I've done it now!

Wednesday January 8th was a cold snowy day, as you can see from this picture!  It was really hard to say good bye and watch her being escorted off.  Bittersweet.  Here are some excerpts from her first 10 days in the MTC.

Friday, Jan 10th:
"Okay, now the important things. I feel like I've been here for weeks instead of 2 1/2 days. The first day was pretty overwhelming. Right away I went and got my name tag and other paper work stuff. Then I dropped off my stuff and was taken to my classroom, where I met my companion. Her name is Sister Christensen. She is so awesome. I love her already. She's one of the best possible people I could have started off my mission with. She's from New Castle, Utah, which is down south by Cedar City. I'll try to get pics uploaded to my blog soon. After class went to devotional and listened to the MTC President. Then we went to a teaching workshop with real investigators and got to help teach them a bit. After that we met our zone leaders who took us on a tour of the campus. My zone leaders are really cool! My district is lots of fun and I love them all so much. There's me and my companion, and then there's Sister Esplin and Sister Wright who are going to the Arcadia, California Mission. We also have 3 elders, Elder Mansaray, Elder Smith, and Elder De Lima. They're all really cool people and they're all really passionate about the gospel. I'm learning so much from them! My companion and I share a room with the other sisters from our district and we all have a lot of fun together. I'm also the only one without a boyfriend waiting for them haha. Cause I'm super smart ;D

We also met our Branch President last night, President Mangum. Not the one from the 4th ward but it's possible they could be related or something. His wife is so cute. He's really strict about time, like if something at seven and you get there at seven then you are late. If you're five minutes early then you're on time. He's a really nice guy though. He made me the Branch Music coordinator. So I get to pick them hymns and the people to play and conduct them.

I'm learning so much here. I'm drinking from the proverbial fire hydrant of knowledge as we say it here. Let me just say that the MTC food is certainly something. I've tried new things but I feel like it's just typical cafeteria food, only a little more high class. 

I had a really cool experience today. Sister Christensen and I were trying to plan on how to teach our role-play investigator Jason. We had come up with a plan before, but as we were discussing it again we realized we didn't really know what we were doing, and our teacher encouraged us to pray again as a companionship and really trey to see what Heavenly Father sees in Jason. Se we got on our knees and I offered the prayer, even though I'm really self-conscious about praying. It was such an awesome prayer. I could feel the spirit and I was so excited because I'd never really prayed that powerfully before. After that we were able to determine what Jason would need to hear during our first lesson, which is simply that our Heavenly Father loves him, no matter what. We are going to teach him tonight so wish me luck!

Friday, Jan 17th:

"We have an investigator named Melissa (who may or may not be a real investigator, but who knows). She is so awesome. She's super interested in the gospel and we've taught her the Restoration and started the Plan of Salvation. We had her read 3 Nephi 11 when Christ comes to the Nephites and she loved it. We committed her to pray to know for herself that these things are true. So hopefully she'll feel something. Our lessons with her just seem to go so great. Lessons with Jason have been pretty okay. He's hard to plan for cause we just don't know him as well as we should, and he only has like one facial expression haha. So it's kind of meh. I miss you so much! I love you."

Oh and guess who came and spoke at our tuesday devotional. Drum roll please...

ELDER and SISTER FREAKING BEDNAR. They were so awesome! They just answered questions and they were so amazing and freak it was sooooooo cool. When we all stood up when he walked in I was so excited and then I saw that it was him and I was way mooooore excited haha. Especially cause we had just listened to his talk about the character of Christ which was also way good. So yeah.