MTC Week 4: The Plague

Hola!

I'm finally feeling better!  But as you can probably guess, illness in the MTC spreads like butter on toast (which I eat everyday for breakfast because it's the only thing that's edible in the mornings) Elder Smith was the first to be infected, karma for making me stay here for my companion's first outside world doctor's appointment. Next was Hermana Miller, then Hermana Gratton and Elder Jensen. By Thursday, half of our district was out of class. The Plague is still making its way around, but at least I'm finally feeling better.

No word on Hermana Lund's heart yet. We're going to a cardiologist on Thursday who will determine if she can stay or if she needs to go home for two months of heart tests. 😢

As of Sunday we're officially Sister Training Leaders, just in time to greet the newbies today! Also, thankfully I was released from my one-week-long calling as Branch Music Coordinator 🙏 so my stress level has significantly decreased this week.

Funny story of the week:

Hermana Lund and I have a goal this week to commit all three of our investigators to baptism. We had the chance to put this goal into action yesterday with our investigator Marcella (Side note: because of Marcella, I've adopted the catchphrase "Es muy wow!" 😂). Hermana Lund and I had another Hermana, Hermana Mugleston with us for the day who is much better at Spanish than we are so we were excited to have her help. I put Hermana Lund in charge of the baptismal invitation and she did so well. Her Spanish es muy wow! We set the date for January 20th and Marcella said that was a perfect amount of time and that she loved having us teach her!  We finished up and left the lesson feeling elated!  Until Hermana Mugleston informed us that we had actually invited her to THINK ABOUT being baptized, and that the date we set was for her to decide if she really wanted to be baptized. Oops. Pero esta bien, porque we have time to clarify with her in our next lesson. Hopefully this one goes as well as we thought our last one did. 😂

It seems like our spiritual theme of the week has been "Endure to the End", which is really applicable as a missionary. Sometimes it's intimidating and exhausting to think about enduring all the way to The End, but we don't always have to look at it that way. Sometimes enduring to the end just means enduring until the pain goes away, enduring for the day until you can sleep, enduring through the week when you have a cold, enduring the food until you get Chick-Fil-A on Mondays, enduring whatever dark cloud you're under until you get through it.  And the challenge isn't just to endure, but to endure faithfully.  If your faith only comes in chunks at first, that's fine.  Build it one strand of twine at a time until it's a rope, then an iron rod and a lifeline back to God.  '

One thing that's really impacted me this week is the story of the Jaredites traveling in barges to the Promised Land in Ether 6.  Verse 7 says "And it came to pass that when they were buried in the deep there was no water that could hurt them, their vessels being tight like unto a dish...therefore when they were encompassed about by many waters they did cry unto the Lord, and he did bring them forth again upon the top of the waters."  The Jaredites were probably really scared when their barges were submerged, which is why they cried unto the Lord, asking Him to bring them back to the surface, but I really like that it says that when they were submerged "there was no water that could hurt them."  Sometimes we think we are enduring well because we are praying and crying unto God, but also, sometimes we can't see that our challenges and trials are actually taking us through safer ground.  The Lord knows what He's doing; He is the wind.  Our job as we endure is to trust in Him as He guides us. 

That's my spiritual thought for the week, guys. Read Ether, it's great.

- Hermana Thunell