Half Way Done at the MTC

Dear Familia!!!!

Just a head's up. On p-day I go and print my emails out early in the morning, read them and then respond in the afternoon. If you send me an email after, I will only be able to skim it. Just fyi.

According to the MTC, I am half way done here. I am on my third week! CRAZY! Can you believe it!? Yeah, neither can I! Well, here's how my week has been.

Last p-day, after I emailed, my companion ended up discovering a secret hidden stash of hidden treasures (like weird candy and what not) in the AC. It was super fun to find and so all week we have been plotting and planning about what to put in it next. All of us decided that we are definitely NOT going to have anything that is from there though. It is kinda sketch... like there are these weird cloud candy things. Yeah, we'll just leave them in there.

My Companion, Sister Pennington, and I

Some Elders in my district have gotten strep throat. Everyone that has had strep throat has been quarantined to their room and we have told them that they are absolutely not allowed back in the classroom until they are better. Two of them have been kicked out. One of the two had a 104 fever apparently. I am very grateful that I am not sick.... I sit right in front of one of the Elders that was sick. I think that all of them are feeling better now though, so that is a relief. We have class again tonight so I guess that I will get to see who shows up for that and who decides to stay at their residency and sleep because they are sick.

We have these devotionals every night. Most of the time they are pretty good. One of the things that they have the missionaries do is sing hymns for the prelude music. :P The director lady last Sunday was honestly kind of weird. She kept stopping us in the middle of our songs and telling us that we did not have enough "sparkle" in our voices and to try to do it better. On the song "There is Sunshine in My Soul Today" she told the organist to do something special so that we would be inspired to make our voices "sparkle" ... the organist did nothing different. Ha, it was pretty funny. My companion and I kept joking around that since we didn't have enough sparkle in our voices that we would have to have a long companionship inventory that night (companionship inventory--where we talk about things that we need to fix in our companionship and what we are good at). Also on Sunday, I went and watched this ABSOLUTELY AMAZING talk by Elder Bednar. It was called the Character of Christ. So incredibly inspiring. A few of the things that he talked about was that everything that Christ did was for other people. When the natural man in us would turn in because things are hard or difficult, Christ would turn out and focus on others. One quote that really stuck with me was that "there would be no atonement without the character of Christ." Powerful.  They also talked about how having a testimony is not enough, we have to be converted to the Lord and we can't live off of borrowed light. I really liked that.

In front of the Provo Temple

During Language study this week, as a class we were studying the word of wisdom. In Portuguese, the word for peace is "paz" and the word for parents is "pais". My teacher messed up these words and ended up saying that if we obey the word of wisdom, we could have parents.... Anyways, I am glad that I obey the word of wisdom so that I can have parents. We all got a pretty good laugh out of that.

Portuguese is coming along pretty well. I think I surprise myself by how much I am able to remember. I have memorized "My purpose" and the 1st vision in Portuguese. My companion and I were practicing Portuguese the other day for a lesson and she told me to try saying the whole thing by myself. I ended up talking for like 10-15 minutes all by myself about the Restoration in Portuguese! I was so surprised that I could do that!!!!!! I definitely have a TON of gaps, but I feel like I am learning a ton and I love it! :D My companion and I have a goal to learn 20 vocab words a day and to retain them and also to start memorizing different tenses. We only really use present tense in class which is a pain.

A lot of people in my Zone have been getting their visas and have been going straight to Brazil. One of my sister training leaders, my two zone leaders, and one person got theirs so they are headed straight down to Brazil and will be finishing up the rest of their MTC stay there. I am excited to go to Brazil, but if I get sent state side first, I would have absolutely no problem with that. I think that I actually might like that.

Thank you for all your love, letters, and prayers!

Love, 

Sister Spencer