Weekly Letter!

Familia! 

Sounds like it has been an eventful week for all of you. I'm sorry to hear about the events that have happened. I have been keeping everyone in my prayers and will continue to do so! I'll include my remarks for Grandpa in a separate email. 

My companions have been getting much better this week. I still personally think that we are spending too much time at some of the ward member's houses, but it is getting better! My one companion, Sister Stone, went and did exchanges this past week so she was gone for two days so it was just Sister Horkley and I. It was actually pretty fun. I definitely like just having two people better than three, but oh well. When we were together, we did some awesome finding. Earlier in the week,  I had gone and looked through some of the old potential investigators trying to find some people that we could go and teach. One of the people that I thought that we should go and see was Darren Cross. When we went to go and find him, he wasn't there. Only a really scary dog and a neighbor who was high beyond belief and had a lovely plot of weed growing in her house. Lovely. Well, we were going to leave since no one wanted to hear our message when up pulled his other neighbor in the car. She was a super hyper lady. We talked to her and she seemed really interested in going to church.... she mentioned it to us before we even brought it up. I wonder if part of that was because of our name tags and she wanted to seem like a very religious person. Who knows. We are going to go back and teach her this week and I am VERY excited to see what happens! 

The ward members here are very nice and each very different. There is this one family that is all healthy and vegetarian (They won't eat altoids because apparently they have horse hoof in them, but whatever) and then there is this other family who only eats carbs and meats. Interesting. I am still searching for a family who loves to eat fruits and veggies, but unfortunately not a ton of people seem to like that. haha. Cool thing though, this week I tried fried oreos this week. They were okay, tasted a lot like fair food. One of the lady's in the ward said that she was going to make this thing called grits for me. She keeps going on and on about how good they are.... hopefully they are THAT good. 

We had zone conference this past week. It was pretty good. We went to a church building in a different city. It was just a ton of speakers and sitting for a few hours and listening and taking notes to stay awake. I think a lot of being a missionary is sitting and taking notes. By the time I come home, I should be pro at it. Anyways, one of the speakers talked about how in this life we have things that we can hope in... such as the Savior, the gift of the atonement. But in this life, there are things that we can only hope for... such as receiving eternal life. I had not thought of it this way and thought that was interesting. While we were at the zone conference though, I saw some old people from my first district in the MTC. They had arranged to have a Portuguese lesson with one of the lady's in their ward from Brazil. Because I was at the building at that time, I got to sit in! It was awesome!!1 I love Portuguese so much. And, the lady gave me some awesome Brazil candy. I was pretty excited about that. It actually tasted good and wasn't super duper sweet like some of the candy here is. Don't remember what it is called though.

I finished the Book of Mormon for the second time on my mission this week. It was awesome finishing it again. I love that book and how every time you read it, there are different things that you pick up. One of the main things that I picked up this time as I read it was the importance of deciding your attitude, standards, beliefs and sticking to them and also the power of Christ and how he can heal you. That was super nice to hear, especially with my foot! I'm now working on reading the Doctrine and covenants since I have never really read that before. So far it has been great! 

My companions got a kick out of me this week. At night we have the phone on loud volume so that the alarm will wake us up in the morning. Well, apparently one of our investigators decided to text us at 3 in the morning. She sent two texts so it woke me up. When I woke up, I realized that I was super hot, so I went and got a fan, turned it on and went back to bed. I couldn't fall asleep and decided I was super hungry, so I went and got half an apple to eat. I figured everyone was asleep so I just went straight back up to bed and ate it in there.... well apparently the texts had woken them up to because as soon as I started eating my apple, it fully woke both of them up. They were both so surprised that I would eat something at that time... I guess they have never done midnight snacks before. But yeah, they have been giving me quite a bit of grief about it. 

General Conference was awesome. I'll skip summarizing the talks since I assume that you all watched or are going to watch it sometime. We went over to a member's house to watch it and it was definitely different. The first session that we were there, before the conference started, I was talking to one of my companions and we were laughing at something, I don't remember what. She told us to be quite and listen to the prelude music... the next day we went over there, she had assigned seating for us. Yeesh, we're not two. :P

I love you all so much!! I am praying for all of you! 

Sister Spencer

Family! Week 1 in the Field!

Dear Familia!!!

I am in Knoxville Tennessee and absolutely loving it! I have a lot I want to tell you so hopefully I can fit it all in! First off, it was SO nice to talk to everyone! Definitely gave me a nice little booster before I came out in the field!

My mission president, President Irion, met me at the airport with his wife. He is a nice man, but honestly I have not had that much contact with him. After he picked me up, he drove me straight to my apartment, dropped me off, and then said goodbye. I didn't have an interview or anything with him, so can't say that I know him all that well.

I have two companions. My companions names are Sister Horkley and Sister Stone. They are both very nice! (Side note, I counted up, and they are the 13th companions that I have had so far. Kind of crazy!). Sister Stone really enjoys cooking a ton. She said that she got a minor in culinary. It has been fun getting to know her a little bit and what not. She has done some cake decorating in the past, so she showed me pictures of what she has done, and I showed her a picture of Tara's wedding cake. It was pretty fun. My other companion is Sister Horkley. She is a very nice person as well. We all have been getting along pretty well. On my third day here, both of my companions pretty much had a blow-up at each other.... talk about awkward. Anyways, everything is figured out now and I feel a LOT more unified with both of them!

My first few days here were a little hard. The missionary work here is going VERY slow. When I came out, I don't think we had one progressing investigator. With the first lesson that we taught, my companions basically talked to the person for a good hour and a half and then gave a 5 minute spiritual thought. That was my second day here so I was kind of disappointed with that. With all of the work that we were doing, I didn't feel that great about it and honestly like I wasn't able to give my all... or even enough to make me tired at night... A little discouraging. Things have been getting much better though. I have learned that just because I am the "new missionary" does not mean that I have to be quiet. lol. Ever since my companions and I had the talk about things that were bugging us, things have been getting better little by little. It's definitely interesting to see how different people have different meanings for the words "hard-work."

Well I have had a TON of tender mercies this week! Let me share some of them with you! On my first day here, we decided to do a little bit of tracting. We went to a few houses, but on the third house that we went to, a lady answered the door. We weren't able to give her a lesson, but we were able to share a quick spiritual message and leave her with a prayer. She mentioned how her bosses brother had taken his life and how it was a divine mercy that we had showed up to giver her some more peace in her life.

A few days ago my companions and I needed to get lunch but we didn't have enough time to stop back at our apartment to get food so we just dropped by subway. When we were at subway, I started talking to this girl named Beth (:D). Anyways, at the very end of the conversation I asked her if she would feel comfortable giving me her name and number and if we could come visit her sometime. I don't know if it will turn out to be anything, but it sure was nice to go up and talk to someone and actually get a name and number out of it!

The other day we were going to visit a less-active member named Trish. When we were going there, we saw a person walking his dog so we stopped and talked to him. His name was Brandon and we set up an appointment to go and teach him the next day (Sunday). Trish wasn't there, but we did get an appointment with Brandon so we felt successful! The next day when we went to visit Brandon, his very grumpy dad answered the door. He went to go and get Brandon so we could teach him, but he decided that he didn't want to meet with us, so we got BONKED. Thank goodness we make back-up plans because then we decided to go and visit another less-active member of the ward! The timing that we got there was absolutely perfect. It could not have been any better. This LA name was Sarah. Sarah had her roommate just barely move out unexpectedly that day meaning she had to come up with double the money to pay all the rent herself, and she was super stressed with her two year old child (who she had just put to bed because he had thrown food ALL over), and she had just gotten off the phone with her boyfriend so she could clean up the mess. She was honestly about ready to have an emotional break-down. We came in, helped her clean up just a little bit and we shared a spiritual message with her. The spirit was so strong! It was wonderful. We invited her to start praying and just the timing with everything, we could definitely see the Lord's hand working through us. It was wonderful!

This week we packed up a lady named Patsy and helped her move. She lives right next to us. It was honestly SUPER frustrating. When we came over to just move all of the big things, she had not packed one thing. She expected us to do all of it. I don't know the full background on this lady, but she does have a history of using the missionaries and I definitely felt used. :P Anyways, thanks for teaching me to do things on my own before I ask for help!!

I saw my first firefly this week. It was pretty cool! I am in a driving mission. Hopefully I will get transferred to a biking mission sometime or something. I think I would really enjoy that. My foot is doing well. I personally think that I will be here until my foot fully heals. Oh, all of the meals that I have had here have been lasagna. I guess everyone here REALLY loves lasagna....

Mission life is good!

All of you are in my prayers. I love you VERY much!! Church is true!!! 

Love,

Sister Spencer :)

Week 10 . . . And still counting!

Dear Family! 

This now makes 10 weeks that I have been at the MTC.... super long. There have definitely been ups and downs here though. I figured out that I study about 6 1/2- 7 hours by myself a day. Super long. I have been trying my hardest to stay productive and keep my mind focused, but it can get a bit hard, especially when I don't have any investigators and lessons to prepare. There was one day in particular where I was getting pretty down. I said a prayer asking that I would be able to have some people to help teach, or some investigators. Not even two minutes after I had said my prayer, one of my old teachers, Irmao Van Wagenor, came up to me and told me that there was a Sister in the district that he was currently teaching that wanted some extra help and asked if I would be willing to help her out! I was so excited!!! Then, after we had finished talking, not even a minute later, another teacher came out and started talking to me. He mentioned how the district he was teaching just barely got here 5 days ago and asked if I would be willing to help them out during their coaching missionary study. Dang, immediate answer to my prayers!!! While these were answers to my prayers, the best part is that I was actually able to help them! The very next day I helped out the whole new district, and the day after, I helped out Sisters (Sister Passey and Sister Eddington) from Irmao Van Wagenor's district. It was so awesome!! My prayers were definitely answered, and it was definitely an answer that I needed right then! 

For devotional this Tuesday, I was still on my little scooter so I got to take the shuttle over to the Marriot Center. It was pretty cool though because on the way to the Marriot Center, we stopped at the Wyview west MTC campus to pick up missionaries who also couldn't walk over. When we stopped there for a minute, I saw one of my good friends from freshman year at BYU. I got to have a quick 30 second conversation and it was definitely very nice! Then, once we got to the Marriot Center, because I was limping and can't really walk like a normal person, one of the workers took me down to the floor level on the elevator and so I actually got to be on the floor instead of climbing all over the bleachers! Super nice!! On the way back from devotional, the driver went and dropped all of the senior missionaries off at the Marriot Hotel first, so we got to drive around Provo. For being in the MTC, it was definitely a tender mercy for me just to see the outside world! 

As it turns out, for the Relief Society General Conference, they wanted to do a sister missionary choir for it. All of my companions are SUPER into singing, so we have been going to every possible choir practice so that we could get in there. Last Sunday, we filled out a survey and we all made it into the choir, so for the Relief Society General Conference session, you might see me on the camera!! My companions are all unbelievably excited about singing in the choir and I find it to be kind of funny. I'm not much of a singer, but I am very excited at the prospect of being on TV and getting to go down to Salk Lake! :) 

Probably the news that I am most excited to tell you is something that happened to me yesterday! I was sitting outside in the hall, studying like I always do when the person in charge of the referral center walked past. I introduced myself to him when I first got here and he knows some of my situation now so we got to talking. He invited me to come and start working in the referral center until my foot heals so I can leave. As soon as he said that, it just sounded right. It felt right, it sounds right, and I REALLY want to do that! On Monday morning, he said he would be in his office again so he told me that I could just come on over and that he would get things figured out for me to be there! This sure beats studying by myself for 6 1/2 hours a day!! AND there is a possibility that I could talk to people you speak Portuguese so I could practice my Portuguese as well. I am so excited for this!! I'm going to talk to my Branch President about it on Sunday, but I put in a good word with his wife when she came to talk to us last night, so I think that it will all work out! I sure hope it does! If it does work out and I get to be there, and then I get a re-assignment, it would be super cool because it would be like I would have 3 missions in one! I am SO excited for this!!! :) 

They have started making these divine salads at the MTC. I am in love with them. It sure beats all of the other food that they have here. They had a SUPER good pulled pork one the other day. It reminded me of cafe rio and made me very happy! :) 

Here are a few quotes that I thought were really cool: "There are at least two angels for every missionary. We are definitely among heavenly beings at the MTC." and ..."Let us love at all times. Our own spirits become healed, more refined, and stronger as we serve others." I thought both of those were super cool! 

I love you all! Thank you for all of your letters and support this week! You are in my prayers!! 

 

The church is true and Christ lives! Prayer is amazing!! 

Sister Spencer

Final Countdown!!! . . . Almost

Dear Familia,

Well, yet another week and I am still here at the MTC. I think they are having trouble getting rid of me. ;) JK! 

So for companions this week, they have been switching up quite a bit. At the beginning of the week I had Sister Francis. She was awesome and I loved her! And then she got her re-assignment to Salem, Oregon and left Saturday morning. After that, I went into a trio and my companions were Sister Reeve and Sister Leonard. They were so fun!! I really liked being their companion. One thing that they did which was super nice is that they included me in their lessons instead of just trying to ignore me thinking that I was only their companions for a few days so it didn't really matter. That made such a huge difference. But, they got their visas, so they left for Brazil on Monday.

Now, my companions are Sister Nielson and Sister Hardester. They are so fun!! I feel like I am learning a lot from their example and they are definitely very inclusive as well. Sister Hardester's mom sent a package with socks for all of us in there. And her mom even included me! It was so nice!! I should be with them for the rest of the time that I am here! I am pretty excited for that!! 

My foot is doing well. It is continuing to heal and the nurses here have given me a scooter to go around on so I don't have to walk on my foot. It's pretty fun- I named the scooter Sam (gender neutral name). I've learned how to drift on my scooter and it is pretty fun to do going around corners and everything though! (don't worry, I am definitely being smart!). Because I am on the scooter though, I've been getting a ton of comments from people saying "Oh I wish I had one of those"... or..." Dang, I want to hurt my foot so I can ride on a scooter. As fun as my scooter is to ride, it definitely not worth hurting my foot to purposefully have one. My foot hurts sometimes, but not a lot of the time. It's good just as long as I stay off of it--the scooter is very helpful. I can tell that it is healing quickly. i am definitely very glad that I got a blessing before I went in for my surgery. That is definitely helping out a ton. :)

I talked to my branch president and because I have been at the MTC for so long (I am on my 9th week right now), they do not know what to do with me. My branch president has declared me as a "solo/appendage" missionary. Sounds pretty cool, right? Well, it really isn't that cool. The district that I am with right now has only been here 3 weeks so I am pretty far ahead of them. My branch president basically told me that I get to sit right outside the classroom door and study on my own. I am trying my very hardest to stay diligent with studying, but it is pretty difficult at times... especially since I sit right next to the drinking fountain and everyone and their mother who comes over asks me "where is your companion" and "oh, what did you do to your foot?" It can be a bit frustrating to explain my situation 20 times to everyone who asks. I guess it is really good patience testing for me though.... 

I had a really good lesson this week about "making the mission count." It really energized me to help me continue to do my best. Even though I am in the MTC, I think that I have come to realize that this IS my mission. I can't wait to go out in the field, but I am here now and I am most definitely going to make the time count here and do my best to be a positive influence to others. In my scripture reading this past week, I've noticed the phrase "and the Lord comforted his people." I really like that phrase. I can feel the Lord's comfort in my own life and I know that there have been countless tender mercies which I am so grateful for! (One of which was that I saw my good friend Haley Brogan at work--she works MTC security-- the other night. SO awesome!!!)

I love you all VERY much! You are in my thoughts and prayers! 

Sister Spencer

Uneventful,Yet Eventful Week

Dear Familia!!

How are you all doing? My week has been pretty uneventful and eventful at the same time. I had my surgery on Wednesday and it went pretty well. I am currently in this boot weird thing and I am not allowed to walk a whole lot or at all really.
It is kind of frustrating. During the day, I go to the health clinic to this place called the "sick bed." During the day I just stay in there basically. I really like it in there though. I am the only one back there, so I just read things in Portuguese out-loud, work on my pronunciation, practice learning vocab and sentence structure. It's pretty great and honestly I really like it. I am going to be sort of sad when I have to go sit in a classroom again and re-learn things I have already learned. Oh well, things will work out the way that they are supposed to. With the original bandage that they put on my foot, it bled through that, so the nurse put another one on top and said that if it bled through the second one that they would consider it to be excessive bleeding. It sort of started to bleed through a little bit, so later today I am going to go into the nurse and see what she thinks. In all honesty though, I am not super worried though. I know that the Lord will help me to get everything figured out. 

I met some sisters who are going to Campinas and they live on my Residence hall floor. There are 6 of them and they are all SUPER nice. I am definitely super lucky and have the best mission! That is a fact. I really hope that I will be able to get my visa soon. We'll see what happens though. I'd appreciate your prayers to help my visa come through quickly! :)

This past week I have had a TON of companions. My companions have been Sister Van Wagenen, Peterson, Dunn, and my current companion is Sister Francis. I really like Sister Francis. She is super fun, nice and level-headed. One of the companions that I had, Sister Dunn, I was only with her for a few days, and honestly I am glad I was only with her for a few days. She was SUPER attached to her old companions and so when they left, she had a hard time. I tried to do everything I could to make her happy, but I guess it was hard on her when I had to go to doctor's appointments so she couldn't eat dinner with her district. At least it was only for a few days though. Oh, so super funny though. She left Wednesday morning at 2:30 in the morning and on Tuesday night, I told her to wake me up so that I could say goodbye to her. On Wednesday morning, right before she was ready to leave, she said my name to wake me up, I literally sat straight up in bed and sort of let out a weird noise. She said it was one of the weirdest things she had ever seen and was pretty freaked out. I thought it was hilarious and could not stop laughing for a good 5 minutes after she left. ... some things are definitely only funny when you are in the MTC. :P 

This past Sunday was fast Sunday. We had missionary conference for two hours. On Sunday I was worried about my foot, so I was praying for comfort with it and for it to heal quickly. It was amazing, I felt like the speakers wrote the talks specifically for me to hear. Pretty darn cool. In the talks, they mentioned how the Lord will answer your prayers, he may not always tell you what is going to happen, but if you have faith in him, he will definitely watch over you and do what is best for you. I definitely needed to hear that. 

The past district I was in, was definitely very unique. I am glad I was not with them for my entire time at the MTC. They are kind of super weird and touchy. During class times, I would look over and the Elders would be giving each other an in-depth back massage.... AWKWARD. Yeah, I'm glad I moved districts. On Monday they were all taking pictures since they were leaving, and since I am the awkward person district jumping right now, I got loaded down with all of the cameras. It is kind of hard to feel like I don't really belong anywhere and that I am just there to be the photographer. I was pretty much on the verge of tears, when Seth walked around the corner. He is such a good brother. Such a tender mercy that I saw him!! 

One of the teachers that I had this week was named Sister Tirrell. She is super nice AND she went to Campinas on her mission. I've been asking her a ton of questions and it is super cool to hear all about it! One thing she mentioned to me is that she gained 40 lbs on her mission.... That is NOT happening to me. I guess that kind of worried me. 

On Tuesday night we had one of the best devotionals that I have been to here. The speaker talked about how right now there are 76,000+ missionaries serving in the church and how by the end of fall, there should be around 85,000+ missionaries. Such a cool time to be a missionary. The speaker also went and talked about Jacob 5. The whole olive tree analogy. One thing he mentioned about it, is that all of the prophets just asked for more time for the trees to produce good fruit, and the last servant, asked for more servants to help the trees produce good fruit and right after they got more servants, the Lord came. The speaker mentioned how we are fulfilling a prophecy to be "more servants" for the Lord. He said how the Lord had invited us to be more servants and we were fulfilling that calling. It was a super cool talk. I was so glad that I got to see it. 

It is hard being at the MTC always seeing people going, but I am doing my best to stay positive. I have taught some pretty killer lessons to the walls and chairs in the "sick bed" area. I'm grateful for the alone time though. That's always nice to have. I am so grateful to be a missionary. I love you all VERY much!! 

♥ Sister Spencer

MTC Stay Prolonged and Upcoming Surgery!

Dear Family!

Another week at the MTC has passed by, and I am still here... and will be for a while now. I guess that the biggest news for this week is that I will be getting surgery on Wednesday, September 4th. My new departure date for the MTC is now September 25th. I'm doing my best to stay positive with it. I guess that I am tad bit disappointed that I will be here for so long, but I know that the Lord will take care of me and that I am where I need to be right now! I am hoping that I will heal quickly so that I will be able to leave sooner. And, the odds of me getting my visa while I am here are VERY likely! So hopefully after this, I will be able to go straight to Brazil! One thing that I am worried about with being here is that my Portuguese won't progress as much as I would like it to. With my district being gone, it is much harder to talk in Portuguese since the district that I am with does not like to. Since I will be here for a while, I am not sure what exactly will happen. I should find out in the next few days. 

My whole district left this week for their reassignments. It was pretty sad to see them go. Especially waking up Wednesday morning and being the only one in the room... yeah, that was super weird. On Wednesday morning I moved in with another district. There were 4 girls in the room that I moved into. Right now I am in a trio. My companions are Sister Peterson and Sister Van Wagenen. They are both super nice! On Thursday I had a ton of doctor's appointments so they were super patient with me going to each one. I really am appreciating all of their patience. I also moved in with another district. It is sort of weird because it is not the people that I am used to being around, but they are super nice. They are definitely a very musical district. When they got their reassignments, before opening them, they all decided that they wanted to sing two hymns first.... something that I am not used to, but hey, whatever floats their boat I guess. Yesterday they received their re-assignments. Two of the sisters are leaving Monday morning and going to Georgia and the other sister is leaving on Wednesday morning going to Ohio. They are super excited and I am super excited for them! Thoughts of going out of the MTC are always pretty exciting! It is sort of sad to see everyone go though. 

Tuesday Devotional was SO awesome!!! We had another apostle come and talk to us. It was Neil A. Anderson. He talked about sacrifice and love. One of the things he said that really stuck with me is that: "We sacrifice for those we love, and we love the things we sacrifice for." I really liked that quote. It is so true. After that, he went and talked about how Christ sacrificed and gave his life for us and he loves us very much. He related it to missionary work and it was very powerful. At the very end, he shared a story about the importance of always sharing your testimony. He had a former missionary come up and share an experience about how he shared his testimony one time and that was one of the things that made an investigator interested in the church. It was pretty cool. I hope that when I am on my mission that I will always have the courage to share my testimony with others! Definitely something that I want to strive for. 

I have become an avid sleep talker apparently. Before my former companion left for Brazil, she woke up to me saying "Vamos a Brasil, e voce? ... Ah, muito bom". And then two nights ago, I woke up one of my new roommates because I was laughing. And then last night another girl was having trouble going to sleep and I said "E muito importante a usar a preterit." It's pretty cool hearing everything that I say, but I feel like I have become much more talkative in my sleep! It's definitely pretty fun!

Yesterday I attended the "in-field" training again. It was exactly the same as the week before, so no surprises there. I felt like I should use my time more productively than doing the same thing over and over, so I memorized all of the irregular preterit verbs. It was nice. My goal for this week is to master the subjunctive verbs, when to use them, and to create a a ton of sentences to help me practice them! I have also been learning a ton of vocab which is super nice. Even with my district being gone, I still feel like for right now, I have enough things to do so that I can push myself to learn more. 

Well, not much has really happened this week, it's just been an odd week. Even with this being a more of a difficult week, I am SO grateful to be a missionary and have the opportunity to serve the Lord! I know that the Lord is watching out for me, and all of us and that he loves us all very much! I love you all very much! 

Sister Spencer

One Week Left in the MTC!

Dear Familia! 

I love you all sooo much!!! 

Well, big news first if you haven't heard, I have been reassigned to the Tennessee Knoxville Mission!!!! I am SO very excited!!! My companion and a few other people in my district got called to the same exact mission. I am pretty stoked. Because of my foot, I will be here another week, so there is a slight possibility that I will be reassigned... apparently the travel office did not plan for that, so we'll just have to see what happens. I hope I won't get reassigned, but we will see. I know that the Lord is in charge and that he will take care of me whatever happens. 

The first picture above is my reassignment;
the picture directly above is everyone in my
district called to Knoxville with me.

Opening my reassignment!

So I was on crutches for part of the week because of my foot. At first I was SUPER excited. Crutches always seemed so fun.... and then I got them. I hate crutches. They are awful and terrible. But the good news is, is that they did the job that I needed them too. My foot is starting to heal up quite nicely. Another good thing about crutches was that I got some pretty cool perks with them. On Tuesday night, we have devotional so normally all the missionaries have to walk over there. But, because I had my crutches, I got to take the shuttle on over. It was super nice to be in the shuttle. On the way back from the devotional, I got to get on this super legit and nice bus. It was what I would think of as a celebrity bus... and yes, I did feel like a rebel celebrity being on that bus (there wasn't enough room for my companion to be on there as well so we were told that we had to split). It dropped the senior missionaries off at the Marriot hotel parking lot at first, so it was like I got a small tour of Provo. It was nice to see the outside world a little bit and remember that the MTC is not the only thing that exists in this life. 

I got to be a host for new missionaries coming into the MTC this week. That basically means that I got to show the new missionaries where to go and where they needed to be at a certain time. It was pretty cool. The first sister missionary that I got was pretty interesting. Her mom was bawling and she was bawling as well. I tried to tell her that the MTC was a happy place and that she would like it here. However, when I said that, the mom basically let out this nice long wail.... yeah, I didn't really know what to do, so basically I told her that we had to get going and tried to offer some comforting thoughts as well. Luckily the other sisters that I had were not like that at all. The rest were pretty much tearless. I really believe though that the MTC is what you make it though. I have heard of some people absolutely hating it, and other people loving it. I hope that the one girl will be able to make it a positive experience. 

Something funny that happened on Sunday was that Elder Light was released from blessing the Sacrament and Elder Dark was called in. That gave me a good laugh. :) Thought you might enjoy it as well! 

My District

So in the MTC, in building 18M on the 3rd floor, there are some highly coveted "rolly" chairs. My district has waited long and hard for these chairs. Finally, the time came that we were able to steal the chairs from a district that left. We were all soo happy, for about a day or two that is. On the day that my district hosted the new missionaries, the custodians came in and took all of the "rolly" chairs off of the 3rd floor. I won't lie, I was a bit disappointed. Those chairs were much more comfy than the other ones that we have now. Apparently the custodians moved them all to another building. Since we only have a few days left (the rest of my district) we decided that it was not worth it for us to go and find them again.... so let us all welcome another week of uncomfortable chair sitting. :-/ 

We taught one of my investigators, Maria, about the word of wisdom this week. It was so fun and I loved it so much! (Maria is the 60 year old party animal). She has been following the Word of Wisdom ever since and I know that she is being blessed from living it. On the last lesson we gave her, we gave her an apple to keep up the good work... I guess you could kind of look at it like positive reinforcement. She loved it though :). As for our other investigators, Neumar is doing quite well. We committed him to a baptismal date and now we are starting to teach him some of the laws and ordinances of the gospel. He seems to be handling everything really well and accepting it well. I am not sure how much he is reading the Book of Mormon though, I wish he would read it a bit more and pray a bit more. But he is doing so awesome nevertheless. :) For our last two investigators, Nathan and Wayne, they are doing well. Nathan is going to pray about Joseph Smith and being baptized and Wayne is going to pray about Joseph Smith. They are both starting to show more faith. So awesome to see. I absolutely and thoroughly love it!!! 

I think that I have finally decided on my missionary scripture, Ether 12:4.  Just thought you would want to know! 

We had "in-field" orientation this week. It was pretty fun at first! We learned a ton. At the end though, it sort of felt like trying to get a sip of water from a fire hose.... impossible. I am pretty much positive that I will have it again this next week, so nothing too exciting. I guess it is pretty basic stuff though. 

I love you all VERY much!!! You are in my prayers and I am so grateful for all of you in my life. I know this gospel is true and I am so grateful for the opportunity to be a missionary!!! Keep the faith!!! 

Sister Spencer