Week 2 at the MTC

Hey ya'll!

This week has been crazy busy, but I have loved every moment! So my usual daily schedule is wake up, breakfast, classroom instruction where we teach for an hour then go over one of the lessons in PMG and go over another fundamental (one day we talked about stress relief which was really great!), zone teaching where we review a lesson we talked about as a zone instead of district, lunch, study time, some days we get gym time, then dinner, class time, planning, and then it's time for bed to get up and do it all over again. I say "usual schedule" because it is not always the same everyday. Tuesday morning we had a service assignment where we cleaned the bathrooms of another residence and then yesterday we had this In-Field Orientation where we went over lots of stuff that we will be dealing with in the field that we don't deal with now, like working with members. the first couple days went by so slowly and seemed like they would never end, but after Sunday the days really have just zoomed by! It was really nice to be here on fast Sunday! The spirit was so strong (as always) and made it so that I didn't even realize that I was hungry until I was standing in line for dinner. Every fast Sunday here they do a Mission Conference with the whole MTC so it was really cool to be able to go to that!

On Monday we had a lesson with one of our TRC investigators (TRC is teaching resource center). She had been going to church with her husband but wasn't a member. We met with her not really knowing what to teach her about because we didn't know how much she already knew. Once we started talking with her we learned that she was Catholic and did not know much about the church. So we started out with the Restoration and the Book of Mormon. We probably invited her to read the BOM about 5 times but she was dead set against it. We did not expect the lesson to go that bad but we did get to go back and talk to her again on Wed. When we left the room we were all so upset. It was just a very bad feeling in there, very contentious. Not good. We thought and prayed A LOT about what to talk to her about next. In class we had just gone over "How to Begin Teaching" and a lot about our purpose, so we decided that we needed to make it clear with her what our purpose was. On Tuesday night when we were planning, we had thought to talk to her about the Atonement. I had written in my notes next to that section in PMG "The Doctrines of Christ." So I turned to 2 Nephi 31 and knew that this was the message that we needed to share with her. We met with her the next day and went through them and she knew them but not as the doctrine of Christ. We talked about faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. She told us that the scriptures we read in the lesson were exactly what she was going through in her life. At the end all 3 of us bore our testimonies and invited her one more time to read the Book of Mormon and this time she agreed to! It was a completely different feeling in that room! The spirit was so strong and I know that she felt it too! It was such an amazing experience, probably my favorite one yet!

I have been able to have some gym time this week which has been fun! The first 2 times, I played four-square, but don't worry...I didn't get hurt! HAHA then yesterday I played speed with almost everyone else in the zone! It was fun and I held my own pretty well. Got some of the Elders out and my companion. At one point I was in the final 3 and then got one of the Elders in my district out! He couldn't believe that I did that! It was funny! So then it was just me and another Elder, but he played basketball in high school and got me out like 5 seconds later...it was pretty awesome though! I could hear Pops telling me "That's my girl" just like he did when I hip checked some boys in my OYSA soccer days!

I got my travel plans and the end of last week! It was pretty crazy how soon I got them! I have to meet at the MTC Travel Office at 3:30 AM Tuesday morning to go up to Salt Lake. My flight leaves SLC at 7:30. I fly to Detroit and have almost an hour layover there before flying to Indianapolis! My companions don't leave until Wednesday though so they get to wake up early 2 days in a row because they have to walk me over. There are 29 people in my travel group so maybe there will be another Indianapolis Sister in there so I don't have to be all alone! I will probably be calling home...I am just not sure when we will get to the airport so I can't be more specific. I can't believe that it is already almost time for me to leave here! It was only a week ago that I came!! I saw Sister Spainhower here on Wednesday! It was nice to see someone I could actually hug because before that I had only been seeing Elders that I knew from school!

I am glad Dads birthday went good, I was thinking about him all day wishing I could call and wish him a happy birthday! I also was thinking about grandma on Sunday wishing her a happy birthday as well!

I miss you all so much and love you all! I will be leaving here soon so if you are sending a letter or something, either send it to the mission home or make sure that I will get it by Monday so I won't miss it! I will e-mail you as soon as I can with my new address and information, but again...don't know when that will be...

Love,
Sister London

PS sorry there are no pictures, the laundry room computers were super busy that I didn't have time to get one today! I will send lots when I get to Indiana though!

At the MTC

Friday July 5, 2013
(The first e-mail we received from Sister London)

So far, I am the only sister that I know of going to Indiana. There might be more somewhere who just had to learn English first. I don't know. My companions are both going to Des Moines Iowa, as well as 4 Elders in my district and all of another district is going there as well. The Elders in the picture are in my district. The five of us are going to Indiana and the 6 others are Iowa.

The missionaries who will be serving in Indiana

We watched the fireworks last night after the program. The program they had for us was real quick but then they let us watch 17 Miracles! It was so cool and I found a couple of little quotes from the movie that I think will help me a lot. I realized again how important faith is. All of the pioneers had such great faith! They are such a great example of faith. Even though we don't have to trek across America, we need to have that level of faith so that in case anything came our way, we would be able to jump completely into it!

They keep us so busy here! There is a lot of study time but it is hard to figure out what to study! They tell us so many different things to study but we don't have enough time to get it all done! The typical schedule here is 6:30 AM wake up 7:15 breakfast, then we usually have some study time before class and then classroom instruction. Lunch, study time, classroom instruction. I think I get gym time 4 or 5 times while I'm here starting tomorrow, I think. We get 55 minutes of gym time. I am excited to go play volleyball and hopefully I can get my companions to come play soccer with me!

Sister London and her companions-Sister Nye and Sister Geiger

Since we don't get temple time today and also next week, I think we will probably take a quick nap. It is odd because we have so much afternoon time open because there's no temple time. Today we had to wake up a little earlier to get to the laundry room and then we got breakfast and went to the bookstore. I had forgotten workout pants so I needed some gym shorts. Then we went back to the room and showered! It was nice to shower at 9:00 instead of 6:30! We had personal study time and I read in Alma about Korihor and when he was struck dumb! It made me chuckle a bit because he really was just saying he believed in order to speak again.. which is not good. Making God angry is not good! We then ate lunch and now here we are! We have class time later tonight where we teach a lesson to this progressive investigator we have. It is really one of our teachers who is being an investigator, but they say that it is really cool and they are really good at it! I am excited to see how it goes!

I have seen some people I know around, which has been fun! I miss you all and love you all! My time is really up now so I hope to have many emails to read from you next Friday!

Love, Sister London

"super excited about the name tag"