MTC Week 6 - Last Week at the MTC!

Frére Brooks, a super cool teacher that we had for a few classes.
He went to Montreal as well and told us a lot of cool things about our mission!    

Bonjour! This week has been full of amazing experiences. It was our last full week at the MTC, so we made it count!

We had one of the districts leave on Sunday and Tuesday, which was pretty sad. I had gotten pretty close with some of the Elders in that district. Most of them are going to Barbados, like Elder Johnson and Oplinger, but two of them that I absolutely love are going to the Washington D.C. North Mission speaking French! I was so excited when I found out a couple of weeks ago that they were going to D.C., and I made sure they knew EVERYTHING they had to do while in the city. I'm was super happy for them, and I made them very excited! Their names are Elder Goring and Elder Jensen, so watch out for them (I got some great pictures with them, but they're on their cameras so I'll send them next week when they send them to me).

Singing "Souviens-Toi" for all the departing missionaries at the fountain

On Monday, I got a minor cold, and it mostly went away that night, but the next morning on Tuesday I woke up and had absolutely no voice! It was pretty frustrating, and I could only speak with a whisper for 2 days! It was hard to do my lessons, but it still was fine. What was funny was that I didn't feel sick, and I didn't hurt at all, I just completely lost my voice! My district all had gotten really sick the first week, and I was the only one that didn't. I was maybe a bit too prideful about it and it came back to bite me! It wasn't bad, just a bit annoying, but also very comical for the rest of my district. 

Elder Johnson and I before he left to the Barbados mission 

This Tuesday we had the opportunity to hear from Elder Oaks, and he gave a super good talk! In only 6 weeks we have had been able to hear from all the apostles on the Missionary board which is crazy! He spoke a lot about our challenges as a missionary, and some advice on how to overcome them. It made us more confident to get out to the field on Tuesday!

Elder Oplinger, who is also going to the Barbados mission 

Wednesday was one of the best days I've had at the MTC. Me and the two other Spanish Elders, Elder Cortez and Elder Alejo, had the opportunity to teach a lesson with someone in Spanish, so we prepared for that this week. Her name was Ana. I was feeling a bit uncomfortable about it, since I didn't know basically any religious word in Spanish, but I worked hard and got a few things down. We planned just to teach a regular lesson, but when we started talking to her, we realized that she wasn't a member of the church and was a real investigator! We then continued to dump our entire lesson plan and just got to know her a bit. She has been interested in and has a lot of respect for the church, but she never really wanted to be baptized. She had been taking missionary discussions and going to church for months, but they just couldn't get her to commit to it. She had a lot of doubts and was too afraid to actually follow through. A lesson that was originally supposed to be for 15 minutes ended up being a 45-minute discussion about her thoughts on various doctrine. We had a wonderful discussion, were able to comfort some of her fears and settle some doubts, I shared her a scripture and we shared stories, and then we asked if she wanted to be baptized. At this point she was in tears, and to all of our astonishment, she committed to be baptized this Saturday (so that we could maybe come)! We were so happy! Our first commitment and we haven't even left the MTC! For the past few days we've been in contact with the Provo Mission since they have to deal with the Baptism, and we've been trying to see if we can maybe go to her baptism if she actually can do it this Saturday. It probably won't happen, but it's okay since we know that she will go through with it. It was such a neat experience!

On Thursday, we had our In-Field Orientation. It was super long, almost 10 hours, but was super helpful. We learned a lot about how to work with members to find investigators, how to plan and set goals effectively, and gave us a decently realistic look at what we can expect to do from day to day in the field. It's made our departure on Tuesday feel so much more real, and we are extremely excited to finally get out there! Only 3 days away!

I'm super grateful for my time at the MTC. Although it has been slow at times, I have learned lots valuable skills and had many great experiences that I'll remember for the rest of my life. I'm so excited to finally get out to the field and use all that I've learned and learn a whole lot more! Love you all!

Elder James