Last PDay in the MTC! Week 6

What a crazy week...and what a crazy week it will be! I can't believe I am about to leave for the other side of the world!  

A cool thing we learned this week in choir is about yoking ourselves with Christ. We are always like "yeah, me and Christ, we're together, and we are accomplishing so much! We're like perfect partners." But the truth is, if we really were oxen, he would be like Babe, the big blue ox in Paul Bunyon, and we are like miniature oxen. The yoke is on Him, He's pulling the weight, and we are this tiny ox flying through the air, saying "wow look how much I'm doing! look how much weight I'm pulling." and He lets us think that. It was a funny analogy but it made me think a lot about how we should recognize Christ's help more.

This week our teacher taught Sis Parke and I as a demonstration lesson. They talked about coming unto Christ through prayer and we read parts of Alma 33. Vs 5-6. We need to always pray in our wildernesses (when we feel lost) and in our fields (whether our field of work is missionary or family) and then 19-20 and 23. I realized how much we need to have faith in the little things. Just looking to the Savior and He will heal us from all of our troubles.  I liked 21, would you rather harden your heart? no, we all would rather be healed. The last verse is "And all this can ye do if you will." I really liked that. It doesn't say "and all this ye can do if you become more perfect or if you stop sinning or if you do this or that." just DO it and be willing. We can all apply that. Most of us are requesting things from God and often we can have them just by acting.

Our devotional was great too. He completely changed the definition of INADEQUATE for me. We always think of it as a negative thing. but he said it was the best thing because it was what would bring us to our knees. So if you feel inadequate in your life or in your calling, let it be a positive thing for you. 

I am running out of time, so I am going to end with that short email. Next time you hear from me I'll be in the philippines!

Mahal ko kayo! 

-- 

Sister Smith

Flight Plans and Real Life-- Week 5

So I had a pretty good week. Definitely some rough moments, but also so many highs! Lassie didn't almost get hit this week, so that's good.  I watched a cool talk on sunday called "MIssions are Forever" by Jeffrey R Holland. Watch it if you are going to be a missionary or you have been a missionary. Or you want to be a missionary! haha. 

Something funny a girl in my district said last week... So we had a teacher from New Zealand. He was talking about how weird english is.  He said "like the word hamburger for example, what is that? it's not ham!" and the sister said "Um...isn't it called a handburger?" and she was serious. She's 22 years old haha! and she really thought they were called hand burgers.  

Sometimes we take walks for exercise here. I am so grateful for the good weather!! 

Sis J and I have an investigator named Daryl who we LOVE! He is so awesome. He is committed to baptism and we have had amazing experiences with him. We also finally committed Karen yesterday. 

Tagalog is awesome.  We attempted to do some english fasts this week, but it's real hard. We are doing a lot better with speaking it more though. I love it. I wish I was better at putting it in my emails so you all could see how great it is!

The service guy who we get lassie from is so nice. This week he was like "Here are your jobs blah blah blah oh yeah and I asked my girlfriend to marry me on saturday!" and we all died. We lived vicariously through his fiance for a few minutes ;) He showed us a video. then he let us leave service early. He was so happy. :) 

On thursday sis May and I wanted to see how much food we could eat and at breakfast we had 3 and a half breakfast burritos, 2 whole bagels, apples, chocolate milk, and chocolate between us. We were like "we feel great! lets count meals all day." then a few hours later it hit us. But we were impressed with our breakfasts.  haha

We got to host this week! When the new missionaries came, we got to show them around. It was pretty fun. It gave me a lot of flashbacks to my first day. I was so grateful for my host.

One neat thing that happened this week was before the devotional on thursday, I thought of 3 questions I wanted to have answers to. I prayed about them. then all three were answered in order in the devotional. I know that if we tell Heavenly Father what we want to learn, and we put effort and faith in, He helps us. 

Thanks all of you for being supportive! I love you all. 

Mahal ko kayo! :)

--

Sister Smith

Also I got my flight plans this week! Leaving the mtc early in the morning on march 5, arriving in the philippines late at night march 6 :) it's getting real!

Hi mom! Sis. J's mom is so cool. The matching shirts we had were from her. She sent us both like 4 old navy tshirts. They are AWESOME. They don't need undershirts (well one does) and they are comfy. She's cool. (note from mom: this was in response to my email telling Aubrey that I talked with Kelli (Sis. J's mom) on the phone, and what a great conversation we had).

Sis J and I are now the Sister Training Leaders for our WHOLE zone/branch. So that's been hard. haha. but good. 

I finally got the pictures on thursday. That was good.  Thanks for the shoes. I almost gave them to a sister we have from another country but it looks like she got some shoes from someone else. So I'll see if she needs them still. But I also don't want her to feel like a charity case if that makes her uncomfy.  

Sis Parke and I decided randomly to try out for devo music number! so we went like a half hour before and worked on a song, and we tried out and they were like loving it but they want us to sharpen it up for a week and try out again so we'll see what happens. One lady was amazed that I was so good at the violin even though I haven't really played since I was 12. She's like "I can tell you've had professional training." and I told her you were really good and she said to tell you how great I did. Sis Parke was awesome though because she could play it way better than me and the piano part sounded hard.  

I forgot to send the pic/SD card. Maybe this week. Or not. I really never take pics so maybe you'll just have to look at sis j's and then I'll send you some in the philippines.  I got the doterra oils. I use them sometimes but i'm saving them. 

I am leaving SLC airport then we are going straight to japan which is not what they normally do and then to manilla. 

I love you! I hope you can get on for a minute but if not thats okay!! You're so awesome.  I love you a lot.

Week 4!

Kumusta everyone!

This week was pretty good. I will start with story from monday. So as I have said before, every week we get to put up all 32 flags outside the mtc. We take a cart with a rope and it is really hard to pull. We named it lassie and we pretend it's our dog. kindof. Well anyway this week we were putting up flags and it's a semicircle turnaround. lassie was on one side of the turnaround and I was like maybe we should move it. My kasama was like "what if a car ran over lassie?" well one minute later this garbage truck comes FLYING into the semicircle and i scream "NOOOOOOOO NOT LASSSIE!" The driver slams on his brakes because the window was open. He probably thought there was a person or something. No just a cart. But he stopped within six inches of her. so all is well.

Tuesday was awesome. We sung nearer my God to thee at the devotional.

Also my kasama and 2 other sisters were able to talk with some gold tag investigators (real investigators that come to the mtc) and it was awesome. They were from mexico and they asked me who chose where we went, and then later they asked why we would give up everything to PAY to serve the church. It was an amazing experience to be able to bear my testimony and feel the spirit testify to me that what I was doing was right. It is worth it to do this because people need us.

I don't really remember a lot of other things that happened on wednesday. I got mail on those days so that was good :)

Thursday was special. I woke up with a creepy red eye. and my cheek and eye were kindof swollen. So my kasama forced me to go to the doctor and I have a weird strain of pink eye. But it's not really bad. We had to walk off of the mtc campus to get my prescription. That was really weird. It's pretty much almost better though.  My whole district has had sickness going on. so we are praying to stay healthy all the time haha.

This week I learned so much about the language and how it works. It is awesome to really start understanding it. I love it!

I am so grateful for the MTC. I can't believe in less than 3 weeks I'll be heading to the Philippines. So this is your last chances to send me mail in the US ;)

More and more as I study the gospel I am learning how important it is to have charity and really strive to love others more than yourself. Think about that this Valentines day :)

I finished the Book of Mormon again this week. If you haven't read it, read it. If you have read it, read it again. You will learn and grow and feel God's love! 

Love you all. I am sorry my emails aren't the greatest. I think of all of you often though and you're in my prayers. Shout out to my grandmas for their letters and cards. Happy Valentines day. Please be my Valentine, and all of you wait for me. Jokelang. :) Lots of love! Bye!

--

Sister Smith

Photos from Sister Jenkins, Aubrey's kasama. :) 

Here are a couple of excerpts from Sister Jenkins' blog: 

Sister Smith and I taught "Gospel Doctrines", our topic was enduring to the end, which I love.  And, it was so fun.  We met a couple that are going to be serving in the Philippines as well.  I thing that is so cool!  They were way nice and it was fun talking to them.  We finished off our wonderful Sunday with a movie about Thomas S. Monson.

Wednesday, Sister Smith, Sister Parke and Sister May and I made a goal to stay really positive because usually Wednesdays are the hardest day of the week for us.  I don't know why!  But, it worked and we went to bed not feeling discouraged but excited the next day!  

Aubrey's Zone

Excerpt from Sister Tiffany Blake's letter:

"Sister Smith and I have mastered the shower duets together after gym. Everyone gets a kick out of it because we just belt out primary songs the whole time. It is pretty funny."

linggo tatlo! Week 3

So this week was pretty good! I love the MTC. 

Lets see. Last sunday was awesome because it was fast sunday so it was pretty relaxed and sundays in the mtc are awesome. We had Mission Conference and I had been fasting and praying about some questions and they were answered in the speakers' talks. So that was cool. It is awesome to be here for 6 weeks so we get so many opportunities for learning!

Before I forget, the funniest thing that happened this week that I can remember is last night, two of the girls in my district started laughing. We asked them why and they said that they had been looking in our dictionary and found the word "pusa" which means cat. That isn't that funny, but check this out, the word "puso" means heart. Basically all week with our investigators this companionship has been saying things like "pray with all your cat," and "you will feel the holy ghost and god's love in your cat," and we had a great laugh thinking of phrases like "offer your cat to God," and "serve with all your cat might mind and strength." it was so great. I was laughing so hard I almost lost my voice.

A cool experience we had this week was my kasama and I were in a demonstration our teacher gave of a lesson. She was the main investigator and I was just there. She was acting as one of her friends that isn't a member but has investigated the church in the past. She was able to really get into it. We had the lesson for probably 45 minutes. They asked her to be baptized and we were both just crying and it was so crazy. But awesome. And it made me realize how real the teaching is that we do  here in the MTC. Even though our investigators are often our teachers, to them they really feel it and we as missionaries can feel it too.

For service this week we got to do flags again which is fun. and we hokey vaccuumed the halls again. And we cleaned bathrooms.

I really like doing choir. This week for Tues Devo we sang Sweet Hour of Prayer which I usually don't like very much. But the arrangement we sang was awesome. It totally changed my attitude about that song.

I am my district's sister training leader. We had to get a leader for every district since we got 16 sisters in this week!! and only 1 elder. it is so crazy.

Something else that has been awesome is learning the language. We started learning verb conjugations and sentence structure this week and it is starting to make sense. It's great. I love it. The language is hard but so awesome. I am just motivating myself by the excitment of knowing that some day I will be fluent and it will be my primary language. It is so great. 

I'm sorry I don't send very many pictures. first of all, I don't take very many because I rely on my kasama to take them. It's also really hard to send them here for some reason.

Well, this week was awesome. There's ups and downs, but I know that Heavenly Father helps us. We have ups and downs so we can grow. The MTC is definitely a growth zone more than a comfort zone. But it's awesome.

Everyone read the book of Mormon. I tried to think of a specific scripture to share this week and all I could come up with was that I love the Book of Mormon. David A Bednar said if you have any question, buy a new book of mormon and start reading and praying with real intent for that question to be answered. Mark up that BoM as you read it. And when you finish, Pray about that question and you will know the answer.

Love you all!! Thanks for your amazing examples and love!

--

Sister Smith

(pics courtesy of Aubrey's awesome kasama, Sister Jenkins)

Stolen Photos from Aubrey's kasama. :)

into week 2

So friends and family,

The past week was pretty good. I really enjoyed sunday! probably even more than my pday. Sundays are awesome. You have sacrament, relief society (with ALL the sisters), spiritual stuff, choir practice, and devotional. The devotional was pretty great. After the devotional we watched elder Bednar's talk Character of Christ. Everyone search the web and try to find it. haha. Its lifechanging.  I am sure you can find it somewhere.

We also get to go for a temple walk on sunday, so it's nice to spend time outside. 

On monday we had service early and we got to put up 32 flags outside. I picked all my friends' mission flags of course ;)

I really like working out. there's an extra gym downstairs and you can use headphones and watch conference or mormon messages or joseph smith movie while you work out!

We finished teaching our investigator this week. the second lesson was awesome! the third lesson was horrid. I can say that wednesday was the worst day i had so far. Satan wants us to not acheive anything. That's basically how it is. haha. But we taught her last lesson on thursday, and it went way better.  It's crazy how much you can learn in just a little over a week. We can give invitations and ask questions and stuff and I actually understand my teachers most the time.

On thursday we did service again. Sis Jenkins and I washed stairs for 5 floors. So that was fun. haha.

Friday was a good day. The whole day just was more productive and we had some cool experiences. We got to go to a little extra book of Mormon class. One thing I liked that the teacher said at the end was "The Master that you serve will carry what you cannot." Alam ko po na totoo! It's so true.  We just have to carry our load and He'll pick up the rest. Our investigator (now guro (teacher)) came in and taught us last night. she taught us about study and planning and it was really nice.  Weird though, because before we were teachng her and she pretended to not know any thing but now she's teaching us.

This week I bought a tagalog hymn book. It's pretty fun to look through it even though I still can't really understand the songs yet.

I really know a lot of funny things happen to us but this week I can't remember a lot. My kasama and I get giggly a lot but we are getting pretty good at controlling ourselves.

My favorite parts of the week were singing in the showers with this random islander girl (okay I have no idea what she looks like but it was funny) and also singing in the  choir. The tuesday devo was awesome.  He talked about a lot of things, but I really liked a section where he talked about how to become instruments in the hands of the Lord. (Alma 57:21)

1. Exact obedience. Be a person HE can trust.

2. According to your faith... Trust HIM

Turn outward and upward.

3. Invite the spirit into your life. 

well, I love you all. I'm having technical difficulties and I can't figure out how to send pis. cry cry cry.

bye bye!

--

Sister Smith

To Mom,

Okay, I'm going to try to answer everything. Hhaha. You can write more than once a week. Maybe like every other day or 3x a week could be good. Or less. I'm good either way. Whatever you feel you want or need to do is fine. You aren't a bad mom if you send me mail.

I don't know why the date changed, I guess Tagalog is almost always 6 weeks.

Thanks for sharing your camp experience and Heber C. Kimball. I hope i can get over this. :)

Normal day is a mixture of eating, studying (3-4 hours. Personal, comp, and language) class (usually 6-8ish hours I think) and then like teaching investigator, or service, or working out (I wish my comp would get up and do the early morning class but she won't)

My favorite thing is devotionals and personal study. I have a hard time falling asleep and I wake up at 2:30 almost every day. but the hardest part is just staying strong with my self and being Christlike.

I miss RS a ton.

You should cut your hair. It sound smore like you want to.

I saw Michael Unck and Aubree Rasmussen this week.

Sorry you've been sad. this week was  little harder for me but it was just because I am weird. But you will get used to me being gone.

My district is awesome. 9 people, Elder Eyler, Elder Davis, and Elder Gates (going to Urdaneta), me and my kasama going to urdaneta, Sis Ferguson and Sis Ethington (maybe Manila or something), and Sis May and Sis Parke(Baguio). 

My alarm clock works now.

I know Sis. Hansen she's in my branch.

I have YOUR navy cardigan so keep mine

my room has 3 bunkbeds only 4 beds are used we will get more sisters next week.

my retainer is broken on the bottom I must have bit or grinded it. It still works for now. oh well.

send me (If possible, if you can't it's ok)

_real running shoes just for the mtc

-white board marker

-family pics

-small hymn book (If you know hwere mine is)

-grandma's green skirt

-maybe more workout pants it's ok if theyre a little tighter

-peppermitn and digest zen, if she thinks the other ones are good then okay. you decide :)

-maybe more colored pens. check my back pack in the storage room 

loove you!

Well I'm getting off. i'll try to send you a real letter. try to dear elder me the grandparent's addresses. You're the best mom in the world. Always remember that. :) I love you so much and I miss you but I don't feel sad about it.

love you a lot. hebrews 10:35-36.

--

Sister Smith