Hola! Hola!

 

This week has been good here at the MTC, pretty crazy actually, but good!  Four of the Hermana's in our branch left Wednesday morning, including my companion.  We spent the last two nights they were here packing and weighing their bags, it was an early morning and I am still trying to recover, but I think I provided some sleep deprived entertainment for my Elders that was good!  We got three new sisters and three new elders into our branch this week, hooray for new sisters!!! I was so excited, they are all very nice and we will be orienting them tonight about how the next nine weeks are going to go for them.  Two of the sisters are going to Oklahoma City and one is going to the Ogden mission!  All Spanish speaking so we will have fun for the next five weeks, I am excited.  My companion is Hermana Bajorquez who is only here for one more week because she is doing visitors center training and then leaves to St. George, she has been here for the last 3 weeks in my room and she is great. I will get a new companion after she leaves, it will be one of the three sisters that came in this week.  Teaching our investigators is getting better and better.  This week we started teaching a sister from Venezuela- we teach them in what is called the TRC and when we knock on their door we are "in Venezuela" teaching her about the gospel- it feels so real it is so great!  Even though I couldn't say much to her, I helped teach her how to pray to her Heavenly Father at the end and I told her that her Heavenly Father loves her and wants to here from here and she got a big smile on her face- it made my day! I can't wait to keep teaching her and keep loving her more, it is amazing how I have only met her once but I already can't wait to see her and try to tell her some gospel principles she needs to hear- the Elders I teach with are great at Spanish so it helps to listen to them to learn how to say things better.  They are also helping my every day with my grammar and memorizing vocab- it is coming slowly but surely.  I was really frustrated with the language at first but All over is preach my gospel it talks about just studying the words of Christ first, and once you have done that, your tongue will be loosed.  I am learning a lot of patience which is super good for me, and I know that in the next couple of months if I keep trying to get the vocab down, it will get better and better.  I just have to keep that in mind when I am in my lessons, because you can't express everything you want to and you need to with such a limited vocab- so it makes me what to know more so that I can be more effective out in the field.  One thing we have been trying to do better in our lessons is ask more questions and be more familiar with the scriptures in Spanish so we can study them with the investigator in our lessons.  They can only be about 20-30 minutes long so it helps us get to the point and the commitment faster.  It is easy to just start talking and telling them what you know, but I have learned that you have to ask them questions about what you have just taught so that they can teach themselves, or else they will never learn!  We are still trying to figure out how to apply all these principles better, but it makes me grateful I still have 5 weeks to keep practicing before it is the real thing! I have also felt the spirit more in my preparations for the investigators, and use a lot of my study time to prepare for what they need to hear- I am learning how to tell what the Spirit wants us to talk about, now it is just to learn how to say it and convey it to them in the right way!  One thing I learned this week in our Devotional Tuesday night was what the speaker said..."You will succeed because this message is true." Which is true! I loved that so much, and if you have Faith in Christ, he will help you through anything- Alma 32 talks about a desire and the seed growing within you with swelling motions of the spirit- That has definitely been my favorite chapter this week and I have been trying to apply it into my desire to be a missionary and work hard to serve and Lord and have faith in Christ so that I can teach my investigators how to have faith- we even used it with one of our investigators which was awesome.  I hope everyone has a great week- thank you for all your love and support- I definitely feel it out here.  Love you!

Hermana Coleman