September
21, 2013
Exciting
news!! I was selected to be a part of the sister missionary choir that will be
singing at the General RS broadcast on Saturday. I am so excited about this
incredible opportunity and blessing that I have to be able to participate in
this historic choir! We have rehearsal every morning for an hour and half, so I've
been missing class which has been a little tricky, but I'm just so excited that
I was selected to sing it's totally worth it! On Friday we had THE general RS
Presidency come to watch us rehearse which was really neat. Another thing that
is super awesome is that Sister Sally DeFord wrote a special arrangement of As
Sisters in Zion and Go Froth in Faith just for us to sing. I'll try to smile
and look very happy and glowy so that the cameraman will want to show me! Watch
for me!!!
This
week I have learned to love the MTC even more than I thought I could. It
seems that everyday gets better, more difficult and longer than the last. It
doesn't quite make sense, but it's amazing! The Spirit here is so strong in
everything we do and I love the missionaries I am privileged to associate with
here. On Thursday one of our teachers, brother Poole, was talking about how he
felt like he had been called to serve a foreign-speaking mission so that he
could learn humility, diligence, and patience and learn to rely on the Lord to
learn how to teach the gospel His way. He said that he felt like if he had been
called serving English speaking he wouldn't have been humbled enough to rely on
the Lord to teach the way He wants us to. That really struck a chord with me. A
lot of times I feel like I know the gospel so well that I can teach it MY way.
Just starting to learn Tagalog has humbled me and made me realize how much I
really do need the Lord. He knows the best way for His children to be taught. I
need to learn to be more diligent and patient and rely on Him.
This
week we had two really awesome devotionals. On Sunday we had the co-director(or
producer?) or 17 Miracles and Ephraim's Rescue come and talk to us about some
of the miracles they experienced as they were filming those two powerful
movies. He talked about sacrifice and all that we owe to our incredible pioneer
ancestors. it was really neat hearing some of the behind the scenes stuff that
happened as they made the films.
Then
on Tuesday we heard from Elder Schwitzer of the Seventy. He served as a mission
president in Russia and told us about the best missionary he ever served with.
This elder was always surrounded by the Russian members and investigators and
they all loved him. He took the time to get to know each one personally by
asking them question after question. His Russian wasn't perfect but he had so
much love for every person he met. He forgot himself and went to work with an
eye single to the glory of God. I want to be this kind of missionary- the kind
of missionary who forgets her insecurities about the culture and language and
trusts in God, putting His work ahead of her own insecurities. I want to love
the people and know them as our Heavenly Father loves them. I hope I can forget
myself and my fear and trust God.
The
Tagalog is coming along. We taught 4 lessons to our investigator, Jeffrey this
week. I learned that I can understand and speak more Tagalog than I think I
can. It's such a beautiful language but so different for English. Everything is
SOOOO long!! The Book of Mormon in Tagalog is 771 pages, 240 longer than the
English one. "Through faith" in Tagalog is "pamamagitan ng
pananampalataya"- it's crazy long!! I like learning it, it's just
impossible to keep up with everything that we learn in class because twice a
day in class we learn a new type of sentence structure or verb conjugation, so
there's no way to get everything down before we move onto the next thing. The
Lord is blessing me as I continue to work diligently to learn and study.
My
district is still super awesome. I love every single elder and sister so much
(in a completely platonic elder-sister way, no worries). We all come from such
different backgrounds and have very different personalities, but we come
together to form a really awesome unit. We like to have fun and we have a
couple of elders who are way funny so sometimes it's really hard for us to
focus and get work done in the classroom. The elders still call me Sister G or
Sister Gus or Sister New Hampshire because I can't get any of them to say my
name right. oh well, I think it's funny.
Sundays
here at the MTC are so wonderful and relaxing- way more relaxing than our
half-day P-Days! We have music and the spoken word and RS with all the sisters
who are here. We have sacrament meeting with our branch and district meeting
and then we get to go on a walk around the temple for an hour. In the evening
we have dinner and choir and then a devotional. After devotional we are allowed
to go to different rooms to watch different videos of church talks. It's such a
spiritual and relaxing day!! I LOVE SUNDAYS!!
Everything
is really crazy right now because we're getting ready to move to West Campus on
Tuesday. I'm so excited though! My address will not be changing that I know of.
I think you can still send mail to my regular address and they'll forward it
over to me. I'll let you know if that changes though!
I
love you all so much and I love being here! Thanks for all your support!
Love,
Sister
Gustafson :)
Sorry
no pictures again this week. I need to go buy a USB/memory stick converter to
make my camera talk to the computer :P
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