14 June 2016, Week #2

14 June 2016, WEEK #2

This week has just flown by!

The first week here was soo long and soo hard that by the time it was P-Day, we all felt like it wasn't NEARLY long enough.  And then before we could even count down the days to the next P-Day, it's P-Day again!

Tuesday night, we had the opportunity to be in the MTC choir that would be performing in the the Devotional that night.  Little did any of us know that the song we would be performing would be the first time that song has EVER been performed, was written by Elder Bednar, and would be broadcasted all over the world to all the MTCs!  The song is called One By One and it was seriously the most incredible thing.  I had to stop singing a couple times because I was so filled with the Spirit that I was going to cry!  It was amazing because we hadn't even paid that much attention to the words before we sang it on camera, but it was truly amazing.

This past week, my companion, Sister Burbidge, and I had the opportunity to finally get into the TRC (Training Resource Center) and teach people who may or may not be investigators.  We taught a woman named Emi.  Emi is Japanese and lived in Tokyo for most of her life, but moved to Provo about 4 years ago to the ELC at BYU to study English.  She has had the missionaries teach her before, in Tokyo and has several LDS friends that "always seem happy" and she was very curious about that, so she met with us!  We had been teaching her the whole week and she was making amazing progress, we could see the light of Christ in her eyes begin to shine so bright - she was keeping her commitments, and she was feeling the Spirit!  But it finally came time for our last lesson, which was on Friday.  So, in this lesson, we went into it, having prepared the Gospel of Christ and we were planning on having Emi pray about baptism, to know if it was the next step for her to take.  The last lesson we taught her was about the Plan of Salvation and we asked her to pray about what we taught and also to continue to read the Book of Mormon.  We did not tell her specifically where to read in the Book of Mormon, but we assumed she would just pick up where she left off in 1 Nephi.  Well, guess what?  She was prompted to read 3 Nephi chapter 11, just the first few verses that talked about sacrament.  So, Sister Burbidge and I started to get really excited because that

was part of our lesson plan!  Later in the lesson, we moved onto baptism and Emi seemed to start to get a little hesitant, scared almost.  She asked us if baptism is just a one time thing and she told us that the other missionaries had talked to her about it, but that the idea scared her because she knew she wasn't perfect no matter how hard she tried and that she would make mistakes again and that would be it - no more salvation.  We were able to tell her THAT was the purpose of the sacrament and of repentance!  Then we invited her to pray to know if baptism was the next step for her and she was so excited!!  She was excited about everything we told her!!  The Spirit was so incredibly strong in that room!  It was insane!!  We ended the lesson with a prayer, which was said by Emi, and she prayed for both of us and our families and she thanked God for the knowledge she received that day!  She then had us take pictures with her and had us write down our emails so we could keep in touch.  The whole experience was just unreal.  I'm so grateful we got to teach her.  She also asked about the ribbons on my scriptures and we were able to tell her about going to church every Sunday and the YW program and all kinds of stuff about how your growth in the gospel continues after baptism inside the church.  It's still hard for me to believe, but Sister Burbidge and I realized that God gave us that experience for a reason.  We loved visiting with Emi anyway because she was just always amazing, but we really needed that to happen.  So as soon as we were out of the building, we stopped and said a prayer of thanks to God and asked Him to bless Emi for her faithfulness and to help her know how to advance to the next step.

It's just amazing to think that would have never happened if we didn't come out here on our missions or if we gave up after the second day or the third.  I haven't gotten the email from Emi yet with pictures, but as soon as I do, I will send them!

So, our district is pretty awesome.  We're all super close and will probably all be friends for the eternities (and probably were before this life).  So our district leader suggested we do the Tower Challenge.  For those of you who have heard of it, you know it's great, but for those of you who haven't: the Tower Challenge is basically just getting a bunch of people together and draining an entire tower of cereal in the cafeteria.  We have ten people in our district, so we thought we'd have a pretty good chance, so we did it this morning before going to the temple for another endowment session.  We had it almost 4/5 of the way gone when a cafeteria worker came to refill the tower.  So we asked him very politely not to because we were doing the tower challenge.  He decided to go and tell one of the MTC dining leaders and he came over to the table and started chewing out Elder Macdonald (our district leader) for not disciplining us for doing this and how we were going to lead people away from the church by. . . eating cereal??  So, Elder Macdonald was pretty upset, but he kept his cool.  At lunch time, after going to the temple, he went up to the guy who chewed him out and apologized for what we had all done, which was apparently so bad they decided NOT to tell anyone it was against the rules.  All the guy said to him was, "Yeah, the President doesn't want to see that again." and just scowled at him.  So Elder Macdonald came and sat down and was just even more upset than before apologizing!  It was frustrating, but we all had a really good time chowing down at least 4 bowls of frosted flakes each! (Pictures included)

Anyway, my MTC experience has been amazing so far, I am really loving it here.  We all got our flight plans recently and we're leaving on Monday at 3:30 IN THE MORNING.  Our flight starts at 7:30 and we get to Lubbock at about noon.  I'm super excited to finally be going to Lubbock, but I am seriously going to miss my district!  They have been the best thing ever, we do EVERYTHING with each other!  They are all amazing and I love them.

I love you all and I hope you have an amazing week!

Love,
Sister Heather Overson