July 22nd, 2011

Hola familia y amigos!

Whewwww so much to write this week but so little time!  This week has definitely been the best so far! (yep, the best out of the 2 WHOLE WEEKS I have been here, haha).  Here is my list for you all...

 

 

AWKWARDS, INCOMODOS, y CHISTES

• that elder that told me about the bandaid.. yep, I see him ALL the time.  At least once or twice a day.  He always says hi to me and talks to me.  The other day I was sitting by myself at lunch waiting for my comp. and I was looking around cuz I couldn't find her and he came over to me awkwardly and said 'sister Hunt are you ok? did you lose your companion? you looked pretty lonely over here!' haha I was like yep... I am ok.... :) haha. Yesterday he told me that I 'looked nice today'. Bahaha. He is a .... nice... boy.. hahah. (Love those cute 19 year olds here, they are just adorable)
• nighttime.  the middle of the night is so weird here.  my roommates have told me that I have been sleep talking, and the other night I remember waking up and I have no idea what I was thinking but I called out loud 'Hermanas!'  Then I looked at my clock and realized it was 2:10 am
• while we were teaching 'Mario' (our teacher Hermano Gillis) he started going off about how he couldn't pray during our lesson and we couldn't tell why.. something about his friends and being mad.  Well, I thought he was saying something like how his friends were talking to him about us, and for some reason I assumed he was going to drop us.  So I start going off trying to say something along the lines of 'will you give us one more chance?' Only I didn't know the word for chance so I just said Cita which is appointment... he looked super confused and then started laughing and said no, no, no, I'm not saying I don't want you to come back!!  After all of my pleading.  My companion got a kick out of that one.
• also with Mario we have been singing hymns at the beginning of our lessons.  He 'doesn't know them' so we end up just singing by ourselves, so basically we just sit there and sing to him which is funny by itself.  Then the other day we happened to come across Hno. Gillis' book where he writes down how he feels after all of our lessons. The first thing we saw by Hna Hunt and Harper was 'Deben cantar en un coro' which means 'they should sing in a choir'. hahaha. At least he likes our singing!
• ok. this was the best teaching experience ever.  We were teaching another missionary and he is acting like an investigator.  First we started with a hymn and they sang with us, and for some reason Hna Harper and I both got the giggles at the same time, so we start cracking up and they had to finish the song without and we couldn't stop laughing.  Then during the prayer I have to hold my mouth and turn away because I couldn't stop laughing.  Then during the lesson we asked if he had a religion (he was playing an investigator who is obsessed with football) and he goes 'si, mi religion es N F L' in spanish letters haha and we taught him how to pray and this is exactly what he said in his prayer: "Padre Celestial, me gusta futbol americano, gracias por comida, en el nombre de Jesucristo amen'. bahahahaha. For those of you who don't know spanish that means 'Heavenly Father, I like football, thank you for food, in the name of Jesus Christ amen'.  We were laughing SO hard.  I tried to cover it up and turn it into crying and said 'we just felt the spirit so strong!'  Oh man, good thing he wasn't a real investigator!

AWESOMES (there are so many this week I don't even know where to start!)

•  after all the classes are finished, walking to our residences and seeing a huge group of missionaries standing in the middle of the commons outside singing Joseph Smith's First Prayer in another language.  The spirit was so strong, he just stopped and stared for a few minutes.  There is no place in the world like the MTC!
• devotionals and firesides. oh my goodness! at the fireside on Sunday they told this amazing story which I will tell at the end of this e-mail.  The Tuesday night devotional was given by Elder and Sister Hammond.  They are the most adorable couple in the world, I want to be like them with my husband when I'm older!  They told us a lot of good advice about missionary work and the power of the Book of Mormon
• Called to Serve.  Everyone who serves a mission gets to do this.. but we sing it a different way.  Sister Nallie (she is the wife of one of the counselors in the MTC presidency) wrote this version I think and it is SO incredible.  It starts out with her on the piano playing this little noble march tune like a bugle or trumpet would play and we all start out sitting down singing the first verse and chorus softly like we are marching and you can hear us in the distant, and then it changes keys and we sing the 2nd verse a little louder, and during the 2nd chorus when we say called to serve our KING we all stand up on King and then it changes keys again and we sing at full voice the chorus again, and then sing the last 2 lines slower and with more power at the end.  Both times we have sang it so far I have hardly even been able to sing the ending because I am sobbing by that point!  It is the most powerful thing I have ever felt.  Imagine 2,000 missionaries doing that all in the same room.  There is so much power and strength there, I am SO grateful to be a part of such a noble cause!!
• this Sunday I received an 'assignment' (basically a calling except I am already called as a missionary so it's a calling within a calling).  I am the new Coordinating Sister for my zone!  I have been told by multiple people that it is equivalent to a zone leader, except I don't think it is because I only have 4 sisters in my whole zone (they're all in my district) to take care of.  But I basically work with the zone leaders, make sure all of the sisters are doing ok, make sure all of the people in my residence hall are following rules, and welcome in new sisters and show them around if we get more in our zone.  Awesome!  My comp. also got a calling as the music coordinator for our branch.  Those are pretty much the only 2 callings that sisters can get here.. so we're pretty happy!
• ok... time for the awesome story.  This is a true story that was told at our fireside.  There was a young man who received his mission call to Colombia.  He had lived in Japan when he was younger and was fluent in Japan, so he was disappointed when he learned that he wouldn't be serving there.  He wrote a letter to the first presidency and asked to get his call reviewed because he didn't think it was right.  They wrote back and said no, it was right.  So he went to the mtc and learned spanish, and at the airport when he was leaving he was still upset that he wasn't going to Japan, so he wrote the first presidency again, and they replied with the same thing.  Well towards the end of his mission, a Japanese man found him and his comp. on the street and said 'I've been looking for the church for many years!  I have a book of mormon but I haven't been able to find the church, will you come teach my family?'  of course they said yes.. so they went to his house, and there were 65 Japanese people there.  The Japanese man had been teaching to them from the Book of Mormon, but none of them knew where the church was.  This missionary baptized 65 Japanese people at the very end of his mission.  Before he left, he went to write his testimony in the Japanese guy's book of mormon.  He looked through to see if he could find where he got the Book of Mormon from.  There on the next page, was the testimony of the missionary's dad.  His dad had given the Japanese man the Book of Mormon many years prior in Japan.

Miracles happen my friends!  I see them happen every day here.  Sometimes we don't understand why God puts us in the places that he does, but we must trust in him and recognize that he knows us better than we know ourselves, and he knows what he's doing.  Thank you everyone SO much for your support!  Thanks for the letters this week and the packages (Mom and Al!), it is so good to hear from you all!  Write me as much as you would like!  This gospel is incredible.  There is no better place on earth for me to be right now.  Have a fabulous week and I will talk to you all next Friday! :)

 

Love, Hermana Hunt

 

P.s. I saw Dillan Lewis this week and also Josh Wendell and talked to both of them!