FAMILY!!!! Okay... so much to day and so little time! Well SPAIN IS GREAT!! Last minute got my visa, didn't even have time to call my family from the airport! I will get to call you christmas though so that will be awesome.
And your trip up to the cabin sounded way fun!!!! Swimming in the river and fourwheeling! WHAT AN ADVENTURE. I bet the kids loved it and it was a great get away for the entire family. Perfect timing though, thanks for waiting until AFTER I leave. I also loved loved loved the halloween pictures. Everybody's costume was TOO LEGIT! They all looked so good, and mom I know your costume had to have been the best of all. Ashley, you are the cutest nerd I've ever seen. I wonder where you got those awesome suspenders? Haha. Squat, you are such a baller. You could have dunked that baby out of this world! But only with the help of the world's sexiest cheerleader, Cam the woMAN! I hope mom taught you some good cheers like C-A-N-D-Y, or I will cry!!! Hope you were cheering on the basketball team while the nerds were playing in the band ha!
And Mom, I should have told Elaine Dalton to say hello to you because she was just here on Sunday! I will elaborate more on this detail further on in the email. But it's ABOUT TIME you and Lisa were reverent. She is the most difficult person to sit next to in church, good thing her husband is bishop so she can't be kicked out... or maybe he is the only one that can make her be quiet by the 'laying on of hands' haha. I love Lisa. Send her my love, tell her to just come run on down to the mtc and take a dump in the trees like she does everywhere else in Logan. She'll know what I'm talking about. Tell Sam her halloween costume was awesome as well!
But I got you all. I am still in the provo mtc :) Got you all super stoked though. I thought it was a funny joke. So anyway, sorry my email last week was super short and random. I was really flustered when I was trying to email cause the stinking timer is RIGHT IN MY FACE! So first things first. MOM.... I loved the email you sent me last week about your friend. Everything you told me was so amazing. She is ready for the gospel. She has been prepared, and lucky for Heavenly Father he has YOU and DAD whom he could trust and place her in your path and know you would have an impact on her and have the courage to give her the Book of Mormon. That is so awesome that she called the missionaries for a blessing. It is really sad she is in the hospital and is struggling with her health. I don't wish that upon anybody. But if I've learned anything while I've been here in the MTC it's been that the Lord breaks down and breaks us apart ONLY SO HE CAN BUILD US HIGHER. And with him as our contracter we will never fall apart. Sometimes while we are stuggling and feeling like, "seriously God, where are you?" He is just allowing us to be humbled and realize that we truely need Him, that we are incredibly inadequate without Him, and that with Him and through Him we can do all things and over come all things.
Do you remember that story I told you guys at breakfast one morning. My friend told it to me, it happened while he was on his mission. He said a family got in a car accident and all the children were killed and the parents were both fine. 5 kids. Sad. At the funeral for all of them the stake president was giving a talk and he told a story. He said, there was a man walking along an old dusty path when he noticed a shephard carrying a baby lamb over his shoulders. He waited for the man to get closer and asked him what he was doing with the lamb. The shephard replied, well I broke this lambs legs so I now have to carry it until he is healed. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?? The man asked. The shephard replied, this baby lamb doesn't know the dangers of everything that is out there. It doesn't realize that if it wonders off and gets lost he can fall on rocks and break his back and legs. Or he can wonder off and get eaten by wolves. He can just get left behind and not get the nourishment it needs. So instead of letting this baby lamb get lost and die I break it's legs and carry it until he is healed. This way the baby lamb knows his shephard and will never leave the flock again. Just as sometimes we feel as though the Lord is breaking our legs from under us. Though we may feel so alone and broken we often don't realize he is carrying us. He is healing our wounds and bruises that we may know our Shepard, that we may trust Him and never stray the flock to get left behind and spiritually destroyed by wolves. I was thinking about this story while you were telling me about your friend. Maybe during this hard time in her life, when she is feeling lost and confused about religion, the Lord is just allowing her to be humbled that He may heal her with his Atonement and bring her into the flock. Just a thought though!
As far as the MTC goes, I know you asked a little bit about my schedule mom. So basically wake up time is 6:30... but the sisters have a special work out at 6 am if they would like. We do like kickboxing. yoga, pilates and aerobics. So we usually get up at 6 and go to that. Then we eat breakfast, teach our progessing investigator Maria, who we just found out actually isn't married to her 'husband' and she is afraid to marry him because he abuses her, but she is also afraid to leave him. Then we have language instruction for an hour or so. Then doctrine classes where we learn how and what to teach somewhat. We do lunch at our designated hour. THEN REPEAT. We have another investigator Carlos who is from Ecuador, 30, single, illegally in the states and just looking for a job. He is really smart and understands everything we teach him. He prays everyday to have a purpose and job here in the states. Our challange with him is he doesn't beleive he can have a personal relationship with Christ. He was raised thinking only Preists and Prophets can commune with God and Christ. So we read 3 Nephi 11 with him and he was like, but Christ was with the sinners? And we were like EXACTLY. So he is slowing beginning and accept, embrace and soak in the fact that Christ is a personal savior. That He knows Carlos personally, and as a matter of fact is the one person in the world that care THE MOST about him, and proved this by dying for him. We try to show him how the Lord's hand is stretched out still, and just waiting for him to grab a hold and so He can lift Carlos up and help him overcome his challanges and sins. So after we teach him we have 3 more hours of classroom instruction, practicing teaching, learning the language and all. Spanish is good... all the Elders are jealous that we Sisters can talk so fast and fluent ha! Little do they know, it's NOT perfect. But the language is coming along nicely, and I am realizing everyday how fun it is to teach the gospel in spanish. The language makes it seem more colorful! Then we eat dinner, have a sceduled gym time that we go to. Have some personal study time in there. Plan lessons for our investigators.... Then bed time is 1030!!!! It actually happens sometimes... but not all the time. So I fall asleep a lot during class, don't tell anyone. But that is my daily schedule and I try to fit in some bathroom breaks in there.
So remember how I always tell you old parents of mine that Ashley will be 21, Cameron will be 19 and then my parents will have no more kids at home so you can all be serving missions at the same time! Today I met the sweetest senior couple going to Chile and their son is also in the MTC and he's going to mexico! They said their son tries to avoid them.... but lucky for him they are only here for 10 days haha. That will be you in the next 8 or so years! How cool would that be, if you are all on a mission at the same time I will just get a job at the MTC so I can see you everyday!
What else can I tell you. We have some amazing relief society teacher here. For example, last week was Elaine Dalton... Recognize the name? It was cool. She mentioned how we all felt like her daughters cause she was in the young womens presidency while we were all in young womens and now that we've grown up she is speaking to us in relief society! She told us a really good story. She said she loves running, but now with her husband because she is competitive and she always beats him! But on this one occasion they were running together and there was a huge hill in front of them. She got so excited, cause she was good at hills and her husband wasn't. She thought to herself, perfect! I can beat him!! So she started running up the hill and was wasting him! She was going as fast as she could, but surely... he passed her around the middle of the hill. Trying to catch up she just couldn't. She she just decided she was going to turn around cause she was so upset. She yells out to her husband, I'm done, I'm just going to go back to the car and wait for you. As she started running down the hill she felt him grab her hand. He turned her around and started leading her up the hill again. He said, "Elaine, don't you know you NEVER turn around when you are in the middle of a hill." She struggled to the top of the hill and made it. Then she told us of the amazing view she would have missed out on if she would have given up. She then brought up the point that to give up and run down the hill, once you are already in the middle, is just about the same distance to continue on and go up the hill. It even still takes effort to run back down the hill then you are back where you started. She counseled us TO NEVER GIVE UP WHEN YOU ARE ON A HILL. No matter if you have to slow you pace or even walk. Every step in the right direction gets you closer and closer to your goal. Even if you are feeling beat, like you don't want to be climbing any more or just plain mad that you aren't doing as good as you want, keep going!! Christ will guide us by the hand. Literally. Be on our right hand and on our left. I loved this story she gave cause it reminded me of when I ran cross country and we would run at mountain crest. I hated this course. It was rarely flat. Steep hills up and down. I remember there was one girl on my team and I always wanted to pass. She was my goal! We were climbing this hill and I was gaining on her. I was passing her. And I was excited... Then I realized she was really struggling. She was crying when I passed her and stopped running and just started walking. I just grabbed her hand and said let's do this together. I wouldn't let her stop. We talked every step through and finished the race together. At the moment I realized it's more important to help out team then to be selfish and finish the race for ourselves. I had forgotten about this race then like a year later the girl came up to me and just said, I really want to thank you for that one day you helped my climb that hill. You taught me a lot of things about myself. That is what I am doing here on a mission. It's hard not to be competitive and compare spanish, and how strong the spirit was in my lesson verse yours. But in all reality, we are on the same team. It is our mission to help our brothers and sisters climb this hill. As we climb we will recieve the help of our all loving coach that says don't you dare turn around, just make it to the top. Come see the view from here... You won't regret it. So... to anybody reading this, whatever hill you are on, if it is a hill downhill slope of sin turn around and climb the hill of repentance. If it is a hill of struggle KEEP climbing. Only when we climb can we be made stronger! Hannah Montana said it best!!! It's the climb. Haha.
Well TIME IS UP!!! That's my email for all you. I love you all. The church is true.
Love, Hermanita Marshmellow
