Thursday, July 16, 2009
Dear Family,
Hey! I hope my email this morning wasn’t depressing. Everyone says the first 3 days of the MTC are hardest, and I can totally relate. Maybe it’s because it’s p-day or because I’m getting the hang of things, but I feel really good today.
Let’s see, I’m trying to remember what I didn’t put in my email. Oh, first of all, I brought way too much stuff for these teeny closets. Expect to get some shipments sometime, probably when I better know what to hang onto. Also, Mom, I’m sending home the turquoise sheet to see if I’ve gotten any of the shots listed. The lady thinks my immunization record is incomplete, so could you double check the 2 sheets and get back to me? Otherwise it sounds like I’ll be a walking pincushion. It’s okay, though, I’m getting used to needles – we had to get our blood drawn for our visas to make sure we don’t have HIV, and I told the nurse I was squeamish and had small veins, a deadly duo. They let me lie down and gave me a ‘comfort critter’ (code for someone’s unwanted Valentine’s Day stuffed animal) and only stuck me like 4 different times in different places before drawing enough blood. I felt like crying, but I walked out of there with a nice-sized crunch bar and a bunch of loony toons band-aids stuck to me. Totally worth it, right? Well, it is, because I get to go to Mongolia…someday.
Speaking of, that’s funny how we leave the day after my 22nd birthday, isn’t it? I don’t think birthdays matter much in the mission field. Oh well.
So we get to go to the temple! I’m so stoked. We’re going in a couple of hours, which I think is a real treat. Out of the sisters here (and I never asked the elders), I’m one of the ones who received her endowments earliest and went the most before reporting to the MTC. I’m so grateful that I got to go as much as I did.
I’ve seen so many people here that I know, which has been so wonderful. I ‘hang out’ with Sara every night before bed, and that brings me sanity. I love her and know her and she is the one person here that I feel I can honestly tell how I feel or how frustrated I’ve been and it’s wonderful to feel comfortable and familiar with someone or something when everything else is so new and foreign and hard. Talk about tender mercies. Oh, I also ran into Elder Hale the night I got here, who said he’d run into Mom & Alex (I think) in the parking lot as you dropped me off. I laughed and said that I’d just seen Allie with the puppy the day before. Ah, I don’t like writing about this. I’m surprised by how much I miss you because it’s not like I haven’t been away from home before. But I know how I get, and I tend to feel lonely and out-of-sorts and homesick the first two weeks or so of a new experience. It’s ok. It all takes getting used to.
So, I think one of my favorite things about the MTC is that my comp and I will study outside, and we constantly have missionaries coming up to us and asking if they can contact us, or bear their testimonies or whatever. Of course, we say yes and then they talk to us for a few minutes. It’s usually in another language, and more often than not, it’s in Spanish. I don’t think my comp likes the interruption, but I absolutely love it. Not only is it so fun to speak to them in Spanish a bit (I language I actually CAN speak), but it’s so wonderful to talk to them and hear all the places they’re going, and to feel of their sincerity and earnest attitudes. I don’t think I’ve ranked myself with them yet – I guess it hasn’t clicked that I’m a legit missionary – but it touches me. The Lord has so many servants going ALL OVER the world, speaking ALL different languages. The work is progressing and no unhallowed hand can stop it. Nothing can. It also gives me strength to know that if they can do it, so can I. Not only am I not in this work alone -- there are THOUSANDS of missionaries – but I am backed by the creator of the universe – by our Father in Heaven. This is His work.
I mentioned an awesome devotional we had by Pres. Seuter on Tuesday. I cried like a baby during “Called to Serve”. I also cried when we sang “How Firm a Foundation” for the prelude. Read the words again, especially the one that says “The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose…I’ll never, no never, no never forsake”. POWERFUL STUFF! I love it. But the part I wanted to share from Pres. Seuter’s awesome devotional was what he said about fear. He said if anything is going to hold us back in the work, it’ll be our own fear. But he gave us 2 antidotes. First, he gave us the 10 second rule. Say a prompting comes to bring up the church with the person sitting next to me on the plane. I have 10 seconds – don’t think, just DO – to ACT on it before the fear starts setting in and I start making excuses or rationalizing. So JUST DO IT.
The other antidote is: truth can defend itself. Truth is truth. While I may feel like what I say and do are super important (well, it is, kind of) and that I have to know it all and be quick to defend the church, it is truth. If someone chooses not to accept my message, what does it matter? THE GOSPEL IS TRUE. It will prove itself.
Another really cool thing was something his wife said. She was just opening her talk when she told this story and it hit me hard. She is the matron of the Ogden Temple and she met this little old couple that had come all the way out here from Mongolia. (YEAH!) They’d been members of the church for years and had been praying and praying to be able to go to the Hong Kong temple and be endowed and sealed, but they never had the money. Well, somehow, their daughter that moved to the U.S. was getting married and there was some miracle that permitted them to come all the way to Ogden, be endowed and sealed as a family, and then see that their daughter sealed to her husband. SO COOL. The Lord answers prayers! It’s funny that it’s not at all the way they expected – they’d been trying to get to Hong Kong. Sis. Seuter then stressed: it is no small thing that we have temples near us. We are SO BLESSED. So, I challenge you to go to the temple. Go more often, with greater desire to learn and serve. We are so blessed to have it so close. Make it a habit. Remember Elder Bednar’s talk on temple worship? Read it again. And then GO TO THE TEMPLE!
OK, so we’ve learned some cool cultural things about Mongolians. They never, ever put their books on the floor. So we don’t either. We keep them on a little wire shelf under our desks. I asked Bro. Cannon about the work there if the missionaries can’t actively proselyte (or is it proselytize? The latter is an ugly word). He said the people are very open and frequently invite their friends to church. There was never a shortage of work to do or of people to teach. Great news!
OK, I’d better go. My poor comp is hungry and wants lunch now. I’m really fine; I don’t like the food much at all and I feel like we’re always eating anyway. : )
G2G. Love you!
Sister Kristen Staib
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