No Technology Withdrawals

It's wierd that I'm not going through any technology withdrawls. I haven't even really thought about technology or any of that stuff. I didn't find out until yesterday that Transformers 2 is coming out. It's kind of cool how I'm left out of knowing all that. I like it. The only thing that takes us back to technolgy is when we do the language program on the computer and quote movies/t.v. shows, "Babylon" stuff. Oh and we sing Taylor Swift a lot. "Love Story" it's a great song.

There's a lot of excitement around the MTC today because the Mission presidents are coming for training and so a lot of the Apostles and First Presidency are going to be here. My teacher's mom cooked for Elder Oaks when he was in Chile a few days ago and said that he'd find him when he came to the MTC this week. So Elder Oaks might come to our class which would be pretty cool. I taught the 2nd lesson in the TRC yesterday and the Spirit was so strong. At the beginning of the lesson the guy said he read and prayed about the LDM and thought he knew it was true. So at the end after I taught about the Atonement (we only got 1/2 way through the lesson in 30 minutes, there's a lot of stuff in it) I said he knew it was true and received a witness that it was. Then committed him. It felt good, but would have felt better if he was a real investigator.

Simple and Powerful Hymns

Well, this past week has been amazing. I've felt the Spirit so strong. We teach lessons to fake investigators in the TRC and The Spirit was amazing when I retold the First Vision. I had it memorized in english, but I forgot it because I memorized it in Spanish. So we gave an english lesson, but parts of it in Spanish. It went really well though.

On Sunday we had a fireside, I don't remember who gave it but he had a position in the MTC. But before every fireside and devotional we sing 3 prelude songs, and then an opening hymn. And while we were singing the prelude songs it hit me how powerful hymns are, and I've gained a love for them. But every now and then we'll sing songs from the childrens hymn book. I think these songs are even more powerful than the ones from the hymn book. The lyrics to the children's songs are so simple, but powerful.

In class on Monday or Tuesday our teacher, Brother Penailillo, gave an awesome lesson. He was relating the Lion King to repentence. And how Scar gets him to run away from his life after Simba's dad dies, and he lives the Hakuna Matata life (Eat Drink and Be Merry). And Rafiki is like a bishop or prophet who tells him what he needs to do to get back. I think the most powerful part though is when Simba sees his dad in the clouds and Maufasa says "you've forgotten who I am" and Simba replies with "no I haven't" and Maufasa states "You've forgotten me, because you have forgotten who you are." That statement is very true with our Heavenly Father. As we stop doing the things we know are right, we get farther away from him. I think y'all should try watching the movie with this in mind.

One of my teachers got the flu, and then the person subbing for him got the swine flu, and a few people in our zone have the flu. But I'm still going strong. AND THEN, last night we had a devotional from Elder Bednar. He gave a great talk. It was about not worrying about a profound prompting from the Spirit to act, but to "be a good boy" and as you do the things that are right you'll be guided. He told a story about his General Conference talk. He had one prepared but 2 days before it was due for translation he woke up at 4 a.m. and wrote a new talk that he gave in confrence. All he knew is that he was talking after Elder Oaks and before Brother Stevenson. Oaks talked about serving others in temples, Bednar talked about Blessings of temples, and Stevenson talked about Temples in homes. And Monson closed telling everyone to go to the Temple. They all felt inspired to talk about temples which i think is amazing. Oh, and I went to the temple today and the I felt the Spirit so strong as I was a proxie for sealings. It was goood knowing the joy I could bring the people I was doing the work for.

Swine Flu Lockdown

Things are pretty crazy here at the MTC. They've pretty much quarantined the MTC because of the flu and swine flu. They aren't letting any missionaries leave on their missions, so their departure dates were pushed back. The nuevos (new people) coming in couldn't have their family come in with them, they only had a curbside drop off. The church made a press release about it. There's like 3 people with swine flu and 17 with normal flu. But someone in our zone got swine flu so it might be up to 4 now. I don't know. Other than that the MTC is pretty good. The first few days were really long and not fun. But Saturday we had our first gym and since then things have been going faster. I'm starting to learn Spanish. I can already introduce myself as a missionary, get to know the person, tell them I have a message about Christ, and bear my testimony. I still got a lot to learn though, so it's pretty intimidating.

My companion is alright. He knows a lot about the gospel and Spanish. My district also helps me a lot. We're all pretty close, so that's cool. One kid from Austin, Elder Morris, reminds me of Brad McLea. And Elder Hiatt reminds me of Robert Foran. It's weird. We found a stuffed animal dog in our room, so Elder Hiatt, Elder Watkins, Elder Morris and I took it in and gave it a name. We named her Lavender because she has a purple flower in her mouth. I feel like I have so much to write. My zone is great we're all close.

We have some people who were supposed to leave two weeks ago but have had visa problems and so they've been here for 10 weeks. I worked the Referrel Center for the first time a few days ago. I called people who ordered stuff from the church. One person I called was from Brooklyn, and was real mad that I called because he told the last person not to call back. But the best response someone got was Elder Watkins called a guy and he said "DON'T CALL ME. I DON'T WANT YA AND I DON'T NEED YA!" There was some success though. Elder Hiatt talked to a lady for like 45 minutes. The next day we did chats and I talked to a guy for 20 minutes, but I had to go eat so I had to transfer him. He seemed like he was pretty interested though.

Yesterday we had a devotional from Brother Gonzalez of the Quorum of the 70. He gave a great talk about how to be a better missionary. We also taught our first lesson in the TRC yesterday. The spirit was sooo strong while we were teaching. Our maestra (teacher) would go room to room seeing how everybody was doing, and she said ours was near perfect and that the spirit was very strong. It was a good experience. It's nice being able to have time for personal study everyday. I've been learning a lot, and it's so awesome seeing so many people here who are willing to sacrifice 2 years of their lives. Our Branch presidency is really good too. One of the counselors, Brother Priest, knows so much about the Gospel I try to absorb everything he says. I'm running out of time though so I gotta go.