Week Four in the MTC - "mei palangga ang Dios para sa inyo!"

I know that miracles happen everyday and that prayers are answered. Heavenly Father loves you all so much and wants the best for you. He hears you every single time you pray. He wants to hear from you! I've learned to appreciate praying so much since being here. I'm so incredibly grateful for prayer.

 A little about life here. I am living on the main campus, not the West campus at Raintree. I entered the MTC with 700 missionaries, 600 on main campus and 100 went to the West campus. We heard they are going to start construction on the main campus-- I don't really know what they're going to do. I love the MTC so much! The spirit is so strong here! This place is so sacred and so wonderful. I love being around so many missionaries all the time!

Our sister training leaders who left on Monday

Three districts from our zone left on Monday. They were all Cebuano speaking districts going to Cebu, Cebu East and Tacloban in the Philippines. We miss them a lot. A lot of them were internationals from places like New Zealand, Tonga and Samoa and we became really close to them. It was sad saying good-bye. But since they left, we got four new Cebuano speaking districts in our zone this week! They all arrived yesterday! 

Sister Peterson and I were asked to be the new Sister Training Leaders, which means we are in charge of taking care of all of the sisters in our zone. We just got 20 new sisters and 17 new elders. All together we have 30 sisters in our zone. We're so excited to have this new opportunity to really get to know the sisters in our zone and help them the best we can. On Tuesday, four international sisters came in, so we welcomed them and then Wednesday, the rest of them arrived and we welcomed them and showed them all around. It was lots of fun! It made me think about my first day! Time is going by so fast!

We picked up the internationals on Tuesday.
This was taken after running in the rain, coming from the devotional at the Marriott Ctr.

A typical day for me is: personal study, breakfast, class  for 3  hours  (part of it we teach our progressing investigator/teacher, learn language, learn teaching skills), then language study, lunch, companion study, class for three hours with our other teacher, planning, dinner, Gym and this thing called TALL (computer program to help us learn Hiligaynon). We're very busy everyday! It's really awesome! I'm learning tons:)

Last Thursday, we had this awesome experience at TRC. We taught a lady name Sister Konishi, who is from Bacolod, but has lived here for a while and volunteers all the time at TRC. She's so sweet. We talked to her about faith (in Hiligaynon). The Spirit was sooo strong, it was amazing. The Spirit taught her through us the things she needed to hear about faith and she said she was strengthened by our message. When she gave the closing prayer, she started crying, which made me start crying. The Spirit was so strong. She reminded me of why I am here and how incredible awesome it is to get to bring hope into people's lives and remind them through the Spirit of God's love for them and help them come closer to Christ. The gospel is truly so wonderful and I feel so blessed to have the Gospel in my life. I love the joy that the gospel brings into everyone's life. 

We had an awesome devotional this week Tuesday with Elder Anderson! He talked about love and sacrifice. He said "we sacrifice for the things we love, we love the things we sacrifice for." The greatest sacrifice of all, is the atonement. When he was talking about that, I thought about my Savior and how much I love Him and how incredible it is for this opportunity to testify of my Savior all the time. I get to wear His name on my chest, right next to my name. I am a representative of Jesus Christ, which is the most amazing thing ever. I feel sooooooooooo blessed for this opportunity.  

Love, palangga,