October 30, 2015

I can't believe it but Jarek has been at the MTC for 8 weeks.  He leaves for Sapporo, Japan on Monday.  Sure do miss that kid. Here is his last letter update from the MTC.

WOW!!! It has already been two months in the mission!! Time really flies and I have only been in the MTC about ready to get back to the real world were the real stuff happens! This week in the MTC was really good both of the Devotionals were really good as usual the one on sunday was about kind of like the power of the repentance for both us as missionaries but he had us think about it in the perspective of the investigator as well and when we did that it reminded me of the times that I have seen the power of the Atonement in my life and how great I felt at those times, it was also cool when he said that no matter what anyone has done we can receive help and be forgiven for what ever we have done. The Tuesday devotional was given by the Primary General President Rosemary Wixom; not gonna lie I totally thought she was going to talk to us like we were primary kids so I didn't think that it was going to be really applicable haha was I soooo wrong.. Her talk was about the our foundation which was really good because her two main points were from a song that we sung as children and the two lines for the song were 'I believe in our savior Jesus Christ' and 'His truth I will proclaim' These points were amazing for missionaries once we have received that testimony of Christ and what he has done for us, though we don't have a perfect knowledge, through our faith in his sacrifice we want to share his gospel and his atonement so that all of our brothers and sisters can receive and use these same things.

My Companion and I were chosen as missionaries for the people in your purpose workshop for all the new missionaries coming in, we got to go in front of everyone do a door approach and start a lesson for 5 minutes until the new missionaries took over what we started, before we started I was like finally I can teach a lesson in ENGLISH!!!! I was soo happy, then I was like crap I haven't taught in English for 2 months and I'm going to be in front of like 100 new missionaries who are looking to us as examples of good missionaries, I was so nervous it was so long since I have said the simple Japanese questions that I know, the first lesson went alright we got her to the point where she was telling us why she agreed to meet the missionaries and what religion had done for her in her life. The second one went even better except in the beginning where me and my companion both said his name wrong his name was Jose and his friend Pedro referred him so I asked if his name was Pedro when he answered the door because I totally forgot.. then my companion did the exact same thing when we sat down, hahah well that just shows that we are not perfect and it also shows that it doesn't matter if we don't say things perfect the spirit that we bring and when we follow what the spirit tells us to say we can get to a point where we can find out what they need from the gospel to help them in there lives.

For the First time our TRC skype session went pretty good right after the people and your purpose workshop lesson we went straight to the skype lesson we had nothing prepared because we were told we weren't going to teach but that lesson went really great we were able to testify of the Book of Mormon and me and my companion both shared a personal story about how family scripture study has helped our relationships with family, I felt the spirit really strong and felt that the spirit was guided all our our lessons that day!

I was able to see a couple of friends this week from AF I saw Brian Brinton he came in this wednesday and he got to see me teach in the people and purpose workshop so that was pretty cool, was also able to talk to Heather Kofford before the devotional on sunday it was cool to talk to her and I felt like I was in the MTC for a long time but she is learning 2 languages Tahitian and French and she is here for 12 weeks, 6 weeks a language so glad I'm just learning one even if it is one of the harder languages. 

Those were the big things that happened this week anyways love you all hope that you are all doing great!!!!:)

Elder Stevens