Tres Semanas

Hola Everyone!

I officially hit my three week mark this past wednesday. That means I'm technically more then half way through my first transfer... which is crazy to believe!! One thing really nice about this fact though, is in conversations with spanish speakers. When ever I words "semana" and "CCM'. I knew the answer was tres semanas, because I had been here for three, and had three weeks left, so there was no other possible answer! My spanish continues to improve a lot though, and I am growing to understand more and more.

This week started off with quite the surprise. We attended our usual Sunday evening devotional. Everyone is bussed over to main campus, were we meet in the main auditorium for a guest speaker, and then divide to watch a gospel related video of choice. This time, they opened as usual, except to say that we were to watch Elder Bednar's Character of Christ video (Sorry, it's an MTC video from christmas morning two years ago. It's an amazing talk, and he does a HILARIOUS impression of the cookie monster related to the natural man, but it's only available to be seen at the MTC). We were then told that we were to remain seated for special instruction. 

When they said that, I immediately started thinking of what that could possible mean. And near the end of the video, I saw ushers start to move around some microphones within the auditorium. Almost as soon as the video ended, everyone decided to not stay seated for the special instructions, but to stand because a General Authority had entered the room. If you haven't guessed by now, Elder Bednar decided to come and do a Q&A with the MTC :) I knew what was going on as soon as they started to move around the microphones because he had just done the same with us a few months back. Many good questions were asked, and many wonderful answers were given, some of my favourite are:

In respect to scriptures and personal revelation, the scriptures are a "pre-recoridng of the voice of the Lord, that we don't hear in our ears but we feel in our hearts, and it becomes as a compass that directs us to His voice."

That repentance really has 4 R's "Recognize, Remorse, Restitution, REDEEMER. It isn't repentance unless it's focused on Christ."

And the final one really hit me, in regards to spiritual gifts. We "never receive them because we want to, but because God trusts us to be in the right place at the right time so that it goes through us to bless someone else."

I really felt that apply to me this week as we began meeting with our TRC investigator, a sweet girl named Ive. who has committed to be baptized on Junio 20. She has so many questions, and I felt so very inadequate with my spanish, even though she was willing to translate on occasion. I began to realize that I didn't need to learn spanish so that I know Spanish, that's not why I'm here. I'm here so that I can learn how to communicate the plain and simple truths that is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has truly been restores in it's fullness on the earth today. 

Otherwise the week has been going pretty well. I found an Elder Crawford on west campus this week, which was pretty entertaining. I keep teasing Hermana H. that I've gotten a new companion. :P I love her though, and honestly couldn't have asked for a better companion. We have a lot of learning and growing to do, but we are both committed to do so. And for any future/past missionaries reading this, Companionship Inventory is a wonderful thing :) Oh! we also discovered that we are the only missionaries in the entire Utah MTC campus with calls to Hermosillo at the moment. So it looks like it's us two and whoever is at the Mexico CCM!

I hope all is well

Hermana Crawford

ps: check out the link below for more about Elder Bednar and some of his talks.

https://www.lds.org/church/leader/david-a-bednar