Bonjour!!!
How is it going?! Thank you for all of the letters this week...I felt tres loved!!! Sounds like everyone is doing pretty well...Mom I am so excited for your fridge!!! Truly.. although I may have laughed out loud when I pictured you sitting in the kitchen hugging it haha. Oh and Chris...thank you so much for writing me!!! I'm going to write back but I'm going to send it to Canada because I don't know when your break is between semesters. Kaila...I'm sorry you have strep! I can feel your pain!!
This week at the MTC seemed really long. Not because the time dragged...just because conferance already feels like it was SO long ago haha. This week has been fairly eventful. We recieved 20 new missionaries in our zone! Which is quite wierd because it means we are the oldies...which means we are leaving soon...which means I should probably know french by now...haha jk but still it is getting a little intimidating that we will soon be in the field. But having newbies have also made me aware of how much I have learned in the past month and how real the gift of tongues is. I swear I've learned more here than I learned in 4 years of high school (of course I can only really talk about gospel subjects...I'm assuming normal french will come when I get there haha) As well this week my companion sprained her ankle...we've been moving very slowly around the MTC...but she is healing quickly. I'm just grateful it didn't happen closer to our departure date and it could affect her departure date. As well, two other soeurs and I have found a great little secret on our floor. We like to call it the Room of Requirement (please tell me you picked up on the Harry Potter referance) but in reality its just a linen closet that serves a very good purpose of being able to get away from all the noise and write letters and in our journal. We call it RR...its our code for "I need a break...meet me in 10 with chocolate!" haha just kidding...but its been great having Soeur White and Soeur Woodward as friends and having our little getaway at the end of the day.
General conferance was amazing in the MTC! I think just being around all the missionaries and striving so hard to feel the spirit made conferance a very special experience. Our teacher challenged us to only write down spiritual impressions because we get the talks in the ensign a month later...but those spiritual promptings only come once. So I tried it and it was such an amazing experience. I still had as many notes at the end of the day, but they meant so much more. One of the strongest things I felt (especially when President Monson was speaking about the Rome Temple) was that we are preparing France for a temple. I know that there is no way one will come while we are there...but speaking with other missionaries in our zone we all had similar feelings. That it is France's turn...and we are helping to prepare the way. Maybe we are all just really pumped for our mission and we are getting our hopes up...but Elder Benar said in a devotional at the MTC a few years ago that missionaries need to stop worrying about whether their thoughts are promptings or their own thoughts because when if your doing the right things it doesn't matter! If your righteous then your thoughts will be alighned with the spirit. I especially loved President Holland's talk at the end. It was very different but so powerful. I wish everyone we are going to teach could watch conferance and be able to feel the things I did...because then how we they not want to be baptized!!!.....can you tell I've been in the MTC for a while now??
That night we also had a really good speaker for our Sunday night devotional. His name is Vai Sikahema...he played for BYU and played in the NFL. Now he is a news anchor in Philidalphia (SP?) Anyways...he started telling us stories about his mission. And he started telling us about one of his investigtors...then he said well let me introduce you to him. Then he brought his investigator from 20+ years ago up on the stand. It was so powerful as they told his conversion story together. After, he had his whole family, kids and grandkids, stand up and show how one conversion has now spread the blessings of the gospel throughout generations. It made me think of my own family history. How Gram and Papa's decision to be baptized changed my life...and how the pioneers on Mom's side would have had to have so much courage to leave everything they knew for a strange religion in the Americas. I am so proud to come from both families and so grateful that I have been a recepitant of those eternal blessings and now have the opportunity to bring that the families of France.
Well, those are my thoughts from the week! hah I love you all and I hope this week has been great!!
Soeur Smith
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