Countdown for Whitney

This week has gone by soooo fast! And I have two weeks until I fly out til Deutschland! And probably exciting for you, I get to call you in two weeks as well! I think it'll be super grand to listen to General Conference just before we fly out--get that extra boost and all! Apparantly we just watch conference and the rest of the time we get to do laundry, pack, or whatever--I don't think it'll take me too much time to pack because I don't have SO much stuff and I've been careful not to accumulate any more that I have to besides all the fun books I get to carry around.

Well on Tuesday for our devotional we actually had *another* surprise speaker, Elder Ballard! We were really lucky to hear from ANOTHER apostle within our MTC stay, and so that was pretty dang neat. It came at a good time, because I was thinking to myself that I was getting the language down (no fluency, and yes, still some accidental dansk!) but I get more and more excited to leave. However he talked mainly about making really good goals and to use our time to the best of our advantage, instead of wasting today thinking about tomorrow. So I've been trying to make the most of what I have at the MTC before I regret it! Not that I'll be in Germany wishing that I could be in the MTC, I think only free laundry would be something that I miss (and yes, feel free to laugh at my cheap-ness). But as Bro. Luna told us auf deutsch, "the food here is the test, but in Germany, it'll be the reward."

On Wednesday, all of our new deutschers came! We're now 28 strong and they're already starting off on the right foot; they can already pray and bear their testimony, which it's amazing see happen to them, but amazing to realize that it's happened to me as well. I could tell that a lot of them were sort of wide and bleary-eyed from the first couple of rough days going cold turkey on all that's "Babylonisch" but today they seem very happy. And they're all really awesome! We have two sisters, Sis. Kapplani and Floyd, Sis. Kapplani is from Albania and has a super powerful testimony, and Sis. Floyd is from Georgia (the state) and she's absolutely hilarious. We had two other sisters, but they fast-tracked. We warned them it'd be tough and they're already coming to us asking if we can help them practice teaching because they hardly get any chance to teach auf deutsch! We also have 11 Elders, two from England (to a total of 4 Brits!!) and one from France, Elder Dagry. He's actually pretty funny, and energetic. He's not at all French-snobby, because I try saying easy French to him like "merci", "aur revoire" "bonjour" or whatever to be nice and he doesn't think my accent is aweful! Elder Dolben says my British accent is by far the most horrid thing he's heard. I'm pretty sure he used those exact words, but it's REALLY easy to push his buttons; the other Elders take care of that. Since I'm the Coordinating Sister, I got to help them with their welcome orientation meeting by helping the zone leaders teach about how to have good companionships and comp inventories, so that felt pretty cool. We also took them on a tour of the campus, so it feels weird already knowing everything there is to know and them asking questions and such.

Before all of that, though, they all introduced themselves and shared their testimonies which ended up taking an hour because of their testimonies! It was super powerful and it was a weird feeling for me; I've only felt it once or twice, but I felt like I was super-charged with the Spirit, I literally felt everything from my fingertips to my toes just humming. I had all this energy--I felt like I could do anything! And it was from their strong testimonies; there were a few Elders that shared that they didn't really know why they were on a mission, but they knew the Church was true and it was a good enough reason to go. Another Elder said that he'd been innactive since he was 12 and had just come back to church a year ago, and I thought that was really grand of him to come after a really rough time in his life. I got to share my testimony last and put all this energy to good use. I don't remember much, except my prayer to be bold as I share my testimony was definitely answered. Words were just coming out that I had no intention of saying, but glad I did. I shared with them that if they just invite the Spirit and let him do the talking, they can say the things they yearn to say in a language that's foreign and strange to them, but it'll touch those who listen. And for the Elders that seemed finally daunted by the idea of a mission--and pretty much anyone--the MTC wasn't built for perfect missionaries; if they expected us to be perfect, I'd already be in Germany right now. But the MTC is to help us achieve our goals and to make our weaknesses become strengths (Ether 12:27). And we wouldn't even be on this Earth if Heavenly Father thought we were perfect. We're here to learn who we are, who we want to be (or be like) and move in that direction. Everyone has a weakness, but everyone has a purpose to be here and to achieve something. But we've been promised in the scriptures that through Christ and his Spirit, we can accquire the characteristics and talents and desires that we need and want! So needless to say, I have deep respect for our new arrivals. And surprisingly enough they think I'm pretty cool! They open up to us really well and it's really easy to get everyone included in and enjoying the MTC together.

As for our investigators: drumroll! Nikolaj our wonderful investigator is committed to baptism since last Tuesday! Hoooooooly meine gute that's a grand feeling. He's not even a real investigator but it makes me incredibly happy to see his progress. He's already cut down his smoking intake from 20 cigarrettes to 10 within a week; he has enough faith-power to send off a space shuttle, meine gute! Even Michael is making progress. We gave him the baptismal committment, but since his progress is vastly much more slower, we invited him to be baptized once he has recieved the answers about God that he's been looking for, and he said yes! We're being patient with him, but he's opening up to us more. I think that he's hesitant because his wife wants nothing to do with the church and I wonder if he thinks the Church might make his marriage more difficult, but we keep telling him that if this is the case we can talk to her and answer her questions. In the real world I'm sure we would've already met her and taught her, so it's weird being in the MTC and having to act out everything like that, I guess. But I mean, 2 months ago he didn't think that when he prayed there'd be someone else on the other side. I'm honestly not sure how much that's changed, but he actually prays, and he prays with us. He even asked us in our last visit, "does it hurt God that I don't believe in him yet?" Which I'm not sure how to look at it, because why would he care about someone's feelings that he "feels" doesn't exist? I've been learning to see progress in everyone and everything, even if it's not punch-in-the-face evident. So yeah, FORTSCHRITT! Der Fortschritt and die Wahrheit are my favorite deutsch words so far (besides the wonderous "meine gute") and pretty soon I'll send pictures that are evident of that!

Another big thing this week: a visit from BBC??? Ya, stimmt! BBC came to the MTC, and specifically OUR zone to do some sort of new story/study thing concerning Mormons. Apparantly there's some sort of rule going around Europe asking the missionaries not to talk to people on buses, and I guess that intruiged the BBC people to learn more. They've come specifically to know what exactly we do in the MTC and why we serve missions. I think because there are more world leaders and such that are members of the church, they thought that we are serving missions as some sort of Business training to be world leaders. As cool and how true that could be, (because what we do learn makes us bold leaders) some of the Elders in our zone got to tell them that we're actually just here for anyone else besides ourselves. And I'm sure they were really impressed! It was cool to know that the BBC came to President Brown and he reccommended they talk to the Japanese and Deutsch missionaries, and so we must be doing something right! They mainly talked with the Elders in the other district, so this was all sort of from someone else, but yeah, pretty cool! I don't know when that'll be public or on the web; they told the Elders they'd give them the info, but we're sure it'll be another few months. I'll try to get the info soon, so you can take a look at it and pass it around!

Well, I think that's just about it for this week! Our goal is to Speak Your Language/ SYL for as much as humanely possible! It's fun to deutsch anyway.

Until next week! I miss you tons!
Love,
Whit