Still in the "EMPTY SEA"

Monday September 17, 2012

Hola todos!

 I'm still here in the Empty Sea!( get it…MTC) Lovin life! First of all I want to give a birthday shoutout to the best little brother there is out there! Happy Birthday Marcus! He turns 12 today and now that means he will eat cereal. I am certain of it.

 Oh P.S. Mom the Dear Elder deadline is like 5:00 PM on Fridays. I saw you mention that in your last one. They don't come on Saturday which is a major bummer. Oh well. Thats ok.

The best day of the week is P-Day. You get to do laundry, take a nap if you want to, go to the temple, do whatever you want basically with some study time in between, which I think is my favorite part of every day. Study time is such a blessing to me. I love the scripture in Doctina y Convenios where the Lord gives revelation to Hyrum Smith and says that "Before you seek to proclaim My word, first seek to obtain My word." That is what I view study time as. Obtaining the Lord's word so that I can deliver his message with accuracy, conviction, and most importantly, with the Holy Ghost. But yeah. P-Day is awesome, but Sunday is a way nice time too. I love the Firesides on Sundays. I feel so edified, and I love using the word edified too. We also get to go on a temple walk, but I don't dare disclose the precise hour of that great time because I know my mother would be there every week. I do it because I love you mom. It's in the late afternoon though. If you can find me I will run away. Love ya too much.

My Spanish is coming along little by little. I get better at it each day, and by learning more grammatical tenses and vocabulary, soon enough I will become THE Spanish Master. Soon enough will probably come in like 9ish months though haha. ( In Due time of the Lord.  But I really do feel the help of the Lord and all prayers coming my way. Thank you so much for them and don't you dare stop!!!! I need all the help I can get.  I am at the point where I can't always say exactly what I want to say, but through much brain power and maybe a 5 to 10ish second thought process figure out a way to say what I want to say.  It probably isn't grammatically correct, but most Spanish speakers can figure out most of what I am saying haha.

Anyways, a fun thing happened! I committed my fake real investigator to baptism! His real name is Hermano King and he is my teacher, but he role plays a progressing investigator named Manuel. I will give you the rundown of our most recent lesson with him. He has been pretty receptive, probably due to the fact that he is our first investigator, but that is ok. We started out teaching horribly, mostly because one, it was all in Spanish, and I didn't speak much Spanish the second day in the MTC, second, because they throw you in before you have any remote idea how to teach!!!! That was the worst part. We went in there completely blind, attempted to blabber out a couple of Spanish and Spanglish words, and then tried to decipher what he was saying to us, which was probably like 25%. They recently taught us a very important phrase that we will be using forever. “Repetalo por favor?”  “Repeat that please?” haha  I have used that countless times in our recent lessons. Sorry for that tangent. Anyways, we have taught him most everything, except for a couple commandments. We know that he can feel the Spirit in our lessons, before  we just haven't been very good at identifying it. So I came up with a masterful plan to “help” him out.  We started out our lesson by having him sing with us Soy un Hijo de Dios, I am a Child of God. It is an awesome song because a 6 year old can understand it and it is impossible not to feel the Spirit during it.  I then asked him immediately, Manuel, what do you feel right now? He said "tranquilo," which I think means tranquil or something like that,  haven't looked up the translation yet. I then identified that as the Spirit. I read him Jacob 4:13 out of the Book of Mormon, which testifies that the Spirit testifies of truth and cannot lie.  I asked him if he had been praying about whether baptism is the right thing for him. We challenged him before, and he said that if he was ready, he would be baptized.  I then asked him if he would pray aloud right now, and ask if baptism was the right thing for him right now. He did, and gave an awesome, simple prayer. I asked him what he felt afterwards. He said that he was feeling the Spirit. We again pointed out that the Spirit cannot lie, so I asked him what he needed to do. He then said the magic words, "I need to follow my answer." He said all this in Spanish of course. I was so happy at that point. I then extended the baptismal invitation, which, "Manuel, will you follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized by someone holding the Priesthood authority of God?" He accepted, and has a date, but we are pushing it back a little bit because we still have a little bit to teach him. The beautiful thing about it is that whatever we teach him now, hopefully he will go off his testimony of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and realize that it is all true. I love it! When I was testifying of Baptism to Manuel, even though I was doing it in Spanish, I could feel the Spirit so strongly, just another confirmation to me that this work is true and that I am being an instrument in the Lord's hands to bring about His mighty purposes.

 I love this work and know that it is the work of the Living God, and His Son, Jesus Christ. It is true. I have no shadow of a doubt that I will be bringing people to the RESTORED CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST!!!! It isn't the church of Joseph Smith. It isn't the church of Thomas S. Monson. It is the Church of Jesus Christ, and He is at the head of it. I love you all. See you in about 23ish months.

Love,

Elder Mike

Recent MTC Pictures September 10, 2012

 Look who I found?

 This is Elder Ruiz. He leaves to Las Vegas Wednesday. He lived next door to us, and he was on the total opposite side of the spectrum. While we spoke English and were learning Spanish, He, being from Baja, Mexico, knew Spanish and was learning English. We helped each other out, and our district became really good friends. He is going to a Spanish speaking mission, but if you go to the states you have to have speak English well too anyways. He is a really swell guy.

 The crew

 The Olympus Tie. A ton of people from Olympus have passed on this tie from person to person and a good number of us have signed it. I wore it for a day. Felt awesome.

Some neat new scripture covers for my Spanish scriptures and hymn book. I look legit now.

The Powers of the Priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of Heaven!

Hola familia! Como esta arriba???

This week has been a good one. We got two new investigators to teach, Noemi and Luis. Well We don't have Noemi anymore because her alter-ego, Hermana Price, is not my teacher anymore which is sad. Shout out to her if she reads my blog like she promised. Anyway so my teachers now are Hermano Bruce, and Hermano King. Hermano King served in Chile and got back about four months ago. Hermano Bruce is fresh out of Argentina and speaks with a weird Argentine accent that he is trying to get rid of for our sake haha. They are both really good and I am loving their teaching. The Spanish is coming along poco a poco. Every day I pray for and thank my Father in Heaven for the gift of tongues. It is real and I am feeling the reality of it now. We had a workshop on Friday about recognizing the Spirit and the sister gave a couple really good points that I think are helping me day by day to get better.

 You are probably wondering about the subject of this email. Well here we go. Elder Fawcett was sick for a couple days. I think he caught my cold but it didn't like him as much. He felt really dizzy and had a sinus infection pretty bad. Most of the drugs you sent me have mostly gone to him, but none to much avail. Well on Sunday, he asked for a blessing. I was wayyyyyy nervous and didn't really know how to do it, but luckily that is what the mission handbook was for. So I did my best, and I gave a blessing as the spirit  directed me. It was such a cool experience! Words came to my mind that I felt were from the Spirit, and even though it was a short and simple blessing, he woke up from a nap an hour later feeling great. Any sickness is no match against rest, drugs, and the priesthood. So that was the highlight of my week. I am grateful that I was able to receive those words from the Holy Ghost and deliver a blessing that was able to help another person.

Neat thing. Our district was kind of discouraged because our lessons were really crappy with our investigator because they completely outlawed English in our lessons. Our teachers came in and really emphasized that Learning Spanish is not our first priority in the MTC. It is to learn how to fulfill our missionary purpose. Our purpose is to Invite others to come unto Christ be helping them receive the Restored Gospel through Faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, Repentance, Baptism, and enduring to the end. Spanish comes second to that. It came as a testimony builder to me that if I don't know how to teach in English, I sure as heck won't be able to in Spanish. They really emphasize effective study habits to learn how to do just that.

Mom, here are the answer to your questions. Don't freak out but no I did not join the choir. They have practice on Tuesdays right in the middle of my class time and I can't afford to miss that. I need all the Spanish help that I can get. I am however auditioning for a musical number this week. I went last week, but I got in line literally seconds too late. I will let you know how that goes. My district leader is Elder Smith from California. He is brand new as of yesterday. Our old DL, Elder Keller, leaves for the Guatemala MTC tomorrow. Now our district is purely Costa Ricans and Philadelphians. It is a way nice time.  The "Republican" cookies, ann romneys recipe, got nothing on yours mom. They were kind of gross actually I think they are still under my bed. Thank you though. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE PACKAGES!!!! Sorry I have been an ungrateful piece of crap and not thanked you before. I love being spoiled it feels nice to feel like the most loved child once and a while. Make sure Meredith and Marcus read that sentence.

COOL STORY! I gave a hug to an Elder yesterday who is the first missionary to come from Nepal!!!! The one branch there is like less than 100 people and I admire his faith and sacrifice to come out and do this! It is the best work in the world and I can't wait until the day that I am fluent in this blasted language.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts and prayers. They are felt! This is the true work of the Lord!! Anyone who says differently let me talk to them about it. The church is true and the Atonement is real!!! Love You!!! Over and Out



Elder Dial

ESPANOL!!!!!

Elder Mike with Elder Steven Doxey and Zach Seastrand...friends from Oly!

Elder Dial w/good buddy from Olympus Elder Alec Anderson

Elder Dial's MTC district...his companion is on his left...I think just bad shot w/eyes closed...??!!

He even ran into Elder Warren Crowley, a Virginia buddy!

Olympus buddies at "the map" at the MTC...

Elders Dial, Anderson and Morgan Evans..I believe at the temple

Again, w/Elder Doxey who leaves for Chicago because he has yet to get his Visa to Peru. Note the terrible wildlife tshirt on Elder Dial...however, he does have his name tag on!   His companion cannot believe that he knows someone at every turn!




September 3, 2012 MTC


Hola todos. I can officially say that all of my high school Spanish has returned to me and even more. The gift of tongues is completely real because there is no way that I could ever learn this blasted language this fast at this rate. So many things have happened. Elder Fawcett and I are getting better at teaching our investigator, Manuel. They throw you into teaching on the second day in the MTC IN SPANISH which was awful. We didn't know how to teach or speak the language! But I think they do that to you so you learn to rely on the Lord and to give you a sense of urgency to learn how and what to teach. That urgency has made me change my study habits drastically. I used to just READ the scriptures. It is good, but it is not the best thing that you can do. Every single thing I do must be focused on my purpose as a missionary, which is "Invite others to come unto Christ by receiving the Restored Gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end." We had that memorized within the first couple days, and in Spanish not soon afterwards. Every single thing we do must be directed towards that. That means that my study habits must be focused on my investigators first. The Spanish that I study is the Spanish that I need to use in my lessons. It was hard at first, but now I feel comfortable doing it. Two three hour sessions of classtime used to be torture for me, but now I look forward to it. Isn't that weird? I HATED Spanish class earlier on, but now I can't get enough of it! This church must be true or something.

For our Sunday fireside, we got to watch the Prophet's 85th birthday celebration. It was way good! Then after that we watched some terribly made missionary movie made in the 80's. It was hilarious.

I love gym time here. I play more basketball than anything. That's all Elder Fawcett plays. My district is terrible overall at basketball so I pretty much dominate, which is the first time I could ever say that haha. I do some running too. The other day I ran 3 miles but I need to run more often. I gained like 4 or 5 pounds but I caught myself and hopefully I can watch what I eat. I stay away from most bad things, have a wrap like every day with a salad sometimes, and then I only have ice cream on Sundays and Wednesdays. If I keep gaining then I am going to stop eating completely. Maybe that will work.

I am going to audition for a musical number this week. I need to ask someone in my zone to play piano for me but I have someone in mind.

Well they have a TERRIBLE setup on the computers here in the laundry room so I can't attach pictures here. I will try to send some later. Congrats on callbacks Jojo! You are gonnna do great!!!!! Thanks family for the care packages. My district loved the cake and the treats. In the next one, I humbly ask for my decongestant spray in my bathroom and some nyquil. I have had a gnarly cold the past couple days and my sinuses have been going crazy. Love you tons!