March 10, 2011

So I have decided that now that I have the hang of the MTC I should give you a detailed account of my day. So here it goes for yesterday:
6:25am: Alarm goes off. Try to turn it off as quickly as possible. Spend five minutes on my knees thanking my Father in Heaven for the greatest day ever yesterday (wednesday) and asking Him to direct my day.
6:33: Try to pry my companions out of bed because we have gym in two minutes and they are both still out cold.
6:37: Arrive at gym, two minutes late, but so is everyone else.
6:40-7:15 Play a very intense basketball game with five other sisters. Score some points, miss a LOT of shots, laugh a LOT, and add a few more bruises to my collection.
7:15 Leave gym ten minutes early so my companions can make sure their shower, hair, and make-up is done for the day. (Me: shower, throw my hair in a messy bun, do my make-up, and still have 15 minutes to study spanish verbs)
8:12 Leave for breakfast, at this point I should probably check my planner to have a feel for the day...hmm...after breakfast we have a green color-coded block, that means Hemano Christiansen is teaching (yes, I color code my planner, the mission is turning me into a crazy)
8:16 Arrive in the cafeteria...nuts, nothing edible..wait, they have bagels today! A bagel with cream cheese, some peaches, and three or four glasses of water it is!
8:43 Climb the 72 stairs to the top floor where our class is.
8:45 Start class with a hymn and prayer in Spanish, of course, and then grimace as one of the elders offers one of the many smells that I have now become accustomed to.
9:06 I'm freezing! My coat is at the dry-cleaners and the elders insist the air conditioning be turned to max! Please tell me it isn't so that we have this class until noon!
10:58 Break into three groups, two companionships practice for the TRC, one prepares to teach our teacher/investigator (Dan), and one companionship teaches him now without any prep time...Yep, let’s go teach Dan!
11:30 Leave our lesson with Dan, not sure if he is 100% there, but we have a baptism in three weeks, rock on!
11:40 Leave class early so my two companions can practice a musical piece they are doing together...that would make me the untalented third musical wheel! Climb down the 72 stairs.
12:15 We are officially in a blue block of my planner. We finally get the chello that was being used up until this point, but I discovered a couple of new things in my Patriarchal Blessing as I was waiting.
12:16-12:49 Listen to my companions practice their musical chello/piano piece while I write and translate Spanish sentences. (I also do this when I am stressed out, weird kind of stress relief I guess!) I must say that the piece is beautiful and I am very proud of them.
12:53 Go to Lunch....YAY, they have sandwiches made out of materials I can identify! Bonus, they also have a little bag of Cheetos to go with it, AND a pickle! Awesome!
1:33 Pick up my coat from the dry-cleaners, of course right now is the MOST beautiful day since I have been here and am currently standing in the sun with my eyes closed looking like an idiot, although a very happy one!
1:37 Pick up my Spanish scriptures from the book store now that they are embossed, they look beautiful!
1:43 Climb the 72 stairs to our class.
1:45 Sing again, pray again, and then start personal study. We have a lesson with Yuriko tonight and we need to teach her ALL of the commandments from lesson four since she is getting baptized in a week and a half. Of course, I haven't even started to study lesson four yet!
2:20 Finish with almost all of the commandments in outline form, but feel like I really need to study my scriptures for some reason. I start where I left off last time in Alma 18, gosh I LOVE this chapter!
2:37 The elders are talking about doctrine, I get sucked in and distracted, refocus about three minutes later.
2:45 Start companionship study, pray, bear our testimonies, recite our purpose and the first vision in Spanish. Fill out the teaching record for Dan, and take a few minutes to discuss what our next steps are with him. Spend twenty minutes talking about the commandments and Yuriko and how to approach our lesson this evening.
3:17 Hermana Rex comes early to help Elder Hansen fix his tie. We get a little distracted talking to her, but we need to prepare for the TRC.
3:33 Hermana Rex asks if we can start class early because she remembered last night something important she forgot to tell us. Pray and sing again, read out loud D&C 4 (wow that sounds awful! We need to work on saying that one!) and wait for the bomb to drop that she forgot to tell us....
3:49 Now we are in the Purple block, meaning it is Hermana Rex Teaching. Hermana Rex asks us all to turn to Alma 18...wait a second! I just read that in my personal study! Alma gives us an example of how to approach and teach someone who doesn't know or believe in God, oh and by the way, our TRC investigator today is a non-Christian. It’s ok though,  all I have to do is tell them the truth and bear testimony of what IS true, just like Alma.
4:02 Walk down the 72 stairs
4:07 Gather in a little prep room with the rest of my district and say a companionship prayer that the spirit will be with us and that the Gift of Tongues will be given to us as this entire lesson must be in Spanish.
4:09 Enter "the store" and order some things that we need, black dress shoes, comfortable, and will hold up to LOTS of walking for me please! Then ask her if she goes to church around here, she does, the Buddhist church. We tell her that we also believe that we had a life before this one, but that we know that we lived with our loving Heavenly Father, and not as plants (which is what she thinks she might have been in her last life!) She is intrigued by our testimony and asks if we can come back tomorrow to pick up our stuff that she will have at her house and teach her more.
4:27 Gather again in the prep room and try to figure out which principles she needs to KNOW from lessons one and two. We settle on parts from both, with our main focus being that God is our loving Heavenly Father and because he loves us he restored his gospel today as well as pre and post earth life.
4:34 Knock on the door of our investigator's 'house' and are surprised by two other people in the room, apparently she invited her two atheist friends to join in on the discussion with the 'Mormons!'
4:37-5:05 Start with a re-cap from the store for Vincent and Brooke (the Atheists). Bear simple and direct testimony that I know my father in Heaven loves me and that He loves each one of them. Testify that he created this world and share Alma 30:44 with Vincent the Atheist. And then when he asks me HOW I know all these things, testify of the power of prayer and that through God you can know and do all things. The spirit was definitely there.
5:05 Tell our investigators, 'of course we can come back tomorrow' when they asked us how soon we could come back!
5:12 Climb the 72 stairs back to our room.
5:15-5:37 Read the feedback from the 'investigators' and try to answer the questions Hermana Rex poses to us: How did we help bring Heavenly Father's children unto him? And what can we do this week to better prepare to do that with other investigators?
5:38 Sit down with Hermana Rex and have her correct and explain the mistakes I made with my Spanish sentences. I write the english in black, the spanish in red, and then she corrects in blue. Can I just say my paper is finally starting to look less like a victim of the great blue sword carnage!? I know something is bothering Hermana Rex. I ask her what is wrong, and she tells me she went to the dentist today. Then I tell her she is really good at deflecting. Apparently not very many people catch that, because she was pretty surprised that I noticed. I hope everything is ok. It is a blessing to be able to feel the concerns and worries of others as a missionary. We have to be perceptive to what others are feeling, and I absolutely believe we are given special powers of discernment as a part of our call. However, this also means that WE worry for and about them all the time. I try to focus, but the worry I feel for others, my teachers, companions, friends, and especially my family is sometimes over-whelming. Of course, Hermana Rex doesn't want to burden me with her problems, but I do tell her that I hope whatever, or more likely, whoever gets better, and that I will be thinking about her. I guess that and prayer is all we can really do. Did I mention that prayer is quite possibly the greatest thing on earth? I am literally talking with my father as His daughter. I miss my Dad and the talks we used to have so much, but now I talk to my Father in Heaven the same way I did with my Dad, and I can feel the love and recognition and understanding that He has for me. He KNOWS what I am going through and how I feel, and I love every second I get to spend talking with Him.
5:58 Sing in Spanish O My Father to the tune of Come Thou Fount, absolutely beautiful! My new favorite Spanish hymn (at least when it is sung to that tune).
6:02 Climb down the 72 stairs again, after telling Hermana Rex we would see her tomorrow and that I hoped everything would be ok.
6:05 Arrive at dinner....nothing...nothing I can even identify...thats ok, two bowls of cereal sound delicious! I'll even be healthyish and have one of Grape nuts and one of Corn Flakes.
6:37 Jeopardy anyone? Another chatting session.
6:43 Climb the 72 stairs again
6:46 Sing, pray, and try to finish going over the information for Yuriko from Lesson four while also trying to fit in some language study and tune out the Elders talking about who knows what (gosh do I love them, they are so great, and I am so lucky to have them around me everyday, every single one of them has made incredible progress the last six weeks and I am so proud of them.)
7:52 Down the 72 stairs we go.
7:53 Walk with Hermana Vogelsberg to our lesson with Yuriko (Hermana Clinger has to welcome the new district so will be on splits with the zone leaders) (Is it really only almost eight o'clock? I swear it has to be later than that!)
8:05 Start the daunting task of explaining Obedience, Pray Often, Study the Scriptures, Keep the Sabbath Day Holy, Baptism and Confirmation, Follow the Prophet, Keep the Ten Commandments, Law of Chastity, and the Word of Wisdom all in 45 minutes. Luckily the only one she really had an issue with was Sabbath day worship because of her job. Luckily I had personal experience with this from Tucson. I told her to trust in her testimony and to honor the respect and relationship she has built with her boss and have an open and honest discussion with him. It was still hard though.
8:53 Climb the 72 stairs back to the room.
9:05 Meet back up with Hermana Clinger and begin planning. Luckily it is P-day tomorrow and we don't have a whole lot to plan for! I think we will do initiatories tomorrow at the temple so that should be a good experience.
9:20 Sing and pray as a district and hike down the 72 stairs one last time.
9:35 Change, brush my teeth, and read my letter from my Dad. Have a great talk with Hermana Clinger about some of the concerns she is facing right now. Give another friend, Hermana King, a big hug because she is leaving in a couple of days for my favorite place in the world, Tucson!
10:29 Talk to my Heavenly Father and thank Him for the Best Day ever, which actually turned out to be today and not yesterday or the day before like I had thought then!
Well, there it is, a day in the life of an MTC missionary! This still can't convey the laughs, the conversations, and the incredible spirit that is here. All I can tell you all is that I feel more like a missionary today than I did yesterday, and I know that cycle will continue every day. I am so excited for every day that I have to be a missionary, it is the greatest thing I could ever do with my life. I am so excited to make every moment and second count. I love you all, and I am so grateful for the love and support you send me. Every once in a while it dawns on me that there are so many people who are thinking about me, fasting for me, going to the temple for me, and praying for me. Most of the time I don't feel like I deserve all that love, but know that I feel it and am so greateful for it every day. I couldn't serve the Lord to my full capacity without having that support. So truly, from the bottom to the top of my heart, thank you.
I love you all,
Hermana Levanger