Family I can't tell you how great it is to be able to respond to all of you!! I am overwhelmed by the love and support you guys give me. I seriously can not thank you enough. I want to write each one of you back, but it might take me a few weeks. Needless to say I found strength and comfort in each single one of your guys letters I wish I had time to respond to them all this second!!
This week was good! For Easter, Pres. Ballard came and talked to us! It was broadcasted to every MTC in the world. Pretty neat to be where the entire world came together. I can't exactly remember what he said but I remember it was good. Hah that's my lil tired MTC brain for ya! Other than that just had more church and devotionals and a walk to the temple! I am going to miss the temple...today was the last time I'll go for a year and a half! But I hope all of you had an incredible Easter full of love for our Savior! I wish I could have heard grandma's lesson. I love her lessons.It is hard to sit here and summarize what has happened this week because it feels like a lifetime of events happen every day. It's mostly filled with class time and teaching investigators. We have an investigator named Jessi who is awesome. She is portraying herself when she was a non-member but we aren't suppose to know that she has joined. Anyway!! We have had a lot of awesome lessons filled with tears and the spirit. However, she loves to just chat and is very, very open about her life. Haha I swear it sometimes just turns into 45 min counseling sessions between me and her.. whoops! Hahah she's 30 and divorced but somehow we connect on the same level and I find myself giving her dating advice, hahaha last week I told her that I think this boy she is trying to marry has commitment issues. I try to refrain from doing that but dang she just is blinded by who knows what!! hahah I often explain to Sis Davis that she shouldn't encourage those two because there are 1,023,984 red flags. Anyway, I promise we teach a lot of spiritual things here too;) We teach non- stop! Which is exhausting, but great practice.Even though me and Sis Davis could not be more different, we teach well together. She comes in on clutch with the scriptures and I am a lil better at relating and connecting! She also gets nervous sometimes and just says she wants me to take it hah so we are working on balancing the time.We just got another investigator who is RAD. She super outdoorsy and so I am like living vicariously through her! We talk about places to snowshoe and what not (told her to go to green pond), and I tell her to hike for me too! It honestly is weird a lil still to interact with people here who still have real life's once they leave. My teacher is going to J Beibs this weekend....What I'd do to hear some real music haha.Another thing that I started doing this week is playing volleyball with some of the more athletic elders and sisters. It's funny because it was all the elders who are way extreme into basketball and think that they are the hot stuff here because they are committed to play in college or were before they left. But I hold my own and it's fun to do something that I actually did before the MTC!! Haha.I also had a 15 min convo between me and an elder who speaks Mandarin and it was his first day here, translated by elder horton and stroud. Come to find out later, he speaks English, is from Idaho and has been here 10 weeks! They all laughed so hard, they played us like fools! Sis Davis claims she knew but i KNOW she didn't haha.
I am still finding it fun here despite the routine! Last Friday during service cleaning I had the lil custodian guy teach me color guard twirls with the brooms. He is surprisingly immaculate at that art. We can all only aspire I guess.I have really felt some of my answers to prayers answered here. I have felt more of an assurance to keep going and have been given a little more confidence that I owe to myself to really dig deep in this gospel and find the truths. I look back at the first day I was here and I truly have seen myself grow and overcome things I didn't think I could. I have been more in-tune with every single emotion and feeling with in myself than ever before. Everything here is so deep and filled with real soul filled things that matter. I think at my life before here and there was a lot of small talk and superficial events that happened all the time. That is not the case here and it has only been two weeks!I had a pretty cool meeting with a member of my branch pres the other day. He knows where my heart has been and where my desires are. As we were talking he broke down to me in tears rolling down his face and said "Sister Jackson, you will get out there and those answers WILL COME. I promise you. I look at you and just think this incredible." He said, "There will come a time where it all will just wake you up to the reality of this gospel". He has not a doubt that I wont find the truth of the BOM and the rest of the doctrine. I've never had anyone show me so much confidence in finding answers than I have here. Don't get me wrong it still is an ongoing fight to stay motivated and full of faith but I feel the lord has given me just enough to keep going!My heart could seriously burst with the love that I have for each and every single one of you. I feel so undeserving of the time that you have all put towards me in my life right now. I truly could not do this without any of you and wish you all could see how much you mean to me. I do a lot of reflecting here especially since I cant respond till Wednesday! I want you all to know I'm praying for you all and love you to the core of my being!!!! I miss you tons, keep up the good work over there:)
The beloved MTC pic
In honor of J Biebs this weekend
Elder Stroud from good ole BYU
How I love Sista Garcia
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