Dear Family/Mother:
The past few days have been way too good to wait until my next P-day on Friday to tell you my experience the past days. Friday was our first legit P-day. We woke up and got sack breakfasts. Then we came back to our dorms. We sat in the hall with our zone and ate breakfast. We ate and told funny stories. We then didn’t have anything to do until 9:15 so we all decided to go back to bed. It was awesome to sleep in a little. I had been completely exhausted and needed it bad. We then went to do laundry. It takes forever to do laundry here. It’s nice to have clean clothes though. We then had the rest of the day to organize our stuff, buy supplies and eat.
At around 2:00 we had the chance to go to the Temple. We had gone over earlier than the rest of our zone. The way the missionaries are looked at the Temple is amazing. It was so cool. You seem almost like a VIP. While we were waiting in the chapel my Branch President, President Shumway leaned forward and started talking to me. He told me that “you guys are the most prayed for people besides the Propeht.” That made me feel really good. It was an amazing experience to go to the Temple with our entire zone. When we got into the actual meeting just us missionaries and a couple other people took up the whole right side and four rows on the left. It was insane. Such a cool experience to have so many missionaries in the Temple and that was just our zone. If that was our zone, with all the missionaries, I can only imagine how much Temple work is done every p-day. It is just wonderful.
I am starting to get used to the Temple now. I’m starting to remember everything. The whole meeting took quite a while with so many people. It was nice to just sit in the Temple and ponder. It was one of my favorite experiences here at the MTC.
Another spiritual experience was today during class. We had watched a devotional of Elder David A Bednar at the MTC. He had talked about missionaries always asking him “how to know if it was the spirit or just them.” He then told us a couple of stories that had happened throughout his life. His first story was about him while he was on his mission. He was asked to pick up Elder Packer and his wife at the airport in Germany. Before sending them off to the train Elder Bednar had given Elder Packer and his wife 20 German dollars(whatever they are called). He had thought at the time that they could use it for food. They boarded the train and left. Halfway through the trip they started checking passports. Elder Packer’s passport was fine but they were having trouble with his wife’s passport. The train attendant was giving them troubles. Elder Packer got the idea to put the money into her passport. The attendant left and came back with the passport. They later found out that they would have been pulled off the train and stuck in Germany.
Another story was that when Elder Bednar was a Stake President he had to go to a meeting 2 hours away at his Stake Center. He was sitting in the chapel 5 minutes before the meeting started. His son had a championship basketball game at 7:00. He looked down to see a father of a kid that was also playing in the game. He leaned over to his Secretary and asked if he could take over the meeting. He then walked down and got the father and they left. The father hugged him and thanked him for taking him to the game. They drove to the game and made it 29 minutes before the game started. He and the other father were able to watch their sons play. He had thoughts, wondering if he had made the right choice that night.
Fast forward 6 months…Elder Bednar gets a call at 4:30 in the morning. It happens to be the father of the kid at the basketball game. The son had been on the mountain cutting wood. He had been splitting wood with a metal wedge. . He swung hitting the wedge breaking off a shard of metal hitting the son in the chest. He hadn’t noticed it had hit him. While driving home the kid told his dad he didn’t feel good. He passed out and they drove to the hospital. Elder Bednar then hurried over to the hospital to find out that the kid had passed away. The shard had hit is heart causing internal bleeding. The father of the son grabbed Elder Bednar and told him thanks for letting him leave to watch his son play his last game.
Both of these stories started out with just a small thought from Elder Bednar. He later found out these small thoughts had lead to great spiritual experiences. He explained that the spirit isn’t always a big spiritual feeling. He said that “as long as you are obeying and being good boys the spirit will be able to reach you.” (not exact works but somewhat close!) This made me realize that as long as you are doing what you’re supposed to you can have these types of experiences. He also said that as long as you’re doing good it will most likely be the spirit. It was such an amazing talk showing how small decisions that had started out or small thoughts ended up being big spiritual events. The spirit could be as small as a thought that can lead to something so great.
This weekend has been a very spiritual and testimony building. I also had to say my first prayer in Spanish in Sacrament meeting. Sunday was extremely stressful. We have to write a talk every Sunday for Sacrament meeting. No one knows who will get called until basically right that second. I was frantically trying to write a talk and translate it into Spanish. We were also being interviewed by the Branch President. On top of that I was trying to remember how to say a prayer in Spanish. It has been a crazy yet spiritual ending to the week.
I’m not sure when you guys will receive this, but they’re moving the mailroom/bookstore/dry cleaners to the new building. I won’t be able to receive dearelder letters until around Thursday or Friday. Which kinds sucks because it’s the week before my birthday. I will be able to receive normal mail, just not dearelders.
Also, what did Mckay’s mom say? I’m kinda curious. I’m starting to wonder if I’ve the right address. I’ve written all my friends but haven’t gotten anything.
I wanna hear how everyone is doing? Have Ethan and Ainsley got my letters? I just got one from Baileigh today.
I love and miss you guys and hope to hear back soon.
Lover, Elder Torgersen (Tortuga) A bunch of older Elders have started calling me that.
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