MTC - February 14, 2013 - Week 3

Hey Everyone!

I officially passed the half way point here at the MTC! It's a bit daunting really, but I know that we are making great progress in regards to learning the gospel and learning Swedish. As of yesterday I was officially made the Junior Companion, after being Senior Companion for three weeks.

Last Saturday we had an amazing lesson with our "investigator." Our first lesson didn't go so well, between my companion and I not understanding everything he was saying and the fact that we didn't really know how to explain what baptism was in Swedish. After that interesting experience, we took the time to seriously ponder and pray about/for him to see what we what we could do to best meet his needs. We came up with a general lesson plan where we talked about God, the importance of Christ, the Atonement, following Christ and how baptism is key to following Christ. We wanted our investigator to desire baptism by the end of the lesson, but we thought that he wouldn't be completely prepared by the end so we extended a sort-of halfway commitment (along the lines that as you learn and pray about the things we teach, will you follow Christ example and be baptized?). Before we even finished the question, he said "Yes! When?" My companion and I just looked at each in surprise for a second before she asked hesitantly, "You want to know when you can be baptized?" (Well in less words than that, but you get my meaning.) Our investigator grinned and repeated, "When?" We quickly extended a date of March 9th and he eagerly agreed. Once we closed the lesson and started to head back to class, our teacher called us back to talk about how awesome the lesson was. He pretty much told us that we can make such an event a typical first lesson.

Other than that, Swedish is coming. I've noticed improvements in the lessons my companion and I teach. Last Friday we had "TRC" appointments (which are return missionaries/church members from Sweden acting as themselves), and the second return missionary sister we taught told us that our grammar and pronunciation at two weeks is better than many of the people in her district when they had left the MTC. It just goes to show how much the Lord is hastening His work. He's definitely preparing His missionaries for the tasks that He wants them to complete.

We had Gregory A. Schwitzer of the Seventy on Tuesday and a Mark J. Lusvardi give the MTC fireside on Sunday. My companion knows a lot of people in the MTC actually since she's from Provo. There seems to be some 50 or so missionaries she knows here. The main messages were the importance of charity/just loving the people, baptism, and conversion. It's like that phrase "Give of yourself by forgetting yourself."

My group of 32 missionaries headed to Sweden with some of our teachers!