Life at the MTC continues

Thanks for always writing to me! I appreciate it so much! 

 

Can you believe that two weeks from today I will be in the mission field? A week from this Friday is when my district gets are reassigments, so we're all very excited about that.

 

Yesterday we had a really neat experience with one of the elders in our zone. We were doing an activity where we traded teaching an investigator and tried to invite the spirit. Sister Christensen and I taught one of our best lessons yet because we really just focused on inviting the spirit, and focused less on the words that we were going to say. Foi otimo! It was awesome.

 

Another cool experience is that there is a native brazilian from across the hall and I was talking to him while Sister C was going to the restroom. He said that I don't have an American accent, and that I have an accent of a brazilian. I was so excited!

 

Nothing else super duper exciting has happened. We're getting two new districts in our zone, which will push us up to 96 people, which is pretty big. Sister C and I are still the sister training leaders, and I really love it a lot! It's so much fun getting to know the other sisters and to help them out.

 

Let me tell you about one of our investigators real quick. Her name is Angela, and when we first started teaching her, she was really timid, didn't really have faith in God and didn't know how to pray. We just taught her yesterday and she's progressed so much! She has total faith in God, has been to church with her husband and child, and reads from the Book of Mormon. We're working on setting up a baptismal date for her, which is really exciting. The gospel is true. Heavenly Father loves each and every one of you very much. And as long as you keep inviting the Spirit in your lives, it will bless you. I pray for you every night and I miss you, but at the same time I know that this is what I'm supposed to be doing. Have a fabulous week! Thanks for the dearelders!

Sister Tillman

MTC District

Sister Tillman and her companion 

Life at the MTC July 2013

The MTC has been pretty crazy of course. 

My district is awesome. There are thirteen of us, which is pretty big since most districts are between 8-10 people. The first few days were CRAZY. We taught our "investigator" 48 hours after stepping foot onto the campus. In Portuguese. I didn't realize how much I had actually known Spanish until I couldn't speak it anymore! There are lots of things that are similar to Spanish though, which has been a big help. I said the prayer on Sunday in Portuguese, which was terrifying too. But I knew that I could do it and that everything would be ok. And I really want to push myself because that's the only way I'll learn. My companion is Sister Christensen.  Also, in our district, there's an Elder Gangler who lived in Rio for a year, so he knows how to pronounce a lot of the words and he knows a lot of vocab. The grammar rules are fairly similar to the ones in Spanish, so between the both of us, we can piece together a decent paragraph with proper words and grammar, which has been fairly helpful.

So far, I've been loving it here. I'm also really tired a lot. By Saturday, the whole district was WIPED OUT. But we've managed to recover a little bit. Sunday was great! We had the new Brazilian MTC president speak to us for devotional and we had Sheri Dew speak to us for Relief Society. Both were great and exactly what we all needed to hear!

One of the reasons why we're so tired is because we're on the early schedule. Instead of just waking up at 6:30, we're supposed to be at breakfast at 6:30. Which means we wake up an hour earlier than most missionaries and still go to bed at the same time. I'm always really hungry by the time we get back because we eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner so early. We have lunch at 11 and dinner at 4. So that schedule took a lot of getting used to.

One thing that's very different than what I thought is that I thought we would have a teacher all the time, but we don't. We only a teacher once a day, and then we teach our "investigator" for the other classroom time. The rest of the time we have is spent studying in the classroom, whether it's personal, companionship, or language study. It seriously feels like whenever I'm not eating, I'm studying. It's been good to have so much study time though because we really need it. Whenever I'm not exhausted, I'm glad that we have to wake up earlier because it gives us an extra hour to study. And we're always praying, which has been a huge help. So many times, we've received inspiration for our investigator. We have truly felt the spirit here. It has been wonderful.

One great way to get a hold of me is through DearElder. Just enter my MTC address into the boxes and I'll get it the same day! 

I'll be sending some pictures as soon as I figure out how to work it. I love you all and wish you the very best!! I love you all!!

Tchao!

Sister Tillman

This is how to fill in Monica's info on dearelder.com

Elder Sister President Hermana (No Title)     Title First Name Last Name    Unit # Mission Code or Mission (optional) Estimated MTC Departure Date