Life Savers: MTC!!

Guys! The MTC is so awesome. There is a different spirit here than anywhere else I have ever been. Everything is based on Christ and it's so awesome! One of my favorite things is these amazing murals that are everywhere in the buildings. And they have these little rooms where you can sit and study while hymns play. It's so awesome. The Spirit is so strong literally everywhere.

And everyone once in a while I remember that everyone on this campus is for the same reason. We are all missionaries with the same purpose. I've never been part of a group that is so united in its focus. It's cool to remember that.

So much has happened! I got to the MTC on Wednesday last week and that day we did the Character of Christ experience. It's a thing they do with all the new missionaries where you watch Elder Bednar's talk about Christ's character and discuss together how He always turns outward. Humans naturally turn inward, naturally think about themselves, what they want, what they need. Jesus Christ, even in His greatest suffering and pain, only thought about others. I want to be that kind of person! This devotional was so cool.

Another spiritual thought and then I'll talk a little more about the day to day. We had a devotional yesterday from this guy named Carlos Revillo. He taught about faith and miracles, which has been emphasized a lot this whole week. And he also talked about work. Missions are work, undeniably. A lot of it. But this work we're doing is blessing our lives and the lives of others. Something he said that stood out to me was this: "You're setting a pattern for your life right now. If you become a person who gives 50% on the mission, you'll likely be a person who gives 50% after the mission." It reminded me of the scripture in Alma that talks about how those who were happy in this life will be happy in the next life too. The way we choose to live in this moment is going to affect the way we live later. My companion is always talking about how important it is to live in the present, to choose joy now. The first couple times she said I was like, yeah, that's good to remember. But the more it's repeated the more I think about how vital that really is.

Also someone in my district shared this cool analogy! If you're building a stone wall and you pick up a stone that is the wrong shape and doesn't fit anywhere in the wall, do you abandon the wall? No, you just put that rock to the side. Later on as you build, you might find a place that that rock fits in perfectly. Or you might not, and that's okay. Having an extra stone that doesn't fit in the wall doesn't prevent the wall from being built, and it doesn't prevent the wall from being strong.

In the same way, we are building our testimonies and our understandings of the Savior. And there are gonna be things we come across that don't make sense. Rocks that don't seem to fit in our wall. But doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith. And later on you might realize that you received an answer to that question somewhere along the way. Or it might just be something that you have to be okay with not knowing the answer to. Some rocks are never going to fit in the wall, until the next life when we have a perfect understanding and can see clearly how each stone is meant to fit together.

Okay! So much to share this week. We got tested for covid on Friday and one of the Hermanas in our district tested positive. As soon as she tested positive, the rest of us got whisked out of the room and she went to the sisters covid building. There are two whole buildings reserved for the missionaries with covid, one for the Elders and one for the Sisters. There were only like ten people in the building with her and she was bored out of her mind the whole time. She gets out in just a couple hours and we are so excited to see her again!

Because there are only four Hermanas in our district, with her gone the other three of us became a companionship. And it has been so fun! The first day was a little weird because both of our companionships have ways that we do things and we had to put it all together into one companionship without making Hermana Hamilton (the sister who joined us) feel like she was thirdwheeling on everything we did. But then we just became great friends and it was really easy to be a trio. I'm really happy that Hermana Figlioli is coming back from quarantine but I'm gonna miss Hermana Hamilton being a part of our companionship!

All of our classes are in Spanish and it's cool to see the difference between day one everyone's ability to use Spanish and day seven or whatever today is. They're really encouraging us to use Spanish outside of class and we're doing that a lot more as a district now. Spanglish is awesome. :)

I know a lot more Spanish than most of the people in my district, just cuz I have a little more experience with it. Even though I'm sometimes a little bored in classes when we talk about colors or weather or something I've known forever, I'm so glad I'm in my district and not an advanced one. We were talking to some elders who are in an advanced district and they all speak different languages. Their classes are all in English and they're just expected to know their languages. They don't even get to practice with each other since they have different languages. I am way happier to be in my district where I can still learn new things everyday and I can help out my fellow missionaries. I can define most words for them that they don't understand and we even started doing this group Book of Mormon reading and translating thing. Also, my companion has such a thirst for knowledge! I love it so much. Everywhere we go she's always asking me how to say things or conjugate or even spell them. That's one of her favorites, to ask me how to spell a really long word, like 'misericordioso' or something, as we're walking, and she just repeats it to herself until she can visualize it. She's really fun and she makes me stretch myself. And we laugh together all the time about everything. I feel like I've known Hermana Harrison for years and it's weird to think we didn't even know each others' names until less than a month ago.

One thing that made me laugh pretty hard this week was when she said, "The sillas need to be pescados so they don't blow away." We're always saying stuff like that, combining a few Spanish words we know into an English sentence. 'Sillas' is chairs and 'pescados' is fish. She meant to say 'pesados' which is heavy. Then there's also 'pecados' which is sins. But I think it's actually really cool that the words 'heavy' and 'sin' have only one letter difference in Spanish. Christ gave us the opportunity to repent through His Atonement because He doesn't want us to have to suffer under the weight of our mistakes every day. Instead we can be free from guilt and pain when we repent.

The gym is this awesome building that can be converted into a big hall for devotionals pretty easily. My comp absolutely loves running, so we usually split up in the gym so she can get her daily run in. There's an indoor track on the top floor, but it's open so that I can be on the second floor and do tabata and abs and still be within sight and sound. Or I can be on the main floor and play four square with the Elders. I also did yoga with my other companion on one of the days. The gym is such an awesome building.

El CMM is increible! Sorry about the lack of accents that are about to be in this paragraph, I don't know how to turn the Spanish keyboard on on this computer. He sentado el Espiritu Santo cada dia aqui y estoy muy agradecida ser una misionera. Yo se que Jesucristo es nuestro Salvador y cada dia aprendo mas de Su sacrificio y su gran amor. Tengo un testimonio de la verdad del libro de mormon. Tambien testifico que Jose Smith fue un profeta de Dios y que ahora tenemos un profeta de Dios que recibe revelacion por toda la iglesia. Creo que hay poder en fe y que Dios es un Dios de milagros. Digo estas cosas en el nombre de Jesucristo, amen.

Have a great week you guys! I love all of you and I have loved reading emails from everyone throughout the week. It makes me so happy to hear about what's going on with you guys!

Hermana Cazier

pics

1. our door when we showed up on day one