Wow, less than two weeks left in the MTC--only one more P-day! It's now been more than 2 months since I got here, pretty amazing (at least to me). I'm looking forward to Australia, I can't wait to get there.
There hasn't been too many things that have happened this past week, although there is at least one big one: last Tuesday (P-day), at the devotional, the speaker was none other than Elder David A. Bednar! It was pretty special being able to hear from one of the twelve Apostles. He spoke on General Conference, more specifically how to study and apply the talks from the Conference. He shared his own way of studying talks, which has three parts: doctrine, invitations, and promised blessings. He first reads the talk to determine what doctrine is being discussed (for example, Christ's Atonement and repentance), then picks out the invitations the speakers give for us to follow in order to apply their talk, and then looks for what blessings the speaker promises will come as a result of doing their invitations. I was struck by how similar it is to how we teach as missionaries. We teach doctrines and principles, invite our investigators to make commitments, change, and come unto Christ, and tell them what blessings the Lord promises us if we do these things. I believe this is also how the new Sunday School program is structured, although I am not 100% certain. Ultimately, the reasons all these things can be split up into 3 categories (doctrine, invitations, and blessings) is because this was how the Saviour Himself taught. As I am now a representative of Jesus Christ, I am doing His work, so I must therefore do it in His way.
Elder J (in our district) had eye surgery last week. He's doing fine though! He wore an eye patch for a day, but since then he hasn't needed one. His eye has stitches in it (it's wierd, I know--they are the dissolving kind, so they are getting smaller) and his eye is super red, but it's getting better. It's kinda funny because he squints with it all the time, he looks like a big friendly pirate (his folks even sent him a pirate eye-patch for fun). The reason for the surgery was to do a biopsy on a growth he had in his eye, he hasn't gotten the results on it yet though.
In TRC on Saturday at the opportunity to once again meet with Elder R's former roommate--the crazy thing is that it wasn't planned, just chance! We also had a sister (member) there with us. Our lesson was on prayer, i.e. how to receive answers to our prayers, and Elder R asked the Sister if she had any experiences with prayer she could share. She shared a personal story of a time she experienced an answer to her prayer in her life, and although I didn't understand that much of it because my Chinese skills, it was a testimony to me that the Spirit transcends language because I was still able to feel it without fully understanding what she was saying. My wish is that Elder R's roommate was able to feel it too, and feel how much we care for him.
This Friday I'm going to be finding out where I'll be going in order to get to Brisbane. From other missionaries I hear the Tokyo airport is the place to have a layover in. Personally, I don't understand why the method of travel matters, it's the destination I care about. In the "old days," missionaries would be spending weeks at sea, like my Grandpa did when he went to Germany for his mission! So an hour or two in an airport is hardly something to shout about.
Our speaker at the Fireside on Sunday, Brother Heaton, Admin. Dir. for the MTC (If I recall correctly), gave us some food for thought as we prepare to go to the mission field: We, like everyone else leaving the MTC nowadays, will do the 12 week program out in the field that has recently been implemented. One of the purposes of this program is to prepare us, if our Mission Presidents feel so inspired, to be trainers for the new wave of missionaries with the age minimum change and everything. These missionaries will be getting to the MTC in January/February or thereabouts and (for the Mandarin ones at least) will start getting in the field at the beginning of April I think, which means I will have had 5 months or so in the field by then. So it's possible that I might be training some of the 18 year-olds. I hope not though, I certainly hope my *own* trainer has a little more experience than that! Haha.
Wish me luck! I feel more and more excited for the field as the date draws closer.
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