July 3, 2012

Dear Mom, Dad and family!

I can't believe this is the first time I am writing you! I feel like I've already been here for an eternity (not that that is a bad thing).

Sorry to have kept you waiting so long! My p-days in the MTC will be on Tuesdays. I'm glad it isn't on Fridays or something because then I would have had to wait like a week and a half to be able to write you. But luckily, it's just under a week since I last saw all y'all.

It has been great here so far! My companion is Sister Gillespie! She's the one going to my mission that I got to know over Facebook before we left! I love her so much already! We get along soooo well and are almost always on exactly the same page. I think we have been learning a lot from each other, which is exactly what a companion is for. She is from Roosevelt and went to Utah State to study math education before her mission. She knows Deni (Dustin's sister. I might have spelled her name wrong). We have a lot of fun together, but also know when to be serious as well. Right now I'm the senior companion, which is a great learning experience. We will switch in two weeks and it will be her turn to be senior companion. It doesn't really involve too much other than being the one who decides who is going to pray and conducting companionship inventory (that's when we discuss our goals, talk about how we are doing as a companionship, air out any concerns we have, etc).

The rest of our district is going to the Reno Nevada mission, which just barely opened up on Sunday. They are so great! We have another set of sisters (Sister Overson from Arizona and Sister Nunn from Louisiana) and two sets of elders (Elder Schembri is the DL and he's from Oregon and his companion is Elder Clark from Georgia (I think) and then we have Elder Linn from Texas and Elder Bailey from Washington). The sisters are in the same room as Sister Gillespie and I (along with two other sisters who are in another district learning Spanish. They've been here for about 5 weeks already), and we get along really well with them as well. Our elders are so sweet and dear. They are trying so very hard to be the best that they can be, and they are always so kind to me and the other sisters.

It's seriously been such a great experience so far. I miss you guys a ton (times a million) and I certainly miss the Magic Bullet as well. ;-) But I have already grown so much already, but I know I have a long way to go. We've already taught A TON of lessons, which it's great to just get out and give it a go. We have two instructors (Brother Woolf and Sister Call) and each of them has their own investigator persona that we teach, and then we also teach other missionaries in Zone teaching as well as less actives in the training center. Obviously the teachers and the other missionaries are roll play, but the girl we teach in the training center actually might be a real less active. Or a BYU student pretending to be a less active. We aren't really sure. Either way, it's so neat that although these aren't "real investigators" how the Lord allows us to really use them as teaching experiences. Elder Scott was at the MTC last week training mission presidents and he told them that the Lord uses role play as a way to teach his missionaries and he will bless them and "the investigator" with the same Spirit and inspiration that will abide in our actual lessons in the field. And it all really does feel so real. We pray for our investigators every night, even though we know they are personas, the Lord has blessed us with the ability to really love them as if they were real.

On one of our first nights here we met our branch presidency and they are so awesome! President Connors used to be a mission president and he totally knows whats up. He had each of us in our district bear our testimonies and it was such an amazing experience to see a room full of God's servants. I know I have so much more I need to learn from the members of my district and I'm so grateful for them.

We had a really cool fireside on Sunday. A guy came and did a re-inactment of Willard Richards's diary. Willard Richards was one of the people in Carthage Jail with Joseph Smith when he was martyred. Especially since I'm going to Palmyra, I felt this really special connection to everything he was saying about Joseph Smith. At the end of the fireside, we sang "Praise to the Man" and it was unbelievably powerful to see a room full of missionaries all with testimonies of the restored gospel. How grateful I am for Joseph Smith and his humble willingness to sacrifice himself for the true gospel!

Thank you for all of Dear Elders and the package you sent! I didn't get any of the letters or Dear Elders until Thursday night because we didn't have a district leader yet to get the mail, but when we finally did I had A TON of mail. It made the other missionaries jealous ;-) I actually feel bad for especially the elders in my district so far. I don't know if any of them have gotten a single thing from home! It makes me so sad, but I'm so grateful to have a family that I know without a doubt supports me and shows that support. If you happen to have time with your primary class or sometime, would you mind maybe having them send quick little notes to the elders in my district? There names are all at the top as I mentioned earlier and their mailbox numbers are the same as mine. Don't worry about the departure date. But if you guys don't have time, no worries at all! I plan on writing all of the elders little notes today that I will leave on their desks so they can feel the love a bit ;-)

There are so many little things and funny things I wish I could write. I'll try, some of them might not make sense. Sister Gillespie hiccups a lot which is kind of funny, and everytime she does, she points at me as if I were the one to hiccup as a joke. It was really funny though because one of the elders in our district took a really long time to figure out she was just teasing and it wasn't actually me hiccupping. We all got a good laugh out of that.

Last night, Sister G and I were saying companionship prayer. The girls in our room were talking so we were trying to find a quite place to say it and we decided to sit in the little elevator foyer thing in our building since you aren't supposed to use the elevator unless you are moving luggage, we thought it would be clear. Sister G was in the middle of the prayer when we could hear the elevator moving so right in the middle of praying she just said, "Just a second Heavenly Father!" and we ran so we wouldn't be sitting in the elevator right when someone came out. Ha ha it was just really funny that we told Heavenly Father we would take a break from our prayer. Maybe you had to be there ;-)

We have been trying to be really obedient. Our branch president is really insistent that we get to bed at exactly 10:30, and we've been doing pretty well. We need to work on getting ready faster in the morning. We are often late to our first study sessions in the morning. There's always room for improvement though!

I'll write more in letters today. The temple will be closed the entire time we are in the MTC so the time we would have gone to the temple will be spent with whatever we want. I will be catching up on my journal and writing letters!

I'm down to my last minute on the computer. I love you all sooooooooooo much and miss you tons but I know this is where I need to be. Thanks for the support! The church is true and I know Christ lives and loves us!

Love,

Sister Butters