March 12, 2016 Birthday Week

This week flew by. A birthday in the mtc isn't the greatest thing ever, because you can't take the day off and relax. In fact my birthday was the busiest day of the week by far because we had to teach 4 lessons that day. It was fun to get a bunch of packages and letters though! The sisters in my district also got me some cookies and a drink and they made me this birthday crown, but it didn't take long for some old guy to tell me to take it off and keep up the appearance of a missionary:( I can't really remember all too much about what else happened this week.. it all just kinda blurred by. Oh yeah well Sunday was fast Sunday and that was super rough because it was a full 24 hour fast so that was an incredibly long day. Fast and testimony meeting was good though because we got to hear from all the people in our zone who were leaving for the field. After Monday we only had two districts left of our zone, but luckily come Wednesday we got a new district. It's nice to be the older missionaries in the zone now. 

The devotional this week was really good, because Elder Pino from the seventy spoke and he gave his entire talk in spanish with a translator, so it was awesome to practice listening and being able to understand what he was saying without the translator. Also it kept me awake during the devotional because it required some focus. He gave a good talk about how Christ teaches and how he calls us up to a higher plane of understanding, like with parables and such. He related it to our mission calls and how we had been called to a higher plane and as such need to comply to a higher standard of obedience than we were used to. I really enjoyed the talk. I the whole idea of thinking of people being on all sorts of different planes of understanding and God being on a perfect plane of understanding and Christ as the mediator being the only one able to teach to any plane of understanding to help raise us up to a higher plane of understanding. Also it applies to us teaching investigators and recognizing their level of understanding and teaching them according to their language and understanding like that verse in 2 nephi 31. I think it's like verse 3 or 4 or something. Anyways just an idea that made an impression on me. Hopefully the way I explained it makes sense. 

That's all for this week I think. MTC time is just cruising by and I can't wait until I get out in the field. I am still getting along great with my companions and the other two elders in my district. Pretty amazing how good of friendships can be formed in only a few weeks when you are spending every minute of the day with the same people. 

Hope everyone is doing well! Love and miss you all. 

Heres a pic we took with Tim.