The First Week

Hey everyone! I can't believe it's only my fifth day. I have to have been here at least a month already right? Wednesday and Thursday were so long. I could not get my mind off of all of you and it was difficult staying focused and being able to learn by the spirit. Thursday night I really prayed that I would be able to focus on what I was learning and not be so homesick. That made Friday so much better! Seriously, it was a night and day difference.

Sister Paul is my companion and she is super awesome! We get along so well and she has a pretty solid testimony. We've both been working really hard and have learned a ton in our classes and companionship studies together. We have similar ways of preparing for lessons and we bounce off each other really well during lessons. It is interesting to hear about different experiences she's had as she is from Arizona and grew up around tons of members.

My roommates are pretty great too. Sister Anderson is from Texas and Sister Tua is Polynesian and is from Utah. Her sister is actually serving in Indianapolis and is Sister Clegg's companion! Out of the four of us, all of us are going to Nevada Reno except for Sister Tua who is going to Ohio Columbus.

This whole week has been mission president training for new mission presidents. That means this whole week we've had the prophet and most of the apostles in the cafeteria where we usually eat and training the new presidents. This also means that there are many times where only a couple walls separate me from prophets of God, which is super awesome to think about!

As all of these general authorities are here, there have been changes on campus. We all have to be dressed with the highest standards of dress and maintain the highest cleaning standards as a mission president or apostle could decide to come in and teach our class. It's definitely been an amazing thing to look forward to!

On a very related note, on Thursday a voice came over the loud speaker and told all of the sisters to report to 19M, or the new cafeteria/meeting place for this week. Allowing our minds to run wild, we all excitedly prepared to listen to an apostle speak to the sisters! Then the MTC president got up and told us he was going to change our lives for the near future. And then the announcement of a lifetime...Sisters, there was a bat found in 17M (our residence) so we are relocating all of the sisters across campus to a new residence. So instead of meeting the prophet, I carried two 50 pound suitcases up a couple flights of stairs. So that was fun....

So I met my mission president and his wife on Friday night. His wife walked in first and started crying as soon as she saw us. Then President Chesnut came in and we all got to shake his hand and got to know him a little bit. He and his wife are amazing. They have such strong testimonies and I feel so happy being with them. At the end of our meeting with just 16 new missionaries, our mission president, and his wife, President Chesnut offered the prayer. I felt the spirit so strongly as he prayed that there were tears in my eyes! This has definitely been one of the best spiritual experiences of my mission so far.

As the mission presidents are all here they kinda took over our cafeteria. Which is cool, I'm not going to stop an apostle from doing what he wants. So we've been eating in the gym. Our food has included Taco Bell, Subway, Chick fil a, Costa Vida, Papa John's, and steak. So it's been pretty great, I'm not gonna lie :)

Meme and Poppy took me to get snacks before I went to the MTC and we got some Mountain Dew. The crazy thing is, before my mission I got headaches pretty often. Since I've been here, I've had less than a third the amount of Mountain Dew I had before my mission and I haven't gotten a single headache. The MTC really does have such a strong spirit and brings so many blessings!

Teaching this week has been great! Sister Paul and I seem to be so in tune with the spirit that our lessons are able to go so well! We've taught two of our teachers that are acting as investigators that they taught on our mission. So we've taught Joseph a lesson and then Agatha a lesson, who's agnostic and we got to the point of committing to prayer :) We also taught our first member lesson the other day, which was great! Volunteers just come in to the MTC and we teach them. We taught him about prayer but really he taught us so much more than we taught him, which was so great. Tonight we teach a possible nonmember about the Restoration so that should be fun!

In class on Saturday we do a lot of role plays and try to figure out how to teach lessons effectively to investigators. As I taught my companion a 5 minute lesson on the Restoration with our testimonies, I had one of our teachers, Brother Godfrey, listening to me almost the entire time. That made me so nervous! Afterwards, he told me all good things about my teaching, which was awesome and encouraging :)

After these role plays, we went in to the computer lab to take a survey on our email. That was so distracting! We all had to log on to our emails and see all of the emails family and friends had sent us but we couldn't read them! It was so difficult to get back on track, which was depressing because I'd gotten to this point where I never thought of home and was able to really focus and feel the spirit so strongly. We did eventually figure it out, so that's good.

Sunday was pretty great! We took some pictures on our Sunday walk to the Provo temple, but I don't have time to figure out how to upload them right now. While we were waiting to go on the Sunday walk, we had to wait near the front gate of the MTC. While standing there, a group of girls next to us started freaking out because Elder Christofferson drove by! We watched him and his wife get out of their cars and it was so cool! We then decided to wave at every car that entered just in case. We waved at Elder Oaks and he waved back :) Those were the only 2 we saw and I think the security guard was annoyed with us. It turns out that the whole first presidency was at the MTC that morning though!! :)

The rest of Sunday was so long. We've just been going all day from 7am-10pm everyday and it was a struggle having nothing to do for a while. We watched a ton of Mormon Messages though! You guys seriously need to watch "Lift" because it's seriously the best!

So far I've seen Elder Jared Ribar a couple times and that's been cool! I've also met some elders and sisters going to the Cincinnati mission and I met 4 elders and a sister going to the Indianapolis mission! I got to talk to Elder Walton for a while, so if you see him he seems pretty solid!

Last night was great because we had some great devotionals! I'm running out of time or else I would tell you about them, but it's really motivated me to study more about Christ and how to be as selfless as him (which really isn't possible but I'm gonna try :)). The first devotional was Elder Allen and he is so cool! He is pretty much over all missionary work and oversaw the putting together of Preach My Gospel. He definitely helped all of us so much! Then we watched a devotional Elder Bednar gave that you can only watch in the MTC for some reason. It was great and was all about the character of Christ!

Well this week has been exhausting to say the least. Last night I was so tired that I had said my prayers and was asleep by lights out at 10:30. I've been really working on exact obedience so I've been getting up almost on time at 6:30 every morning! We've really been going and having a spiritual workout for the entire last week. Last night my eye was super bloodshot so I'm hoping that's just from being tired and won't turn into pink eye or something. We're going to the nurse later to check it out though.

Even though I'm so tired, I'm so happy! I know that Heavenly Father is blessing me so much! I've learned so much and am so comfortable teaching our investigators. I also know that God answers prayers. We get so many opportunities to pray throughout the day and it's wonderful! Especially when I get homesick or am not focused on the work, it's great to be able to pray and be put right back on track! I love bearing my testimony of this gospel to investigators because i know that this Church is true and that it changes lives!

I love you all and miss you guys! If you want to, you can send me mail on dearelder.com and I will get it the same day. It seems like mail may take a couple days to get out here, but I'm not sure because I haven't gotten any yet.

Love you all and miss you!

Sister Ashley Gootee :)