Happy Christmas Eve Eve

Happy Christmas Eve's Eve!!! I hope all of you are enjoying your time at home and/or with the in-laws! Christmas in the MTC has been pretty great so far. We've had a couple different firesides/devotionals about Christmas already. This last tuesday, the president of the quorom of the 70 came and talked to us. On Christmas day, they told us that an apostle is going to come speak with us and we'll have our church with him. I think we're also going to have some sort of Christmas eve festivities starting tomorrow night. I'm pretty excited about that.


As for another thing that I'm super excited about, I'm leaving for the D.R. in 4 days!!! I think that Dominican Republic MTC will be WAYY smaller and so I'll probably get to know most of the missionaries there. I think it should be pretty fun. Yesterday, I was looking at a google map on the LDS. org website of where temples and church buildings are and I saw where the D.R. temple was. I know the MTC is right next to the temple, and from the sattelite picture, it looked like it was just about half a mile from the ocean. I really hope I get to go see the ocean at least once while I'm in the MTC. I heard that in foreign MTC's, a lot of times they will send you out with missionaries to proselyte and teach real investigators. I'm pretty excited about that. It will be way good experience. I'm also not sure if I'll stay with my same companion or get me a new one when I'm there. I've heard that a lot of times they put you with a native right away to try to get you to learn the language faster. I guess that would be good help, even though it is kind of intimidating to think about!  


So, I am sitting here in the laundry room, waiting for my laundry to finish drying. And I was trying to think of a funny story to tell you guys, and so I was asking the elders in my district what I should tell you and one of the elders, Elder Hansen wanted me to tell you about he beat prayer boy at gym time. So every day at gym, the EXACT same kid says the opening prayer and gets SUPER excited every time he gets picked, because he shoots his hand into the air as soon as the word prayer is said. Well, yesterday, Elder Hansen beat him with his hand up and got to say the opening prayer. He was way excited. All of the elders have been plotting for a couple weeks now how to take down prayer kid and they finally succeeded yesterday. What a glorious day. Oh and yesterday was actually my last day of gym as well, because Christmas even tomorrow then I pack during my gym time on Monday. I can't believe it's coming so soon!! It's so weird, but I kind of feel like time doesn't exist here. It's really strange actually. 3 hours can feel like 1 hour and 1 week can feel like just a couple days. It's crazy.


Oh yeah! I did just think of something awesome! So earlier this week, we had this substitute teacher come teach our class. He taught one day and briefly mentioned he was a convert and then came back the next day and actually told us his story. He used to be Athiast and absolutely did not believe in any God whatsoever. He told us of how he randomly came upon the missionaries and spent the first 2 lesson absolutely arguing with the missionaries. And then his friend invited him to church and he told us of how absolutely strange and SOO confused he was, because he wasn't even religious at all. Then he told of going to the temple and feeling drawn to the temple, but not knowing any reason why and the feeling was soo strange to him. He also talked of when the missionaries would bear their testimony and it was the weirdest feeling that would come over him and it was so weird that he couldn't even dispute the point back, which he had been doing the whole lesson. Finally, he agreed to try the missionaries challenge to pray about the Book of Mormon, even though he had NEVER prayed before or even believed in God or Jesus Christ. He decided to try it one day and talked of getting such a strong feeling come over his whole body. He said it felt like his whole body was on fire with light. Instantly in that time, certain truths were made known to him. That the church was true, the book of mormon was true, Joseph Smith was a prophet and whatever the missionaries said was true. He said everything he believed his whole life disagreed with those truths and so he decided he had to completely forget everything he had known his whole life. All he knew then was those simple truths revealed to him. He said "Even breathing felt different". He said that he said that over and over to himself after praying. So, the next lesson, he went to the missionaries, told them the experience and said that he had to believe everthing they said and that he had a lot to learn, because he didn't know anything about life anymore, so he was ready to learn. It was such an amazing story and testimony. The spirit was so strong during the whole story. Anyways, the story took 3 hours to tell and so there was waayyy more detail, but anyways, it was awesome. He ended up getting baptized, then went on a mission. It was so amazing to hear how the gospel can COMPLETELY change anybody's life. It made me realize that the gospel can change ANYBODY'S LIFE! So awesome!! I'm so pumped to be here sharing this gospel!!