Semana Dos

Hola Familia!

I don't feel like I have a lot to say about what has happened this week. I've missed out on half of the activities because I've been sick, but that's okay because I guess that gives me more time to talk about what went on last week!

Something that I wanted to talk about in my letter last week was my testimony of Priesthood Blessings. After a week of being here I was getting super tired and having a hard time focusing sitting through what is basically 9 hours a day sitting in the same classroom. I was getting pretty frusturated and I knew that a lot of that was because of my hypothyroidism. I decided to ask my district leader and his companion for a preisthood blessing. I'm so glad I did. It was such a cool experience and I'm also sure that the elders really enjoyed the opportunity. During the blessing I started to feel tear drops on my arms and I realized that they weren't my tears but the elder who was giving me the blessing. It was such a tender experience! I haven't had that happen since I received my Patriarchal Blessing.

Since I've been here at the MTC we have heard from several General Authorities. We have heard from David F. Evans of the seventy twice, L. Whitney Clayton of the first presidency of the seventy, Sister Wixon (the general primary president) and Sister Burton (the general RS president). They have all spoken about how excited they are about the new changes in the missionary age. You wouldn't even beleive how many new missionaries we have gotten here at the MTC. I'm pretty sure we will double in size by the time I leave in February! There are some rumors about how they will be handling all of these missionaries, but we aren't supposed to leak too much information out. It is definitey going to be an exciting time for the church. The majority of the missionaries in my zone are 18 year old elders or 19-20 year old sisters. Something that David F. Evans and his wife said was that we are going to have to grow up fast as missionaries because we WILL be training after 12 weeks in the field and probably the entire time we are in the field. I know that that is probably true of the Nashville Spanish group because there really aren't that many Hermanas out serving right now.

The language is coming a little rough still. It feels like I've been here at the MTC for forever though. Since I've been so sick I haven't been able to use my voice since Tuesday, so it is a little dissapointing that I am missing out on working on the language. My companion is improving in the language a lot though. We taught a lesson a couple of days ago and it was probably the best lesson we could have given. We've been working on memorizing the baptismal invitation in Spanish and I'll tell you that it is probably one of the most powerful things I could memorize in Spanish. The other day we made a "contact" (who was really our teacher) and my companion and I decided to invite him to baptism on the first visit. It was probably one of the most powerful things ever. We felt a little silly doing it at first, but there is a lot of power in the invitiation, the spirit just couldn't help but not be there for us.

Sorry to keep this email short, I LOVE YOU ALL.

Please use Dear Elder to write me, remember it is FREE in the MTC.

Con Amor,

Hermana Rich

p.s. I got a pretty funny letter from  my distant cousin Elder James Skidmore. He wrote in the return address "Elder Hot Boyfriend" and then made it look as romantic as possible. In the letter he wrote "Hey prima! Hope your district leaders got a kick out of that..." It was pretty funny because that same day I got a couple other letters from elders and so my district had  lot to get on my case about.