Our teachers here at the MTC are absolutely amazing. I want to work here when I get back for sure. So we had started teaching an "investigaor" whose name was Carly and we taught her 4 or 5 times and then stopped. Turns out the next morning she was in our classroom as our second teacher, Sister Coleman. Its really amazing how both her and Hermano Kiser will have a whole lesson planned out but by the time we are done singing the opening hymn they say that they feel prompted to talk about something else so instead we spend 3 hours discussing different things. One thing that has been really good about having the teachers is what they call Coaching Missionary Study. The teachers pull us out individually and then talk to us about what we need to do to be improving and bettering ourselves. Last week I had talked with Hermano Kiser but it was more about the district and what things I could do to help out with the issues we had been having, but I talked with Hermana Coleman yesterday and it was really good. She gave me a talk by Pres Kimball titled "Christ: the perfect leader" and its been really helpful as I've been struggling to know how to lead our district and help resolve some of the problems that we are having. I just have constantly been learning that I need to study more, but I'm extremely grateful for the studying that I had done all throughout seminary and right before coming out to the MTC because I have been able to remember scriptures that I read and have been able to focus on following the Spirit more instead of learning the lessons in Preach My Gospel.
So last week Ben Ehlert came to the MTC and I ran into him at breakfast on thursday morning. We found out that the Tagalog zone that he is in and my spanish zone are on the same schedule so we run into each other all the time, and we play basketball for an hour everyday together at gym so its really really fun.
Last night we started with the TRC (teaching resource center?). Its where volunteers come in to be taught by the missionaries. Nearly everyone comes in is a member, and especially because we are teaching in spanish most of them are return missionaries. Its basically home teaching, and we spend 20 minutes each with 2 seperate people talking and then sharing a message and then they evaluate us afterwards on a little paper. At first it seemed a lot harder then teaching investigators because I felt that I didn't really have anything to contribute to these people since they are already return missionaries themselves. But I guess it went better than I thought, because on the evaluation sheets one of the guys that we taught wrote that our spanish was the best spanish he has heard in the last ten times he had volunteered and the other guy when we were talking to him couldn 't believe that we were in a beginner district. While my companion is alot better at me in regards to speaking the language, I think that I just need lots of practicaly practice where I am speaking, because I already know the majority of the words and grammer that I would use in a simple teaching situation here, but I'm just not as fast at putting it all together.
One thing that I really think is super cool here at the MTC is how the fake investigators work. When we teach our "progressing investigators", they are our teachers pretending to be somebody else. At first I thought it was just to help us learn how to teach but as I've learned more it turns out that the majority of the time the people that are teachers pretend to be as we teach them are family members or friends that don't have the gospel and that our teachers use the lessons we teach to recieve inspiration on how to help out their loved ones. When we were teaching Carly, she had said right off that she believe the Book of Mormon was true even when she had only read a chapter or so, but we needed to keep her reading it but I wasn't sure what to challenge her to read. As we were sitting in a devotional, the thought came to me to ask her to read the book of Enos, and I really had no idea why, but at the end of our next lesson I challenged her to read it and she said she would. The lesson after that we talked about his faith and the power of prayer and such and then moved on. It wasn't until yesterday when I talked with Hermana Coleman (Carly), that she explained that Carly is her sister and is not a member and she has really been struggling to understand what she can do to help her with her trials when she doesn't want to turn to the gospel. She said she was really confused when I challenged her to read Enos but she did anyway and found a verse that talks about how our brethren will be blessed because of our diligence and prayers and she said that it was a huge answer to her prayers and was a big comfort to her. It constantly amazes me how much love our Heavenly Father has for each and everyone of us and how truely mindful He is of our individual needs.
Hope you are all doing well!
Love,
Elder Crockett
Ps - if you have a burning desire to send me a package, load it up with mints of any and every kind. Its a rule that we can't chew gum, and since I'm trying to be exactly obedient I don't. And its even harder when I have 3 brand new packs of gum in my suitcase. haha it makes me laugh though so its not that bad :)
No comments:
Post a Comment