Week 5

Friends and Family!

Well it is finally time for me to leave the MTC! I will be leaving at 6:30 on Monday morning for Scottsdale. I am so excited to finally start the real work! I am so nervous - the MTC is a fantastic safety bubble that I am not sure I want to leave yet. I am going to miss my teachers and district the most. They are such amazing people. I don't feel like my Spanish is ready for the real world, but hopefully it will come quickly in the field. I know it will take a lot of work, but I am ready!

We have to come up with fun things to break up the study time. This week we found a new game. The back of our chairs bend back really far. If you pull them back, set something on it, and let go they fling really far. We took the Swedish Fish that Andrea send me (THANKS SO MUCH) and would shoot them into my mouth. It took quite a few times of being hit in the eye before we did it, but when I finally caught one in my mouth it was a huge success.

"Blue Day" at the gym with our ring pops

In the residence halls when we are getting ready for bed Hermana Sherrow’s favorite thing to do is try to scare Hermana Barker. It started with hiding in closets but has escalated. Yesterday to get back at Hermana Sherrow, Hermana Barker hid under her bed and grabbed her foot as she got into bed. As I type this I am realizing how this is one of those "had to be there” moments, which is why I rarely try to email about the funny things that happen in the week. Just know that I am having fun and spend a good majority of my day laughing!

We had to say goodbye to all of our investigators this week and it was so hard. You grow to love your investigators so much. Realizing how many goodbyes I am going to have to say over the next 17 months is the saddest thing ever. As hard as it is to say goodbye it makes me so excited to find new investigators in the field because I just know that I can love them so much and I have such a happy message to share with them, full of hope. I hope I can find people who need the Gospel as much as I need it!

This week we got to host again, but this time instead of traffic hosting we were the actual hosts for the new missionaries. We helped them get their tags, get their luggage to their rooms, and find their classrooms. I liked traffic hosting so much better. Turns out carrying luggage all over the MTC campus is a lot of work, and the weather wasn't helping anything. I was glad I got to do it once, but when my district got back to the room we all agreed we wouldn't want to do it again, even if we were here for another week. 

Our district with one of our main teachers

Every Sunday we watch a devotional and then a church film. Some of the church films are old devotionals that apostles gave while in the MTC. This week we watched one by President Uchtdorf. It was so good! He talked about how grateful he was to the missionaries who found him and his wife and taught them about the Church. Their apartment was the last door at the end of the hall on the top floor of the building. If the missionaries were not dedicated enough they might not have kept going to the very end. I want to be the type of missionary that works as hard as I can until the very last second of every day. Continue up, keep going, and don’t turn around. 

On Thursday all of the missionaries leaving the following week go to "In Field Orientation," which is eight hours of people talking about how you can be the best missionary possible. As hard as it was to focus during that, I did learn a lot of cool things. The most important thing I learned is how to work with the members of the ward to find people to teach. Members can be such a blessing to missionaries, but missionaries have to earn the trust of the members. I hope I can do that with the members of my new ward that I will meet next Sunday!

Finally got a map picture!

Thank you all for the nice letters, packages, and Dear Elders - they are so sweet and I love them so much! You are all the best. I brag about all my family and friends all the time. 

Have a wonderful week! I will spend the next two days frantically packing and learning as much Spanish as I possible can before I leave on Monday. 

Love you all,

Hermana Doxey