Day 23 MTC

Oy! Kamusta-man?! (Hey, how are you?)

This week went by SUPER fast. The days go by the like weeks and the weeks go by like days here. I can hardly believe it's almost July!

How did you all like the Sunday Broadcast?? It was awesome! My district was exhausted afterwards and didn't really have much to say about it, but I was really inspired by it. The choir was there for about 5 hours! But we got to sit in the blue comfy chairs ;) I was sitting kind of near the front, but on the far left (if you're facing the choir). I was wearing a collared cream shirt and my black glasses (I don't think you can see me in any of the videos, though). I almost didn't get to sing because so many more people showed up to sing in the Broadcast when they hadn't come to any of the practices.

It was really cool to directly behind the General Authorities and members of the Quorum of the Twelve. Robert D. Hales looked so small and weak when he walked onto the stage! And Elder Bednar looked as young as ever. (While I was studying outside the next day, I saw Elder Quentin L. Cook drive away in his car!). It was interesting to watch the teleprompter and what the speaker actually ended up saying. I thought it was funny when Elder Holland wasn't able to say the Spanish he had been practicing for the video call. Even though their talks were written, you could tell they were still following the Spirit.

Remember the story Sister Neill Marriott told in the video? She told that same story in our RELIEF SOCIETY the week before. No biggie. We get the opportunity to have speakers come several times a week--Tuesday devotionals, Sunday Devotionals, Relief Society, etc. etc. etc. Oh since the choir had a different schedule on Sunday, we had a HUGE sacrament meeting together in the gym where we have devotionals. There were five sacrament tables with at least 4-6 priests at each.

So there's yet another flu epidemic here at the MTC. If you get sick, the doctor gives you a shot that knocks you out for 24 hours, haha. I have yet again been blessed with health, although both my companions are sick. :/ The nice thing about being in a tri-panionship is they can stay in the residence hall while I go with the sisters in my district to class. It was nice to be on splits while teaching. I taught investigators twice that day and it was cool to see what things they do differently while teaching.

Last P-day, I had an awesome experience in TRC. Instead of teaching our teachers, we teach RM volunteers as themselves (they weren't pretending to be investigators). We had no idea that we were going to be teaching members, not investigators until 30 minutes beforehand. We scraped together a lesson in Cebuano with no time to really practice or memorize the vocab we wanted to use. We taught two different lessons about prayer. The first lesson went ok, but the second time was AWESOME. Our Cebuano was still baby talk, but we were more engaged with our member, DJ. The Spirit was SOOO strong during the lesson; it was incredible. As I relied on the Spirit, I was given words sufficient to barely get my point across, but nothing more than what i needed. During the lesson, DJ asked us to pause for a moment while he wrote down "padayag" (revelation) he received. It was really cool to see how our simple lessons were able to teach him--an RM who also taught at the MTC. At the end of the lesson, he told us that even though he is an RM and a teacher, we--as full-time missionaries and representatives of Jesus Christ---have been set apart and given power to touch and change lives. That hit me so strong!

I know that if I'm trying my hardest to do my best, God can work with my inadequacies and consecrate my work for His purposes. It was so comforting, reassuring, and empowering to hear the effect I can have as a full-time missionary.

Tuesday night, Janice Kapp Perry spoke to us! During the devotional, we got to sing an arrangement of Primary songs she wrote. The words to those songs are really powerful--I had forgotten. We also sang the missionary version of the EFY medley: the new verses to As Sisters in Zion with the Army of Helaman. It was sweet, especially when we sang: "We are NOW the Lord's missionaries to bring the world His truth."

I'm so happy to heat Braden and Brooklyn are back in Utah!! Tell them hi for me!!! :D (and write me letters/pictures!)

Send me pictures if/when Dad finds his Cooper's hawk! :) And I want to help think of a name again, haha.

How long is choir tour? And what have you been doing with the Taiwanese guys? I wish I could meet them!

Tell people to write me back *cough cough* ALEX *cough cough* :)

I love you all! Nasayud ko nga tinuod ang ebanghelyo ni Jesukristo. Nasayud ko nga mapalanginan mo sa Dios samtang magtudo ko.( I know the gospel of Jesus Christ is true. I know you will be blessed by God as I teach.)

Thanks for all your support and prayers. I really appreciate all the advice and spiritual thoughts you share with me. It helps a ton!

Kinasingkasing (sincerely),
Sister Amanda Smith

P.S. I have my purpose and the First Vision memorized in Cebuano!! What.

Day 16 MTC

Kamusta ka, pamilya?

This week was great! I've been learning SOOO much here! I thought I'd be learning mostly Cebuano here, but I've been learning more life lessons (ex: how to get along with different personality types, how to understand investigators' needs, etc.). It feels like I've been here forever already. The weeks go by so fast here! I literally feel like it was just Saturday--all the days blur together. Here's typical schedule:

6:30- wake up and get ready for the day
7:00- personal study
8:15- breakfast
8:45- classroom instruction (ex: learn Cebuano, teach investigators, study preach my gospel, companionship study, etc. etc.)
11:45- language study
1:10- lunch
1:55-additional study time
2:45- classroom instruction again
5:45- daily planning session
6:10- dinner
6:55- TALL (when we go to the computer labs with headphones to practice hearing and speaking Cebuano)
8:10-Gym
9:30- personal time/prepare for bed

Mondays we have service at 6am. . . it's actually not too bad. Plus we get an extra 15 minutes to get ready.

On Sundays, our meetings are all spread out. For Relief Society, we watch Music and the Spoken Word and then have a guest speaker to talk to all the sisters at the MTC. We still have all our normal study hours on Sundays. Sacrament meeting is after lunch. For talks, everyone in the zone prepares a talk on the same topic and then they announce who is speaking during the meeting!! So if you're not prepared, too bad. It's a really smart idea though: I'll have 6 talks prepared to use on my mission. :) Sunday nights are awesome: first I have choir practice at 5, then the Sunday night Devotional, then we watch a talk or church video.

Tuesdays are cool too because we don't have to stress about teaching and we have Tuesday night devotionals. Afterwards, our district has a sort of testimony meeting about what we thought about the devotional. We have all become so close! I think we have the most unified district.

We're teaching two new investigators: Tintin and Bal (our two new teachers: Brother Young and Brother Taylor). They're both very different from each other. Brother Young is CRAzy, but he's very enthusiastic about the gospel. He brings the Spirit very strong into the classroom. Brother Taylor is one of my favorite teachers. He has a quieter personality, but he has a very clear vision about the purpose of missionary work. After his first lesson with us, I felt so much better about what my role is as a missionary. My teachers are finally starting to speak a little more English. The first week, they spoke almost exclusively Cebuano. Now, the spiritual thoughts are 80% Cebuano.

Since I'm in a tri-panionship, we switch the role of senior companion every 2 weeks. We just switched yesterday. I learned a TON about being a leader from this experience. Even though it's hard to keep track of two companions (especially when they go in different directions, haha), we are growing so much together.

Here's some cool linguistic stuff for ya, Dad. :) The phrase for "eternal life" is kinabuing dayon, which literally means "life continuing." There are two words for the word "know:" kahibalo-which means to know in your head, and nasayud-which means to know in your heart. Also, the word for "fulness" is kahingpitan, which includes the word "perfect" in it (hingpit). The more I learn Cebuano, the more I see how flawed English is. Cebuano is so cool to learn! The grammar actually isn't all that bad to learn. There's a lot of markers to memorize (ex: mga is how you make things plural, etc) but the conjugations are fairly simple, depending on what the main focus of the sentence is. Cool stuff.

One of my companions has been really really sick lately. And then just yesterday she sprained her ankle really bad. Even though we're been missing a lot of class and study time everyday, we are being blessed. We should be far behind everyone else, but we are staying caught up. It's cool to see how my MTC experience thus far has been more about helping people, rather than teaching or language skills. God really knows what experiences I need to become a better missionary and person.

Spiritual thought of the week: In class this week, Brother Young told us to write questions (in Cebuano) on the board about the plan of salvation, as if we were an investigator. We ended up answering one about why repentance is necessary if Christ has already paid for our sins. Brother Young explained that repentance is not a negative thing. Repentance means change---changing to not only commit no more sin, but changing to be better than we ever have before. Repentance means turning towards God. We turn towards God in so many positive ways, so we should not think of repentance as something we only do when we do something bad. Remember: good, better, best! (Dallin H. Oaks, I think?)

How are the students from Taiwan?? Have fun entertaining them with all the kids gone, haha. Alex and Jared: here's the deal, I'm writing you letters today, so you have to write me back! K? k. :)

Anyhoo, I love you all so much! Thanks for all the support and especially your advice! Keep it coming! And sorry if it takes me a while to write anyone back--I didn't finish writing even half of my letters last p-day, haha.

Kinasingkasing,
Sister Amanda Smith :)

Standing in Dad's parking spot and pointing to his office - sooo close!

Day 8 MTC on First P Day

Kamusta pamilya!

Sorry if i don't capitalize things. the shift key on this keyboard is hard, haha. my first week here was crazy! The first week has been super busy, but i finally feel like i belong here. i forgot what I already told you in my first letter, but I have two companions: Sister Malietoa and Sister Anderson. I love them both soo much! I'm senior companion (which surprised me since Sister Anderson is and 23 and is more of a leader) but it's really helping me to learn things quickly around here. Being in a trio is harder than i thought. It takes a lot more planning and we're learning how to use our time more effectively.

We have a lot of study time everyday: personal, companion, and language study time. Then we have class twice a day for like 3 hours or something. my teacher is Brother Elmer. he's incredible at Cebuano and teaching us spiritual insights. Everything we do here is focused on the investigators. Right now we're teaching a man from Cebu, Philippines named Cixto (not really--he's one of our teachers, but he's using a person he actually taught as his character). The first lesson was crazy hard. i thought it would be easier with two companions, but it's hard to give us each time to teach. Whenever he asks us questions, i can only answer in baby talk because we haven't really learned much grammar yet. in the first lesson, we taught him how to pray, read the Book of mormon, and we bore our testimonies, and gave him commitments and promises---all in Cebuano!!! And that was only Friday! it's seriously a MIRACLE that we are able to speak so much Cebuano. When we study the language, we're not just studying for ourselves or to learn a fun new language. we're studying so we can teach them the gospel and bring them closer to Christ.

900 missionaries came in the day I reported to the MTC. As a result, we are now having our Tuesday devotionals at the Marriott Center!!!!! WOOOO! it was super weird being back at BYU, especially on the walk over. It felt nice and normal though.

I'm doing the choir with Ryan Eggett!! There's about 2000 people in the choir! It used to only be about 600 before, haha. At our last choir practice, towards the end, Ryan grabbed the microphone and said in his deep voice, "Amanda Smith. Come down and say our closing prayer." I knew he was going to ask me to pray! (I ran into Rachel Leishman just that day and she told me how he always picks on old choir members to say the prayers). I said the prayer in Cebuano! I figure no  one would know what it was so it wouldn't matter if I could only say a few things in my baby talk.

I absolutely love my district! We all get along really well. there's 9 people: 4 sisters going to Cebu, 2 elders going to Tacloban, and then me and my mga kauban (companions). ;) We have soooo much fun together! I think we bond quicker than English speaking missionaries because we have cooperate to even understand what our teacher is saying, haha. I'm really loving the small classroom setting. i can participate a lot and have all my questions answered quickly.

Thanks for all the letters!!!! (especially Moo!--although a real letter would be nice, too ;))

As for the huge broadcast thingy, this is what Ryan told us: on the 23rd, there is going to be a Worldwide training thingy all about missionary work! The MTC choir is going to be singing with about 1400 other members in this compilation of video clips of missionaries around the world! So I get to be in a video that'll be posted on the church website! woot! All the apostles will be there as well as anyone involved in missionary work in anyway. i don't think you can come to it live, but you can watch for me in the sea of missionaries singing!

Believe it or not, the food here actually isn't that bad. But i think i'll get sick of it after 6 weeks of being here. And no, Dad, I'm not experiencing any "adversity," ;)

I love the scripture journal I got! I've taken so many notes already! I take it everywhere. Here's the spiritual thought of the week. It's from a talk we watch on Sunday from Elder Bednar! I don't know what it's called or if you can find it anywhere, but it talked about discerning between your thoughts and the Holy Ghost. He simply said: stop worrying about it! If you're doing what's right and pressing forward, your steps will be guided. If you are good, then every good thought you have is inspired by the holy Ghost, even if you do not recognize it as the Holy ghost at the time. God shouldn't have to smack us with the Holy Ghost to think what He would think and do what He would do.

All in all, i love it here! My brain may fried from studying flashcards in all my spare time, but the Spirit is soooo strong here! I'm always running into old friends everywhere I go. sorry this letter is so scatterbrained! Even my P-days are jam packed with stuff i need to get done--i still have to prepare my lesson for Cixto this evening. Um, lemme know if I left anything out that you had asked in your letters.

Peace out! Gugma,
Sister Smith ;)

P.S. My address has sort of changed: they moved up the date i leave to July 16, not the 18th, fyi. But i still get my mail either way. :)

MTC - First Letter

Amanda squeezed in a letter in her first day and a half. Sounds like she's very busy already!

We miss her already, especially Bella. But we know she's doing a great thing and we are very proud of her.