2nd P-Day at the MTC

Hola Familia y Amigos!

One of the elders in my district suggested a very fitting title for this week's email, which is fire hose.  That is the most accurate thing I've heard in a long time, because this week has been like a fire hose outpouring of knowledge, learning, and the spirit.  There is so much amazing knowledge being thrown at me every day here,  I don't even know what to do with all of it!  It is amazing how the MTC has helped me to grow my testimony and faith in Jesus Christ.

Like I said last week, the MTC is a crazy experience.  But It's okay because all of us here are just one big group of friends, trying to figure out this crazy mission thing all together!  That creates a really cool kind of unity between all the missionaries in our zone, and in the entire MTC.  Sometimes I feel like some of the people I've met here are just meant to be my very best friends!  The best thing is that we just laugh a lot here, and laughter is the best therapy for just about anything at all!  So I am so grateful for all the fun experiences and amazing people I've met here.

I want to share a sweet experience I had earlier this week.  We are learning spanish at a very fast pace, and to be honest we are teaching most of it to ourselves!  Luckily though, if I can teach myself organic chemistry, I think spanish is in the realm of possibility.  Haha.  Anyways, right away they had us start teaching full lessons to our first investigator, Bruno, all in spanish!  It was kind of a crazy experience trying to teach a lesson in a language I didn't know.  But something sweet happened during one of the lessons.

It was only our second or third lesson or something like that.  The first lesson we had with him, I didn't even know how to pray, let alone actually say anything.  We kept making plans for lessons and Bruno would kind of throw them out the window with questions and conversation.  So one lesson, we came to a part where I had written down word for word a testimony I was supposed to share because I couldn't really say it without looking at what I had written down.  The lesson was going decently, but I could feel that we weren't really answering the questions that Bruno needed answers to.  So it came time for me to testify, and I didn't know what to say, I just felt that what I wrote down wasn't what he needed to hear.  I didn't know how I was going to speak if I put the notebook down, but I had a feeling that I should.  So I just put down my notebook and said something so simple in broken spanish:  "No se espanol mucho.  Y, yo no se muchas cosas.  Pero, yo se que Jesu Cristo vive, ahora.  Y Yo se Jesu Cristo y Dios tienen mucho amor para usted."  I continued to bear the simplest but one of the most powerful testimonies I've ever given.  I just knew in that moment, broken spanish couldn't stop me from testifying of Jesus Christ!!! The spirit in that moment was so strong it was almost tangible.  Even though I knew I was speaking broken, probably terrible spanish, I also knew that that brought the strongest spirit to our lesson out of all the lessons we've taught him.  Later, when we met with him so that he could give us feedback (I was right by the way, he's our teacher now,  Bruno is actually Hermano Savage), he said that the most powerful moment in all of the lessons we taught him was that moment, because in that moment, that is what Bruno needed more than anything.  That was a sweet gift and a blessing.  I had a teacher once say to me, "the gift of tongues is not being able to know a language perfectly.  It is being able to teach with undrstanding.  That is the gift of tongues."  I don't really know spanish still, but I continue to have faith that if I put Christ first and "look unto Him in every thought, doubt not, fear not", He will enable me to do the impossible  - to walk on water, to serve a mission, to teach a lesson in a language I don't know!  The possibilities are endless, but I know that Jesus Christ is especially with His missionaries as they are serving Him.  I feel that every day.

I hope that everything at home is going well!  I miss yall every day!  But I am absolutely having the time of my life here getting to know my Savior better than I ever have before.  I couldn't ask for a bigger blessing than that.  

I love you all and would love to hear from all of you!

Con todo mi amor,

Hermana Clarke