Letter #7

Hey Cemyu!

Tak Shto, this week NEW ELDERS CAME!!!!! YES!!! And, I got to HOST Elder Brandon Warner!! It was the best!!! I love that Elder! He was really nervous, but seemed to be doing just fine! I'll help him out! (Don't worry Chelsi, he's in good hands!) Mom, that sounds really exciting that you get to eat tiger or rattlesnake or whatever... I hope it tastes good...? haha! My laundry soap is working fine! Thanks so much for it! This past week has been great! I got to say goodbye to some of my favorite Russian elders and Japanese elders. Soon, I'll be the one receiving the goodbyes!! I'm starting my eighth week today!! Wow. Oh, and I see Kristen Nelson (Spellcheck?) Every wednesday! It makes my day!! I really love it! I'll try to get pictures with the people I have yet to obtain pictures with yet and send them home! I really don't know what to talk about this week... Oh! Matt Christensen sang at the devotional in front of the entire MTC and he was AMAZING!! The speaker was so touched by his song and I was too. Afterwards we just talked and we bore our testimonies to each other. I'll miss seeing him. Haha! That Elder is the best! Elder Payne and Elder Collinsworth left this week as well. That was sad. But I'm so happy that they are finally out of here! The MTC for 14 weeks is too much.

So this week, We were learning about teaching people not lessons and I thought that was a way cool idea. It should be so obvious, but all too often it is so easy to forget. My investigator that I am teaching, his name is Slava, he is having a really tough time with drugs and stuff and even though he's not a real investigator, we are still expected to be able to discern his needs. This is not an easy thing to do. so we asked our teacher and he explained to us the importance of teaching people not lessons. The first part of this is: 1) asking inspired questions. He said that while he was in the field, they had these exercises where one person would be the missionaries would have another person next to them who periodically would tell them "Stop. Ask an inspired question." The missionary would sit in complete silence until they felt an inspired question. Many times they would ask a question to break the silence, but it was obvious when that was the case, so the person acting as the spirit would say "No. Stop. Ask an inspired question." They would wait for minutes at a time, but when the question came, it would typically be simple, but it would throw the investigator for a loop. The next part is to 2) LISTEN!! So often we are worried at what we will say next or we think that we have an answer to what we assume is their questionand we fail to truly listen. But If we listen, they will ALWAYS reveal something about themselves and what they need. This is where 3) Discernment comes in. This can be one of the most difficult gifts to have as a missionary, but if we follow the first two steps of teaching people, not lessons, discernment is already set up for us. If you have asked an inspired question and have truly listened to what they have told you, it will be SO much easier to distinguish the needs that they have from what they say. The spirit will always help you with this. The last part is 4) teach doctrine. Take what you know about them and what they need and teach them a FUNDAMENTAL, SIMPLE doctrine from the gospel. This should be the easy part! Well, anyway. I'm out of time! I love you all! Say hi to my friends and tell them I love them!