This week has been filled with a lot of emotions. I've loved it and learned so much. Last Sunday we got to hear from Richard I Heaton. He spoke about repentance and how we should see the word repent as a joyful thing, not negative. Some of my favorite things he said were:
-How we feel about the word repentance is how we will teach it
-Repentance is not an event, it's a way of life. It is a process of constantly aligning ourselves with God.
-Repentance is an invitation to make God happy every day.
The elders in our district left early on Tuesday morning so we said goodbye to them Monday night. It was sad seeing them leave, but we still have 7 sisters in our district so it wasn't too bad. On Tuesday I had a feeling that our Devotional was going to be special. We had been practicing the song "Precious Savior, Dear Redeemer" for choir and our director told us it was going to be a great night. Usually about 10 minutes before the devotional starts they put the picture and name of whoever is speaking, but this time they didn't. We always sing about three prelude songs while they finish seating all the missionaries. As we were singing Praise To the Man, Elder Bednar and his wife walked in. We were all so excited and sang We Thank Thee Oh God For a Prophet. It was so powerful. Elder Bednar talked about General Conference and how to study the talks. He explained how we can get the Doctrine, Invitation, and Promised Blessings out of each talk to really study. He said we should "Ask, Seek, Knock and DIG". I will never forget the song we sang in choir, Precious Savior Dear Redeemer. The Spirit was incredible and the words meant so much to me that day. Earlier on Tuesday, we had class from 2-5 like usual except we had a different teacher. It was our last class before we started Visitor Center training the next day. We all felt pretty good with what we had learned in the past few weeks since we've been here. Well, the substitute teacher decided to make things interesting and had us role play without our companions and teach investigators who didn't believe in God. They had a lot of other things that they weren't sure of such as gay marriage and polygamy. They questioned a lot of church policies that I had no idea how to answer. We did this for most of class and by the end I felt like I really didn't know anything anymore. Most of the lessons we have taught here in the MTC are with investigators who are pretty easy going and really nice to us. I started questioning everything that I had learned and realized I was not very prepared. Afterwards, our teacher shared the scripture in Doctrine and Covenants 82:88, "And whoso receiveth you, there I will be also, for a I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mineangels round about you, to bear you up". This scripture really gave me a lot of comfort knowing that I'm not alone and if I am obedient and prepared, that I'll always have help. So after devotional we went to our classroom to study for the last hour. Just as we were about to leave, we heard someone scream from downstairs. I walked out into the hallway and saw a bat flying right towards me. Sister Neuberger and I dropped to the ground laughing and crawled back into the room. Everyone was freaking out and it just kept flying down the hallways. Luckily we were able to escape..it was a really big bat and we ran down the 5 flights of stairs without encountering our little friend again. Today one of our sisters went home, she has bronchitis and will come back when she's better. It was sad to see her leave. I leave for DC on Tuesday and I am SO excited. Also tomorrow we get to go to temple square and walk around with the sister missionaries there. It'll be a cool experience. I hope you all have a great week!
Love, Sister Haertling
Top and middle pictures-Visitor center training this week. 9 hours of training...they were tired!
Bottom picture-Sister Haertling's two cousins in the MTC at the same time as her L-R Cayden Cazier, Mark Mathews, Sarah Haertling
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