Lock Your Heart

Hey everybody,

This week was good at the MTC. Our Chinese teacher gave some of the Elders and the Sisters Chinese first names. They're actually really cool. Elder Cheung's Chinese name means glorious sky and heaven shine or something like that. She hasn't given one to me yet. She's had us memorize 7 things in Chinese in order to get our Chinese name tags. The 7 things are: James 1:5, 1 Nephi 3:7, Moroni 10:5, The purpose of a missionary, I am a child of god, The first vision, and the baptismal invitation. It's pretty hard stuff but It's really nice to know it in Chinese. The language is progressing. It's pretty slow, but I know that God will help me learn the language in his time not mine. I know that all I have to do is put faith in him and everything will work out the way he has planned.

Some of the Elders and I have been trying to practice flips outside. We went out one night and they were teaching me how to backflip. An old senior missionary was walking by when I was gonna do a flip off the wall and we just kinda sat there and waited for him to talk to us cause we knew we were in for it. He just got a little mad at us and told us to go to our dorms. I think they're extra stingy on this because lots of people have been disobeying the rules and staying out really late. We got locked out of our room so we went and got a new key. Turns out the one they gave us was wrong so we went back and got another key and we weren't in bed until 12:00 but it wasn't our fault!!!

This Sunday I had a little bit of redemption from missing Elder Bednar's talk last week. This week we had the opportunity to have Elder Ballard come and speak to us. What was cool is that it was broadcast to most of the other MTC's in the world live. It was an amazing talk, he talked about obedience and keeping the rules. How it keeps us as missionaries safe, and keeps the Power of God in our teaching. We want to have people when they see us know that we are messengers from God. He referenced Spencer W. Kimball talking to missionaries around 50 years ago. A Missionary just disobeyed a small rule and bad consequences started because of that decision. The missionaries that were with this Elder were interviewed and asked why they didn't tell their Mission President what was going on before it was too late. They just said that it was his decision to ruin his mission and they weren't going to get in the way of that. Elder Kimball then said:" What about your mission? This is your mission. This is your church. You all are representatives of Jesus Christ." He was saying that we are responsible for every other missionary, not just ourselves.

The main point of Elder Ballard's talk was that we need to Lock our Hearts. He said to not open it for anything while we are on our missions. You can't fall in love with someone you don't open your heart to. There are problems with Missionaries losing their focus on their purpose . He reaffirmed that our main focus is Jesus Christ and he's the only one that we should be looking to. We have time after our missions, but right now we have a different purpose.

 I just really loved his talk cause it told me that no matter what, the thing that matters most is bringing people unto Christ and not focusing on yourself or your needs. We are so much happier when we are focused on others and helping them better themselves and strengthen their relationship with God. It's only when we revert back to ourselves and try to help ourselves progress that we fall short. I want to learn Chinese so bad, but if it's not for the right reasons It won't come to me. I've realized that if I focus on helping others God will give it to me. 

During the tours this week some of my best friends saw me. Hunter, Daniel and Dawson. Seeing them was so awesome and I was so happy. It's so cool to see people like future missionaries and past missionaries on the tour. Sharing experiences just makes the spirit of missionary work escalate. By the way sorry that this email is all over the place. It's just a kinda random fact week.

We hit our six week mark so all the missionaries in our zone left. We are now officially the oldest missionaries in the MTC!! It's pretty weird honestly that people are coming and going all the time. But it just means I'm getting closer to leaving to my mission. A huge group of Mandarin and Cantonese missionaries left which was sad. They've been here for the six weeks we have and we all got super close. They passed down all of the traditions to us and now it's our turn to keep them going. In Sacrament meeting they sang a special musical number: "Be Still My Soul." It was really cool because the Cantonese sang the first verse, Mandarins sang the second, and they both sang in English the third verse. It was really touching.  We woke up at 3:00 this morning to say goodbye to them and they gave us some advice and told us it would be us in no time. They told us not to waste our time in the MTC. Seeing these people leave just makes me want to work as hard as I can for these last three weeks we have. 

Anyway, sorry for the random email but I hope you enjoy it!! Here's some pics