Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Week 4 at the MTC!

This was a great week. It brought it's own new challenges, but I've come to expect and look forward to that. I love being in a trio with Sister Holden and Sister Nelson, though it is different than just having one companion. They are such good missionaries and so inspiring though. More news this week, since school is starting, all the teachers have to go to half-time schedules. So we lost one of our teachers :( We have a new one, and now we will have one male and one female teacher instead of two men, so that will be cool. We're all going to miss our teacher though. Also, I don't know if I have mentioned this, but all the Brazilian missionaries have been on a wonky schedule since we weren't originally scheduled to be here. Instead of waking up at 6:30 like everyone else, we had breakfast at 6:30, then lunch at 11 and dinner at 4. Well, this week they finally fixed it and I get more sleep/get to eat at normal times! It's the little things. Haha also they moved our classroom to a newer and a lot nicer building, so that will be good.

We made a commitment as a district this week to try to only speak Portuguese during the 6 hours of class we have daily. It's tough, but I'm so grateful we are doing it. I actually would rather try to only speak Portuguese ever, but a lot of people in my district aren't comfortable with that yet. We'll get there. Our teacher told us how sometimes we have to sacrifice what is easy for what is worth it. It is easy for me to just speak English, but I am learning Portuguese so that I can share the gospel with people. So, it is worth it to sacrifice English for the sake of other people's learning. We had a great devotional this week by Neil L. Andersen about this topic. He discussed Sacrifice and Love and how interconnected they are. We sacrifice for the things we love and love the things we sacrifice for. I can totally feel this in my life that as I sacrifice my time, energy, and everything else to bring others unto Jesus Christ, I am growing to love those people so much more. I also realized how much faith really is a principle of action. It is not enough to just believe something is true. True conversion leads to action. It's just like how I have faith that I can learn Portuguese, but if I don't speak it and study it, God can't help me learn it. We have to put in our part by praying, reading the scriptures, and being obedient to the commandments in order to receive help from God. I love this idea so much.

Something I really liked that we discussed this week was being fully committed to following Jesus Christ. In the Bible when Christ tells the apostles to come follow him, they drop their nets, leave their ships, and go. I need to leave behind my old worries and focus on the people I am here to serve. I was so grateful this Sunday to have all the talks be about things I was studying and praying about. I know that as we put our trust in God and do as He commands, He will make our paths straight and guide us. One other cool thing this week; we get time to watch church movies on Sunday. Our district decided to watch Joseph Smith and the Restoration, which outlines the entire story of Joseph Smith restoring the gospel to the Earth. It is such a powerful movie and reminded me why I am here. I would highly recommend watching it, you can find it on lds.org. The early members of the church went through so much heartache, pain, and sorrow for the sake of the gospel. Nobody would do all that Joseph Smith did for the sake of something that was a lie. The Book of Mormon IS the word of God and this is God's true church on the Earth once more. It just makes sense to me, and as I have prayed to know this, it has been confirmed to me countless times. It has changed my life forever. I love you all and hope your weeks are going great.

Tchau!
Sister Dieter



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