3rd letter

Hola Everyone! So I am settling in here. It is weird to think that I have been here for 2 weeks now! I will be in Mexico in less than a month! So in my last letter I was super excited about our investigator. I guess I should explain that a bit because I have had a lot of people comment on that :) So our investigator "Roberto" is actually Hermano Croft, one of our teachers. Except we did not know that at the time. I guess every time a new district comes in 2 teachers get assigned to the district, but the new district only ever sees one of them. The other one is their investigator. The teacher will pick a person who they taught on their mission and pretend to be them (same personality, same back story, ect.) and the new district will get to teach them. So we taught "Roberto" 5 times and then one day we came into class and "Roberto" is there. It was kind of weird at first, but Hermano Croft is NOTHING like Roberto so we quickly got over that :) It was such a great experience because everything is so real! The nerves you feel about teaching are real. The planning is real. The love you feel for them is SO real. The prayers that we said, praying for Roberto were SOOOO real. And the answers to our prayers were SO UNBELIEVABLY REAL! Hermana Schaser and I got to talk to Hermano Croft about our experience with Roberto. We told him how we would always pray before going into the lessons for things like the gift of tongues, and that we would know what Roberto needed, and that we would have the Spirit with us; which are all great things to have but the day where Roberto accepted our invitation to baptism we had prayed that Roberto would feel the Spirit and that Roberto's heart would be softened, and that is when miracles happened! Hermana Schaser and I were the only ones he said yes to baptism with that day. So it was really interesting to talk with Hermano Croft and hear about his experience with our teaching because he did not know any of this before hand. Now we are teaching another investigator (Carmen) and we are working on getting in the door of another investigator (Filipe). We have only tried once so far so hopefully tonight we can get in. It is SO nerve wracking! I don't think I mentioned this before but I joined the MTC Choir! It is so awesome! We have practice on Sundays at the West Campus Chapel and then on Tuesdays we go up to Main Campus for another practice. Usually we have to walk but in bad weather they will bus us. There are devotionals on Sunday nights and Tuesday nights and the choir sings at the Tuesday one. The devotionals here are so great! I have been to 4 so far. I have heard Stephen B. Allen, Lynn G. Robbins (of the 70), Roger Connors, and Carlos A. Godoy (of the 70). I think that my favorite at the moment was Carlos A. Godoy. He is from Brazil and knows English as a second language. He told about his conversion and was super entertaining! It might sound weird but my favorite part about watching him was watching him fumble for words. He would say something like "The Spirit here is p... palp.... palpable? Right? (he would look back for confirmation that that is the word he wanted then say) Wow that is a good word!" or he would ask "what is the word for that?". But that did not distract from his message! I love that because that is going to be me! I am going to fumble over words and have to ask for help but that is okay! A few days ago we had an "Adjusting to Missionary Life" lesson on stress. Hermano Croft had us do an object lesson. He took us outside and had us do wall sits! The idea was that just because your legs are shaking, does not mean that you are weak. We did not really know why we were doing it at the time, but once we got started none of us wanted to give in first! We ended up holding it for 3 1/2 minutes before one of us finally gave in! Mom I know how you like object lessons and usually I am all for them, but really that was not fun! But it did inspire us Hermanas and so we have been doing wall sits at gym. Dude my legs are going to be so strong when I get back! So we are working really hard to H.S.I. (Speak your language... in Spanish) all the time. It is REALLY HARD!!!!!!!!!! But it will help us get better.... On a side note: Our district has adopted the saying "Que en el mundo!" which literally translates to "What in the World!" but it does not make and sense in Spanish, so anytime we say that in class our teachers just roll their eyes at us. The Elders also really like the word "corazon" (heart) so everything is "Tacos es en mi corazon" or "El Spiritu es en mi corazon". It is awesome. And just in case you are wondering it is REALLY COLD here!!!! I cant wait to get to Mexico where it is still in the 80's!!! Okay 2 Spiritual thoughts and then I have to go: Look up 3 Nephi 27 and answer the question that Christ asks "What will ye that I shall give unto you? And look up 1 Corinthians 7:23.... it is an awsome to think that Christ is my master, he has already bought my soul, so I can not be the servant of men. You guys I feel so greatful to literally be wearing Christ's name over my heart! I love this gospel! and I love you guys! Love, Hermana Ashcraft

2nd letter from the MTC

Hola mi familia! Oh man! I there has been so much going on that I have no idea how I am going to be able to tell you all of it! First let me start by saying the MTC is awesome! The Spirit here is unbelievable! It is crazy how much stuff they have us doing everyday! On our first day here one of our Zone Leaders told is that the days are long and the weeks are short. I kind of thought he was crazy, but now that I have been here a week I can tell you he was TOTALLY RIGHT!!!! Ok I am going to try to answer some of your questions. 1. My companion is Hermana Schaser. She is from Bremerton, WA. She is awesome! You will know her in the pictures because she is the smallest Hermana :) 2. My District is AWESOME! We are a district of 8 (4 Elders and 4 Hermanas, including myself) and we are all going to Monterrey West! And Mom, Elder Harker is in my district! Tell his mom to use Dear Elder! He needs mail! :) The Elders are so awesome! They keep us laughing all day, but we Hermanas help keep them focused! So it is a good balance. 3. After I got dropped of I got my name tag put on me and a BIG bag of books handed to me (it is like 11 LBS!!!!) and then was stuck on a bus and shipped of to west campus. West campus is AWESOME. It used to be BYU housing so everything is apartments. Which leads to the next question. 4.I live in a 2 room apartment. I share my room with my companion and then Hermana Sumsion and Hermana Chapman (the other hermanas in out district) live in the other room. It is great because we only have to share the bathroom between the 4 of us:) 5. ok Schedual: we are supposed to get up at 6:30, but we eat at 6:45 so we need more time to get ready. So lately Hermana Schaser and I have been getting up some time between 5:50 and 6:00 so we can work on our lesson and get ready ( will get to the lessons in a minute). After breakfast we have class for 3 hours, then personal study time, lunch at 11:20, then we have more class or study time, some gym time somewhere in there, and then planning time. We try to be in bed with the lights out by 10:30. 6. My teacher is Hermana Osborn. She served her mission in the San Francisco area. She is cool. and She almost always speaks Spanish to us! If she uses English she always asks permission first. I guess that is how we will learn fastest but sometimes it feels like my brain is going to explode! But I have learned SOOOOOO much!!! I can pray in Spanish, say Our Purpose in Spanish and bear my testimony in Spanish. We are trying to speak it all of the time but that is really hard! 7. The food good. I hear it is better here on the West side than it is at the Main Campus but I really don't know that for sure.... 8. Dad I have not seen any Apostles walking the halls. If they do that I am guessing they have been sticking to main campus because I have not seen them.... Although I am in the class room for 8-9 hours a day so I dont know when I would see them Okay so now for the best thing that has happened! We started teaching our first investigator on our THIRD DAY HERE! His name is Roberto and he is from Mexico. He speaks ONLY SPANISH!!!! Do you know what that means?!?!?! Hermana Schaser and I taught a 30 minute lesson on our 3rd day here in SPANISH! I was kind of freaking out!!! We had our whole lesson scripted out, like litterally every word. It went ok, we challenged him to pray about our message. The next time we went to teach him we asked him if he prayed, he said that he did not then went into this explanation of why he did not. The only thing I got out of it was "es dificil" so all we knew was that something was hard for him. We explaned that because our spanish es no bueno we wanted him to write down his problem so that we could learn the spanish to address his problem. He did. When we got out of the lesson we asked on of the teachers to help us translate what he wrote. it said that he did not feel like he should pray, he wanted to know what God would want to talk to him if he has done so much bad. We were so excited because now we knew what he needed to hear! The next lesson we talked about repentance. We asked him if he loved his daughter Olivia. He said yes. We then asked how he feels when she does something bad he said he feels sad or frustrated. We asked if he would still love her. He said yes, but she is only 4 so she only does little things. so we asked if when she was 30 years old and really bad if he would still love her. Them we related it back to how God loves us no matter what. We challanged him to pray again. Then yesterday we had another lesson. We asked if he had prayed and he said YES!!!!!!!! We were speechless! He said it was a really good experience. We then taught a lesson on baptism (with just a list of words in front of us I might add, no script!) and the importance of it. We invited him to be baptized. He said he was not sure if he should, so we asked him to think about it, and he said he would. We asked him to say the closing prayer, he was hesitant but we convinced him. You guys he said the most beautiful prayer!!!! He prayed to be a better dad and son, it was so good! Hermana and I were totally crying. When he ended the prayer we looked up at him with tears coming down our face and asked him again "Will you be baptized?" and guess what?!?!?! He goes "When?" I through out the first date I could think of "28 de november". he was worried he would not be ready, but we promiced we would help him and that he would be ready. IT WAS THE BEST DAY EVER!!!!!!!!! We are teaching him again tonight. I love you all! I miss you but I am right where i need to be. Love, Hermana Ashcraft

And She's Off!