This is the only Family letter we received from the MTC ( there was a quick hand written one and then she was to fly out before the second Pday)
Hi everyone!
Well, I'm here at the MTC! It is really a great place to be!
It seems like I've been here forever, but at the same time I feel like this
past week went by so quickly! It is like a time warp. We have an ongoing joke
in our district that whenever you say something like "yesterday when we
were teaching lydia....." you say "yesterday, or 2 weeks ago, when we
were teaching lydia" or something like "this morning, or last year, when
we ate breakfast....". haha. It feels like we do SO MUCH every day! But it
is all great stuff.
My companion and I get along great! We like to eat the same
stuff at the cafeteria, and we both are lovers of the little white handbook. We
pray SO MUCH here and we kept loosing track of whether it was her turn to pray
or mine. SO we came up with a little system: every time we pray, I flip my ring
around the other way and put it back on. If the ring is facing towards me, I
say it. If it is facing towards her, she prays:)
We get to go to the temple today and
I'm excited about that! Oh, and we LOVE getting your mail! Thank you so much
for the letters! It makes a missionary's day when the District leader hands
them a dear elder or a card!!! Mail=gold here:)
We have wonderful teachers! Brother R, Brother G, and Sister
GR. They know just how far to push us. We had an amazing experience on
Saturday! We had been working in hours and hours of classes for the past few
day and we were all so exhausted: Physically from not getting enough sleep,
mentally from learning so much from our great teachers, emotionally from this
whole new experience, and spiritually because we were being asked to teach and
bring the spirit in ways that we never had before. We were doing role plays in
class and the post-lunch sleepiness was setting in. We couldn't focus, and we
couldn't get the new concept that we were learning. We understood it in theory,
but when it came to the application, we couldn't get it right. We kept trying,
role play after role play, and we began to feel very frustrated and
discouraged. Most of the sisters were crying (myself included). I felt so
inadequate. I really couldn't do it. Our teacher, Brother R, Told us to all
stop for a second and say a prayer. He told us that we could use the atonement
in this situation. Christ knew exactly how we felt. He could help us to
overcome the exhaustion, he could help us to feel good enough, and most of all
He could help us to be able to understand the concept and put it into action.
Brother R told us that we were at the edge of a cliff, and we were being asked
to take on more step. But he testified to us that if we had the faith to take
that step, Christ would carry us. It was an amazing experience. We all prayed
for the strength that we so desperately needed. We knew that we could not do
any of this on our own. As we came to our Heavenly Father in prayer, and fully
relied on Him, He gave us more strength and help than we ever could have gotten
through our own work. I now have a stronger testimony that He will provide a
way for us to do all the things that we are called upon to do. He will never
leave us alone. If we will just turn to Him, He will make a better missionary,
a better sister, a better friend, a better person out of all of us. Through
Him, we can do all things.
I love and miss you all!
-Sister Rachel Hodgson
p.s. we report to the travel office
at 7:30 Tuesday morning June 4th, and our flight leaves Salt Lake City airport
at 11:55 (Utah time). Expect a call somewhere in there! sorry we don’t know
much!
Everyone:
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