12 Day Miracles

Hello everyone! I promise I am not dead though it may seem like it since it has been more than a week since I entered the MTC. Well having P-day on Thursday means that I only get one here and my next email will be from Fort Lauderdale (or my first area in my mission). So to get everything I want to say I am just going to go day by day.

September 30: First day in the MTC and man it is crazy and a rush of getting everything you need and finding your class and where you live and being totally lost in our new little city. So my District is 4 Elders and 3 Sisters so you guessed it that means I'm in a trio and so I have two companions Sister Peart and Sister Olsen. Also our zone has two districts that entered today and all 15 of us are going to Florida except half of us our going to the Florida Tallahassee mission and the other half are going to the Florida Fort Lauderdale mission. As we continued through our day we gathered as new missionaries and sang Called to Serve and it truly was amazing and sounded like an army of missionaries singing and the power in the room was just incredible and words cannot describe it. Also on the first day at the MTC you get an orange dot on your name tag (the Dork Dot) and because of this magical dot you get said "Welcome to the MTC" like a million times.... in reality it was probably only several thousand....just kidding again it was probably like 3,000 times. Also today we taught our first investigator like the MTC believes in baptism by fire because we were instantly thrown into a room with 30 other missionaries and expected to teach 3 different investigators and let me tell you it was like the most frustrating thing ever. Like I thought it would be hard to be unified with my companion (did not think that I would start out being in a trio) but with 30 people being unified is next to impossible and so those poor (real) investigators were probably just incredibly confused.

October 1: Today we learned that at the MTC you majorly teach yourself like we don't have teachers except for like 6 hours a day and so the majority of our time is spent studying on our own without supervision, which on some days is not the best and other days I feel like I grow immensely. Also today we found out about our first two investigators Dawaun and Shirley. These new investigators are actually our teachers Brother Aston and Sister Eaton, but once we enter the room to teach them they are no longer our teachers but our investigators. I mean at night we pray for our teachers but we also individually pray for our investigators and we ask for help for them and guidance so that we can teach them better. Also today we had our first zone meeting and my companions and I became the new Sister Training Leaders (STL) this is like the female Zone leaders we help to lead our zone and will participate in zone meetings on behalf of the sisters.

October 2: Today was our first day at gym and I was surprised at how fit I seemed to be as I didn't get as tired as I usually do when I exercise for 45 minutes. The Lord truly does bless his missionaries and he is definitely blessing me with health both in the ability to run and not be weary and kneel without knee pain. Also today we found out about our new 3rd investigator named Erika and I am super excited to teach her. Turns out the Sisters in our zone who are leaving this week also taught her and said that they think she is a real investigator and not just a member pretending to be an investigator so that is a little more pressure on us but I am just so excited to teach her!! Today we got to teach our two other investigators and it was absolutely amazing seeing the power of God but also seeing how much room I have for improvement as a teacher. We taught Dawaun in the afternoon and it was the first time teaching and I definitely was super nervous. As a companionship we had planned a lesson and all had fervent prayers in our heart that we would be able to feel the spirit as we taught and that we could be guided. As we went in to teach we were in no ways perfect and messed up a whole lot of things but the spirit was there and it filled the room and we received the coolest inspiration on what we should talk about but more importantly what we should not mention at all and it was amazing to see and experience that direct talking with the Holy Ghost.

October 3: Today our schedule was messed up but that's okay because the reason it was messed up was GENERAL CONFERENCE!!! The opportunity to hear the prophets speak and to receive that personal message from God. I'm not going to share any insights now because I don't have like a tremendous amount of time but anyone who would like to talk conference I would love to get your emails and talk about what we learned during conference because it was absolutely amazing! 3 new apostles!!!

October 4: More conference and it was totally awesome to hear from our prophets and church leaders. While during the breaks between conference sessions we were sitting by a district of Elders headed to Russia and we challenged each other to a riddle conference and it was a fun way to get to know other districts and to grow in camaraderie as the MTC and not just our district. Today is also Sunday and so there are just even more amazing experiences to here to partake in. So we always have a Sunday devotional and this week it was Vocal Point. If you don't know who that is (I didn't before today) then go and look them up they are an amazing LDS a Capella group that sings church music and they are absolutely amazing. After devotional it was movie time and the MTC has an amazing selection of LDS movies and talks that we can watch but before coming I'd always been told to watch "Character of Christ" by Elder Bednar because you can only watch it in the MTC. Let me tell your it was life changing and mission changing and it was absolutely amazing and I wish that I could watch it again after the mission.

October 5: Today was our first day teaching Erika and she has an absolutely amazing story that I will have to tell the full extent of later but for now I'll just tell ya that She has the missionaries for over 4 years and has been taking lessons here at the MTC for 4 months and she doesn't see baptism being in sight. Today while teaching Dawaun and Shirley we got them both to pray. Dawaun was super nervous about it but I just promised him the blessings he would get and told him his Heavenly Father just wanted to talk to him and he then became willing to pray. Okay now for the funny stories of today because I feel like so far I haven't really shared how much fun the MTC is and it is not all class and learning but we actually have a lot of good laughs here. So today at lunch the guys started arm wrestling and man they are super strong and it was funny to see how determined they were to win because they were not going to lose. It then evolved to Chinese Arm Wrestling which is basically trying to get your companion to slap his own face. Well the Elder that slapped his own face (very jokingly) stood up all offended said goodbye to the ladies and stormed off and for the rest of the evening kind of jokingly held it over the Elders heads. Also while we were at dinner Sister Peart was sitting next to an Elder from another district and they were all talking and conversing. The Elders left and a few minutes later we left as well. As we were walking back to class he came up to us to ask for Sister Peart's email. Sister Olsen was then like "Are you like asking for her number?" and the Elder was like "Yeah, the Missionary way". Super funny though is Sister Peart has a boyfriend and so she told the Elder to get mine and Sister Olsen's emails instead. So that is how I got the email of a random Elder. [Note: this is not appropriate Elder behavior to flirt and ask for Sisters numbers/emails].

October 6: Today I realized that I could potentially become a runner. I know the apocalypse is happening for anyone who truly knows me, I believe that running should be saved for life and death situations, so I never thought that I would enjoy jogging. But beside that, today we found out why Erika is  such a challenge, she wants to know all about the deep doctrines of the church before she gets baptized so that she doesn't feel inadequate. Also kind of funny today the Elders in my district have decided to call our teacher Sister Eaton Mom. Today we participated in choir and it was an amazing spiritually experience of learning more about the power of prayer through music. Our devotional was Linda K. Burton the General Relief Society President for the church so needless to say it was amazing.

October 7: We got a new district today and they are headed all over the United States which is cool but also kind of sad for them. Today we also got to do service which is basically cleaning and maintaining the MTC but it was awesome. The guy who was in charge of us goes to BYU so that was cool to talk to him. Today as a companionship we were totally not unified and everyone could tell like I never understood that before but now after going through it being unified is the most important thing because it affects everything: how you learn, how you teach, how you react, etc.

October 8: Today, yes this is today, right now, as I sit on this computer having an amazing P-Day.

You see so many people at the MTC that you know so here are a few:

Sisters - Boden, Bills, Miyazawa, Price, Davis

Elders - Carter, Bradford, Wood, Lloyd, Thorpe, Seaman

Man the MTC is so cool and I am loving it and it seems super weird that I leave on Tuesday for the mission field. Sorry this is such a long email and that it seems so chaotic and sporadic.

Also your probably wondering why this email is titled 12 day miracles. Well that is the nickname for groups like us, we are only in the MTC for 12 days and so as we leave we are literally 12 day miracles.

Love,

Sister Kelsey Jennings

P.S. get on Dearelder.com and send me an email they get printed off like mail and missionaries love to get mail and I mean like love to get mail. My unit is 79 and my departure date is OCT 13. Send me something like seriously.