Hi everyone!!!!
Sounds like everyone
is doing well! It’s awesome to hear that everyone is ok.
This week has been kind of crazy! Another one of our Elders, Elder Frost,
got his Visa! He is from Georgia so he might have even used the Miami consulate
(you will have to check on that for me Mom). Our entire district is now made up
of 4 sisters and my companion and I! It's awesome that missionaries are getting
out there though! There is still hope! Elder Frost was a super funny person and
a thoughtful follower of Christ, he is a great missionary and our companionship
will miss him. It’s a lot quieter now without him, I have no one to sing
country songs under my breath with anymore! Hahaha but I really am very excited
for him.
Let me tell you a little about life here. In the mornings we get up and
have about thirty minutes to get ready. At six thirty we have
breakfast and then, depending on the day, a combination of classroom work with
a teacher, computer guided study time on the language (TALL), personal,
companionship, language, and additional study time. Surprisingly, everyone
talks about how the MTC is so busy and about how there is something planned for
you every hour of every day, and there really is, but it is not in a normal
sense that your day is planned for you. The schedule is built in such a way
that you have the idea of what you need to be doing planted firmly in your
mind, but the how to go about doing those things is always up to you. It is not
always as easy to understand, but after a little reflection I am coming to
understand why the MTC is built this way. Heavenly Father invites us to do
things. He asks us simply and in a straight-forward manner just enough so that
we can remember what we need to do, and after that it’s our call what we do.
The MTC is just like that. No one is walking around policing the hallways
ensuring that missionaries are engaged in personal study time during personal
study time. No one is forced to do anything. This is the Lord's way, He does
not compel nearly as often as he invites because he knows that when people
freely choose to follow him they are blessed in added measure (Alma Chapter
32). I have felt that blessing. The freedom that is afforded to missionaries to
allocate their time as they see fit and to learn to use their time to the best
of their abilities has added for me extra blessings beyond those afforded for
simply obeying. In my short time in the MTC I have felt the profound difference
in how I feel when I obey, because when I am obeying I am doing so by choice,
when I am wasting time and unfocused I feel even more distraught because I know
more clearly what I am missing. I feel greatly blessed to be able to be here.
Elder Harris and I were made zone leaders this week. I'm actually pretty intimidated,
but I'm confident we can and will do a good job. We are working hard (mostly)
and trying to improve where we are falling short. I have such a long way to go,
there are so many things I don't know and understand yet about the gospel yet
that I am really trying to learn. I am confidante I can and am working to get
there. In our leadership meetings we have been taught to lead by example. Our
mission is to be a missionary for missionaries. I have a growing desire to be
good and to keep getting better, because doing so will allow me to bless
others.
We
work a lot here, and it’s not really the educational, spiritual, or the
physical work that's hard, its seriously a lack of sleep! Days are
looooooonnnnnnggg and nights are short in comparison. I wouldn't have it any
other way however, I like and expected that the experience of a mission would
cause me to stretch my faculties beyond that which I was capable of before, and
as long as that is happening I will be happy. Growing pains are expected and
welcome, granted uncomfortable, side effects of that stretch. I hope I will
come back from my mission in the "best shape of my life", and no
muscle grows without resistance. Right now I am trying to figure out how to
better feed my spiritual body so that I can turn it into a lean, mean,
converting machine. I'm seeking how to understand how the spirit can work
through me and how I can be capable of having it as my constant companion.
I love each of you,
and miss you.
Elder Showalter
p.s.
I know the Church is
true!