MTC week 2

It turned out I actually needed the tetanus shot too, so I got both of those. That's a bummer about the fall league, but I figured with the high schools doing a season in the fall there'd be less of them doing it, so I'm not surprised. I know you already got me a fair amount of socks, but is there any chance you could send me some lighter ones? The thick ones I have combined with my not too breathable shoes are cooking my feet.

On Monday we did some service in the morning. It wasn't very hard, we just took out trash and vacuumed and stuff, but it was a nice way to start out the day. On the way to our morning class some of the Elders convinced the sisters that it was our district leader's birthday. It was actually the last Monday, but we all wished him happy birthday and played along, and it was kind of funny. Then the sisters got him a present, and that made us all feel pretty bad. So at dinner everyone was trying to decide who should tell them it wasn't actually his birthday and how to do it until I just turned to the sisters and told them. Fortunately they weren't mad, they just thought it was funny too. That was also the day we found our investigators, so we did spiritual things too. 

Also an Elder that was leaving was getting rid of some ties, so I got five or six free ties. All but two of them looked pretty ugly, but hey, free ties.

On Tuesday we got to hear a talk from Elder Oaks. Our district sat like, three rows from the front, so that was pretty sweet. He took a lot of stuff straight out of the preach my gospel book, which kind of testified to me that we already have all the stuff we need right at our fingertips and all we have to do is use it.

On Wednesday we learned how to use the online teaching center, which is where the chat box on mormon.org gets sent to. People talk to real investigators and get real baptisms in there, so it's a pretty sweet experience. Well, sometimes it is anyway. The only chat Elder Hart and I got on Wednesday was someone with the screen name Sam Sung asking us if we knew a scientific equation that proves that God exists. We bore our testimony to him and told him if he really wants to know if God exists he should ask God himself. It pretty clearly was just someone trying to troll us, but it was kind of funny. In our afternoon class our teacher taught us about the power the Book of Mormon has to convert people. He told us about an investigator from his mission named Debbie. Debbie had been praying to find the true church for a while when they met her, so she was totally ready to do the things they told her she should do. She read the whole Book of Mormon in two weeks, and he said most of the time she pretty well taught the lesson for them. It was really cool to hear about her. We also put together a goodie bag and apologized to the sisters for tricking them into thinking it was Elder Nielsen's birthday, and we gave it to them in class Wednesday.

Thursday I extended my first baptism invitation. It was terrifying, even though the spirit was totally prompting me to say it, I was so nervous that it took two or three tries to get the words out. But, she said if she gets an answer when shole e prayed that night she'd do it, so the spirit knows what it's doing. Elder Hart was saying the whole walk to class that I was crazy for saying that so soon and I need to slow down, but then when we got to class and told everyone about it Brother Bennett, one of our teachers, asked who else had invited one of their investigators to be baptized. Nobody else raised their hand, and he chastised us pretty severely. He said we should be bringing it up in the first or second meeting and not wait until later and spring it on them all of the sudden in a later lesson.

On Friday we met with both our investigators. The investigator I invited to get baptized said she'd do it, and we committed the other one to reading the Book of Mormon. Both lessons went really well, it was great. 

Today we went to the temple. We were going to do endowments, but this woman came up to us with a bunch of family names and asked if we could do initiatives for them, so we did that today. Now I'm in the laundry room listening to someone play the ukulele and poorly sing a song from Moana.

Elder Hart is hard to talk to when he's convinced he's right. He's not very good at listening, he just wants to talk and talk and talk until everyone agrees with him. It's a little tiresome, but it's okay. He cares a lot about helping everybody feel happy and welcome and I love him to death. 

Anyways, I think that's pretty well it, I love you guys!