Hellooooo Familia (and friends)!!!!!
Oh my goodness, I don't even know where to begin! As you all know, getting to the MTC was an adventure! Lucky we didn't go over much in class that day. My companion is Sister Kaia Jarnigan!!!! Who would have thought?! Mr. Jarnigan's daughter!! It's been pretty fun with her as a companion! haha The food is alright...I eat a lot but some of it is just nasty! We get fed well here for sure. Mom, you'd be happy to know that I work out so good!! Our zone and district are pretty much the best.
So my usual schedule of the MTC: We wake up at 6:15 every morning to get ready for the day. We have personal class room study for 45 minutes and then breakfast. After every meal we have 3 hour class room blocks. In those blocks we can either have 1. personal/ companionship/ language study 2. our professor Irmao Crestani comes and teaches us Portuguese 3. We teach our investigator Anna. Yes, that's right, we teach lessons in Portuguese. After our first full day (Thursday) we were told that we needed to prepare a lesson for our new investigator Anna, in Portuguese. My goodness it was nuts.
Anyway Thursday night we met with our branch and I met a Brother Coffman who was best friends with grandma's brother and served with grandpa in Brazil. He's awesome!! I seriously have the best branch. Friday came along and we taught Anna her first lesson. We basically read from Preach My Gospel and tried to teach her to have faith in Jesus Christ. It's hard to learn Portuguese.
LOVE SUNDAYS!!!! Sunday's here at the MTC are the best! I was on a spiritual high all day! Sacrament meeting was at 8:15, and then right afterwards we were able to listen to music and the spoken word, and we sang As Sister in Zion but it was a missionary version. I balled like a baby! Guess who came to speak to us for relief society?!?!?! SISTER LINDA K. BURTON!!! AWESOME!! She talked about receiving gifts and our attitude about those gifts. She is such a powerful lady.We had some personal time and then Sister Jarnigan and I went to sing in the choir. We're singing "Our Shepherds Lately Knelt" or something like that. It's beautiful! Brother Richard I. Eaton talked to us for our Sunday night devotional about how much God loves us. It was pretty good. Sister Jarnigan and I decided to watch Elder Bednar's "Characters of Christ" message that he shared 3-4 years ago on Christmas to the missionaries. If you can, READ IT!!!! I loved it so much. I needed Sunday really badly.
We taught Anna again yesterday and it went soooo much better! We could only improve from the last time we taught her. We taught her how to find happiness and how to be happy. We only knew what scriptures we wanted to share with her and some of the things we wanted to say, other than that we relied on the spirit to help guide us. Even though our Portuguese was TERRIBLE, I felt so much better about it.
I love it here. I love being surrounded by so many missionaries. The spirit of the gospel is awesome, I almost don't want to leave, but at the same time I want to teach and understand better. I've seen a little bit of how much of a roller coaster the mission can be. I know it's true though. Teaching Anna is great!! Sister Jarnigan and I just get so happy after we teach, even if it wasn't our best lesson. I know Heavenly Father is blessing me. There will be times that random words will come into my head and I know what they mean. I know the spirit is working to help guide me. Even though the language is hard, I have such a peace about it. I love learning and and I'm trying to soak it in as much as I can. Portuguese is just beautiful!!! I can't wait to be able to carry on a conversation past "Hello, how are you? bye!" haha.
I couldn't have asked for a better way to serve the Lord. I love Him so much, and even more now that I'm here. I can't wait to see what they have in store for us for Christmas. I love you all so much. I feel the support that you have for me. Thank you so much Mom and Crystal for your letters. I really needed that that day. Keep doing good things!!!
Love,
Sister Madison Hillam (Isn't that a great title?!?!)
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