Well everyone I have survived a week. I am actually surprisingly amazed at how happy this place is. We definatley are standing on holy ground all the time. Hahaha you most definatley don't have to worry about going starved here. The food is amazing...and there is so much. Other than eating what have I done this week? Well for starters... we sit in class for 9 hours (it's a three hour block, then a meal, then back to more class). The only thing I don't like about having that much class time is the silence. Ooooo how it kills me to have to sit in silence for 3 hours at a time. Its so hard. My companinion and I cannot wait for the half time break we get cause we can go use the restroom and just talk for a few minutes. When we have that much silence the only way I survive is by laughing. I take every opportunity to laugh out loud.
In the classes we take time to have personal, companionship, and language study for the first 3 hour block. We decide what to teach our investigators. Then we study and prepare the lesson for them. The next 3 hour block is where our teacher will be teaching. We may do anything from language learning to wathcing movies. The last hour block is also the teacher teaching. This is usually where we will learn a concept from the language, and practice signing it. For example, yesterday, we learned about how to ask questions in asl. You need to involve the face. If it is a yes or a no question (Close-Ended Question) then it is your eyebrows up. We had an activity where we practiced raising our eyebrows....it was quite a sight to see my try to raise my eyebrows on cue. We practiced for about a half hour. Swithching back and forth with the members of our district, to kind of mix things up and learn from others. During that half hour I improved alot.... Just wait til you guys see me try to do it for you....it is definaltley a sight to see.
This past week we had our first investigator. Her name is Jamie. She grew up Christian-ish. Her dad was a southern baptist and her mom a catholic. Her friend who is a member told her about us and that is how we met. During the first lesson....it was pretty easy. She "had missionaries over before us". She already knew about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. That made our life easier. The focus of that lesson ended up, not being what we planned. We planned on teaching her the restoration, but thank goodness she knew that already. I did not have sign the first vision which made for a very happy Elder Betts. We focused more on the holy ghost. She said that she reads the book of mormon, but she only feels the spirtit when reading with her friend. We challenged her to pray to feel the holy ghost when she reads the book of mormon. The second lesson we taught about the plan of salvation. She was interested in that. She loved every minute of it. When we asked her if she had fullfilled her challange, she said she had. She felt the Holy Ghost during her self studying. It was wonderful. The challange we set up for her was to go to church and continue reading the B.O.M. and pray for the holy ghost. During the third lesson we talked about Faith, Repentance, and Baptism. As we talked about baptism, she want to be baptized and follow the Savior's example. We set up a "Date" for her and told her to prepare to be baptized. During the fourth lesson we talked about the word of wisdom and challenged her to live it and get ready for her "baptism date". It was a wonderful time teaching "Jamie". We learned so much from her. We will also now continue to learn from her, as she is now one of our new teachers. But not as Jamie but as her true identity.
Thursday came along and I woke up forgetting it was my companion's birthday. I felt so bad. Luckily I got a package of donuts from one of my friends. We threw Elder Phillips a birthday party during class, and it definatley made up for forgetting his birthday. Also Thursday we got new refurrals for new investigators, since we were done with Jamie.For the two weeks we will have two investigators. From the sounds of it I'm liking these investigators. From what we were told, they sound amazing, and i cannot wait to hear more of there story.
Thanks to everyone for supporting me out here. It makes my day to recieve letters and emails from you guys. If you guys get the chance check out Dear Elder.... you go to dearelder.com and put in my information and the message you would like to send. That day the MTC will print off the message and I can reply by that night. It is a fast way for you to get your message to me. Also you can email me or send me letters. I would love to hear from you guys. I will do my best to answer back to everything you ask me.
I Love you all. PIctures are soon to come. Check out the blog my sister made to see them all...if you contact her she will tell you how to get to that, cause i dont know how.
Love-Elder Betts
