MTC - week 6

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone had another great week. Not a whole lot was new for me this week! My district and I were able to go to our first ever MTC Mission Conference which they do every fast Sunday. It was a pretty cool experience to listen to some district presidencies and the MTC presidency. My favorite quote from the conference was said by Brother Nally who is in the MTC presidency. He said, "A testimony is what you know to be true by the power of the Holy Ghost; and conversion is being TRUE to what you know."

This week was a little hard on most of us because Brother Perez who is one of our teachers (and was our first investigator) came into class and told us he was quitting his job at the MTC. He is a student at BYU studying Biochemistry or something crazy like that. He is planning on becoming a doctor someday and said that he felt he needed to focus on his school right now. He was apparently having a hard time balancing both seeing as how he would almost fall asleep standing up every day in class. He said he loved us very much and was sad to go but that he had been praying about it and knew it was what he needed to do. None of us were upset or anything but it was hard because we had all grown so close to him as our teacher and our friend! He surprised us all this morning, though. As we got to the temple and were waiting in the chapel to go to the endowment room he came up and sat right next to me and Elder Chappell. He went through the session with us and ate breakfast with us all after, so it was great to see him again.

He shared a story with us on his last day of teaching us. He said that on his 3rd month of his mission he was senior companion with a brand new missionary and neither of them knew spanish very well, or were experienced teachers. Brother Perez felt overwhelmed and didn't know how he was going to be successful because he was so new and didn't know spanish well. He said that one day him and his companion decided to do the only thing they knew how: run. So from that day on they ran to every house in the middle of the summer in order to not waste time, and shared simple testimony. He said, "If you're unsure about what to do, do what you KNOW how to do; and do it as hard as you can." He shared his testimony with us that as inexperienced as they were, the Lord blessed them because they did the best they could with what they knew how to do. I know this is true in all cases in our life!

We all have weaknesses and doubts at times, especially me! However, as we give everything we have the Lord will make up for when we fall short. I have definitely felt the Lord's hand guiding me in the MTC and I know that he will help every one of us as we come to him with a broken heart and a contrite spirit.I wish I had more to say! I can't wait to get out in the field and bring others unto Christ. I'm sure that once I get to Nicaragua my emails will be a lot more interesting!

I love you all and pray for you!

Love, Elder Parrish