90% is Showing Up...Flight Plans

Hola amigos y familia! 

Well to start off, Spanish grammar is ruining my life, but we'll get to that later. 

Best part of my week was that i was sitting in class studying Spanish and my district leader handed me a letter from home  and then Nika sent me a little package the next day! She sent me a little scrapbook thing with a bunch of quotes and letters of advice. She had asked some of our friends to type missionary advice, and then wrote it out for me. Also she sent me a talk called "Becoming a consecrated missionary". I read it and then had Dixon read it and we were both way motivated to be better missionaries.

I'm excited to get to go to the temple today! Its seriously what i look forward to every day... i'm going to be so sad when i can't go every week in my mission 

I really love my teachers here! Our main teacher is hermano Parker.. he's the best! He is so in tune with the spirit, and is 100% dedicated to the church. Me and Dixon have decided that he has raised the bar for the kind of guys we want to marry. Our other teacher is Hermana Evans. She is the example of what i want to be like. At one point me and Dixon were a little discouraged, and we were alone with her.. and she told us that she has so much faith in us. and that she prays for each of us by name every night. It made us tear up.. she's the best. 

Sunday was fast Sunday! We still had to be in class at 7:30, so i did some good studying, and then during district meeting, me and Dixon lead the discussion about having faith in the atonement. I shared something that i had read in a book called"The peacemaker" a couple months ago.. (which you all should read btw). And it talks about the Abigail and David story. Where David was about to go to Carmel and attack Nabal. And Abigail met him halfway, gave him gifts and asked for his forgiveness, even though she did nothing wrong. But it related Abigail to Christ.. and how she took Nabals sin upon her and asked for forgiveness, not because she needed forgiveness, but because David needed to forgive. The book talks about how through the atonement, not only do we get a remission of our sins... but we can have faith that Christ took upon the sins of others. The atonement offers the sustenance we need to be made whole, after being hurt or affected by the sins of others. 

I hope that all made sense. Then in fast Sunday we all shared our testimonies in Spanish.

Yesterday we had our last lesson with our TRC investigator, Diana. It was so sad.. we bore our testimonies and gave her a little picture of Jesus from the MTC store. I got a picture with her.. i'll send it. We also did a skype lesson with a member from mexico... the lesson was pretty short, but it was good. She was nursing her baby while we were teaching her.. it was hilarious. 

The joke in our zone lately... is that we were picking spirit animals.. and elder Lumsden goes "hermana hall would be a lemur!".. and everyone was freaking out and thought it was spot on. They say its the shape of my face apparently. And not that i have super big eyes.. but apparently they stand out a lot,( "bright eyes" they say) so they are lemur eyes. I dont get it, but its funny haha. 

This week we learned subjunctive... which turned my world upside down. I have to change basically everything about how i speak. Its a little frustrating.. but the teachers keep telling me that i'll eventually catch on and speak correctly without even thinking about it. Its kind of hard to believe, but they've all been in my position before so i trust them. 

One thought for the week that hermano Parker shared. He was leaving on vacation with his friends, and none of them wanted to attend church.. but he said he was definitely going to. He said that 90% of being a member is showing up. I was thinking about that.. and i dont think that just means showing up to church. It means that we take action. We attend all of church, repent daily, look for ways to serve, fulfill our callings, attend the temple, even cleaning the church on Saturday mornings when its our turn ;)... basically we need to "show up" in our discipleship. God needs disciples, and he needs them forever. Lets all try harder to consecrate ourselves to God this week. 

oh yeah we got our flight plans yesterday!!! FLIGHT PLANS We were all freaking out! We leave at 8:50 am next Monday! My mind is blown! 
1) i dont know enough Spanish 
2) I'm  way excited 
3) I'm sad to leave Dixon 
4) I'm excited to eat food in the airport that is not from the MTC cafeteria! Time has just flowwwwn... only one more pday left! 

hope you all have a fantastic week! sending much love