March 26, 2008

I have eight minutes to write today... I want to take advantageof it... I've been singing a lot in the MTC. We have a choir sing in the devotionals on Sunday and Tuesday, and we practice the hour before the devotional for the song we're going to sing that day. One day at dinner the choir director came up to me and told me he'd like me to sing one verse of the song as a solo. So the choir sang averse and then I sang a verse and then the choir sang another verse. It wasa little bit terrifying seeing as how I didn't have any practice time...but it was still fun. I do love singing. But I don't always love the awkward attention of having everybody recognize you in the halls for a couple days... but that was a while back. It all blew over pretty quickly.My entire district is pretty musical. We sing in our district at least 4hymns a day... often more. It's really fun cuz we're accappella andeverybody's singing a lot of parts. And there's always Elder Hancock the opera major making it pretty even if no one else knows the song well enoughto sing parts. it's a good time. we prepared a special musical number forsacrament meeting once. we sang Lead Kindly Light in four parts accappella and the second verse me and elder hancock sang sop and tenor while everyoneelse oohed their parts. and then the guys sang half a verse. and then thesisters sang a line. and then we all came together for the grand finale. itwas quite a performance for 9 randomly selected missionaries with noprerequisites for musical genious. it's fun.i also spoke in sacrament meeting on sunday. it was on the ressurrection so i talked about how our purpose as missionaries is to teach and preach of christ. i quoted the first little part of that talk you sent me. Then I talked about how the book of mormon andbible work together to testify of christ and how much my testimony of thathas grown. and then i talked about how the sting of death is swallowed upin Christ (1 corinthians 15:21-22 and mosiah 16:7-10) Abinidi and Paultestifying the same amazing thing--different time periods. one before andone after christ. And now we get to share that message with the world. Ilove my Savior and I love the scriptures.That's my ten minutes. I'll be more interesting when I get in the field anddon't do the same thing with the same people every day of my life for aslong as i can remember. 13 days!

Love you. Thanks for writing. I love hearing from you always.Whitney

Mum,

Thanks for sharing your scripture study. I wrote down the scriptures youloved and i'm gonna read them today.Easter in the CTM was pretty great.

I had to speak in Sacrament. A three minute talk. Every week here we're given a talk and we're all supposed tohave a ten minute talk prepared and be ready to condense it into 3 minutes.And then for Sacrament Meeting, the Branch President gets up and just callsrandom missionaries. And you have to talk. So I've prepared some talkswhile I've been here. And Sunday I finally got asked to speak. It's ourlast speaking sunday in the MTC because next week is fast sunday and theweek after that is general conference and then we're out (i still have onemore P-day after this...)

So sacrament was good. But Relief Society was incredible. I love being here, because teachers can just open it up fordiscussion, and people actually discuss. And they say awesome things. TheMTC president's wife gave the lesson on the atonement. And then told thishear-wrenching story about her granddaughter who died of cancer at the ageof 9. And before she died she asked her Mom how she would feel if she wentto see Jesus and her mom said that she'd be okay if she just came back tolet her mom know that she was okay. And the girl said "good, because I'm soexcited to meet him." And then people just shared spiritual experienceswhen they really understood the atonement. And at the end we watched this10 minute slide show of paintings of christ's life set to this wonderfulmusic. It was really powerful. The spirit in the MTC is incredible. Youguys should look for this one picture that I've never seen before. Maybeyou know all about it, but it was Mary teaching Christ how to pray. He wasmaybe 5 and he was kneeling over her lap. Can you even imagine teachingChrist to pray? There were a bunch of pictures of women interacting withChrist. And his love for them. And theirs for him. That was reallytouching to me. And after chuch we just got a lot of chocolate. There was amassive ice cream bar with lots of toppings in the cafeteria. I ate myweight in chocolate ice cream and chocolate syrup and nuts and sprinkles.It was awesome. And apparently the easter tradition in Brazil is to eatfish. So we ate fish.I wish I had more things to write about... life is pretty much the sameevery day... that'll change soon enough though! 13 days till I'm a reallymissionary! I'm terrified and really excited all at the same time.

Love and Miss you,Whitney