Week 2

Hello all you beautiful people!

Since last Wednesday, I have gotten more and more sick... I have a bad chest cold which, with my asthma, kinda really sucks haha. I get tired so fast. And, even though I want to run and keep in shape but it is so much harder when I am sick hahaha. Slowly the cold moved from my chest to my head and so now I've been getting super bad headaches. But what can you do hahaha.

Today, I want to talk about Jose (pronounced ho-zay). At the MTC we get to practice teaching real people (they are mostly actors but a few of them are real non-members). These people work at the Training Resource Center, TRC for short. Anyway, as part of the training we have to go and "find" the person we teach which really just involves us walking into a courtyard full of people who are trying to act casual. This was all last week by the way.

The first person we say happened to be Jose and so we went up and talked to him. We had an instant connection and he shared some of the struggles of his life. He is an amazing person who has been struggling with insomnia and severe anxiety. Planning lessons for him was so hard because both me and Elder Harper felt very little inspiration from the spirit except to tell us to not teach something haha.

The first lesson we decided to teach him about God's love for him and it was good. We ended up showing him a video and he told us that the video was exactly what he needed. The second lesson we felt impressed to teach the plan of salvation, but as we got in there, we felt wrong about it and so we taught about forgiveness. He told us that that was exactly what he needed. He had been hurt by so many people in the past and he really needed to forgive them. The third and last lesson for the training was the hardest to prepare... We had absolutely no idea what to teach him. We ended up feeling that we should talk to him about patience in our trials.

When we started the meeting, after the Prayer, I simple asked "so from what I know about anxiety there are triggers, so what are some of your triggers?" And he started to get emotional and said "You are the first person to ask me that and to truly care" we abandoned the lesson and just talked to him for the whole 30 minute time that we had. He explained to us that each time we've met with him we gave him exactly what he had needed most and that we taught him that there are people that truly care about what him. He explained that he's been able to open up to us better than any therapist he's ever had.

It was heart renching because it was our last lesson and both me and Elder Harper wanted to stay and help him more... but we had to tell him that this would be our last meeting and that he would be getting some new missionaries and they would pick up where we left off. He was visibly distraught but we assured him that it wasn't us that had helped him but the Lord that had guided us to him. Before we left, he asked if he could take a picture with us so that he would always remember the people who had helped him so much.

During that last meeting, Jose had told us that his insomnia had gone away and he was now off most of his meds because he didn't need them anymore. He told us that he had been looking forward to talking with us each day.

This week, the sisters in my district were able to snag him as their TRC person... they have been telling us that he has been able to open up to them and he actually asked them if they could get him a book of Mormon which means that the work continues and that he wanted to followed our final invitation for him which was to read the book of Mormon. Jose might have been one of the actual non-members And we were able to help him.

I know that God loves all of his children and I'm so glad that he was able to use me to show his children of his love. It really reignited me desperate want to get out into the field and teach God's children. Sure, I am still far from a perfect teacher, or a perfect anything for that matter, but I'm putting in my best and I know that he will be able to make up the difference and use me however he sees fit.