Hello family and friends,
It’s been a great first week here at the MTC! My first Sunday here was amazing. The whole day was centered around Christ’s atonement and we heard some great testimonies about that.
Tuesday night we had an MTC devotional. Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles came and taught us. He told us that he felt impressed to give us a blessing of success, and promised us that we would have successful missions. It was amazing!
Afterwards, our branch president said that he felt inspired to tell us, just my district of eigth missionaries, that we would be responsible in bringing “literally hundreds unto Christ” and that we would change many many lives.
Yesterday was by far the most spiritual moment I have had here. Our district of eight missionaries were supposed to teach an “investigator” and actor, as if we had just knocked on his door and had been invited inside. We had our lesson planned, our lines rehearsed, and we were ready – convinced that it would be like all of the other practices and that we would have a great lesson and leave him with a Book of Mormon.
Right from the start, he was very defensive. He invited us in, but whenever we tried going with our lesson he became very agitated. After about five minutes of trying to keep going with our lesson, some other missionaries came in to practice and began becoming very aggressive, taking some of the things the investigator said personally. Right when I felt the tension was about to break, Elder Guzman started asking the man questions about his life. His work, his family, etc. Immediately he lit up. Elder Guzman and I work so well together.. I started doing the same. We knew that we wouldn’t be teaching him today, just earning his trust. When other missionaries tried to go back to teaching him the lesson, Elder Guzman and I tried to bring it back to the track of talking about him again. He talked on and on about himself, the troubles he had.. his family.. how much he loved his wife.. how good God was.. the things he did wrong.. how he felt bad about them.. he really opened up, and we hadn’t tried to teach him any of the Gospel! Well, long story short, eventually he asked for our info and said we were welcome to come back anytime. He said he would call us to do some service for an old man down the street and he said he wanted to chat with us again soon.
That’s the short version, but when we walked out of there… Elder Guzman and I couldn’t stop talking about the expereince we had just had! It reminded us that we aren’t here to get baptisms.. we are here to change people’s lives! We knew that out of that first visit, the best we could have done was get another visit. We weren’t going to have a lesson or leave a Book of Mormon or anything. We even got to have a prayer at the end where we blessed his family and home, and he seemed really touched by it! I liked it because it was more realistic to how things are really going to be out in the mission field. I think we did a really good job. So far, with our acting investigators, we have placed three Book of Mormons, challenged all three to read and pray about it before our next visit, and have one baptismal date! Things are really going well!
I wish you all could take a sneak peek to see what really goes on here. What we do here is amazing and it is of the Lord. I wish you all could stand in the auditorium when all the missionaries stand and sing “Called to Serve.” It’s so strong!
Write me letters! I really want to hear from all of you! I miss you all.. but I know this is where I need to be right now. I promise I will write back, we have some free time to write.
Hope you all have a great week and a Happy Thanksgiving! We are about to go do some laundry and then go to a fireside where one of the Quorum of the Twelve is going to speak to us!
Love you all! May God be with you,
Elder Viitanen