Hey y'all I'm still alive!
Bear with me while I learn how I'm going to write my emails. This one may be a quite long so fair warning.
So I got to the MTC on Wednesday and it was a really exciting and bitter sweet experience. I was really nervous but as soon as I got on the MTC campus, I was immediately calmed. Then I went and met my companion and district!My companions name is Elder Johnson and he is from Oregon. There is so much that I have already learned from him! When the district got together and met we all introduced ourselves and where we are going. The Elders in my district are serving in Alabama, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Ohio, Florida and Washington D.C. They are all so awesome and have so much to offer the people they will be teaching. The best part of the first day was when all the new missionaries got together and sang Called to Serve; I felt the Spirit so incredibly strong during that song. Thursday was really long and a lot of information to take in but it was really awesome! That night we met our branch president and got called into positions of service. My companion and I were called to be the sacrament coordinators. It is a good experience to fulfill this call. On Friday is when I really started learning. We learned that making a connection and building a relationship with your investigator is a key element in conversion. I really am excited for this in the field because I feel like I am a people person and can engage well with anyone!
Elder Johnson and I had the chance to use the church's new program where you teach an investigator who may or may not be a member of the church. We met a man named Caleb who is very nice! We got to know him quite a bit and then set up an appointment for another day. We decided after talking to him that the Plan of Salvation would be the best thing to teach him because of how important families are to him. That's basically all for Friday. On Saturday we had some workshops and learned how to better teach investigators. I learned that you need to learn to love and relate to the people that you are teaching and make sure they know that! I learned a lot today but I'll put all my biggest takeaways at the end. Someone told me that your first Sunday in the MTC is the LONGEST DAY EVER and let me tell you that it is true. There is no time to waste. We go from sacrament straight to more classes where we get to learn more about this wonderful gospel! Every day that I'm here I learn something new and come to love the gospel more and more! I also joined the choir on Sunday! I was a little reluctant at first but I am so grateful that I did. It is such a joyful experience! We had a devotional that night and the speaker was Brother Tad R. Callister. He taught so many great truths and then shared historical evidences that disprove the theories of unbelievers who try to discredit the Book of Mormon. By the end of Sunday night I was so mentally and physically exhausted but I was nearly overfilled spiritually! On Monday my comp and I had our next meeting with Caleb. It went really well and we invited him to read the intro to the Book of Mormon, read the plan of salvation pamphlet and to come prepared with any questions that he had for us the next meeting. On Tuesday there was a devotional and I was able to sing in it with the choir. While we were practicing for it, they announced to us who the guest speaker would be and also told us that it would be broadcast to all the other MTC's in the world! They said that it would be... Elder David A. Bednar!! Everyone was so excited! We sang the special musical number and it was amazing. Music is definitely one of the best ways to bring the Spirit to a meeting. Also it was awesome because the camera panned over me while singing. Elder Bednars message was so great! His main message was to always follow promptings. He said that if you are questioning if the thought/prompting is from the Holy Ghost or just your own mind then if it is good, DO IT, because it is most likely from the Holy Ghost. It was so amazing to hear the testimony he bore!
Yesterday was a little rough in the beginning, we had our follow up appointment with Caleb and it did not go very well. He wouldn't really answer any of our questions and so we didn't have much of an idea on what to go off. He did do the invitations that we extended to him though. The day ended well with practicing teaching lessons with our companion. It is really helpful because now I am getting more and more comfortable teaching!
Ok so here are a few side notes:
•There are 6 Elders in our room and 3/6 snore so it is really hard to sleep at night.
•The food is good but the lines are really long because they are trying to feed 2000 people at once.
•My favorite scripture that I read this week was D&C 130:20-21. It talks about the importance of obedience and I invite all of you to read it!
Thanks for reading all of this!! I promise my emails will get better!
-Elder Dylan Swallow
