Funny story for this week: There was a member of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles that spoke at a devotional here the day before I arrived, and there's one speaking the Tuesday after we leave. My district was joking that we simply are just so wonderful already, we didn't need to hear an apostle speak.
As my time at the MTC comes to an end, I've been noticing all of the things I love to do here that I'll be doing for the last time this week. Yesterday was my last choir practice here. I can't tell you how empowering it is to be in a choir a thousand strong of missionaries. We also have a wonderful choir director, Ryan Egget, who always has the most amazing stories to go along with the music we sing. Yesterday we sang "Child's Prayer," which is this beautiful children's song about a child's possibly first prayer. Brother Egget made the parallel between this song and our work as missionaries as we go out and help others pray for their first time. He asked us what Heavenly Father thinks of us as missionaries, helping His children to talk to Him and to come to Him. He told a story of when he was in the bishopric in his ward, his daughter had just turned 12, old enough to be in Young Women's, and it was her first mutual activity. His daughter is painfully shy, and she sat as far away from the other girls as she could. He could not sit with her because he had to sit at the front of the room with the rest of the bishopric, but he just kept praying that someone would sit next to his daughter. She sat by herself for what seemed like an eternity to him. Then, an older girl in the ward called to his daughter and asked her to sit next to them. He said his love for that girl went over the moon.
The point was, Heavenly Father loves His missionaries because His missionaries are trying so hard to love His children. We can all do that. You don't have to be set apart in order to serve His children. You don't have to be set apart to share your testimony.
I started writing poetry this week, and I thought to end my email, I'd share something I wrote.
"Oh, what joy sings in my soul.
The honeyed land calls.
The clock has struck, the time is come.
And what am I to be?
The words of some, long past gone,
Whisper in my ears.
They tell me deeds, long past done,
And what am I to be?
Father, help me, Father dear,
For I am not complete.
My mission long is get to come,
And what am I to be?
Be you, My child, be you in Me
And I will help you be
The whole complete, the perfect whole.
My child, speak of me."
I hope you all have a wonderful week! I don't know when I'll be able to email again, but it would be lovely to have something to read in English once I get to Russia.
Love,
Sister Jarvis
This is Sister Derek, Sister Sommers, me, Elder Sonderegger, Elder Mehr, and Elder Belnap. They are our best friends. We love them. Unfortunately, they're going to St. Petersburg not Rostov. Sad face.
Here's another picture of us, but just being weird.
This is what our classroom looks like when we study. I thought it would be interesting for people who've never been to the MTC to see what it looks like.
Elder Palmer and Elder White. I thought all of these pictures were funny, so I chose them all!
This is Elder White post-water splashing.
This is the Plan of Salvation in Russian (essentially what the LDS church believes about where we came from, why we're here, and where we're going) done by Sister Derek.
And the writing above it is Joseph Smith's account of the First Vision, or when he saw Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, in Russian.
