Week 3: The best week yet!

Another update from Abbi! She said that this was the best week ever in the MTC! She's learning so much, so fast and last Tuesday she tried an English fast, and only spoke Tagalog all day! I can't believe that she's been there 3 weeks and already feels comfortable trying that! Crazy!!  I can't believe that she's leaving the MTC in another 3 weeks!  Right now in the MTC, there are more sister Missionaries than ever before!

Highlights from this week:

"The MTC now has a total percentage of 42% Sister Missionaries.. THAT'S ALMOST HALF! How exciting, it has never been that close in ratio in the whole history of the Church." 

"I think the highlight of my week was walking to the temple with my District and pondering our real purpose of this work. Our teacher, reminded us that the whole purpose of this work is to bring others to come into the House of the Lord and make the same covenants that we have made so that they can partake of the blessings of Heaven as well."

"The trouble with most teachers is that they think that they are the teacher.  The spirit knows everyone.  Listen to him, he has good ideas." 

Sunday walks with my Kasama!

I love the food here!! ....60 lbs later.  hahaha!

The famous map!

KUMUSTA!!

Hello everyone! So much has gone on this week, has been the best week ever at the MTC!! I hope you all have had a good week as well. I will try and touch on most things but we will see how that goes. So it's official, we now have an hour to email to family in the MTC and it was also announced that missionaries can email anyone who is outside their mission boundaries, so that is very exciting and feel free to shoot me an email! :) I really love and appreciate all the letters, prayers and thoughts that all of you have sent my way, I want you to know that I truly feel the strength and the love from all of you. This is a heavy and burdensome work that we are all involved in (YES all of us!). 

I hope you all had the opportunity to listen to conference and feel the power that the General Authorities have in directing God's work on this earth. As members of God's restored church we all have the responsibility and opportunity to be involved in bringing souls unto Christ, it's not just the missionaries.. this is something I knew but didn't realize until I came here to the MTC.  But I do realize that missionaries are set apart in the Lord's work and set apart a time in their life to do the work of bringing souls unto Christ. I was sent a talk this week from last conference "Ask the Missionaries, They Can Help You!" What a great talk and also a true message. Though the missionaries my be young, they can be a very helpful tool because they are expected to have the spirit with them and to represent Christ in their lives.

This week has been great. The MTC is really a training ground for missionaries so that they can learn to live through the spirit. The spirit can be felt so strongly here, and how grateful I am to be able to have the protection of the MTC while I learn to use the Holy Ghost in my teaching and in my daily life. 

We got 2 new districts of Missionaries in our branch this week that are headed to the Philippines as well. AND how great it is that 12 were Sisters and only 5 were Elders! The MTC now has a total percentage of 42% Sister Missionaries.. THAT'S ALMOST HALF! How exciting, it has never been that close in ratio in the whole history of the Church. What a testament it is to me that the Lord is 'hastening' his work in this time!

So, on Tuesday of this week I tried to do an English fast and only speak Tagalog all day. It was good because it helped me  realize very quickly how little Tagalog I actually know. So that was fairly humbling but that is why I'm here, right?? I am also very grateful for the power of the Atonement to help us overcome or weaknesses and help us to become better versions of ourselves. So I guess you could say that the Tagalog is coming on fairly well, I just have to keep remembering that I have only been here for 3 weeks but it feels like MONTHS! I can't believe that I leave for the Philippines in 20 DAYS! I can't wait to get out and use what I have learned in the field and love the people more than I already do. As I have been learning about the People in the Philippines, I have such a love for them already.. I just can't wait to be there!

I think the highlight of my week was walking to the temple with my District and pondering our real purpose of this work. Our teacher, reminded us that the whole purpose of this work is to bring others to come into the House of the Lord and make the same covenants that we have made so that they can partake of the blessings of Heaven as well. 

Sunday is always a great day but this week, it was especially great, it was our first normal Sunday at the MTC, because the first was Easter and last week was Conference. So for Relief Society, we listened to Sister Mary Edmunds; who is a great speaker! She talked about the many missions she had served and helped me realize that we need to rely most on the Holy Ghost, because he knows all the people we will ever run into. She said, "The trouble with most teachers is that they think that they are the teacher." (Cook?)  "The spirit knows everyone.  Listen to him, he has good ideas." She was so great and gave a much needed 'pep talk' I guess you could say. But the truth is that we were preordained to succeed and to do our best to return to our Father in Heaven to live with Him and our families in the eternities. Well, that's all the time I have to spout off random things that happened this week. I love you all!

Love, Sister Rossberg