Y he aqui....

Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011



Hello family relations and all you others not sitting on a cushion!

I am doing great. Life is hard and busy here in the MTC, as it should be, but it is such a great place to be. Safe. Surrounded by my first family in this life (as a missionary), and constantly learning about The Plan of Salvation, poder + infinitive, repentance, The Word of Wisdom, Preterit, and much more.

Speaking of life as a missionary, we had a discussion with one of our teachers about how we were all born here and the MTC is our first home, our district is our family that we grow up with, and when we are ready, we go out into the real world, teach people, learn and grow some more, and then die (get released). Then we go the the spirit world (schooling) and are placed into kingdoms, the highest includes getting a job and getting married. It was pretty funny.

This week was pretty awesome. It went by a lot faster than the other weeks. The saying they told us on our first day is true: The days seem like weeks and the weeks seem like days. Sunday will be our halfway point, which is good and bad because I have still have SO much to learn.

The highlights from this week are as follows:
On Sunday, President Brown gave the fireside, which was a memorial to September 11. We all discussed where we were that day 10 years ago (which made me laugh because one person was a senior and one was in second grade!). In the fireside, we watched a tribute video that was pretty good. I think James Blunt was singing in it, but I don't really know. I'm not so in tune with the music of Babylon these days. We also got to watch the Music and the Spoken word tribute to 9-11 which was pretty awesome as well.

Afterwards, the hermanas in my district went back to our class and watched the CES Broadcast by Elder and Sister Oaks. Or at least we watched the first half of it. Kristen Oaks is really funny and they both said some really great things.
We also decorated the white board for our teacher, Hermana Nelson, because Monday was her birthday. While eating breakfast Monday morning, we decided to do something more for her. So we got a donut from the cafeteria, a candy bar, and a birthday hat someone had in their residence, drew mustaches on our fingers, and showed up late to class. (when you come late to her class, you have to do a door approach in Spanish to get in). She kind of saw us before, so she had her camera ready to filmed us as we sang a direct, word-for-word translation of Happy Birthday outside the door to our classroom, holding up our mustaches. It was hilarious. She said she was going to post it onFfacebook. Whatever that is.

We are extremely lucky to be at the MTC right now. The weather is perfect, most of the time, and the General Authorities start showing up all over. This week's devotional speaker was Elder Ballard! We had no advance warning this time, but it was amazing just the same. He spoke about whatever he felt like. He gave us some "suggestions from an Apostle" such as Be yourself and converse with people instead of teaching wooden lessons, teach clearly because the gospel is plain and simple and the spirit will help them understand, exercise your faith as much as you can, Be quiet/still to let the doctrine wash over you and sink into your soul, and many other great one-liners.

Hna. Magnusson commented afterwards that he said so many great things and "we quote dumb movies all the time, why don't we quote apostles?" Then 2 hours later she quoted a movie. It was pretty ironic.

There are an alarming amount of missionaries on crutches lately, but don't worry, I'm not one of them.

Everything is fine, nothing is ruined. Situation normal.

I'm really happy to be here, even though it is really hard some days and I miss you all tons. Thanks again to those of you who sent me letters.

Love from the District of the Smiling Angels, 08-D
Hermana Anna Sheffield

P.S. The Mailroom is finally moved to building 2M along with the barbarshop, alterations, travel office, health clinic, dry cleaners, clothes shop, and soon-to-be the bookstore too. It is a really pretty building and the alterations ladies are really nice and sewed the split seam in my skirt for no charge. It also smelled like paint because they weren't done yet. My companion said it reminded her of her childhood. Maybe she had a lot of painting in her house...