Last week in the MTC.  I feel ready enough for Alaska and just want to be there right now.  It's fairly hot here so Alaska is looking pretty nice right now. Our TRC investigators this week were so amazing. They are truly prepared by the Lord already that we are just helping them on their way down the path to eternal life. I've noticed every time we get through with a great lesson and the Spirit was able to guide us the whole time.  I am able to climb the four flights of stairs with ease back to class. Yeah, sure, I'm still out of breath due to the high elevation here, but I don't struggle  getting up them or even think about the stairs, I like learning how The Spirit strengthens me personally.  Knowing for myself allows me to teach the power of the Holy Ghost to others better.

Our teachers this week helped us role play with less-active members. This is difficult because their concerns, I feel, are more advanced than investigators.  We have to go into the lesson teaching the same things we would to an investigator but that is where "teaching people not lessons" comes into play. I feel we might have to do a lot of re-activating on the mission so this is good practice. 

Tuesday our devotional speaker was Don R Clarke (Emeritus Seventy) who spoke about feeling the Spirit and being obedient. I felt inspired after that talk and wanted to do my best to be obedient. He posed a question that struck a chord in me:  “Who are you to teach investigators to be obedient to the commandments when you aren't living the rules set in the missionary handbook?”  I like this because he basically called us hypocrites, but in a self-reflective way. Also I want to strive to be a 9:30pm missionary; meaning that we should strive to be teaching a lesson for that half hour a day instead of going home at 9pm.  Wednesday our district had the opportunity to host the new missionaries coming to the MTC. This was a little weird at first. I kept thinking "who am I, having only been here a couple of weeks, to give direction to new missionaries?" It wasn't until I finally hosted a sister missionary halfway through the drop off time that I felt prepared enough to guide someone just like me two weeks earlier. I see the two sister missionaries that I hosted often and it's nice to see how they are adjusting. Thursday we had a 9-hour In-Field Orientation. We were told that this meeting would suck and it would be better if we just kept that in mind when we go. I had that mindset but it was quickly changed. I actually liked the majority of the things they taught and how they taught it. We frequently would change rooms to have different teachers and a change of topic. I only wish we were taught some of this information the whole time we were here versus all crammed into one day. 

Yesterday for Pioneer Day Nashville Tribute Band came for our Sunday fireside and it was so fantastic. Normally the departing missionaries have a departure devotional during choir practice Sunday night so I thought we wouldn't be able to participate in the choir, but they moved our devotional to 10am that morning which was great for us. The choir consisted of about 1400 missionaries--the largest the MTC has had. They brought the Spirit with their passion for the gospel as they sang these wonderful, heartfelt songs. We sang three songs with them with huge smiles on our face. After the fireside are different church films that the missionaries can choose from to watch, but we went back to our classroom to receive priesthood blessings from the elders. This was some of the elders' first time giving a comfort blessing. After one of the elders said the first sentence I was hit with a wall of comfort and it brought me to tears. I am grateful for the priesthood and I know for a surety that the priesthood is the power of God and was restored again to the earth.

We leave tomorrow for Alaska so we have a half P-Day today.

We said goodbye to our elders in our district yesterday as they flew out this morning. Being in class is not the same without them and we truly are going to miss them.