Life in the MTC

I leave the MTC Monday morning! I'LL BE IN DENVER BY 10am!! REAL LIFE????!!!!! This is crazy?! I wish I could spend at least a month here or something! It will be so hard to leave all my friends, the ones from BYU and home, and the ones I have made here.
My apartment is with 6 girls (all going to Denver North).  We laugh so much, and sing at night and pray together. We pray so much here at the MTC!! I pray with my companion so many times a day, that we sometimes forget who said the prayer last! It's great! 

Exact obedience is a huge deal here, and I'm working on it, but it's hard! I struggle mostly on getting to places on time!  My district (I spend hours upon hours upon hours with these wonderful 11 people-- 6 Sisters, and 5 Elders) is in a Guinea Pig class. My teachers are not the normal MTC teachers. They are the people who train the teachers. We also have a manager of teaching.... so our class is kind of a big deal. Most missionaries here don't start teaching until Monday (after being here since Wednesday), but we started teaching on Thursday (the FIRST FULL DAY OF BEING IN THE MTC)! They are trying a new style of teaching, and I'm part of it! It's actually pretty neat, and stressful. We teach about 3 lessons a day (2 are progressing investigators, so we have to plan a lesson for them), and 1 is just a one-time only visit/lesson.
I'll probably have to give a talk on Sunday. You prepare for a talk, and then they just call you up during the meeting, that's when you find out if you really are giving a talk or not

SUNDAYS are incredible! People have said, "make it to Sunday"-- it's true. The days before that are really long, and Sunday is super long, but it is so wonderful! We heard from a hilarious devotional speaker Sunday night (Mary Ellen Edmunds). And when the missionaries sing -- WOW!!!! The days since Sunday have gone by really fast! I can't believe it's Wednesday! I can't believe it's been a week since I said goodbye to you all! It seems like a life time ago, but yet it seems like yesterday! The Spirit here is AMAZING! I have just gotten used to the Holy Ghost being with me, which is incredible!  But you can sure tell when it leaves, or when I get down on myself, that's been hard. The MTC has been a humbling experience... I need to rely more on the Savior, and Heavenly Father more than ever in my life! You truly cannot teach without the Holy Ghost.

Tuesday night devotional: Elder Marcus B. Nash of the Seventy - INCREDIBLE! The Doctrine of Christ has been something that our teachers have focused on, and then Elder Nash hammered it into us in a loving, friendly, but definitely serious manner. 3 Nephi 27:13-22. He said something that really made me tear up. As his son left for his mission elder Nash whispered to him, "Don't hold anything back." When his son returned home, Elder Nash forgot he had said that. When his son got off the plane, after his mission, he embraced his father, and whispered, "I didn't hold anything back". I'm not going to hold anything back, or try to! I'm on the Lord's time! I know it will be hard, but if anyone can help me through, it is the Lord.

The day before I came to the MTC, Russell M. Nelson came for the Tuesday night devotional: "Obedience brings success. Exact obedience brings miracles." We all need miracles in our lives, but especially out here. The Lord wants to help me because I am trying to help bring souls unto Him!! I know that this is going to be hard. I mean, let's get real, you all know that I am not a big fan of waking up early, so that alone will be hard!  But I'm so excited to be a missionary, wait -- I am a missionary!

Please note:  Sister Smith tried to send pictures but the computer did not cooperate.