Water To Wine

Dim a?! Hope everything is going well up in the land away from Provo. Don't worry, I'm still wearing my Aggie gear whenever possible. So like basically just gym time and when I sleep.

Some highlights for the week:

#peacesignfordays - (My skirt was really flowy and I wasn't gonna risk it!) 

We had our Tuesday Evening Devotional and I sang with the choir again. We had practice about an hour before it started. Half way through the song this bat starts flying around in the gym. It was so great! After about 20 minutes of it flying around a couple guys came in with some heavy duty gloves that looked more like oven mitts and the bat was never to be seen again. We're still trying to figure out exactly what happened to it.

I got a package from Grandma Robinson with some lemon bars (which were amazing) that came in a box and then in a ziplock bag. (Also a super great article about Chuckie from Grandpa about his ACL. LOVED that. I'm expecting Emi to keep me up to date when the season starts!!) We blew up the ziplock bag and now have our own form of volleyball we play when we have a quick break between classes. Let's just say we get a little restless sitting through 6 hours of class plus additional personal and comp study. So if you need any great ideas for things to send me, ziplock bags are now a hot item here! Especially the kind with the slidey seal thing.

Lots of class, lots of teaching, but mostly lots of learning!

My Gym Outfit - Tribute to America

Friday was the BEST DAY EVER! It truly was a Happy America Day! On our way in the morning to grab sack breakfast before gym there were tons of sweet hot air balloons just to the west of the MTC! Really anything different quickly becomes the coolest thing ever here. So that was great. And then to gym I wore my wolf shirt with the American flag in the background as well as my Niagara Falls socks, because Niagara Falls is in America. So that was great. And then I got to wear my super awesome American Flag necklace with my red shirt and blue skirt. So that was great. And wait. It gets better. So I'd been praying all day that we would get to watch the fireworks (apparently I'm the only person who wasn't made aware that that's a thing here) so we had this great devotional with all kinds of fun musical numbers. So 10:30 rolls around and we're all still at the devotional and they announce that we could go outside where there was ice cream for us and fireworks!! #prayersreallyareanswered So we went outside and ate ice cream and watched fireworks and sang all kinds of patriotic songs followed by a USA chant led out by the Cambo Elders and I just felt really American. And then we didn't even get to bed till 11:30, but it was okay. So Friday was real great!

#selfie #mirrorpic #iloveamerica

Red, White and Blue with Sister Anderson

Saturday was a little long because we were all still recovering from our 4th of July celebrating, but it was a good day. We had TRC (not sure what it stands for..) in the morning which is were people who are fluent in your language either come to the MTC or you meet with them over Skype and you get to talk to them and share a brief message. They don't pretend to be investigators or anything, it's just good language practice. We met with a super cute RM from HK who's a BYU student. She knows lots of people from Centerville so it was fun to talk to her. We also met with a man who was a missionary in HK back in 1969. He was so legit!! He helped us out a ton and gave us lots of great advice! Old people are so cool.

Sundays are always the best. We had a Mission Conference and there we lots of great speakers. Sister Roach (a wife of one of the MTC counselors) talked about testimonies and how way too often our testimonies start with "I'm grateful for.." or "I love.." when they should start much more often with "I know.." Our testimonies should be centered on Christ. I know I touched on this in my last email, but that's a great blessing of learning a language. I don't have the ability to embellish my testimony with big words or deep analogies. When I bare my testimony to the investigators we teach, it is simple, but I feel with all my heart the truthfulness of everything that I am able to say. We got two new "investigators" this week who really are just our teachers pretending to be different people, and I'm able to go into lessons with just a few notes of some vocabulary words (we're working on the plan of salvation and that opened up a whole new world of words that we're trying to get down), but other than that I'm able to start teaching much more with the spirit than a book. It's incredible the difference that brings into a lesson. I still have SO FAR to go, but the progress is there and it's great!

I was reading this week in John chapter 2 about Christ's first miracle. It's when he goes to the wedding and he asks his mother what he can do to help and she says that they have no more wine. Christ then asks the servants to go fill the water pots with water. After doing that he instructs them to "bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it." The ruler of the feast partakes of the wine and is confused as to why the best wine has been kept for the end of the fea
st, when usually the best wine is served first and once everyone is all tipsy, they bring out the lesser wine.

I thought about the servants in the story. I bet they were pretty confused and skeptical when Christ told them to fill up the water pots with water, and then to serve it to the governor. The water at the time was dirty and unfit to drink. This is certainly "the gospel according to Sister Robinson" but I picture them picking up the pitcher of water and walking towards the governor, looking in the pitcher and still seeing water, and then as they pour into the cup of the governor, having it become wine.

Found Sister Richardson at the temple! She is just the greatest!

Often as I head into a lesson, I feel like the servants. I only have a very limited knowledge of this language, and I'm supposed to go teach a 40 minute lesson. All I have is a pitcher of dirty water. And I walk into that lesson, and somehow the Lord helps me to communicate my simple knowledge and testimony to my "investigator." Somehow the Lord helps the water become wine.

There's no way that I could be doing what I'm doing without the help of the Lord. I continue to be humbled again and again. This is His work. It is to be done His way. All I can do is work hard, follow His directions, take my pitcher of dirty water, and have faith that he will turn it into wine.

Ngoh ji douh YehSou GeiDuk ngoi leih deih! Ngoh ngoi leih deih and I pray for you every day! Remember, it's all about the little things!

Love,

Sister Mo Robinson