Week 5?!?!

Wow, I've already been here in the MTC for 5 weeks! only four more to go! This week was, again, incredible. It started off Tuesday night when we had another awesome devotional and the speaker was Quentin L Cook. That was super incredible. He talked about a whole lot of awesome stuff on being a better missionary, but the best part was the very end. He bore his testimony as an apostle and special witness of Jesus Christ. He told us that when he was called he felt completely inadequate, but President Hinckley told him that all that stuff didn't matter. As he bore his testimony of the divinity of Christ and how he leads the church the spirit was so strong you could cut it with a knife. He then bestowed a special apostolic blessing on us as missionaries. It was super neat. My favorite part of the whole evening was the music. The choir sang a song entitled "Behold the Wounds in Jesus' Hands" which is incredible, you should look it up. And the closing hymn was "I know that my Redeemer Lives." Between the two of those songs, about half the missionaries were crying because the spirit of the whole evening was just beautiful.

The rest of the week was almost as good as that night. Just a whole lot more of the same schedule here: study, class, eat, sleep. Our teachers realized they had been teaching us an extra 4 hours per week, so they decided to cut back on teaching time and give us more study time so they didn't run
out of material. This was awesome news for me because I always feel like I'm running out of time to study. This week I have been studying a whole lot in Alma, and his sermons. I really love Alma 5 because it gives a great example of good teaching through the use of good questions. One of my favorite from that chapter is the question in v. 27 that says: Could ye say, if ye were called to die at this time, within yourselves, that ye have been sufficiently humble? Really makes you think....

I also was studying in Alma 32 about growing our testimonies through the experimentation of faith like Alma said when I had a cool thought. The end fruit of Alma's tree of faith is exactly that, fruit, which he describes as being delicious, white, and a whole list of nice things. This is the end efforts of our continual faith, diligence, and patience in continually nurturing the tree that started with just a seed. If you remember back to high school biology, you'll remember that the function of fruit is to be the vessel for a seed. As members of the church, our trees are producing lots of fruit, but since we just hang out with other members all the time, all that incredible fruit is going to waste. We need to go out, and share the fruits of our hard work on our testimonies with those who have nothing so that they may plant that seed in their hearts.

We had a cool lesson this week on the role of members in missionary work and how the missionaries always come asking members for referrals but they never have any. This is because members of the church usually only hang out with other members. The solution: make friends who aren’t members of the church. Not acquaintances, friends. Invite them (families) over a couple times a month for dinner and don't talk about the church, just be an example and let them bring up the conversation. This is the optimal environment for sharing the gospel. It was a great lesson, our teachers here are awesome. Anyway, sounds like you all are having a blast out there. Keep up the fun and remember the church is true!

Elder Spencer

PS. for all those Utah siblings wondering how they can send me lots of delicious baked goods, apparently if you go to the post office in the WILK they do free same day package delivery. Take advantage of that while I'm still in the states because I hear Argentina mail stinks.