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week 5
From : Kelcie Dickson
Subject : week 5
To : Cara , Chris & Kirk , Gerrit & Ashlee , Greg & Melissa , Jason & Ali , Mom & Dad , Ron & Missy , Ryan , elizabeth sant

Wed Nov 24 2010 4:56:07 PM
Week 5 has come and gone! I am over halfway through with the MTC. I have 4 weeks left! I can't believe it. Here are some things I learned and felt this week:
- Life is possible, no matter where you are. Rely on and ask the Lord for help. He will help you if you have faith and are fully obedient.
- This week in class is the week of the Atonement (de semana de la expiacion). I am so excited about this. I have already learned so much and it has been 2 days of it. On Monday we are ending our week by having a testimony meeting in class. Last night for devotional we had Elder Malm from the 2nd Q. of the 70 speak. He talked about a lot of things but a couple things I got out of it was he told of a story of a truck driver who stopped on a bridge that had collapsed in the middle and saved many lives. As he was relating the story I couldn't help but think of our Savior and how he is like the truck driver. I also thought about how the truck driver is me helping others come unto Christ. I love the gospel! I love how you can always learn and apply things.
- TRC: Satuday we taught a lady from Ecuador who is learning English and speaks almost all Spanish. So needless to say we taught in Spanish. I was not prepared for it but I know it was good. She told us afterwards that we she understood what we were saying. I felt good about it after hearing that. From this week on all of the TRC is in Spanish instead of the task in English and lesson in Spanish. I am grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow. i need to give myself more credit than i do. I have learned a lot more spanish than I am telling myself. I know I still have a lot to go.
- There is such a great power in music. Every lesson we taught we have sung. It has brought such a great spirit to the lesson and has testified not only to me but to our investigators. Every Sunday I have the opportunity to watch music and the spoken word before RS and I love it. This week was on gratitude. It was amazing. I love music and the chance that I have to be taught by the spirit through it and to teach others through it as well. Tuesday night Hma Smith and I sang in the choir. We sung Come Thou Fount. It is such an amazing song. I love it and have taken it and applied it to my life.
- Daniel- we taught him in spanish and he corrected everything we said into the right grammar. It was really annoying and drove the spirit away. We walked away from that lesson frustrated and grateful.
- Yesterday we were supposed to have a big snow storm. They sent all the teachers home at 3, closed half of the MTC down, and BYU closed down. It didn't start snowing until 6:45 and barely snowed. It made me laugh. It is really cold though.
- Some other things i have learned:
- What does Heavenly Father expect of you?
- Some of your hardest moments will be the best education you can get
- be grateful- say a prayer giving only thanks! it is amazing!
- God loves you in spite of your faults/shortcomings
- be 100 % obedient and have faith
- Prayers should be with real intent and a sincere heart- Preach my Gospel is excellent- you should all read it.

Congrats to Amber and Nick!
Happy Birthday Jason, Rachelle and Gerrit! I hope your birthdays were/are amazing.
I have met an elder Dickson, a girl from my old ward, an Elder from Firth and 2 people from Shelley ( cody anderson and a huntsman i believe)

Anyway, this is really short, i had 20 minutes because the internet wasn't working :( But I love you all and am so grateful for each of you. I want you to know that God loves you and wants you to turn to him for help. He will not leave us comfortless because He loves us too much. I am grateful for the gospel and the strenth it brings to me daily. I love the gospel. I love learning more about it daily and in my own life. I am grateful for this time of year to reflect on things we are grateful for. Thank you all for everything you have done for me and will continue to do for me. You are the world to me and more than that.. you mean everything to our Savior, Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father.


Love,
Hermana Kelcie Dickson

!Hola Familia!

Can you believe it has been a month already?! I can't! Time has flown. It seems like I just got here.

Como estas? I am so grateful for each of you! I love getting your letters and hearing about how everyone is doing. This week has been a good one up until last night. I started feeling sick so I have been taking it easy today. So I am going to answer everyone's questions this instead of writing each of you like I usually do on top of the email. Where do I start?

Saturday: Saturday's I have TRC and this week we were given the task of getting to know our investigator on our way to church (this is in all spanish) and then afterwards we taught them the Plan of Salvation. It was really fun! When Hermana Smith and I walked into the room to pick up our investigator we noticed it was one of the girls we taught last week, Julia, and another girl. They were such fun girls. I love teaching them! At the end of our lesson before we compelely ended we decided to sing them a song. We sang I am a child of God. There is so much power in song. Everytime we sing to our investigators the spirit appears more present and the investigators have a complete change of heart in their faces and appearance. I love it! So almost everytime we teach we sing. It is fun.

Daniel- he is another investigator- I think I talked about him last time. He is a 70 something year old preacher. It is a challenge to teach him but I love it. It helps me learn! He finally has accepted our invitation to come to church. We teach him tonight so we shall see how it goes. So far it's going good. He knows a lot about our church but won't pray to know if the things are true or not. I wish he would quit being stubborn and just do it!

Another investigator: Jose. I love Jose. Last week we invited him to baptism and he said he had to think about it. He is also being taught by Jehovah Witnesses and they are trying to get him to become a member of their church. He is really confused and doesn't want to make God angry so he is being Mr. Slow. We still have no commitment but he said he would come to church with us as well. We teach him tomorrow.

Today 700 missionaries came into the MTC! It's crazy! No one is comng in next week due to Thanksgiving. We had a district leave this week and a new one come in today. I haven't met them yet but we now have 7 girls in the zone! :) The 3 new girls are going to Ecuador. I am excited for Thanksgiving next week. We are doing a service project and my district was asked to help with it and be leaders at it. We are making school bag kits. It will be insanely crazy but a lot of fun. It will be a nice change of 14 hours of class daily.

This last week for devotional we had Elder Kevin Pearson, from the Quorum of the 70 come and speak to us. He talked about the principles of power and being a disciple. Some things that stuck out to me were: your mission is your future and your success in life, There is no need to struggle, do your best, ask Heavenly Father to help lift your burdens, your mission will be what you make of it, and there is no such thing as trying so do your best. It was interesting to hear him. He was a very powerful speaker it was almost as if he were yelling. But it was still good and exactly what I needed to hear. I love that we learn through the Holy Ghost. HEavenly Father knows our needs and speaks to us through the Holy Ghost so we always need to be worthy, obedient, and willing to accept and act upon our promptings.

Today at the temple I had a neat experience. I was doing iniatories and had some hispanic names. At first I was like oh great I am not going to be able to pronounce them but I did it. I said them how they were suppposed to be, well I think I did. Anyway, one of the temple workers told me my Spanish was really good and that I roll my r's really well. It was funny to hear that and good to know that other people, besides those in my district, are giving me encouragement. It made me feel good about Spanish. Speaking of, it is coming along pretty well. I am slowly understand all the grammar rules. It is just a matter of applying all of it now. My teachers (maestros) give me some good advice so i am working on that. I am also reading and disecting el libro de Mormon with words I don't know.

!Hola Familia!

Can you believe it has been a month already?! I can't! Time has flown. It seems like I just got here.

Como estas? I am so grateful for each of you! I love getting your letters and hearing about how everyone is doing. This week has been a good one up until last night. I started feeling sick so I have been taking it easy today. So I am going to answer everyone's questions this instead of writing each of you like I usually do on top of the email. Where do I start?

Saturday: Saturday's I have TRC and this week we were given the task of getting to know our investigator on our way to church (this is in all spanish) and then afterwards we taught them the Plan of Salvation. It was really fun! When Hermana Smith and I walked into the room to pick up our investigator we noticed it was one of the girls we taught last week, Julia, and another girl. They were such fun girls. I love teaching them! At the end of our lesson before we compelely ended we decided to sing them a song. We sang I am a child of God. There is so much power in song. Everytime we sing to our investigators the spirit appears more present and the investigators have a complete change of heart in their faces and appearance. I love it! So almost everytime we teach we sing. It is fun.

Daniel- he is another investigator- I think I talked about him last time. He is a 70 something year old preacher. It is a challenge to teach him but I love it. It helps me learn! He finally has accepted our invitation to come to church. We teach him tonight so we shall see how it goes. So far it's going good. He knows a lot about our church but won't pray to know if the things are true or not. I wish he would quit being stubborn and just do it!

Another investigator: Jose. I love Jose. Last week we invited him to baptism and he said he had to think about it. He is also being taught by Jehovah Witnesses and they are trying to get him to become a member of their church. He is really confused and doesn't want to make God angry so he is being Mr. Slow. We still have no commitment but he said he would come to church with us as well. We teach him tomorrow.

Today 700 missionaries came into the MTC! It's crazy! No one is comng in next week due to Thanksgiving. We had a district leave this week and a new one come in today. I haven't met them yet but we now have 7 girls in the zone! :) The 3 new girls are going to Ecuador. I am excited for Thanksgiving next week. We are doing a service project and my district was asked to help with it and be leaders at it. We are making school bag kits. It will be insanely crazy but a lot of fun. It will be a nice change of 14 hours of class daily.

This last week for devotional we had Elder Kevin Pearson, from the Quorum of the 70 come and speak to us. He talked about the principles of power and being a disciple. Some things that stuck out to me were: your mission is your future and your success in life, There is no need to struggle, do your best, ask Heavenly Father to help lift your burdens, your mission will be what you make of it, and there is no such thing as trying so do your best. It was interesting to hear him. He was a very powerful speaker it was almost as if he were yelling. But it was still good and exactly what I needed to hear. I love that we learn through the Holy Ghost. HEavenly Father knows our needs and speaks to us through the Holy Ghost so we always need to be worthy, obedient, and willing to accept and act upon our promptings.

Today at the temple I had a neat experience. I was doing iniatories and had some hispanic names. At first I was like oh great I am not going to be able to pronounce them but I did it. I said them how they were suppposed to be, well I think I did. Anyway, one of the temple workers told me my Spanish was really good and that I roll my r's really well. It was funny to hear that and good to know that other people, besides those in my district, are giving me encouragement. It made me feel good about Spanish. Speaking of, it is coming along pretty well. I am slowly understand all the grammar rules. It is just a matter of applying all of it now. My teachers (maestros) give me some good advice so i am working on that. I am also reading and disecting el libro de Mormon with words I don't know.

Question: Mom or dad- will you get me Chris Vaughan's pouch mail address. I got a letter from him today but I dont have the pouch address.

Cara- How was time in Berkley with Geniel?
Mom- When I am thinking of words in Spanish, I think of German words before Spanish ones. it makes me laugh. That's fun you saw Aunt Helen and Uncle John at Golden Corral. When we go to the temple we go back and forth between iniatories and endowments, we switch every week what we are doing.
Dad- Sounds like you are busy, it keep you out of trouble:) How are the hearing aids?

For my birthday: money would be nice :) I wouldn't mind having a 3 barrel iron. I will keep thinking of things but those are some that I came up with.

Chris: I met an Elder from Firth who knows TJ. I don't remember his name though and today I saw Elder Cody Anderson> I went and talked to him and he looked really confused. It was funny. He told me Koda is doing really well with baseball.

Anyway, I love you all and am grateful for each of you. You are all great examples to me. I know the gospel is true and that when we are obedient and doing our best we will be blessed. It is one thing I have learned. I love you and will try to write in Spanish next week. I hope you all have a wonderful week! Thanks for all that you do. You are the best family anyone could ask for. Until next week!

Love,
Hermana Kelcie Dickson

Hola Familia!

Thank you for all your letters, packages, prayers, and support. It means a lot to me! I still love the MTC and can't believe that I have been here for 2 weeks! The food is getting better and the Espanol is coming along slowly. I still am not getting as fast as I would or as fast as others, but I am getting. I am going to be getting tutored to help with grammar.

Saturday Hermana Smith and I taught two lessons. One was in the TRC, training resource center. Our task was to contact and meet 3 people and teach the last person. The contacting was in Espanol. We did really well with that. The first person went well, the 2nd was another story. As we were talking to him we started laughing because we couldn't think. He laughed right along with us and told us that we were doing great. The 3rd person, most important was the one we ended up teaching. We taught our lesson on the Restoration and did really well. Our teacher was really impressed with how we did. He told us that was the best first TRC he has ever seen. It made us feel good.

Saturday night we taught our other teacher, Hermano Zivic, who was pretending to be a progressing investigator. This lesson was in Spanglish and went pretty well. I felt the spirit there, especially towards the end. Hermana Smith and I sang i am a Child of God to him. Afterwards he wouldn't give us feedback. All he said was muy bien (good job), he was really impressed as well.

Another teaching experience we had was on Monday. Our class and another district split up and we ended teaching in only Espanol. I was scared out of my mind. Satan was definetly trying to not let me teach. I had no idea how I was going to teach the first lesson in only spanish. Somehow I managed to do it. I am so grateful I have the gift of tongues with me and the spirit. The companion I was with was very impressed with the power in my teaching as well as one of the people we were teaching. I am grateful for tender mercies like this! THis experience gave me a good idea of what I am doing well on and what I need to improve on.

This last week, and since I have been here I have run into a few people I know:
1. Kekoa Riggins from Arlington- he is waiting for his visa after 4 months.. poor guy. I hope it comes soon!
2. My old roommates sister, Shannon
3. Stephanie Whittaker- she was in my ward in Salt Lake. She is waiting for her visa but going to a CA mission in the meantime.
4. Uncle Phil
5. Elder Glass- i met him and found out he is in Aunt Georgia's ward
It was so fun to see them.

When I first got here they closed down Sunday temple walks because of trash being left on the grounds. Good news.. it is open :) Sunday we went on our first temple walk. It was beautiful. Today I went to the temple. The grounds are gorgeous and the inside is pretty... outside is pretty, just not one of my favorites.

Tuesday night we has devotional again. This time Elder Ballard came and spoke. His talk was based on becoming a master teacher, asking good questions, Keeping your message simple, Smile, and the person you are talking to should have a good feeling the second they hear your message/ meet them.

Half my zone left this week for their missions and we didn't get a new zone this week. Our branch is going to consist of 3 districts now i believe. I love my district to death and my zone as well. We all get along great and are all so willing to help each other learn and grow. A sister in my zone and I have the same outfit, and we wore it on the same day, it was pretty funny. Then we ended up being companions for the Spanish lesson i told you about earlier. I have amazing teachers and have a good district which helps makes class fun and enjoyable. In my zone there ar 8 sisters, district 4. In my residence hall there are 5 of us.

I want to challenge all of you to memorize the 1st vision! It is so powerful and has more power to it when it is memorized. If i can do it in Spanish and English, you can do it in English. :)

I know that our Heavenly Father lives and loves us. I know that we are His children. I know that families are a central part to God's plan for us. I am so grateful for all of you and the love that we have for each other and for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that Jesucristo loves us enough that He died for us. I know he knows our pains and everything that we go through. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and that he was given the power and authority from God to restore the gospel on earth today. I know that he translated the Book of Mormon (el libro de Mormon) for us to read and to learn from daily. I know that the scriptures are the words of God and that we have a living prophet today, Thomas S. Monson. I am grateful for this gospel and for the joy it brings to my life. I hope and pray that each of you will strive to be a better person and pick one thing to work on this week. I love you and am so grateful for you all.

Until next week! Keep writing. I will do my best to answer! Thanks for everything again!

Love,
Hermana Dickson