Sister Skidmore's Sacramento: Dirty Hands & Travel Plans

It's getting mas y mas dificil to remember things in English. Not when I type necessarily, but when I talk.. and spell.. as you can tell (: it's exciting.. When I have to say prayers in English.. I have to stop and be like.. uh.. gracias por... discurso.. NO NO NO I mean sorry Thank you for the devotional..! Crazy (:

My companera y yo were asked to be the examples in a "How to Begin Teaching" seminar for the new missionaries that came in this week. She ended up getting sick (that story is coming up!) so I got to do it with another hermana in our district, Hermana Griffith, she's going to Sac with me ( i really don't like the word sac.. trying to get used to that.. haha).Basically we knocked on the door of an auditorium with mics hooked up to us and we acted as if we were going into someones home but there were like 50 new missionaries sitting there, watching us talk to an investigator for the first time! So cool! We had one lady named Sarah who was hilarious. She is basically buddist and it was so fun to just see what she believed and talk to her about the Church. She loves yoga and stuff and she just had a firey personality. Her questions were a little all over the place pero esta bien. The other one was George, he was an old man that had his leg amputated and was mad at God for taking it until he said a prayer and realized that God took his leg in order to get George to start praying again. That was such a cool experience. It was an honor to be chosen to demonstrate something that I love doing for the new missionaries. Getting to know people and their stories is so rewarding - holler at your reporter skills! Thad, Erin, Kate (:

I don't have much time so I'll just skip to the spiritual/crazy story of the week.

Wednesday morning. Errbody in the MTC woke up with a stomach virus. Well not everyone... but 2 of the hermanas in my room, Hermana Davidison and Hermana Cruz.. along with another Elder in our district and a bunch of other people at the MTC. No bueno.

I had heard them getting out of bed a bunch that night and I thought to myself.. "Wow they must really have to pee..." Then my subsoncious went back to "Sea monkey stole my money.." (name that movie, Mitch!)

I felt bad when my comp woke me up at like 6 and said hey.. I've been barfing all night... and the whole time I just thought she had major bladder issues.. woops. Anyways, Hermana Cruz and her comp Hermana Griffith had had to throw away the garbage bag with vomit in it so they traipsed out to the dumpster at like 3am. Meanwhile, I'm like OMG these people need to drink less water..ZZzzz... I suck. haha

This sickness thing ended up changing our lives. Stay tuned.

Fun Fact: That morning, after I woke up and realized what was going on, I went to the bathroom and saw a penny. Heads up. Lucky day. Little did I know.

So the 4 of us (out of 8) in my district that were healthy, went to class. Pretty normal day. Hermana Griffith was my comp.

Then in the afternoon we had class with Hermano Peterson and this lesson changed all of us. He had made a lesson plan.. but after realizing there was only 4 of us, he decided to work on a"Fundamental" with us called "Teach People, Not Lessons."

We talked a lot about our purpose as missionaries. We are to invite others to come unto Christ.. and that means making the Gospel applicable in their life and not just bulldozing over them with information.

He said a lot of things that I will never forget. I wrote all of them in my journal but one was "God has been preparing these people since way before you ever meet them. You can't just come in and try to change God's game plan. You have to teach and help the investigator on God's time. You have to be listening to the Spirit or you will not teach."

He had us practice.

My partner for practicing was Elder Page. He had NO prior training in Spanish and the language has been a struggle. Luckily, this exercise was in english. As I sat across from Elder Page, he was the missionary, I was the investigator, he expalined how Repentence and the Atonement of Jesus Christ applies to me. He bore the most incredible testimony, had me read a scripture, and asked me questions that really made me think. The Spirit was so strong that we both were cloudy up top (aka: had tears in our eyes, haha.) Via email I just can't do it justice.

After the exercise, Hermana Griffith and I had to go to the demonstration thing and so just the elders and Hermano Peterson were left. I won't go into too much detail but it really hit home with the Elders that we are teaching God's children and we ought to teach His way. Gosh, yeah. I'm not articulating how awesome it was. At night before we said district prater and went back to the dorms, Elder Chappell bore his testimony that he now understands his purpose as a missionary. Family and friends, I love being a missionary.

-- Some funny stuff:

The MTC choir director is HILARIOUS. We don't go because we can sing, we go because it's like comedy hour! haha. We will be on BYU TV on sunday singing for the World Wide leadership conference so that's exciting! But we were working on a song.. and we allllll hit the wrong note for "Hark all ye nations" and he goes..

"WOw! You guys are doing a great job portraying the apostasy!(apostasy: a turning away from the truth through corruption of doctrine resulting in religious confusion) Clearly NO ONE knew where they were going.. 'Searching in darkness(words from the hymn)' you nailed it!" hahaha

FUNNY QUOTES!

"I'm on a diet, I can't eat salad..." - E. Langi - Tongan Zone Leader (:

After a really spiritual moment...

Elder Chappel - "Tomorrow is going to be a different day.."

Hermana Griffith - "You're right it's going to be Thursday."

GOOD FEELINGS GONE. hahahaha it was so comicooooo!

Me talking to Hermano Schofield (a teacher)

me - "Yo estoy muy animada cocinar el nuevo districto!"

Him - "cocinar...?"

Me - "OH I MEANT CONOCER!"

(for all of you english speakers out there that don't get why this is funny.. cocinar means to cook and conocer means to get to know..I told Hermano S that I was excited "to cook" the new district!

hahha

I love the work I'm doing. I'm learning so much. I know my savior lives. Visit Mormon.org. Say a prayer tonight. Believe me, God wants to hear from you.

Todo es bien. (All is well)

- hermana eskiiiiidmas