Week 3-- Fire & Flu

Well hello, and a bright and early morning to all of you!

 

Perhaps you are wondering why I am awake at 5:12 a.m. Well, at 4:15 a.m. we woke up to a blaring fire alarm. It took me a few alarm buzzes to realize what was going on. Sister Vande Merwe said apprehensively, "Uh, sisters? What's going on?" I responded, "Fire alarm!" and we all jumped out of bed and grabbed stuff as fast as we could. I was going to head to the evacuation zone, but the gym building is right across the way from our residence, so all the Sisters shuffled in out of the cold. The clock in the gym lied to us and said it was 5:15, so we were all thinking it wasn't so horrible. But it turns out it was 4:15, haha. What a crazy start to a day. Sister Millet says that maybe we should stop singing "The Spirit of God like a fire is burning."

 

The Temple is open! Everyone at the MTC has been dying to go to the temple, and we're so happy it's going to be open today!

 

So, as some of you know, there was a crazy illness last week. At first they thought it was the stomach flu, and it was pretty worrisome because after two nights about 200 people were sick, and like 50 people were in the E.R. It was insane. For the Sunday devotional they wouldn't let us in the devotional hall, so we had to go to our classrooms and watch it on our TVs. Turns out the TV system had never been used before, so almost the whole MTC missed about half of the devotional because we were trying to troubleshoot the problem. The tech guy came to our classroom and was going to have us go out to everyone and relay instructions, but as we were leaving they decided to just go into one of larger broadcasting rooms in the main building. Anyway, back to the mysterious illness, there were people sick everywhere. Lots of people had face masks on, there was no shaking hands (we bumped elbows instead), and there were lots of people throwing up. They even opened the clinic on New Years because so many people were getting sick. No, Mom, I did not get sick. But it turns out that it wasn't the stomach flu, it was basically food poisoning. Turns out my distaste for pecan pie has paid off, because it was a bad batch of nuts.

However, Sister Fengel had been getting worse and worse for almost a week, and her symptoms were definitely not the flu. We were all so worried about her because she just wasn't getting better. After going back to the doctors a few times, it turns out she had an ear infection, pink eye, and most likely Strep throat, plus some other things. As soon as she got medicine, she turned around pretty quickly. The devil must really want our district gone, because since we've gotten into the MTC, Elder Lee got a kidney stone, Sister Fengel got a couple really terrible things, Elder Tarry's heart was close to exploding (that may or may not be an exaggeration), and the rest of us got a cold. I haven't really been able to hear the past few days, but I haven't been so bad.

 

Sounds eventful? The best part is that when we were doing our service assignment and cleaning the main building last week, Sister Vande Merwe was using the archaic dinosaur vacuum and it the cord sponataneously combusted, bursting into flame and burned the carpet. The mark is still there.

 

But despite all that fun stuff and the bitter cold (we heard it's been around -6 F, is that true?), last week was such a great week for learning. Week two was definitely a week full of struggles and doubts, but week three was hope and faith. We had a great lesson by Brother Crandall that he dubbed "The Chocolate Chip Cookie Principle." He put it like this: our Father told us to only accept the perfect chocolate chip cookie. The doctrine of our message is the cookie, and the fundamentals are the chocolate chips. (Fundamentals are ways/tools we can teach our investigators and the ways they can learn for themselves. For example: Revelation through the Book of Mormon. We can help teach by helping them receive revelation in a lesson, but they can also use it for themselves later.) Sometimes we only give a cookie to investigators, sometimes just a plate of chocolate chips. Sometimes we give them a cookie with chocolate chips placed on top (throwing Fundamentals in at the very end with no understanding of why) and sometimes we give chocolate chips with a cookie on top (a lesson focused around prayer, for example, with doctrine thrown in at the end). I realized that we had been teaching our investigators with just chocolate chips.

 

Later that day in our lesson with Peter, I could feel the Spirit teaching. I was inspired to say things I would've never thought of, and at one point, both Sister Millet and I opened to the same scripture. One of the most powerful moments was when I recounted the First Vision; I can't even describe how amazing it felt. Another powerful moment was when Peter agreed to pray, and he did it in German. I could only understand a little bit, but I could feel the Spirit in the room. Later that night, we taught the investigator that we had a hard time with in the beginning. We took a completely different route than what I was expecting, and once again we felt the Spirit directing the lesson. I ended up sharing a personal story I all but forgot about, and Sister Millet shared a powerful scripture in Ether 12:27. Now, I know these investigators are our teachers acting or actually members, but it was incredible to see the Spirit teaching. It's the most incredible feeling in the world, and I'm so glad that God loves all of his children and uses the Spirit to tell them. I'm incredibly grateful for everything Heavenly Father has blessed me with, and I'm honored to be able to wear Jesus Christ's name by mine.

 

Once again, I'm going to say how grateful I am for my district. When a few people were out sick this week, we all felt incomplete. Being with all these Elders and Sisters has made me all the more grateful for God's infinite love and knowledge. He put us all together to learn and grow from each other, and I absolutely love all of them. Last night we were listening to Elder Johnson's take on us and it was hilarious. He created survival scenarios and decided who would live and why. My favorite was the Lord of the Flies situation. Apparently I would climb up a tree and live, but for some reason no one would ever see me again. And he gave no explanation as to why I would die on the Titanic, but I agreed with his verdict. Don't worry, we actually have great spiritual moments, too. 

Oh, by the way, I got my travel plans. My flight leaves SLC at 7:00 am (whoo!) and we have a layover in Detroit. Next week I'll be in Philadelphia! Can you believe it? The first week and a half felt like a month and a half, but after that time has sped up. I've been here for three weeks?! Crazy.

 

Well, we can finally go back to our residence hall, so I'll send you pictures later today, hopefully. Thanks for the letters and packages, and thanks for everyone's support. I love all of you, and I'm so grateful for everyone in my life. I'm honored and humbled to be serving the Lord. We watched the Joseph Smith movie on Sunday, and it just confirmed to me that our Heavenly Father loves us so much that he restored his full gospel to us so that we can return to Him.

 

Bright and early love,

Sister Singleton

Me, Sister Millet, Brother Nuila, and Brother Holmquist. We switched out our teachers last week, and the only one that's stayed is Brother Nuila.

Elder Rigby photobombing me. This is our temple walk on Sunday. It was super, super cold and I'm pretty sure I have an ear infection because of it. 

(left to right) Sister Vande Merwe, me, and Sister Fengel. Once again, it was super cold outside.

Elder Rigby, Elder Tarry, (zone leaders) and I. Elder Rigby makes convincing bird noises and weird sound effects.