Elder Nathan Stagg: MTC Week 5

I am still loving the MTC just not as enthusiatically as before! After 5 weeks of doing the same things at the same places at the same time gets kind of humdrum! Luckily i have korean to keep me busy! I can't wait to get out to korea and start my field work! I look forward to that everyday! In 6 days the older group of Koreans leave to Korea and we become the senior district, out of three! Its crazy to think that were gonna be the ones the new districts ask questions too! I've seen the way the older districts have helped me with my Korean, its motivating me to do my best so I can help them! Its really cool to look back on my progress and see how far i have come! In just 5 short week ive learned the; Missionary purpose in Korean, the First Vision in Korean, I can bear my testimony in Korean, I can pray in Korean, I can write talks in Korean, I can teach simple lessons in Korean, I have learned 200+ vocab words, and i am currently half way through memorizing Moroni's promise (Moroni 10: 3-5) in Korean!! Its so cool to see how far i have come with the Korean language! The MTC is the same, food is greasy, language is hard, everyone's always tired, the spirit is always very strong here, people are always happy, and miracles happen everywhere!On Tuesday Sister cook talked to us and she said something that i really liked!! " We need to note the miracles! everyday at least one miracle happens in our lives! We need to be able to reconize them when they happen! We need to see Christ's hand in everything or anything! Everything is evidence that there is a loving god in heaven watching over us and helping us along the path to eternal happiness!" That is so true! If you look for it you can find them and it will make you more grateful for your heavenly father!

When I write about my week I usually use my journal to remember what I did each day buttttt this week I forgot to write in my journal soo I will try my best to remember what I did!

UMM Its starting to get cold here some days and other days its really hot! Its getting so much harder to wake up in the morning! On Thursday our teacher Sister Goodwin shared with us her testimony on the B.O.M and how while she was on her mission she realized the didn't have a 100% testimony of the B.O.M she then told us that if we don't have that strong of a testimony yet she encouraged us to follow Moroni's challenge and pray about and really ask god about it! Well i thought that was cool but didn't give much more thought about it till sunday! We watched ephraims rescue and it was so cool! The spirit was so strong there and it got me hyped for my mission and motivated me to make sure i was always worthy to be able confer a priesthood blessing when needed! I was reading in "Our search for happiness" and it talked about giving priesthood blessings and how its not us with the power to heal. But rather we are just a gateway for heavens power to pass through! We need to listen to the spirit in order to confer heavens blessings on to people! WE NEED TO BE HEAVENS HANDS! That night I went back to my dorm and was really feeling the spirit strong from the movie! And Elder Peacock shared a story with me! Elder Peacock lives in Ireland and was very very sick about a year before his mission. The doctors had no idea what was the matter with him but all they knew is that it was very bad and life threatening! They kept doing tests to try and figure out what it was that he had! The Doctors were going to start a very risky surgery and there was a small chance it could of killed him if it didn't go perfect! His parents were very worried and so was he. He asked his dad to give him a blessing before the surgery, so his dad asked the doctors to leave for a second and his dad and brother gave him a blessing, his dad told him that he would go into surgery and the doctors would quickly find out what was wrong and it would be a quick easy surgery! After the blessing Elder Peacock told me really felt the power of the blessing go through his body and he said he had never felt anything like it before! And sure enough the surgery was quick easy and the doctors were shocked it was so easy and smooth! It was such a cool story! I love elder peacock to death! and He told me that after my mission I have a free place to stay in Northern Ireland and New Zealand so thats pretty awesome! Anyways after that i went to my room and felt the need to start my prayer right then, which was weird because it was only 10:05 and i usually don't start my prayer till 10:30 at the earliest, but i listened to the spirit and started my prayer! About 5 minutes into my prayer I suddenly recalled what Sister Goodwin had told us 3 days prior to this, so I prayed about it and asked god to help me gain a stronger testimony! That lead to me feeling like i wasn't giving this mission my all and if i did that i would get a stronger testimony in doing so! So i told god that i was sorry and would give my all to him! anyways I prayed for about 50 minutes ( so thankfully i started earlier than usual!) I got up from that heart to heart with my heavenly father feeling really good! I felt him as if he were right there with me saying it would be ok and with time i will gain the testimony that i want, and he told me i would get the language down and would be a helpful tool in his hands as long as i tried my best! It was the first time i had ever prayed like that it was definitly a life changing moment! I am so grateful to be on my mission and have the chance to become so much closer to my father in heaven! By the time i get off my mission i will be 20.... so since im giving 2 years of my life to him at that point in my life that would have been 10% of my life! So my mission is basically like my tithing on my life! HAHA

On Monday we had gym time in the morning but Elder Vongsayo was feeling sick so we stayed and he slept, but instead of sleeping i felt like i should study "Our search for happiness" so I did that! I was reading about faith and it mentioned a scripture in the paragraph i was in. At the end of the scripture it showed where it was in the B.O.M I felt prompted to go there even though i had just read the scripture because it had it in the book. I went there anyways and felt like i should read the whole chapter! It was literally an answer to my prayer that I had the night before! Im so grateful to have a god in heaven that loves me enough to answer my questions! On monday I decided to go on an english fast for the whole day! It was hard but I did it! I only spake korean for the whole day! It felt so good and gave me hope! however towards the end i really wanted to speak english! haha anyways i love it here! Such a cool enviroment!

Quotes

"All trials can be turned into blessings" - Sister Mehr

"If we give it our all, then through the grace of god IT WILL BE ENOUGH!" -Sister Cook

"You can't start the next chapter of your life, if you keep re-reading the last one" -Unknown

Love you all

-Elder Stagg