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Thursday, March 28, 2013

Tengo 12 dias mas!!

HOLA!!!

This week has been suuuper good. I have been very focused but at the same time having tons of fun. Ok so I know I have talked about my teacher in the past 2 emails...but I am going to again :) We had a devotional on Tuesday night about the concept of Doctrince, Principle, and Applications and the way the guy explained it was kind of hard to follow and pretty confusing and I guarantee hardly anyone at the MTC knew what he was talking about. But our district did! Cause we have an awesome teacher who been teaching us that same concept for the last 4 weeks and has drilled it into our heads! At first it was super confusing, but now I love using it in my teaching. If you don't know what it is Elder Bednar wrote a book about it called Increased Learning or something like that. You should read it! It is a way to study and teach. But after the devotional we talked for an hour and a half in our room about how blessed we were to have the teachers that we have. I feel like my understanding of the gospel has doubled just through learning by this method. I understand more of exactly why things happened, what it means to me, and how I need to apply it in my life. As I understand the Doctrine more, it leaves me with more freedom to govern myself in my own life. It is awesome, and I highly recommend you learning about it. But we were talking about how now we have a great responsibility in our missions to teach this to the missionaries around us, and to help change the culture of missionaries so that we can be more effective teachers. It isn't a coincidence I was put with my particular district, at this time, with this teacher, so now I need to take what I have learned and apply it and teach it to others.
I only have 12 days left! Ah! We should get our travel plans today of when we leave and when we will be able to call and stuff. Oh and they just changed the rules church wide that you are now allowed to email anyone! So anyone who wants to get a hold of me by email now is allowed to! But DearElder is still the way to go cause we still only have a half hour to email people and getting emails in the middle of the day is awesome!
Me and Hermana Naatjes had a really cool experience teaching our investigator yesterday. The spirit was super strong. In some devotional, someone said to "let the spirit be the senior companion" so that was what we tried to do, and it was AWESOME! It made me really excited to go and have those experiences for real in the field. Our investigator shared some very personal stories and we were able to fit the gospel exactly to his life, and in spanish too! I don't think I stopped smiling for like an hour afterwards.
My team is coming to Utah! I keep telling everyone that I am super excited even though I won't be able to see you guys. Tell everyone that I love them and to have a great Easter and the Woods and a great lunch tomorrow at my house! I'm super jealous! But don't worry, I am really glad I am here right now and I am having an amazing time learning how to teach the gospel.
This week really has been super good, maybe one of the best yet here in the MTC. I am growing a ton personally and I am beginning to be able to not worry too much about Spanish and I am just letting it come. Oh and we are hearing rumors that an apostle might come on Sunday for Easter! We'll see if it is true, but that would be awesome! I love you all and hope you are doing super well! I love this gospel and I know without a doubt that it is true. The Spirit is the most powerful and important thing anyone can have in their life and I want to be able to share this with the people in California. I'm super excited!
Les Amo mucho,
Hermana Marci Johnson

p.s. I ran into Brock Teichert (or something like that) I didn't know he was going to Rome too! And Mary is home! Wahoo! And laura got her call!!! That is so exciting! You and Emily are going to be able to speak Chinese to each other! so cool.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Lo Clavé!

Hola familia y amigos!

Cada día en la CCM, improvo mí español! Me encanta aprendiendo una idoma nueva! No me gusta que necesito pensar sobre todas las palabras que digo, pero un día podré hablar con fluencia!

That actually took me a while to write..so I am still not that good, but one day! I have found myself starting to talk more and more in spanish, but I am also finding myself saying the wrong things more and more. Haha, its all part of the process. I love watching my investigators faces as they try to figure out what I am saying, its hilarious!! Oh and we are getting pretty good at translated phrases we use in English into Spanish, that don't make any sense in Spanish. Like: Lo clavé! (I nailed it!) and we also abbreviate a bunch of words too, like: Soler means usually, but we say El Suel for The usu (usually cut in half...I don´t know how you would write that) And we also say Tots Nuncs Jáms for totally nunca jámas (totally never ever) haha, its pretty fun. You got to make the MTC fun somehow! And yes, we are 19 years old girls :)

This week was a pretty good week, not much new happened. The schedule in the CCM is the same everyday so it is hard to remember what happened and when it happened. Seriously, the time flies. I only have 2 more p days here after this one! But this week I learned a lot about the spirit. Hermano Avila taught us a CRAZY lesson! I wish everyone in the world could have heard it. But it was all about the doctrine of the Atonement and how it is connected to EVERYTHING in the church. He is a really good teacher and is super straight forward so sometimes I actually feel really overwhelmed after his lessons. But we learned that for you to have the fulness of the spirit in your life you must receive all of the ordinances and be living the covenants that you made with him. He drilled this into us because for you to be able to use the atonment in your life you MUST be baptized, because that is when you get the gift of the Holy Ghost. Crazy, so if I really do love my investigators and the people around them I will see that the reason they need to get baptized is so that they can have the blessings of the Atonement in their lives so it is possible for them to be perfected and live with God again. I can´t even explain how mind blowing and cool the lesson was. But he told us to study the talk given by D. Todd Christofferson titled the Power of Covenants, and it is really good too. So I challenge you to study it too!

Courtney King came into the MTC yesterday! I haven´t seen her yet but I saw her the night before at the devotional because her mom was the pianist that day so that was cool. Oh and ChaiDee left for Germany! I need to write her and tell her that I know another person going to Alpine, Germany. That is crazy that Beth is going there!! And Nicole is going on a mission, what?! I was so excited to see her!

On Tuesday the district above us is going to leave and then we will be the oldest district. Weird, I feel like I just got here, but I also feel like I´ve been here for 3 years. My district is so awesome though. We had a district testimony meeting that was sooo awesome Tuesday night after the devotional. The spirit was so strong and people shared some really cool stories. Our district leader, Elder Kroeger, has the strongest most powerful testimony I have ever heard. I love it when he bears his testimony. Its funny cause in Sunday meetings, our district dominates in the zone meetings. The zone leaders are in our district, our district leader, Hermana Naatjes is the coordinating sister, I am the music coordinater, and Hermana McKay just got released as the coordinating sister. So more than half our district goes to sunday meetings and there are only 3 other people besides our district that are in there. Its pretty funny. I don´t even know if that made sense for those who have not been to the MTC, but oh well :)

Well I love you all and I am doing great here in the CCM!
Les amo mucho,
Hermana Marci Johnson

Thursday, March 14, 2013

It's Already P-Day!!

HOLA! This week flew by. All of sudden it was Sunday again, and then all of a sudden it was Thursday. The days just kind of mix together, probably cause we do the same thing every day. :) No but this week has been really good. We got a new teacher this week and he actually served a mission with Braden Stohlton! He was our very first investigator, and then he became our teacher! It was kind of intimidating at first actually, mostly because he is a really intimidating guy. The first lesson with him no one talked. It was kind of awkward, I felt like I was the only one who would say anything because I was sick of the silence. But I absolutely love him now! He is SUCH a good teacher. He is super direct and just tells you what's up, which is scary sometimes, but he is awesome. He just barely got off his mission like 6 weeks ago so he always has tons of stories for us. But the thing that he has taught me the most this week is the importance of studying, and studying the right way. I think it was Elder Holland who said something like this: You tell me how you spent the hours of 6:30-10:00 in the morning, and I will tell you how your day will go, how your week will go, how your transfer will go, how your mission will go, and how your life will go. That really stuck to me. Even though I've heard it before, I didn't realize how much you study on your mission, and how important it was. You really need to learn to love it and learn how to do it effectively. After a couple lessons with Hermano Avila I really started studying better and it has been awesome!! I love it! It's nice because if I want to be a good missionary than all I have to do is be the best studier I can be and that is something I can control.
Another awesome thing I learned this week was about Doctrines, Principles, and Applications. The Doctrine of something is why you need it or why it is important. The Principle is what it is. And the Application is how you do it. We have been studying this in depth for every topic that is in Preach my Gospel. (well not every topic yet) But through studying this and using this method to teach, it makes your lessons and your understanding of the gospel so much better! It's awesome.
I love the spirit that is here. I had a really cool experience this week where our district leader was supposed to give us a talk on baptism and was looking on LDS.org for a talk to help him out when he felt really strongly like he should change the topic and go with this other talk. Then in the lesson I felt super impressed to tell the story about how I gave those Book of Mormons to my team. At the end of the lesson one of the Hermanas was crying and told us this huge story about her brother and how this lesson hit her really hard that she need to give him a Book of Mormon with her testimony in it. It was so cool. The spirit was so strong and there was just such a unity in the room. I love the spirit and the power that it has! It's awesome being here because you can feel it all the time!
The MTC has been great. I am learning a ton everyday, and my spanish is improving all the time. It is crazy how fast you can grow in so little time. I have only been here for 2 weeks and I know WAY more spanish than I did when I came in. Oh yeah, funny story. So one of the Elders in my District was teaching a lesson and during it he said this: "Yo se que Jesucristo pegado por sus pescados." Which means, "I know that Jesus Christ punched for your fishes." HAHA! What he meant to say was, "Yo se que Jesucristo pagado por sus pecados." Which means, "I know that Jesus Christ payed for your sins."  Haha, stuff like that happens all the time.
Pues, Hasta Luego! Les amo much!
Hermana Johnson

Thursday, March 7, 2013

HOLA FAMILIA!!



Hola!
Sorry, I forgot to give you my email. It is marci.johnson@myldsmail.net (just in case you couldn't figure it out, haha)

I am doing really well here at the MTC, or the CCM in spanish. I LOVE my district and zone. We have so much fun together. I love my companion, Hermana Naatjes (Notches). She is from Minnesota and has such a strong testimony. She kind of reminds me of Emily and Laura Peterson. I love teaching with her though because she always has a strong testimony to bear. Well, this is how it works here at the CCM. You come in on Wednesday, meet everybody, and then go to a bunch of workshops to introduce you to the CCM. Then on Thursday you study all morning, go to a bunch more workshops, and then you find out that you are teaching your first investigator the next morning. At this point, I still don't know ANY spanish. But, you spend the rest of the night on Thursday preparing to teach a lesson in Spanish the next morning. I was sooo nervous. I am in an intermediate district, but everyone else in my district knows WAY more spanish than me. I was super intimidated at first. But I did it. I taught an investigator in Spanish without knowing the language. And we still continue to teach everyday, and I still don't really know the language. Even though it was frustrating at first and really nerve racking, I love the way they do it. I am here at the CCM to learn how to teach the gospel to the spanish people in Carlsbad, I'm not here to learn Spanish. And they get that point across from the very first day. I'm sure our investigator gets a kick out of the things I say though, but it is almost always conjugated wrong, or just completely wrong, haha.

I have seen sooooo many people that I know here. A ton of people from PG, a ton of people from soccer clubs, and just a lot of other random people. I think my district thinks I'm crazy cause I always leave randomly cause I see somebody else I know and I want to say hi to them. I see Anita and Taryn a lot. Well actually Taryn is gone now, but I saw her a lot when she was here. Luckily the spanish people and the german people eat together usually so I see ChaiDee almost every meal. I love it! I don't get to talk to her a ton, because we have NO time, but I always see her and I got to talk to her a couple times.
Hey Brian, I heard that President Hinckley in a conference talk one time promised that if you read the Book of Mormon out loud in the language you are trying to learn, by the time you finished it you would be fluent in the language. So read the Book of Mormon before you go! I know you are already trying to, but in case you didn't know about this promise, I thought I'd let you know. :)

Well, I am doing great. One week down! Everyone says that once you hit your first p-day, the time flies after that. Which is good, cause even though I am loving it, it feels like I've been here for a year. My spanish has already improved a ton, and I am really excited to see how much I continue to improve. Before I left everyone was asking me how I was going to do with going to bed at 10:30 and waking up at 6:30, well....I'm still working on being good at that. :) I don't think our room has actually been asleep at 10:30 once since we have gotten here. We usually go to bed at like 11 or 12...but we are getting better. It is just kind of hard to stop talking sometimes when there are 6 girls in one room! But don't worry, we still get up at 6:30 everyday! Well, my time is up, but I hope everything is going good at home! I love you and I miss you!

~Hermana Marci Johnson