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.