Semana Dos!

Hola Hola!

This week was great! Our last week in home MTC which means that next week Tuesday I will get to meet my district in person. Our classes are going well, we have had to memorize many scriptures and passages already, in both Spanish and English, strangely I find it more difficult to memorize the English one but maybe it's because I focus more with the Spanish! We learned about the first lesson that we will teach as missionaries, The Restoration, and being someone who never took the missionary lessons, I never realized how little of it actually focuses on the restoration of the gospel. It mostly talks about God and Jesus Christ and their love for us, which I think is such an important thing for us to learn and to know. 

My district and the items we chose for our one-minute lessons! (only missing Elder Oborn)

This week Hermana Thomas and I were able to teach three lessons! Two of them went pretty well I think, especially considering the fact that we hadn't learned too many teaching skills by the time we taught the first two. The other lesson went not so well, but when we met with that person again, I think we made a better connection with her. That's been a big thing that they've emphasized to us, making connections with people. Sometimes missionaries try to convert and baptize people without making true connections with them and that's not an effective way to teach. One of my mottos these past two weeks has been, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." I don't remember who originally said that but it truly resonated with me and it's written several times in my journal.

It's been great to continue to make connections with my district. On Tuesday we had a devotional to watch and most of us watched it together and were left unsupervised afterwards. While we did get the chance to reflect on and discuss the things we noticed, we also got off track and started goofing off and having random discussions like normal young adults. And then we were kicked off the Zoom meeting so maybe that was a sign that we should be more focused. Oops. Meeting them on Tuesday will be so exciting! Several of you have asked, and yes, Hermana Thomas will be my companion when we are in person.

We've had many opportunities to practice teaching in our classes. Some of them have been in Spanish and others in English, but each time I've felt true inspiration from God through the Holy Spirit. One of the exercises we had to do was find something in our house and bring it to class and then we taught a one-minute lesson with it! Someone else would choose the item, the topic (one of the principles from lesson one in Preach My Gospel), and a third person would choose who would give the lesson. I chose my dad's pet corn Cornelius, not being aware of the purpose of the item we would bring. But Elder Johnson was the one who had to teach using Cornelius as an example and he did a wonderful job. My mind was blown at how he tied it together. 

This week I would like to share with you a verse from the Book of Mormon, which is another testament of Jesus Christ. It's in Mosiah chapter 2 verse 17, "And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God." In this, King Benjamin is talking to the people of Nephi. I love his address and encourage you to read it if you have the chance. But I love this verse because I truly feel closer to God when I am serving others. 

So my friends, I ask you: will you serve someone this week? It doesn't have to be big or important, but help someone in some way. And then tell me about it! I love to hear from you! (I've blind copied everyone on this email list so that we avoid the inevitable "reply all" so if you want to email me directly, my email is michelle.soh@missionary.org)

Love and prayers,

Hermana Soh