I can't believe it's finally my last letter here in the MTC! I've been here so long...1/12 of my mission already. I'm so pumped to finally be getting on a plane this week, just 4 more days! (I know countdowns are bad on the mission but we couldn't help it, we're too excited to get out there). Next time I email, a week from Monday probably, I'll be wearing a pareu in like the prettiest place in the world.
On Saturday I finally reached Alma in the French Book of Mormon, my goal before I left the MTC. My Tahitian has gotten a lot better, we can teach lessons now in Tahitian without any notes or anything, and understand most of what our investigators are saying. But it's definitely not super good, so hopefully my first area is French speaking so I have some more time to study Tahitian.
Elder Dayton has been having a lot of problems with his knee, so he prayed and felt like I should give him a blessing. So on Sunday I gave him a blessing, and the next day his knee was feeling good enough to play Spikeball! It's not 100%, but hopefully he'll be able to ride a bike without any problems now. The gift of healing is real. We also had a devotional by Chad Lewis (Dad will know who that is), and he conveyed to all of us the enthusiasm we should have for spreading the gospel and doing God's work. He really stressed the difference that we can make on the Lord's errand.
On Tuesday we had the opportunity to hear from Elder Christofferson. That was super cool to have an apostle come to our second to last devotional, and it was super cool. He taught us a few things, for one it's more important to be trusted than to be loved by the Lord. God loves everyone, but does he trust you to go out and do the work? Does he know that you will be obedient and follow the promptings that you receive? He also stressed our simplified purpose of teach repentance and baptize converts. he taught about how all aspects of the gospel revolve around repentance and Christ, and our investigators need to know that that is what our message is.
Yesterday we had in-field training, where we learned a lot about how to work with members, use key indicators, and find people to teach. We watched a video clip of one of Elder Bednar's talks, which really stood out to me. He told a story about how two missionaries came to his house one morning, and stayed for about an hour and a half, eating breakfast and playing with his young son. They then asked him for referrals, and Elder Bednar said that he would never give referrals to missionaries like them. He said that he knew that they didn't get up on time that morning, or do the studies as they were supposed to. He also told them that they had wasted an hour and half of the Lord's time that morning. He told them the kind of missionaries that he would give referrals to, and told them what they should've done with that visit instead. Three weeks later, the missionaries returned and followed his advice, and had a total different countenance about them. They then asked for referrals, and he said he would love to give referrals to missionaries like them. We are on the Lord's time, and there is no time to be wasting.
Well I'll talk to you all in a couple weeks, from TAHITI!
Ua here au ia outou!
Elder McQuiston
My batch sporting our BYU ties for the BYU/UTAH game
All of us with our Blue ties and Elder Bradshaw with his Red tie
All the Tahitian missionaries
Saying goodbye to all my buddies
Wearing the Pareu from Elder Tetauru
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