Letter From February 26th

lets get ready to huummmmmbbblllllllllee I'm just going to get right into it this week, bc its been crazy. I can't believe I've only been here a week, it's felt like a month. I can't even remember what I did last week. But at the same time when I was seeing all the new missionaries I couldn't believe it was already Wednesday. Time is a weird illusion here. Also there is a surprising amount of people here that I know! Which is cool. A lot are girls from soccer which makes me happy and miss soccer, but I always call them by their first names. The whole concept of not knowing each others first names is still weird to me. This week I tried to break into a vending machine with a clothes hanger to redeem some string cheese that was rightfully mine. Ok for whatever reason the vending machines never give you change back so I end up spending a dollar on 50¢ string cheese.. Idk why I keep buying it, every time I put a dollar in the machine I always think to myself "maybe this time" and it never is.. Anyways so I bought my string cheese, and not only did I get no change back but MY CHEESE DIDN'T EVEN FALL DOWN. Classic vending machine story. And like all vending machine stories I tried to shake it and run into it to get it to fall down. But of course nothing worked. So I got one of my dear sisters wire clothes hangers and bent it in shape to try and stick it up the machine to try and knock it down. And then I realized that i should also probably take all the string cheeses that the machine owed me. Because like, I paid for them.. I just didn't get them. In the end I didn't get them. #1 because the hanger wasn't long enough to reach them and #2 bc i was starting to draw a crowd and my dear comp Sister Anderson was begging me to stop bc I wasn't acting very ladylike or Christlike.. Which, was true. So I gave up. I feel like if I hadn't had the thought to snag the extra string cheeses God would have blessed me with my one rightful and lawful string cheese. But I got to greedy so he didn't help me out at all and I ended up having to pay two dollars for a 50cent string cheese. It's ironic but in the long run if ur greedy u will pay the price. Or maybe this was a lesson about getting too cocky? Idk. At the MTC anything can be a spiritual lesson. I have heard this quote about a million times this week but maybe some of you haven't; obedience brings blessings, but exact obedience brings miracles. The day that obedience became a quest instead of an irritant was the day I gained my power Another example of how righteous my sisters are is about dear sis Heiner who is from Ogden and is going to NY, NY. Sister Heiner has to take sleeping pills to fall asleep at night and they make her crazy. She has fallen out of her top bunk, yelled at us in the middle of the night, and can even hold out conversations with us. But perhaps the most incredible of these phenomenons is the one night when she not only bore her testimony on the atonement to some dream investigator but also taught them the majority of the first lesson all while asleep. It's amazing. She can LITERALLY do this in her sleep. Anyways the sisters here are so great that I never know what to teach them for relief society. They already know pretty much everything, where as I feel like I am just starting to understand most things. Something I have been trying to do is memorize a new scripture everyday. Which has been good considering I didn't know any when I got here. If only I had started doing this before I got here....(do you hear me Trevor..do ur scripture mastery) with that being said I still can't believe how much I have learned. The chastisements I have revived this week from Heavenly Father have been frequent and numerous. I already knew I was going to need his help but I don't think I realized how much. I have to rely completely on him if I hope to be successful as his servant. A lot of times we will be teaching an investigator and I'll have a thought to take the lesson in a certain direction but I won't do it bc I know a question will come up that I don't know how to answer. There is a quote in PMG in the section about listening to the spirit that says "trust in the spirit to put in your heart and your mind what to teach". This is probably my biggest struggle. I know I need to trust and rely more on the Lord and my companion that they aren't going to leave me out to dry it is just hard sometimes. I am working on having better faith. Which is funny bc a lot of times that is what investigators are struggling with and u can't really force someone to have faith. Hopefully I figure it out in a couple days before I go!! I am nervous bc I still have so far to go but excited to finally get out there in the real field!! Also I leave on Monday so I'll probably call sometime between 4-8 am. As a district one of our goals is to complain less, and if we do want to complain we have to say 3 good things about what we are complaining about. So with that being said, #1 I will finally get to know what the world looks like at 4 in the morning bc I have never been awake that early before. #2 I get to shower before everyone else and #3 I get to have some alone time bc no one else will be awake that early I love you!! Sister Madsen