Hello everybody! The MTC is just great. We learn SO much every single day. It is like trying to drink water out of a fire hydrant. There is wayyy too much to take it. The spirit is sooo strong every single minute that you are focusing. I love it. I can honestly feel myself being taught by the spirit, and I can feel myself every day becoming more and more prepared for the real mission field.
Most of the time we have here is either class time, or personal/companion study time. The classes are great, and I feel like I am learning an unbelievable amount through my study time. I am pretty much reading straight through the BOM, and it is so different and great reading it with the unmeasureable amount of influence from the Holy Ghost. You get so much more out of it if you have your purpose in mind.
Thanksgiving was fantastic. Elder Holland came and spoke to all the missionaries, and it was amazing! We were pretty close. Me and Elder Nash get reserved seating for all the meetings and devotionals because he is an international missionary. Its great. He said something that I thought was really cool...He said if you are always striving to do the Lord's work in the Lord's way, then there are litterally no limits to what can happen. Anything is possible. Just think about it! It is so true. We are devoting every personal and earthly thing we have here to the Lord, so why in the world would he not work miricles all the time for us? I know without a doubt that if you show the Lord that you are striving to serve him with everything you have, then there are NO limits. None at all. I am so glad that I figured this out so soon and understand it so well. I think it will make my mission be so much better.
On an unhappy note, we had Elder Tippetts from out district go home late last week. He just left. We could tell he was definately struggling with the idea of being a missionary, but it was still sad to see him leave. We almost had another Elder in our district go home with him, but me and my companion talked to him and commited him to stay, and he is doing a lot better now. He'll be fine if he always focuses on his purpose as a missionary.
Elder Nash and I are pretty much unstopable. I prayed so so much to have a good companion while I was here, and Elder Nash is an answer to all my prayers. He wants to work so hard, and so do I. We are both leaders for our whole district, and we teach amazingly well together. We have both figured out how to teach with the spirit so so early in our missions, and we can both bring it in whenever we feel like we need to. It is so great. Even teaching other missionaries is such a great experience.
OH! I almost forgot. Yesterday I had one of the coolest experiences of my life. It was probably the strongest I have felt the spirit, ever.....So here at the MTC you have something called the TRC. Which stands for Teaching Resource Center. We do it once a week, every Monday. They have volunters that come and pretend to be real investigators. They tell us that most are active LDS members just giving of their time, but occasionally they get less-active or non-members that come there to be taught. We all thought that it probably never happens that way, because it would just be too much hastle to go through. So yesterday we had a TRC, and we thought we were going to be teaching this lady again named Kate Barlow. The first time we met with her we just discussed prayer and how God loves her as an individual. We commited her to pray for God's love and fore peace. So we went to the TRC, knocked on the door, expecting Kate to answer, and guess what? Kate didn't answer. It was a NON-MEMBER kid from my high school that graduated a year earlier than me. WOAH. Yeah. Wasn't expecting that. He didn't act like he recognized me, so we went in and were kinda confused at first, and then I just started the into to the first lesson which is on the restoration and Joseph Smith and the basics of our religion. I was freaking out because I knew that this wasn't practise anymore, this was a REAL missionary lesson! I was praying so ridiculously hard that it would go well. I knew we needed to spirit with us or we were done for. We went on to teach about how God the Father loves us all as individuals, and how we can feel his love if we ask to feel it. We continued to tell the story of the First Vision, and the spirit was stronger than I have ever felt in my whole life. As I described when God visited Joseph Smith, it was unbelievable. I wasn't saying words from me, I was literally saying words that were being put into my mouth. The kid we were teaching started crying because the spirit was so strong, and he took is SO well!!!! It was the greatest experience EVER to actually teach someone that I knew. It was absolutely amazing. He told us that after our lesson and the experience we had that he could not deny the truth of what we taught and testified of. He told us that he had a meeting with the missionaries, but they had to cancel, so they sent him to the MTC to be taught by missionaries in training. It was such a miricle that I had that opportunity to teach a REAL lesson being a missionary less than two weeks. I can't even describe the amazingness of what happened. The spirit was so ridiculously strong, it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. He was crying all through the closing prayer as well. It was soo cool. I am a real missionary! Haha, and after the lesson we were walking back and I told Elder Nash all about everything, and he was freaking out with me, it was great. So that was absolutely amazing.
I love you all, and miss you so much. I will have more than 30 minutes of computer time once I am in Canada. This is my last P-Day from the MTC, so make sure when anybody replies to my letters this week, they wait to send it until they have my Canadian apartment address.
Love you all!
Elder Porter
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