Week 4

Hello all,
Another week has been survived at the MTC. The lack of outside-edness is starting to wear on me though. Some days when I see the sun I feel like in Monte Cristo seeing the sun for the first time in forever, or a cute little puppy that gets locked in a cage and is rarely let out to play outside. That being said, I'm quite the happy child when I do get to see the sunshine. Sometimes I just stare at it.
Scottish word of the day: Numpty- it means idiot/stupid
Zone word of our life: "Inadequate". Someone told the elders to stop saying stupid or retarded, so now you hear at least 5 times a day "Elder, stop being inadequate!" Or whatever.
District fun: I believe I told you about how Brother Newman has us play rock paper scissors lizard spock. Well, the elders and I decided to make our own version of this game and now play babusha, cat, pigeon. It is pretty hilarious and makes me laugh every time we do it.
Friday was a day of fours. Elder Newmann had us study four hours of grammar straight and so then I decided to run 40 minutes straight on my tiny little track. It was actually a pretty good run.
Saturday I learned that the food in Latvia is actually really good. They do like tea of all sorts though, and tend to get offended if you have some. Kirstin definitely should have been called to this mission. They also have a whole entire row dedicated to honey in the grocery stores. I am quite excited for this. It will be a nice change to MTC food (which is slowly growing on most of us....well, kind of).
Sunday we as a zone (Elder Burr, Lynch, and myself) had a companionship inventory. It was really good. They expressed how they thought that Brother Newman is sometimes inadequate in the way he treats me compared to the elders so that made me feel better about life because it was bothering me. We also had a complain-a-thon about the Armenians (those missionaries learning the Armenian language) who can be...inadequate.
Anywho, on to important things. Sister Clayton (husband in the 70) came and spoke to us in Relief Society. She gave a really great lesson/talk about how we are writing our own life stories. She told us that we should go back and erase all the bad parts, see challenges as opportunities, write others in as co-heroes, as well as to be a "certain woman" in our story. Every day is a new page. She told a cute story of a girl going into kindergarten who on being told to pick her favorite colored crayon and write her name. She wouldn't do it because there wasn't a pink crayon! Sister Clayton counseled us to just pick another color and start drawing a picture. She promised us that it will be the right color for us (even if it isn't what we thought was our favorite).
I sat by Brother and Sister Smith at lunch. It was fun sitting by them because they were telling all sorts of stories about Sister Smith's (who is a missionary going to Armenia) grandpa (the couple is related to the missionary). Sister Smith the younger's grandpa once bombed some pigs accidentally!
Today I gave the "Sunday School" lesson on virtue. It went extremely well. I was a bit nervous at first because some other districts joined us as well as Brother Smith. We all learned a lot about virtue and how it really is just all Christ-like attributes and should be our moral values. We looked at the last chapter of Proverbs and found over 30 characteristics of someone with virtue.
Homework for you all: Watch the latest Mormon Message which I believe is called Don't look back. It is really funny and inspiring. We really do need to remember that our future will be better than our past and taht we can choose to change.
I was forgotten by the sisters on Monday. It used to really bother me, but now it is getting more humorous. Someone forgets me at least once a week, so it is now my game to guess who and when. They forgot to pick me up for breakfast. We had a great large group meeting today. It was by the man who basically invented key indicators and doubled the amount of baptisms while he was a mission president in Mexico. He told us that good missionaries believe that they can baptize and that the Lord wouldn't put you somewhere if there weren't people to baptize. It reminds me of the 4 minute mile. No one thought it could be done so no one did it. Then someone believed in themself, prepared, were obedient to their schedule, had the capacity, believed and then did it. After that tons of people broke the 4 minute mile. We cannot let people pop our belief balloons (as he did with real balloons which left some sisters screaming). As missionaries we shouldn't prepare people for the telestial or terrestrial kingdom.
Sister Priddis is no longer sick and back in class with us as of Tuesday! She wasn't the only surprise on Tuesday. ELDER HOLLAND CAME!! He was incredible and had me just crying freely. Instead of trying to summarize his hour of speaking, I'm just going to make a copy of my notes and hope you can figure it out. This will be one of those talks that we as missionaries will look back on and say THAT changed my life. He talked about our lives changing forever and how we cannot fall away or it will break his heart. PMG was made to convert missionaries. In closing he told the story of the disciple Peter who finally left his nets to feed God's sheep forever. We should do the same.
Also on Tuesday I set two gym records. Sister Bailey decided that the records were pretty weak sauce and that we were going to go around trying to break them until we each had at least one. We both ended up with 2 new records set each. Sister Bailey in the bench press (for reps of lifting 50 pounds) and her incredible 7:30 wall sit. I broke the free throw (ha ha) record as well as the sit up record. My abs are still sore.
Wednesday I taught 3 pretend investigators about the plan of salvation in Latvian. By myself. It went really well! They were really nice and the Lord helped me to be able to testify and remember the things that I had prepared.
I love you so much. You are in my prayers. Tell Grandpa 'hi' for me.

Love,
Mari