Happy Leap Day! Feb. 29, 2012

Wow, so there's so much to write. I feel this way every night as I'm about to write in my journal - there are like a million things to say because so much happened but I never know where to start because the day felt like a week. But everything's going great!

Last night I attended my second Tuesday devotional. This time we were not late for choir practice, so we were able to sing in the choir. Which was wonderful, because we were singing "Come, Thou Found of Every Blessing." As we had rehearsal before the devotional, I noticed a man using the "dentist mirror" thing to check underneath the chairs on the floor. Due to the insight from Steven, I knew that meant we would be having a general authority for that evening's speaker. Then, just before the meeting as we were singing hymns, the director stood and told us that it was not appropriate in this setting for us to make noise if we were going to sing our favorite hymn or if our "favorite speaker" was announced, confirming my suspicion. Sure enough, as we were in the middle of one of our songs, the door opened and in walked Elder Holland. Without missing a beat in the song, all 2,000 of us missionaries stood, grinning because our favorite speaker had just entered. That was an exciting moment.

Elder Holland's talk was wonderful! He has such a passionate, loving style of speaking. I loved how he told us that "real life" is not something we will go back to after the mission, but that what we are engaged in right now is "Real Life" (emphasis on the capitals). He expressed to us how loved and admired we are as missionaries - the general authorities and the whole church are counting on us and praying for us. Then he said that with that admiration and trust, so much is expected of us. Numerous times he told us that we are apostolic (he emphasized the lowercase 'a') and that we are doing the same work he is. He admonished us to NEVER leave the Church, and that we must have at least one convert from our mission - ourselves. He emphasized the need to use the Book of Mormon more in teaching, and we had a really neat discussion about the first chapter of 1 Nephi. That chapter really is the prophetic story - a prophet prays, sees a vision, receives a book that brings the spirit, prophesies of the last days, and is rejected by the people. This is not just the story of Lehi, but of Joseph Smith, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Nephi - it is the story of prophets. He helped me realize that the first few chapters of the Book of Mormon focus so completely on revelation - if our investigators read and understand those chapters, they cannot disbelieve that God speaks to prophets. He went over by 15 minutes, but I think I can speak for most of us when I say that we would have loved to have listened to him longer. It was such an incredible blessing to listen to a prophet of God.

I got a letter from Steven this week, in which he told me about the 40-day English fast he and his companion did in the MTC. I read that part to my roommates, and we were all amazed that he was able to do that. As a result, Sister Busch (one of the other sisters in my district) and I decided that we are only going to speak Russian to each other until we leave the MTC. She had a Russian teacher for a few months before she came on her mission, so she is pretty good with the language and I've learned a lot from her. It's been exciting so far to try to figure out how to communicate in Russian with her. It's only been a day and a half, but I've already seen my Russian improve. Our companions and everyone else we've told about it think we're crazy, but I think it will be a really good experience.

I'm really loving the Russian language, and I'm continually amazed at how much we've been able to learn. I know the gift of tongues is real.

Sharisa