Week 2 (more like 1.5) in the Missionary Training Center

Hello again everyone!

    This week was my second week in the MTC (though I did start last Wednesday). This week I spent most of the time learning the first 3 lessons that missionaries teach to investigators. We would outline the principles taught in them and practice teaching them to our fellow missionaries. The principles in these lessons contain the gospel principles any person should know to understand the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the real world, these lessons and principles can be taught in almost any order and are tailored to the wants of an investigator.

    Another new part of my training was participating in TRC's. These are opportunities to teach "investigators" in a very real-world situation. Investigators is in air quotes because while the MTC says that most TRC "investigators" are church members but some are real investigators, however, the truth is that they are all church members. They had me fooled because the people you teach are very convincing investigators and have complex backgrounds behind why they are taking lessons from the missionaries.

    My companion and I had two lessons this week and they both went well. We had prepared outlines for both lessons but found both times that we almost never used them. The first time our outline was so far off from what the investigator had questions about that it was basically useless. That first lesson my companion Elder Adams did an awesome job. He shared principles and stories that directly answered the questions. In this lesson, I learned more fully that Elder Adams will be able to be an excellent missionary in the field. In the second lesson, I did much more talking and the discussion went rather well. In the end, the investigator was excited to have more appointments.

    Language study was helpful and challenging this week. We finally met our regular teacher Sister Royster and her lessons are interesting. For the first lesson, she only talked in Portuguese and it scared everyone in the district because we had no idea what she was saying. Fortunately, in the next lesson, she spoke in English except to share our new content. Friday was interesting because we practiced praying with people from Brazil. Initially, it was intimidating, and while I rarely understood what they said, they did compliment our pronunciation and abilities thus far. It is clear I need to practice listening and understanding what others are saying. This Tuesday we move to classes only being taught in Portuguese which feels very aggressive but I know if I can learn to better understand others it will go well.