Where does the time go??

Hello friends and family!

 

I'm leaving the MTC in a week!!!

This week has gone by so fast! There is always way too much going on here to know what to tell you all. I feel like every time I get on to email, my mind always goes blank.

 

First of all, I'm so glad Kaitlyn's wedding was a hit! It was the talk of the week in almost every email. Tell her that I love her and that I was thinking about her all day on Friday! To be honest, I can't exactly remember what happened on Friday (it was too long ago...), but I was thinking about her all day!!

Sisters! (Sister Pettijohn barely peeking through!)

So this weekend I had the opportunity to study the Atonement briefly, to just sum up what I've learned and loved most about the Atonement since I've gotten to the MTC. Let me just tell you, WOW. If you haven't dived into the Atonement, do it. It's amazing. In D&C 122:8 (I think), it talks about Christ descending below all of us, to experience everything that you experience. Christ, the most perfect highest being, descended below all of us just to be able to know and be able to help us when we needed Him. How lucky are we? We get a million 2nd chances to come unto Him, have faith in Him, and to be clean. Why are we not doing it more? I finished Jacob this week (I got stuck on the allegory of the Olive Tree...for some reason I just could not understand that 10 page long chapter.), and I was reading in Jacob 6. I LOVE Jacob 6. Verse 2 talks about, well let me just quote it, "And the day that he shall set his hand again the second time to recover his people [the Restoration], is the day, yea, even the last time, that the servants of the Lord shall go forth in his power, to nourish and prune his vineyard; and after that the end soon cometh." What did I get out of this scripture? Um that we better get to work, we better focus and we HAVE to realize that we are running out of time. We need to be dilligent NOW. We need to serve others NOW. We need to talk to our friends about the gospel NOW, not wait until tomorrow. "If we fill our days with a bunch of tomorrow's, we'll have a lot empty yesterday's"-Author forgotten. In verse 5, it says "...cleave unto God as he cleaveth unto you. And while his arm of mercy is extended towards you in the light of the day, harden not your hearts" These scriptures just really hit me last week. There are days that I feel like I'm wasting, or moments at least, talking and being silly with our district. And I specifically know that I need to stop wasting the Lord's time. If the Lord was on the Earth today, he would be doing missionary work. Being here is an honor, being able to serve the Lord's children 24/7 for the next 16 1/2 months is such a privilege. I heard something cool this week as well, that we aren't really creating or helping others receive a testimony.  We are reminding them. We all chose to come here, we all chose to be on the Lord's side. Everyone on Earth had a testimony of our Savior, of the gospel of Christ. We just have to remind them, we have to turn on the light in their minds I guess you could say, to remind them that they know they have a Heavenly Father that loves and knows all of us, and that Jesus Christ died for us so that we could repent and strive to be clean when we return to our Father in Heaven. We have to make sure they know that we aren't calling people to repentance, but that repantance is a blessing. That Christ is allowing us to place our sins and wrong doings on Him so that we will be able to be clean and strive to be more like Christ. We have to remind them of their purpose, remind them of the promise of eternal families. The list goes on. Knowing and realizing all of that, helped me to have a stronger desire to at least bring the gospel to everyone. I hope that everyone can pray to have that same desire.

Trio!

 

Now life at the MTC, is crazy. We have a week left! I don't know if any of you remember that I've been in a trio the past 2 or 3 weeks. I haven't really felt like it, because Sister Rosdahl was put in our companionship and district just because she was sick and wasn't allowed to go to the Philippines yet. Well this past week was amazing. I felt the strength that we've been striving for in a trio. The three of us have learned so much from each other, and we just love Sister Rosdahl! And we had to say goodbye to her today. It was so hard. I feel like a piece of our companionship left, but what is the point of learning if we don't actually learn anything? She's pushed us to be our best, to try our hardest, and to love the gospel. That is our goal for our last week in the MTC. To go all out! Use our MTC time to our advantage and use each other to help with the language and to help strengthen our testimonies. I LOVE the MTC. I don't want to leave! I've been learning so much here, and I just love my teacher's and my district. But I know it's our time to go. We've all been preparing to teach the Filippino people, and now they're ready for us. We got our flight plans on Friday, we leave on Monday morning (I'm just barely missing Spencer by a few days!). And I'm really excited, but I'm really scared. I'm struggling to have faith that the Lord will help me with the language. I haven't had any really big miracle of the gift of tongues here, but I think that's good for me. I need to struggle with the language so that I can learn to rely on the Spirit. I just struggle to not focus on how poorly I say everything. Haha SYL-ing (Speak your language) has not been something we're really strong at...we get distracted. And speak half Cebuano/half English. So it's more like STL (speaking two languages). We're good at that!! I'm constantly saying, "Magsulay ko lisod kaayo sa SYL (I'm trying very hard to SYL) pero...dili do it maayo kaayo (but...I can't do it very well). BROKEN CEBUANO, is fun kaayo. Pero Cebuano/Cebuano, dili fun kaayo.

Flight plans! 

 

Sorry this email is so short. It took me forever to get all my thoughts together. Learning a language just confuses me all the time. I feel like I can't speak or think straight, even though I can't even speak this language. I think that's a good thing though, because it means I'm constantly thinking about how to say things in Cebuano.

 

I love you all!!!!!! Have an amazing week!! Remember that these emails just help me to share what I've learned this week. I don't want people to feel like I'm calling anyone out, but lets face it...if you feel that way, you should probably do something about it. We can all be better all the time!

 

Love, Sister Hogge

 

ps. The next time I email, I'll probably be in the Philippines!! Ah!!

My district with our flight plans! We're going to the Philippines!!!!