1.5 weeks left!

Holy dang time is flying! 2/17 my comp had to go to the byu health clinic so we got to ride in a car over there! that was way weird! but it reminded me of being in dallas for some reason last year at all star weekend. being on the outside world made me excited to leave for tonga haha. so throughout this email i'm going to add random scriptures and ideas that i was prompted to put in this email. read 2 nephi 3 carefully lots of good stuff there. in class on the 18th we picked apart the first 13 verses of the book of mormon if you look those 13 cover almost every gospel principle it was cool. this wasn't the best day i wan in a bad mood cause someone made me feel way stupid for asking a dumb question and we had to go to zone teaching and we were walking there and i told me comp i probably didn't have the spirit cause I was mad but once i got there right before we started teaching i prayed. prayed for forgivness for being mad and prayed for the spirit. The lesson went way way good and it was a neat experience to feel the spirit work through me. 2/19 Jacob 3:1 2/20/11 Jacob 4:8. The topic this day was enduring. I really thought about this. It's really simple. No matter our situation or how hard our lives are, all we are asked to do is keep the commandments. That's it. so if we take it day by day and just rely on the lord and keep his commandments our lives will be blessed. Jacob 5 lots of symbolism. Pray often, not just morning and night but whenever you need. God is always there to help you throughout the day. I challenge you to improve your prayers. Don't just casually pray or ask the lord but PLEAD with him to help you. Make it sincere. Pray every morning to endure the temptations of the day to have strength. I promise it will be easier if you do. Our fireside sunday was way cool. some people went and said their favorite hymn and we'd sing their favorite verse. I've been dying to sing army of helamen at one of these and we haven't yet and no one picked it. I was like what in the world. but then at the end we sang called to serve which we sing everytime but this time it was different. We started out singing soft and by the end we were standing and singing way loud. it was so cool! Then I got surprised he said at the end during the postlude music which is usually army of helamen they would put the lyrics up and whoever wanted to could sing but you could leave. So many people stayed to sing. only some left. it was sweet i love that song. It's by far my favorite. possibly ever of all time. and it really applies to me right now. Then we went to a movie of a devotional by uchtdorf from 2006 which is good. His wife is really funny! and so is he! It was a really good talk about a missionaries call. Another challenge. Something we do here. I challenge you to pick a christlike attribute each week and focus on that and work on it. If you are ever down or anything pray to god to have a better attitude. It works. Mosiah 2:24. 2/22 This day i did alot of scripture study. It was so cool! My knowledge of the Book of Mormon grew aton! If someone can find me a book of mormon timeline that is like folded into 6 and has pictures and covers the history i'd like that. My teacher had it and it helps alot i read the whole thing and it was awesome! Some way cool stories in that book which is the most true of all books. Then we had a devotional that night. The guy was funny. Elder kearson. He was from england and him and his wife did great on their talks. They covered alot of stuff. I liked it alot! Another thought i had. To those who read this before thier mission. Don't dread the MTC. I love it here. You learn so much if you allow yourself to. Listen to the talks. Take notes get all you can from them. They are a great help. It's not alot in your life you get to hear from a general authority twice a week. They are great. I have loved my time here. I will miss it. Oh. if someone will record the documentary between conference sessions that'd be cool for me to see when im back. A few of my buddies got interviewed and will be the ones on that documentary thing! I wanna see it. elder chandler, loftus and some others! Yesterday we got to host again. That was fun. i hosted a kid from provo going to netherlands. This week I really grew alot. The MTC is an amazing place. It's definitely sacred and set apart for missionary work. I love it here. I'm way thankful for all your love and support! I can't believe I'm in tonga in a week and a half! it's comin up quick! Wow. I'm way excited! Stinks for you all cause I'll be on the other side of heaven ;) haha teaching gods children this amazing message. If we just hearken to gods words through his mouth pieces, our lives will be alot smoother and we will be happy. I've been thinking alot about eternal life, how amazing that will be when we can all reunite in heaven. I love you all so much. The church is true. This gospel is true. I hope you all look up these scriptures. But before you do. Pray to have the spirit with you and have the things stick out to you like they do to me. Do this any time you read. And pray after you read. I love the scriptures and love them more and more as i read them. The people of tonga got something comin to them with our district. We have a great district and alot of amazing elders. Have fun all and be safe! `oku ou `ofa lahi kiate kimoutolu! (I love you all alot)

 

Love,

    Elder Rose

6 weeks!

I can't believe 6 weeks have come and gone! They are going so fast! So since the last time I wrote this is what's happened. 2-10-11 Went to the temple. It was great and all except the fact that the lady gave me pants that had a 28 waist and I'm a 30 it was really tight and made the experience very comfortable and enjoyable. I hope you all sence that there is no sarcasm whatsoever in that statement. 2/11/11 so We had a sub this morning and his name is brother krebs. He's the fijian teacher but he taught us this day. He taught us a lesson on staying focused. It was amazing. Our district went through a crazy change and everyone stayed on task and focused and it was jsut way good! then we started practicing contacting with eachother. It was way fun and made me excited to talk to everyone in tonga even though i'll have no idea what they say! 2/12/11 We had service and got it done in a half hour which is way fast so it was good cause then we took naps til class. After that we were extremely focused. We had a TRC That night so to prepare me and elder michael just went through what we would do at the TRC and taught a wall. It helped. after we started elder howell came in so we taught him. Helped alot. Then we taught our teacher which helped even more! It was really good! Then the TRC came and no volunteers showed up so we taught people in our district. It was really good! We SYL'd so much that day or speak your language. It felt way good! After TRC we had to plan out the next week as a class. I don't know why but some people make a big deal out of little things. It's just like come on man who cares. And there was just alot of contention while planning and it was dumb. After planning Elder michael asked if i could grab someone and give him a blessing. When we had prepared for trc earlier he hit his head pretty hard on the wall. He wasn't really feeling good and felt pretty woosy. So I grabbed Elder Trower he's 23 and one that I'm pretty close to and so he annointed and I sealed and gave the blessing. It was really cool and right after I got done he said he felt alot better which i thought was cool and Elder trower said it was a good blessing. So that made me feel pretty good! Then we went to gym and Elder hettig broke his shoe. Half of his sole fell off haha. Then as we left gym i look to my left and elder hettig is standing there being sung to by a guy looking extremely embarrassed. He is from new zealand and this guy found out and new a song from there so he sung it to him hahaha it was bad that guy was a little on the questionable side. 2/13/11 Sunday was good President connors told this story about how his kid didn't really have any friends and so he went to his school to surprise him and see why. He went to lunch with his sun and played soccer. when the kid went back to class he left but his son said thanks for coming dad. He said he heard thanks for saving me dad. Because after that he had alot of friends. On the way out to his car a distinct voice said to him. If you take care of mine. I'll take care of yours. I thought that was cool. He was talking about the holy ghost. Then he told us he was having shoulder surgery. Later our newly made district leader asked if we could do a group fast and if some people didn't want to do it that was fine. But yet again someone made a big deal out of nothing and said not everyone should have to do it but some were to shy to speak up that they didn't want to. Anyone would have if they didn't want to and it was just dumb. It made Elder Unga (DL) feel like crap and it was his first day. I thought it was a way good idea so i tried to reassure him and i think that helped. Then we had a fireside and heard some conversion stories that was good to hear. Then went to the legacy of kirtland movie. That was also really good. That place is where alot of revelation happened! 2/14/11 we fasted and it went well it felt good to fast for president connors. 2/15 this day was a lazy day for everyone. none of us got anything done. So we went down to the devotional and i was hoping to get something out of it. I got alot! It was so powerful. Almost like president hollands talk to us. T save time I will probably just send my notes to ken and have her post them or something. but he talked about 100 percent obedience and stuff it's hard to cover everything cause there was so much good in it! After devotionals we have district meeting where we all say something that stuck out to us and bare our testimony. and we have one of our branch presidency there. President Muir said something that really stuck out to me. He talked about how he used to run marathons. So ken lance and jenna listen up. He said how you carb load before you do the race and about mile 20 you just loose all that energy and you think how am i supposed to do 6 more miles? Well you dig deep within yourself and find the strength and faith to finish. You do the same when you are unmotivated on your mission. You dig deep and push through the hard times! Oh another thing and the devotional that was said that stuck out is: If you want more faith be 100% obedient and you will have more faith. YOu can't be 80 or 90 or 99% obedient. 100% obedience is the only way and that is how you will gain greater faith. How much faith do you want? My challenge is be 100% obedient because you will be blessed and your faith will grow and that is something we ALL need! Also this day we had zone teaching and We were preping to teach our progressing investigator which is elder Pau'u. As we were preparing We talked about some things we should cover. After i did that i felt like there was still something i needed to look over. So i prayed and looked over the rest of the lesson and commandments is what stuck out to me. Something i've never taught. But we got to zone teaching and we didn't get to teach pau'u. instead we taught elder tingy who acted as someone. Low and behold the thing he had questions about was commandments. I thought it was really sweet and a testimony builder to me of following the spirit. on 2/16 we got to finally host the new missionaries! It was really fun! I hosted someone from boise and moab! I really liked it! I hope we get to agian before I leave! Well Mike Mac you asked for a shout out so here it is! Hope all is well and still haven't heard back from you! I better soon! Cant wait for you to get out on your mish and join me in Tonga! Well everyone I love you all and hope all is well! Have a good week!


Love,
Elder Rose

Halfway done at the MTC

Days blend together here. It's crazy! I can't keep days striaght and yesterday seems like a week ago and a week ago seems like yesterday! Time is flying!! 2/3/11 So I got dear johned by a kid in my district who got me back cause I dear johned him. I took a picture of the letter I got. I hope you can read it. We went to the temple and did initiatories and those were good! I felt the spirt pretty strong! Later that night I had my 1 on 1 with my teacher brother yates. It's just like an interview to see how everything is going I had felt like I had leveled off learning the language and wasnt' moving as fast as I had been and felt I wasn't as focused. I told him that and he set a goal with me to set more specific goals and stay focused and to think the harder I work the more my family is blessed. So this past week I worked way hard and focused and did all i could. i feel really accomplished and feel I really improved my language. and I stayed focused and heard good news from some so it was sweet! 2/4/11 I didn't really feel the best and thought about just staying in the dorm to recoup and such. I decided not to cause I didn't want to miss stuff so I went to class and just prayed I'd get better. Within a little while I felt pretty good and learned alot that day so i'm glad I didn't miss. 2/5 we had a TRC which I think i told you were practice teaching things. We taught the whole first lesson in tongan. It was hard and short but hey we did it! I'm learning how to better structure my sentences and such so it's going good! We have to teach all lessons from here on out in tongan. kinda hard but I can do it. 2/6/11 we went on our temple walk which was fun. I have a picture I want to take and I tried it out but didn't work how I wanted to because it was cloudy. Darn clouds. I saw the coppermines by dads house from the temple and I missed being there for a minute but thought it was cool I could see those from where I was. After the devotional that night ( i had to hold my legs straight out the last 45 minutes so i could stay awake for it) we watched the testaments. It was good! It hit me pretty hard. It's hard to watch christ go through what he did. He did so much for us and I need to be more appreciative of that and thank him more often. Also in church that day we had testimony meeting. It was cool, all the new people were going up and my heart was pounding so hard to get up there and bear my testimony. so i was the first in my district to do so. I said all the new people were showing us up so someone who'd been there over a month needed to step up! It was a cool meeting to hear everyones testimony. That day I had read 2 nephi 9. Such a sweet chapter! It talks about so much and its a perfect scripture to teach the 2nd lesson. So challenge this week is for you all to read that chapter and really think about it and try to get whatever you can out of it. 2/7 we played a vocab game in class and me and my comp were on different teams and we have to guess a word and he was up and he messed up this word and how he said it was so funny. Everyone started laughing way hard and for some reason he didn't like me laughing or something but he got way upset and I hadn't noticed. After class he talked to me about it and said I humiliated him and he was furious. I didn't mean at all to make him mad i just thought it was funny. But we talked about it and got over it and were good now. actually by the 9th I felt way close to him. Me and him talk about alot of stuff and it's just good now. Were good friends. But that's what obsticles are in our life for right? to grow closer and learn and be better. Me and him studied the language together on the 9th and we did way good it was sweet. we learned alot! alright so now time for things I need: I need some polyester ties. Silk are no bueno in Tonga so polyester is what's needed. I've got 3 of them so I only need a couple more. it seems like i write so much more than i do. This email is really short haha I'll try to add more to it. My companion had to be someone elses companion from 11-330 one day cause that guys companion got surgery. So I had to be in a threesome with elder hettig and martinez. I'm doing my laundry now it's great. I can't believe how much my testimony has grown since i've been here! It's so sweet! and I've also seen so many blessings! If we are obedient the lord blesses us so much! I know i'm where I'm supposed to be and doing the right thing. Only 4 weeks or like 27 days and I'll be in tonga! I know this gospel is true and Joseph smith restored this gospel and christ suffered for us. I know being obedient to the lord brings blessings. I know the lord cares and loves each of us and if it's our desire to do whats right and we align our will with gods we will be truely happy. I've seen in even in just the last month i've been here. I love the lord and I'm so lucky to have this opportunity to serve him. I know there is no other place I need to be right now. I learn and grow every day and know i will continue to while i'm here. I love you all and love hearing from you. Please keep up the letters. I'm doin my best to keep up with you all! Please be safe and I'll do my best to do the same! Til next week! Ofa lahi atu!

                                 Love,

                                     Elder Rose.

Holy Moley 1 Month?

Hello! Wow in 2 days I'll have been gone a month! Thats crazy! I can't believe that. It's flying by! Only 23 months left! If all go that fast I'll be home before I know it! Anywho, so after I emailed last thursday I got a haircut. It isn't to bad that lady did decent! Quite the exciting event i know. you were all dying to know that. So I'm doing laundry right now and it made me remember to tell you when I'm in tonga I'll be taking my clothes into the shower with me and washing them by hand. So if i do that when i get home don't think i'm wierd, just what i've been doing for 2 years. So also last thursday we were on our way to the temple, i'm in my newly dry cleaned suit and you know not clumsy ol me, i go and have to slip on some grass that happened to be striaght mud under it and so i get mud all over me. It was great! But i didn't want to miss out on the temple so I still went, muddy and all! :) it was great I just waited for it to dry so I didn't have to dry clean it again and I just wiped it off. Looks good as new! Though it looked like i crapped my pants but it's okay! So that's 2 great temple experiences so far while i've been here haha. That night we had a lesson from brother payne about the spirit. it was really cool. he drew a power plant with power lines connected to it and then those went to a house. The power plant was the spirit, the power lines were us, and the house was an investigator, and he talked about like insulators and conductors of electricity and like insulators are getting distracted and not being obedient and such and conductors of the spirit were reading scriptures and studying. and we have to carry the spirit to investigators because that's the only way they'll be converted. it was really cool. On the 28 we did zone teaching. I taught elder estill. we were basically just rushing the lesson which was on the plan of salvation. Half way through he said time out and was like what do you know about who i'm being and was just like just let the spirit guide you and don't worry about rushing the lesson. so the second half of the lesson went really well we asked questions and taught to needs, which is exactly what we were supposed to do! then we taught pau'u and he's been our pretend progressing investigator and it was our second visit and we didn't really teach just asked questions and helped him with whatever he needed. it was really cool. then the 29 we got to teach him again and the first time we taught him we got half way through the lesson and stopped right before the atonement then this third time the spirit really guided us. we were asking him how things were going and he said he went to sacrament with his friend and didn't really understand it so we explained that to him and it was crazy how it tied in with exactly where we left off! It was so cool. and it made me actually realize why we do go to church every sunday and not just once a year. None of us are perfect and we sin every week no matter what so we go to take the sacrament to be forgiven and to expand our knowledge of the church and to renew the convenants we made after we got baptized. just something that hit me hard! on the 30. I learn alot about what i know when I teach. I teach myself things sometimes, when that happens i know it's the spirit working through me. it's a neat thing to experience. This week I've been teaching alot and studying the atonement, Pau'u told this story of this guy who had an affair and his wife had one because he did but they never divorced and they worked through it and stayed married and totally repented and they actually became temple workers and he died not to long after. I thought that was a cool story because you know were he went after he died when not long before he wouldn't have gone there. I thought it was pretty sweet. Later that day i was reading ch 18 of first nephi and the last verses 23-25 it remined me of our journey to heaven and once we get there we create our own worlds and when like the liahona stopped working that symbolized the great apostasy and when the liahona worked again that's cause there was a prophet just like in our history. elder martinez was like woah that's cool symbolization and called that i'll be a prophet haha. That'd be so crazy i can't imagine that! Dad finally got a job! I thought that was cool! Seein blessings of me going on a mission! Looked for a long time then i leave and he finds one not long after! Sweet! I'm happy for you dad! I watched the Joseph smith movie again and it's so cool. the thing that stuck out to me this time is when he said "the lord calls us in our weakness, but qualifies us for the work." I realized how true that is. Then we went for a temple walk and I took aton of pictures! On the 31 I talked with elder estill who is kinda quiet but we talked forever and he talked about how the last year has changed his life hes 22 and now on a mission he wasn't going to go on one and got in a huge wreck awhile ago and that kinda changed his life and he decided to go on a mission and he's been way blessed since. it's a neat story. sorry not alot of time to go into details. something I need is AIRBORNE. I'm getting sick just like everyone else here is and I wash my hands constantly and always use the sanitizer but oh well! On the 1st i taught a pretending athiest. it was kinda cool. I thought we did a pretty good job by teaching by the spirit on that one. yesterday I read my pariarchal blessing and i haven't since before i came. Alot stuck out to me about how much of a healer i am and a teacher. hopefully I can teach many people effectively and heal them in anyway. I got my blessing copied shrunk and lamenated so I'll send my real one back. Last night I talked to elder hettig who is from new zealand and how he went to austrialia to work. Woww they make good money there. Had a few ideas going in my head about that. We'll see how everything works out. Well how are you all doing? I like hearing from you! SOrry some of you havent got letters in a bit. I'm backed up a little bit but i'll try to catch up! I can't wait to go to tonga and teach this gospel though I have lots of studying to do! I know this is the true church and the work i'm doing is the greatest there is because I'll be saving souls and the worth of souls is great in the sight of god. I love you all and cant' wait to hear from you soon! Ofa lahi atu!!

 

Elder Rose