Week 4

Hola!! Yet another crazy awesome week in the life of Hermana Pfeil! Wednesday night we welcomed another new district into our zone! Way fun and sadly they're our last new district to welcome before we take off. AHHH 2 weeks people! Time is flying! We hit our one month this Friday!! Feels good to have a month under our belts but also super sad because we only have 17 or 23 months left to serve the Lord as missionaries. I don't want it to end! Thursday I went to listen to Hermana McGlinchy, Schoof, and Monk (we're all in the same zone and entered the MTC on the same day so we're super close!!) practice a musical number they're performing this Sunday. Hermana McGlinchy on piano, Schoff on flute (she played in the BYU marching band last year), and Monk singing. SO beautiful! They're singing "Where Can I Turn For Peace?" in English and Spanish...or should I say WE'RE singing!! Yes, I got dragged into it. I can picture the shock on my mom's face right now while reading this haha. Let's just say singing is not one of my talents. But hey we sound pretty good when we practice so I guess the Lord really does bless His missionaries! In the afternoon we were able to teach Diana again. It went so well! We talked about the Book of Mormon. Oh how I love it! If you're not currently reading the Book of Mormon I would encourage everyone to start today! It is literally God's words on paper. So amazing! It holds the answer to any questions we may have. Why wouldn't you read it?! After dinner we had a sub, Hermana Cottrell, teach us about teaching less actives. It was an amazing lesson. So important to invite others to come unto Christ like it says in our missionary purpose, not just non-members. Friday during personal study I read the story of the brother of Jared found in Ether. I LOVE THAT STORY!! So so so powerful! One of my favorites! We taught Diana about the Plan of Salvation in the afternoon. The spirit was sooo strong! It helped me to realize just how powerful His plan is and how much joy it brings into my life. I wish everyone had a knowledge of the Plan of Salvation!! All Diana kept saying is, "This is magnificent! I hope this is true!" we promised her that with sincere prayer, she can come to know it's true. I pray she does!! At dinner I received a love letter from a secret admirer. lol what?! It was super funny. Totally a joke. I'll try to remember to attach a photo of it. Come to find out, it's from an Elder going to Canada speaking Mandarin Chinese. Muy loco! After dinner we taught Carlos about the Plan of Salvation as well. I just love this church so much! We are so blessed to know of His plan!! Every night we go around the dorms saying goodnight to the Hermanas in our zone and on Friday night we walked into one of the rooms and found out that one of the Hermanas had almost just died from an allergy attack! She had been gasping for air and they had had to call the emergency medics!! So scary!! It was way crazy but she's alive so esta bien. On Saturday Hermano Simonson taught us in the afternoon and he cracks Hermana McGlinchy and I up! He isn't afraid to sass us back so it's way funny! Hermana McGlinchy got super sick in the afternoon and asked for a blessing. It was a really cool experience to see our district be able to give her a blessing of healing. I love the priesthood and being surrounded by so many worthy priesthood holders! At night we had ciclo (personal study) and watched a Mormon message about Esther. It talked about courage and how courage doesn't mean not being afraid, it means standing up for something you believe in even when you are afraid. I hope to always have courage like Esther despite fears I may have. We also found out that one of the Elders in our zone's mom passed away of cancer. He was able to fly back this week to go to the funeral and should be home tomorrow. So sad. Love you mom. Love you family. Love you friends. Mucho amor!! Sunday was AMAZING!! Oh how I love this gospel and the Sabbath day! It was our fast and testimony meeting and I felt so full of joy and the spirit the whole time I thought I might explode! So amazing!! So many beautiful things were said and stories were shared. I felt extremely blessed to be surrounded by the Elders and Hermanas in my zone! During Relief Society we watched a Mormon message comparing the commandments to a shark barrier. You should try to find it. Way awesome! The commandments are such a blessing in all of our lives!! During our temple walk I got to see some of my BYU besties. LOVE YOU ALL!! And everyone I didn't get the chance to see... I LOVE YOU TOO!!! Our devotional was about repentance and it was amazing! The speakers son had Down Syndrome and he ran around the room passing the microphone to different Elders/Hermanas to answer his dad's questions. It was so cute and made me miss my brother Ray. The devotional started changing my somewhat negative connotation about repentance to a positive one. We should constantly be wanting to repent because it means we'll constantly be turning towards Christ. How amazing! How lucky we are that our Heavenly Father gives us unlimited chances to repent for the hundreds of mistakes we make. No one is perfect but we can become perfected in Christ. So grateful for our Savior and His unending love and sacrifice for each of us! Monday morning we practiced our musical number again. I'm pretty excited. Nervous but excited! My district also helped me write a letter back to my secret admirer lol so funny. After lunch we found out that one of the Elders in our district has to go home because he tore his ACL. SO SAD!!! We will all miss Elder Austin so so much but he has been such a great example to us. He has handled this whole situation with such grace and it truly has testified to us the power of the Lord's timing. So grateful for my knowledge that He has a plan for each of us. If you have your patriarchal blessing I would encourage all of you to read it often. Start tonight! Such comfort in those words! I also started to feel really sick in the afternoon. We taught Carlos for the last time and my head hurt so bad I started talking in circles. At one point I sounded so crazy that we all started laughing. Even Hermano Simonson (Carlos) couldn't keep it together. During the lesson Hermana McGlinchy accidentally said blessing in English instead of bendicion and he started laughing at her. So funny!! After dinner I felt so sick that I had my district give me a priesthood blessing and went straight to bed. I had Elder Austin give one of the blessings and I felt so happy that he was able to give one last blessing as a missionary in our district before he left. When we got back to the dorms I basically slept from right after dinner Monday night to 9:30 Tuesday morning. No bueno. Yesterday I still felt really sick all afternoon but I'm doing a lot better now! In the afternoon we tried to do member TRC with natives through skype but our member wasn't online so we sent a 3 minute gospel message to her instead. All of the Elders seemed pretty shaken up afterwards haha. Native speakers are a whole lot more difficult than our teachers. We also got to teach Diana again which was awesome! We taught about the Word of Wisdom and how it blesses our lives. At one point she said she had goosebumps! So cool!! I pray she comes to know this gospel is true and that God knows and loves her personally. After dinner we went to choir practice. Our choir director is so awesome. He teaches seminary for a living and always has such amazing spiritual insights that connect to the music we sing. We sang "Precious Savior, Dear Redeemer" and it was broadcasted to EVERY MTC around the world because ELDER DAVID A. BEDNAR CAME TO SPEAK TO US!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHH I WAS IN THE SAME ROOM AS A PROPHET OF GOD!!!!!!  I felt the chills just typing that! It was so amazing!!! He talked to us about making General Conference the walk and talk of our lives every six months. It really drove home the point to me of how important it is to constantly study the words of not only prophets of old but also our modern day prophets. So amazing we have living prophets on the earth today!! You could feel the power He holds throughout the room. So so amazing!!! At district review we all said goodbye to Elder Austin. He said our final prayer together as a district and during the prayer he thanked God for the problems we have. Such a powerful moment for me. Inflicted blessings, gotta love them. This morning we went to the temple as a district, it was great. Hermana McGlinchy and I also moved into super nice dorms! We enlisted the help of three Elders from our district and it was sooo funny!! They were amazed by all the stuff we have and complained the whole time about how they were losing their manhood, what drama queens. Haha they crack me up! It's been a crazy week but crazy awesome. Thank you to all of you who have been emailing and writing me! It brings me such joy hearing about all of your lives!! Mucho amor! Pictures will hopefully be coming soon!

Hermana Pfeil

p.s. This is my DearElder information...I know some of you are having trouble sending me letters.

Hermana Elaine Pfeil

Provo MTC Mission

Unit #150 Departure Date: Oct 25

Mission Code: CA-SFER

2005 North 900 East

Provo UT 84604-1793

p.p.s. To any of you who are reading these emails and considering going on a mission, I would encourage you to pray about it. There's no need to be nervous. God qualifies those He calls. Missions are amazing. You can do it!