Week Dos!

Hola familia!!!

I've have now officially been in the MTC for over a week! And it's been amazing. I don't have a whole lot of time, but I am on a better computer so this time I won't be as worried about what I'm typing. However, there's like, super high security on these computers so i don't think that i can email you pictures right now. I'll just print some of my favorites out in the bookstore and then send them to you the old fashioned way :) Hopefully y'all got the other "old fashioned" letter that I sent as well. i don't know how long it takes for the snail mail to get out to Houston, but i don't think that it's that long.

 I thought it would be a good idea for me to tell y'all a little bit about my schedule. Well, pretty much every day is the same, just in a different order. i get up at 6:30 and have 30 mintues to get ready before i head to the classroom for 'personal study time'. then we have breakfast at 7:30 until 8:00. Then my day varies. Pretty much every day I have class and TALL (which is a language learning program on the computer - you can listen to native speakers, practice speaking, learn vocab, phrases and grammar, etc) and lunch and dinner and an hour or so of personal language study, companion study, and planning sessions. Tuesdays we have devotionals and workshops, on my p-day (today) i get to do laundry and GO TO THE TEMPLE!! WHICH I AM SO EXCITED TO GO THIS AFTERNOON!! Our whole district is going together. We get to go to the temple every week for about 2.5 hours.  I'm excited.  Back to my day- I usually have gym time for about an hour (like I mentioned) and then personal time is always at the end of the day. It's from 9:15 to 10:15. That's where we can journal, brush our teeth, shower, etc. Then at 10:15 we have quite time. which is exactly what it sounds. and then lights out a 10:30! I know, sounds exciting doesn't it? We don't ever get to go outside hardly because our branch president said that he wants our district, personal, and language studies to be either in the classroom or on the same floor as our classroom. which makes us all a little stir crazy by 9:15 at night. But we are lasting ok so far. Only 8 more weeks to go!!

hmmm now what do I want to say with my remaining 17 minutes...there's so much! First off, I really am grateful for the dear elders, and I’m sorry if i don't reply to all of the questions that are asked of me in them. It's just nice to hear y'alls voices and know that everything is going ok. The Spanish is going well and it's getting to the point where when I’m taking notes in devotionals or at church that i can't remember the english word for things. let alone how to spell it, so my journal entries and notes are totally in spanglish, which i never thought would happen AND I gave the closing prayer in sacrament meeting on Sunday IN SPANISH. yeah, i'm pretty mucha  pro at praying in Spanish, even with my limited vocabulary...OH My investigator! Mom asked about our investigator Oscar....well he's not real. OK haha he is, but the actual person is a member of the church who volunteers to work here at the mtc. they come here during specified times and are taught by each one of the companionships in the district separately, as if he (or she) were our own personal investigator. The man who we were teaching isn't really Oscar. HOWEVER Oscar is a real person. His story and life and circumstances are real. So it's like teaching a real person by proxy (hopefully that makes sense) Between Friday and today we taught Oscar 3 times, all in espanol! It can be super frustrated to be having the spirit prompting you know what to say, and guiding you as to know what Oscar needs to hear and not have the vocabulary and the skill level to be able to say it yet. However, we made some really good progress with him, and definitely had the spirit with us in our lessons. however, we were so excited to teach him again Friday (like we assumed) and invite him to be baptized, but we found out that we are done with him and will receive 2 new investigators on Monday! ah! 2 at one time! I know we can do it but man, it's going to be a challenge. Your thought and prayers are definitely appreciated for our companionship.

h, also the branch president asked me to be the coordinating sister for our zone. This means, basically, that I'm the zone leader for the sisters. I go to branch council, special coordinating sister meetings (which is like where we discuss RA type things for the floors we live on) and I got to like, leadership meetings. Basically I watch out for all of the sisters in our zone, which, isn't too bad at the moment since it's just mi companeras and I. Yup. There's only 3 hermanas in our whole branch/zone. it's crazy sometimes, but we keep those elders in line. Also, if we ever get new sisters in the zone (which we didn't this week) then I help orient them and check up on them, help them get settled, tell them the rules, and am like their 'big sister' or 'counselor' for their first few days here. We didn't have one of those, which totally makes me a little upset. We finally got the hang of all the rules and learned everything we needed to, but it would have been nice to have a sister who told us all of those things the first night here. We made fools of ourselves a few times, but we've pretty much adjusted now.

WELL my time is coutning down and i want to make sure it doesn't boot me off before i send this. I love you ALL and i love my savior. Next letter, I will have to tell you about the AWESOME devotional ELDER HOLLAND gave this past Tuesday. He truly is called of God. It was an amazing experience. I can't believe I didn't get a chance to tell y'all about it in the email. will do soon, I promise :)

PAZ Y MUCHAS BESOS

Hermana Shannon Hensley :)

This is Dad,
Translation time again. I don't think there is much in here to translate but if anyone reading would like an explaination of anything she says just ask.

She talked about a Branch/Zone.

A Branch is what we call a church congregation.  So when she talks about her Branch she is talking about the congregation she goes to on Sunday.

A Zone is a group missionaries. The Church has over 50,000 or more missionaries serving at any given time.  Their work is so different from the general population that they are organized into groups that are based on location.  The basic organization is a District.  A group of Districts make up a Zone.  A group of zones make up a Mission.

These numbers are just customary and there are no hard fast rules but this gives you an idea of the meaning of the words Shannon is using.

A District has between two to six companionships or from 4 to 12 missionaries.
A Zone is two to 6 Districts or 24 to 72 missionaries.
A Mission is normally made up of between 300 and 350 missionaries and the mission president organizes the Districts and Zones.

Each District has a leader or District Leader or slang will be just a DL.
Each Zone has a leader or ZL.
A mission will have a few missionaries that serve in the Mission President's office.  They are called Assistants to the President or AP.  And if you really get slang they are called APE's
And normally all of these leadership positions are held by the young men.

With all of that being said Shannon said that when she was at Church on Sunday her Bishop, who acts like a mission president for missionaries in the MTC, asked her to be a leader for all the sisters in her Zone.  So in effect she is the ZL for the girls.

She also asked for us to pray for her to help learn the language and lessons.