Hooray For The Holy Ghost!   

MTC - Week 4

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!! I love Thanksgiving! Gratitude is such a happy emotion and can help our problems seem small. I'm so grateful to be a missionary, every week I learn so much. 

This week two particularly awesome things happened, first of all, Elder Oaks came to the MTC! He gave a wonderful message on WHY we do missionary work, and HOW. He talked about how we really can't fully do the how if we don't know the why. That can be applied to every principle of the gospel, if we know the why the how becomes something we want to do. I know that we can learn the why through pray, study, and personal revelation. God lives and He will give answers to any of us that ask with sincere desire to know and the intention to act upon our answer. 

The second super awesome thing, Sisar P and I were teaching a lesson and our investigator asked a question that we did not understand at all. She repeated it, rephrased it, and finally threw her hands in the air. We were so sad that we couldn't help her. Sisar P then turned to me and whispered "bear testimony" so I did. I looked at our investigator, and in broken Finnish I bore testimony of the law of tithing. After our lesson, our investigator thanked us for answering her question so well, she thought we didn't even understand her. We were so confused because we didn't understand her, but it turns out that I answered her question in my testimony. That minun ystäväni (my friend) is the power of the Holy Ghost! "And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things." Moroni 10:5. The Spirit is what teaches our lessons, not us, and thank goodness for that! There's no way we could do what we do without the Holy Ghost to guide us. I am so grateful for the comfort and peace that comes through the knowledge that the Lord always has my back. If I can just open my mouth, He can provide the words.

I hope you all have a great week and awesome kiitospäivää!!'
Much Love, Sisar Mendenhall

L.A. and 18 Daughters 
MTC - Week 3

Terve!

Every week is so different and I learn so much, but this week was especially so.

Monday the Sister Finnishionaries (Sister Finnish Missionaries, aren't we so cute?) took a day trip to LA! Yes, I do mean Los Angeles, California. We needed to visit the Finnish Consulate so we could get our visas. We woke up at 2:30am, bussed to the airport, caught our flight at 7:30 am, and we were off in the the real world! It was great! We talked to so many people, shared our love, bore our testimonies of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, were bluntly told what others thought of us, and absolutely loved all of it! It was great to be out of the MTC and practice teaching people that we just met on the street. Some were really receptive and talked with us for a while, and those people made the trip worth it. Our taxi driver was awesome! He drives the missionaries that head to LA for visas and so he has heard a lot about the church. We asked to go walk around the LA temple, and he decided to come with us. He loves his family so much, and on the temple grounds is a beautiful statue of a family accompanied by a description of how the gospel blesses families. He was so excited, he took pictures, and he expressed how much he loved that experience. It was so great to be able to see his love for his family.

So when I said "18 daughters", I wasn't talking about someone we met, I was talking about my companion and I. This past Sunday we were assigned to be the Sister Training Leaders (STL) for our zone, meaning we are in charge of all of the sisters' well-being. A little scary to think about, but we are already loving the new work! Yesterday new sisters came to the MTC that will be serving in Hungary and we were able to show them around, answer questions, and just help them through their first day here. We have learned the importance of planning and scheduling, my goodness do we use our planners. Our sisters truly are so great, they make wanting to serve so easy. Most of the time this assignment entails simply helping them know they are loved, and helping them to release stress. This week I came across a great scripture about joy in Genesis 21:6, "And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me." The footnotes for this verse say that in Hebrew the word for "to laugh" also means "to rejoice". The Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ is such a happy message, and everyone could always use a little more joy. Oftentimes we are the most happy, when making others happy so it's like double blessings! We are happy and so is our neighbor! I encourage you all to do some small thing to include others in your laughter and rejoicing. When you do so, they will feel your love, and it really is the more the merrier.

These pictures are of the LA temple which is really super beautiful.

Have a great week everybody!!

Minä rakastan teitä!!

Sisar Mendenhall

Activation Energy   

MTC - Week 2

Terve! Mina rakastan teita!

Fun fact of the week, Elvish on Lord of the Rings was based off of Finnish! So to all of you that speak Elvish, I feel you.

This week has flown by! Seriously time must be the best at hide-and-go-seek because I do not know where it goes. Finnish is still coming along well. However, now that we know more grammar we realize how bad our grammar truly is. The Finn-speakers we practice with must have amazing problem-solving and quick-thinking skills! In Finnish you conjugate nouns as well as verbs and there are no prepositions, you add prepositions to the ends of words. That's why Finnish words are so long. In my last letter I'm pretty sure when I tried to say "I love you all" I said something like "You Me love". Mutta nyt mina voit sanoa mina rakastan teita! ("but now I can say I love you all!" That's the right grammar but I can't figure out the accent marks on this computer so it's still wrong.)

We love learning new words! At lunch we sit by Hungarian-bound missionaries who have been here four weeks more than us, so they speak their language much better than we speak ours. When they rattle off Hungarian we want to feel cool too, so we just start saying every word we know in Finnish using inflection to make it sound like sentences. One of the "Huns" figured it out and now he has a list of simple Finnish words to rattle off right back at us. But the neighboring Spanish table still thinks we're pretty cool!

During personal study this week I read 1 Nephi 10:6 which says, "Wherefore, all mankind were in a lost and fallen state, and ever would be save they should rely on this Redeemer." That scripture talks about how we all need Christ's Atonement in our lives so that we can become better and live with God again. When I read it, being a nerd, I immediately thought of changing states of matter (as in an element going from a solid to a liquid to a gas). In my head I imagined when a solid turns into a liquid to be like when we decide to follow Christ. We have new energy, determination, and different properties than we did before. But, if we want to keep changing states and turn into a gas (which is like becoming like Christ and enduring to the end), it takes a lot more energy to turn from a liquid into a gas than for a solid to turn into a liquid. Sometimes, we might think we will never have the required energy, we think there is just too much to do so we shouldn't even try. Let me tell you something awesome, you don't have to provide the energy yourself. "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." (Philippians 4:13) With Christ we are more capable than we can possibly imagine. So use the activation energy freely given to you by Christ's Atonement! It is possible to keep changing states! Literally everyday you can make yourself better. That's what the Atonement is about, it is "to make bad men good and good men better" (I can't remember who said that first, but my dad quotes it a lot!). And unlike a New Years resolution, this change can last for eternity. 

A HUGE thanks for all of the letters this week!! If you haven't seen the movie "The Best Two Years" go watch it. If you have, you know the scene where tons of letters come and it's all for one Elder? That was me:) Vanhin (Elder) Hyer had a stack of letters and went through them like, "Sisar Mendenhall!!! Sisar Mendenhall! Sisar Mendenhall. Sisar Mendenhall..." I loved every one! 

Oh my companion wanted to join choir, I am not a singer but I went with her. They asked me what my choir experience was and I thought back on the time that I was in the Sound of Music. So I replied, "I was in a Catholic Nun's Choir." That got some pretty great faces:)

I love you all and wish you all the best! Have a great week!

Rakkaus ja rukous!

Sisar Mendenhall

Halloween in the MTC:  dressing as Octuplets!

Finnish district braving the elements of Provo:

Drinking From a Fire Hydrant   

One Week Down...

Julia had an awesome send off to the MTC from her fabulous siblings...

She got her first companion...

And she met up with an old friend...

So far, so good!!!

And here is her first letter:

Terve! Hei! Mita kuuluu! (Hello! Hey! How are you doing?)

Before I went into the MTC Cathy explained to me that if your P-Day (preparation day) is on Thursday you don't get it until the next week. Well guess what, my p-day is Thursday! So that's why you all haven't heard anything from me yet. The MTC is fabulous! The first day felt at least 35 hours long but since then the time has really flown by, I can't believe I've been here over a week!

I love my companion, she's so great. Really, I'm not typing this because she is sitting right next to me (although she is), she's awesome. We're totally different, but that works so well. She is from Utah, never has left Utah, was home-schooled, and doesn't eat junk food. She does however like to run, and we both want to learn Finnish so bad! 

Here we have 16 hour days seven days a week. Actually, we are up at 5:45 and in bed by 10:30 six of those days, so that's 16 hr 45 min. You would think we are just burned out all the time, but we're not! We're smiling, we're having fun, we're studying, we are happy! It's amazing how much the Spirit is present here, if it wasn't, if we weren't on the Lord's errand, you can bet all 2100 teenagers here would be zombies. There are six in our district (4 Sisaret ja 2 Vanhinmat, 4Sisters and 2 Elders) and another Finnish district next door (2 Sisaret, ja 3 Vanhinmat). There are also a few Albanian districts, an Estonian district, and a Hungarian district in our zone. We are the "most difficult languages" zone. But our Branch President (our zone is our branch) likes to call us the "Wild and Ferocious Zone, Cha-Ching!" so we say that instead, it's less daunting. 

My very first day was exciting, I was given a massive industrial-strength yellow bag full of books on Finnish. I walked into the classroom and bam, the training started. Our teacher did not speak a word of English the entire day. (I'm really fast with a dictionary now.) By the end of the day we already knew simple sentences and small talk. The next day we studied a ton, and on the third day here we gave our first lesson entirely in Finnish. (Ok, in Finnish and mime/pictionary.) We were in there for about 35 minutes and I cannot believe how much we were already able to understand. The gift of tongues is so real, I know that the Lord is helping us all so much with this language! We have given three lessons since, and each is better than the last. For the fourth lesson my companion and I wrote down just a handful of words, no phrases. Oh man that lesson was so cool! We understood our investigator, and we understood each other!! The Spirit was so strong, we challenged her to follow Christ and be baptized and she said yes!! We know it was just a practice lesson and a fake investigator, but it felt so real. The Lord cares about all of us so much, even though it was a practice lesson that didn't matter to who we were teaching, it mattered to us. We left all calm and cool, really classy-like, but as soon as we shut the door we started jumping up and down and hugging while spinning, we were so excited!! The Spirit was so strong, the Lord helped us remember our Finnish, and we worked so well together. Of course our moment of glory had to end, our investigator then walked out and saw the spectacle. Note for future missionary work: when you leave a lesson all classy-like, get off her porch before you start acting like a buffoon. 

Ok so the subject of this refers to how we feel here at the MTC a lot of the time. There is so much information, so much to do, so much we need to learn. But it's ok. We know we will be able to get down what the Lord needs us to do. "Fear not I am with thee oh be not dismayed, for I am thy God and will still give thee aid...[I'll] cause thee to stand" A lot of the time we feel like we can't stand anymore, whether we can't stand something or are simply exhausted. We want to throw our hands in the air and let someone else deal with the problem. But I know that relying on Christ and trusting in the Lord, will give you the capability to do what you never thought you could. On the first night I looked out my window and saw a street that I have run on a million times. The idea popped into my head that my window was open, not far from the ground, and if I booked it I could be at Cathy's place in less than two minutes. I didn't feel like I could do what I am being asked. then I realized, I don't need to be able to do it all, because I know that I have the Lord to help me. We all have the Lord to help us.

Mina rakastan te! Kiitos for the letters, love and prayers! 

Oh also, dearelder.com is super great...

Sisar Mendenhall