Yet another week come and gone!

This week wasn't crazy eventful or anything (but come to think of it, my schedule at the MTC is pretty much the same thing each week...) but it was still good!  The district of missionaries older than us (we always called them older just because they had been at the MTC longer, even though they were really about our ages for my batch of missionaries) departed for 한국 (Korea) Monday morning very early.  They had to get up at 2:30ish I think...That's early!  But we had a lot of good last moments together with the branch.  They all had 'memory books' that we signed and wrote notes in.  And they signed ours too! (How precious right??)  The night before they left, we inherited a lot of stuff from them.  Things like: a box full of popcorn packages, a Christmas tree, a bunch of Book of Mormon pictures, etc, etc...Basically a gold mine of stuff they inherited/couldn't fit in their suitcases.

On Sunday night, our devotional speaker was T.C. Christensen.  He is a big cinematographer guy behind a lot of the church films that we all have seen (17 Miracles, Testaments, Ephraim's Rescue, Life of a Stonecutter, etc...).  So for his talk, he would show us a clip from one of the movies and talk about the history behind it and why they added it and just neat stuff about all of that.  Something that he really emphasized on was how important journals are.  There are so many facts about things in history (like the pioneer treks) that we just don't know much about at all because hardly anyone recorded those things.  So remember, journals are more important than you realize!

Our Tuesday night devotional we got to hear from Elder Ellis and his family.  And I happened to know them from past experience (of living in the same ward as the oldest child my entire life....no biggy) so I made sure to sit up close.  It was pretty weird to see Darrell and Joy Park at the MTC just a few rows up from me!  They all gave good and different thoughts and messages about missionary work.  I feel like each person I talked to had a different Ellis child's remarks stand out to them the most.  It was definitely a unique format for a devotional; having each kid give remarks, and then hearing from the general authority and his wife.  But it was great!  The Spirit was strong and there seemed to me like there was a major focus on obedience and working our hardest.  Sister Ellis told us: "Don't cheat yourself by just giving part." And Elder Ellis added onto that later by saying: "When you're completely exhausted at the end of your mission, your mission president can help you on the plane and then you can rest up; but while you're out, give your mission everything you've got."

My district got to help with hosting the new missionaries again this week. We were assigned to help with the traffic, but they only needed 8 of us so I helped with the actual hosting again.  This week we had a new crew of Korean missionaries going to the Daejeon and Busan missions which was pretty exciting!  And so I was hoping to get some of them as my hosted missionaries and guess who I got?!?  I had 2 missionaries who I asked where they were going to serve and told me, "I'm going to South......K........Carolina.  And...UH!  Not that there is anything wrong with that mission at all, it's a great mission!  Just after looking forward to meeting someone that might be going to my mission and being my companion later it was a tiny let-down. But I had to make sure to not let that show like that!

Overall we've had a fantastic week and are just all doing our best to be great missionaries and to get a lot of work done!  Love all of you!