Happy Friday from the MTC

Happy Friday!

     I am doing really well. The more I learn and speak and feel and grow every day, the more badly I want to go into the field. But I understand that the MTC is essential, so I'm just doing all I can here for now. Sleep is good, especially since we left Erastus and came to LeGrand, the mattresses here don't have springs that stab your shoulders at night which is fanTASTIC. 

     Remember that sister from Samoa, Sister Ameto, that I told you about? She's going to the Marshall Islands, but since she's the only sister in her district, she is a "solo missionary" and has no companion. She used to room with the Samoan sisters, but since they left for the field on Sunday, she is rooming with me and Sister Gordhamer! It's been really fun, she's really giggly and crazy, but it adds even more sunshine to our residence and we love her.

     Sister Gordhamer is still incredible, in fact, she gets better every day. I feel like we're both mature enough to understand and respect the other's thoughts and opinions and quirks. Yesterday during personal study, we decided to check out the instruments you can rent here and mess around. She's told me before that she plays cello and that she almost went to BYU for it, but it was so competitive that she didn't, which is kinda sad but I understand completely. Well, they only have cellos, violas, violins, flutes, and pianos there, so she got a cello and I chose the piano. I started playing some hymns as Sister Gordhamer was warming up. Then out of nowhere she starts playing and sounds like  Steven Sharp Nelson (cellist from Piano Guys)!!!! I am no where near a John Schmidt (pianist from Piano Guys), so I sounded like a 3rd grader playing with her. That made me feel a little less than talented, but it was fun, and I loved hearing her play. (If only a saxophone was available, maybe I'd have felt a bit better haha)

       There are definitely moments when I get discouraged about learning the language. Brother Marino, one of our teachers who is native to Singapore, was teaching last week and had us practice taking turns, in front of everyone, being his "companion" and teaching parts of the first lesson to and "investigator" dalam Bahasa Melayu. When he called me up, I was supposed to explain a few things about the great apostasy, which I really was not super confident in yet. I stumbled on words and had to keep asking, "Macam mana sebut ___?" (how do you say___?). I got through it okay and when I sat back down, one elder said, "Bagus!" (Good) and I just said, "Eh, thanks." and he said, "Hey, don't look so glum, you did great!" That comment, whether he knew it or not, was an answer to a prayer somewhere in my heart. It made me feel better and from then on, I became determined to practice vocab more and practice teaching lessons with my comp. We came up with a goal to study diligently for at least exactly one hour every day, praying that we will learn quickly and receive the gift of tongues. I know we'll be blessed for our efforts. Other times when I begin to feel down about the language, I think back to all that the Lord has already taught me: a ton of vocab, prayer, testifying, our missionary purpose, the first vision, and the entire 1st lesson. No WAY I could do that alone in 3 weeks. The gift of tongues is real.

      I've been able to run a decent amount, though not every day. We like to go out to the field in front of the temple, but sometimes it's too hot to run, so we play one-on-one soccer or something. Sister Gordhamer is so kind and deals with running up that hill at least twice a week, which is far more than I could have asked for in a companion. I respect her gym time wishes, too, so we don't always run but I'm so thankful when we do. If we go to the gym, I run all I want on the indoor track, which feel amazing. I have prayerfully made a goal with Heavenly Father to eat things that will not make my stomach feel bad and to exercise well everyday so I'll be prepared for the demands of biking/walking in Singapore. Yesterday, no one was on the indoor track at all, so I got to sprint to my hearts content! That was such a blessing, I felt so good:')

      Keep up the emails during the week, it's nice to get a couple of updates before P-Day on Friday (the day Rachel gets to do laundry, email, etc). Sorry that I have not been sending back physical letters, especially to Grandma and Grandpa.  I feel terrible for not even sending one. Each one I read makes me so happy. I also appreciate every package and picture and snack and love sent in each one. Everyone has been so fantastic!

       So, some updatos dalam di MTC mingu hari (from the MTC this week)...

- We got to learn from Brother Marino about bathrooms in Malaysia. He and Sister Fonbuena were the teachers, but besides her, Sister Gordhamer, and I, the rest are elders. You can only imagine how the conversation went with a bunch of 18 year old, fresh-out-of-high-school boys went. It was hilarious, though, and I honestly love having fun being weird with our district. Each one of them is awesome in their own way, I honestly just love them so much. I can see us all someday being like the sons of Mosiah, seeing each other after our missions as people of God and rejoicing. I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY.

- I saw Ben (Rachel's cousin serving a mission at the same time) the DAY before he left!! As soon as we made eye contact, we both said, "picture!" and stopped to take one. He looked so excited, I'm praying that everything has gone well so far and Spain is treating him well.

- For dad: our teacher told us the other day that the word for woman is "wanita." I thought, NO WAY. That's hilarious!! (If you are an Andy Griffith fan, you'll get this reference.)

- All of the old missionaries (the ones that had been here 3 weeks when we came in) have left. So on Wednsday this week, we received the new intake, and we're the "old kids."  Originally, our zone consisted of the Malaysian, Indonesian, Marseilles, Karabatis (sp?), Tongan, and Samoan missionaries. There are so many new missionaries coming in for Karabatis, Tongan, and Samoan, though, that they are no longer in our zone or branch :( This week with the new intake, we added some Spanish, Russian, and English speaking missionaries into our zone/branch, so it's a lot more quiet (and frankly less fun), but I'm excited to help show other missionaries the ropes and make them feel welcome.

- Speaking of being an old missionary, Sister Gordhamer and I have been called to be our branch music coordinators! (I was just thinking the other day about how wonderful it would be to have a calling like being in charge of music to get to know/be more involved in our branch and BOOM, answered prayer). We pick the music for sacrament meeting, assign musical numbers, and direct the music. I'm excited to be more involved, especially with something that we're both so passionate about. We're also teaching relief society this week, so say a prayer for us.

- This Tuesday's devotional, not to knock on the others, but was probably the best by far, simply because....ELDER DAVID A. BEDNAR came to speak!! He started off by saying he'd really been pondering about what to talk to us about, and got his answer while visiting other missionaries out in the field. He said missionaries in the field, when they're away from the MTC and being surrounded by missionaries and the Spirit, worry and ask questions like, Am I doing it right? How do I know if the Spirit is with me? Am I listening and following everything he's telling me to? Elder Bednar said, I want to tell you all, STOP. WORRYING! As long as you are good boys and good girls, the Spirit will be with you always and, whether you know it or not, he will be guiding your actions. 

       I'm grateful every day for my family, the missionary examples in my life, the encouragement, and all of the advice. I pray for each of you and hope you know how much Heavenly Father loves you! Hope your week is bagus (good). Saya menyayangi kamu! (I love you!)

love,

sister hamner

Rachel and her cousin Ben Hamner (who just left for Spain)

Sister Gordhammer (Rachel's companion)

The Singapore flag (one on the right)

Provo Temple

Selamat Petang!

Selamat Petang! (Good evening)

     We did laundry this morning and are emailing, then we'll eat lunch, go to the temple with our district, and come back to hopefully chat with you guys and then prep for TRC. TRC is where we teach a lesson in Malay to returned missionaries that speak Malay. It's pretty nerve-wracking, but I'm glad we're going to the temple today which will bring a calming spirit. I've been SO EXCITED for the temple all week!!

     I'm a bit low on time, so I'll try to make this fast and fill in the holes later today:

- this week we practiced teaching one other missionary in our district a lesson. The other missionary would pretend to be someone they knew that wasn't a member and we would have to teach them a short 5 minute lesson based on their concerns in life. Sister Gordhamer and I taught "Andrew," and we didn't really know what to say at first with his situation, but as we spoke, we each said things that helped him understand and the lesson went really well. It was neat to experience the process of listening to their needs, inviting the spirit, and testifying of truths that relate to them in their life.

- Our branch president, President Gould, also taught an hour long lesson on Sunday about the Atonement and it was super neat. I'll tell you more about that later today.

- what I learned in choir: make your mission your Ebeneezer, eat veggies every day, and don't eat the holes in swiss cheese

-  we played a friendly game of dodge ball with the Indonesian speaking missionaries a couple days ago. There's a small, friendly rivalry between us since our language is almost completely the same, so our district presidents were trying to dissolve that with the game, but it only sort of egged it on, haha. We're focusing on being more friendly to them as a district this week, though

- So Sister Gordhamer and I accidently got locked out of our room this week! It was hilarious, we had to walk all the way to the info desk in another building, while in our PJs, to get a temporary key. But that didn't matter because on Wednesday, they had all of the sisters in our building MOVE buildings! Meaning pack everything up from R3, drag it down the sidewalk, and unpack in R9. Each building is named after someone, like at BYU, and our old building was Erastus R. Snow. So this week, we said goodbye to Erastus and hello to LeGrand Richards.

- I also saw Elder Nicholls, my friend from EFY going to the Czech Republic, the other day!

I'm so sorry about the time, but it's temple day and we need to chow, so I'll talk to you later! 

selamat tinggal (goodbye)

   sister hamner

Pics of the view outside the MTC! Sister Hamner's class went outside for one day.

Living the Dream

Selamat Pagi from hot-and-unusually-rainy MTC! 

  It's all good here, saya baik! I don't feel like a lost puppy nearly as much as I did at first, so that's good. There's much to do here, there's almost no time to think about anything else. A lot of this week was new missionary orientation stuff which helped a lot, but two super amazing things that happened this week were my favorite.

 Sunday, I got to watch the Elder Bednar talk everyone talks about: "The Character of Christ." It helped me gather my thoughts about how we should always turn outward, never in, no matter how difficult it gets because that is the character of Jesus Christ (that talk gave me goose bumps).  I also got to live my life-long dream on Tuesday of singing in the MTC choir, and WOW that was pretty amazing. 1100 missionaries testified of Joseph Smith as we sang Praise to the Man (ahhhh, more goosebumps).

  We've learned a lot this week about having faith and what that means regarding language learning. I've been trying to focus on praying sincerely for help, studying hard, and trusting that the Spirit will bring things to my remembrance. It can be scary and often times I mess up, but a teacher said this week that you have to make 1000 mistakes before you're fluent, so when you mess up 1 time, you're one mistake closer to being amazing! Also, sometimes I randomly switch to German in my brain, so that gets pretty confusing.

  A cool experience happened Friday when Sister Gordhammer and I were teaching Brandon (actually just one of our teachers pretending to be someone learning about the gospel) about faith from the Book of Mormon. We were a little nervous that we wouldn't remember the phrases and words we studied, so we said a short prayer beforehand. Although it was hard to understand him at first, and intimating to hear him talk quickly, we remembered words and phrases and the lesson went great. We had a really good feeling the whole lesson and Brandon said he felt the spirit. It has been really neat to feel that help and guidance all week.

I should probably go take my clothes out of the dryer now, but I got everyone's emails and will do my best to reply! I love you all, thanks for the support and hope this week is bagus!

Selamat tinggal,

  Sister Hamner

First Couple Days at the MTC

July 31, 2019
Selamat Pagi, Mama and Dad and family!!!

Guess what.....

I'M. AT. THE. MTC. WHATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

I'm alive and well and a bit wet, but super excited!! My tag is in Malay and it's super cool (and Markie is right, EVERYone says hi and welcome to you).  Everything's good so far and I think I'm about to get my companion, so I love you and will talk to you soon!

love,

  sister hamner

August 2, 2019

Selamat tengah hari! (that's good afternoon)

  It is insane that I'm now officially a nametag-wearing, sleepy, spirit-filled, slightly overwhelmed missionary for Gereja Yesus Kristus Orang Suci Zaman Akhir!!! If I'm honest, it doesn't quite feel like it yet (of course, I've never known what it was like to feel like a missionary before, so maybe this is in fact it). There's definitely a more special spirit here than a church camp or youth conference, my mind and body and spirit are still trying to soak it all in. It can be overwhelming at times, but I say a quick prayer, smile, and everything seems just a bit better.

Fridays are my P-day for these 6 weeks. My comp is Sister Gordhammer (everyone looks at our nametags and thinks we're related at first, haha), and I love her. She's lived all over the world because of her dad's job (including Singapore when she was 7-13), which is super cool. She's quiet, but super sweet and is very spiritual. We are the only sisters in our district, but the elders are super cool, too! Our zone includes missionaries speaking Samoan, Marshallese (sp?), and a couple of others, I think. Our STL's (sister training leaders, almost like sister district leaders) are a trio, and one of them (Sister Davie) is the one who helped me with my bags! She's Aussie and is super nice, too. There's only one sister, a single missionary, in the district speaking Marshallese, so she hangs out with us! Her name is Sister Ametu and she is from Samoa. She's literally always smiling and is always willing to make others around her happy.

  I actually saw Elder Hamner (her cousin Ben) in the MTC store yesterday! I heard someone say, "Sister Hamner!" I turned around, shook his hand (we can't give hugs), and said, "Hey, Elder Hamner, how's it goin?!" My comps were a little confused that we had the same name and didn't really look alike, haha. But he's doing well, it looks like! And I spotted Elder Zeller coming from breakfast today, but he was studying the scriptures so I just whispered, "Hey, Elder Zeller!" and he smiled and waved. I love seeing familiar faces, it makes things easier. The only person I know from EFY is coming on August 14th I think, so I'll be excited to see another familiar face then, too.

  Okay, I had THE BEST. lunch yesterday. It was a delicious wrap, filled with just a bit of guac, beans, banana peppers, jalapeno peppers, and spinach and WOW, WAS IT AMAZING. My favorite thing so far is language study, it's cool to hear the class ask questions and discuss and learn together! The whole language thing it honestly intimidating, but I've already learned so far, from workshops and other's testimony's and my personal study, that everything will be just fine :) Bagus!

  We get allotted exercise time, so today is the first day of official gym time. And GUESS WHAT. MY COMP WANTS TO RUN. I was blessed BIG time.

  One of the biggest things I've learned so far this week is how to have faith when something seems absolutely impossible. I personally wanted to have more faith that Heavenly Father can help me learn this language, and to be patient with myself in the process. Think back to a time when you prayed for something, but didn't know if you'd get the result you wanted, and was later blessed. Did you pray about it all the time? Did you do everything you could before handing it over to the Lord? It may have felt completely impossible or worthless before you received an answer or result, but we can't realize how much we've progressed or how much faith has done until "the hour He will show us." From a previous faith-building experience of mine, I can testify that I know the Lord recognizes every bit of faith, even the teeniest tiny-est "I will go and do" that we can give. If we put in as much as we can, more than ever before, and let the Lord guide, the impossible becomes 100% possible. I am grateful everyday that I have been blessed with the responsibility to love and teach God's children. I know He loves Sister Hamner and every one of you. Well, gotta run!

   love,

     sister hamner