The Returned Mallory: The Final Countdown

Hello friends and family!

First of all, my family knows this, but my travel plans got changed! I am still going to Argentina, but I don't leave until Wednesday now, which works out fine. The only weird thing is that they are moving all Spanish speakers to west campus on Tuesday so I get to move for half a day. They have already started converting our hallway of classrooms into classrooms for English speakers and they are getting our residence ready for new missionaries. Its weird to think that the MTC isn't going to be my life forever. It feels like its always been my life and always will be my life,but at the same time it feels like I just got here yesterday. Time is weird here.

So in response to everyone's dear elders and questions:

Jake: Sorry, I didn't believe that the kaka jersey story was true, but I laughed that you tried! My companion says hi back and she thinks you are funny.

Mom: Hopefully you got my email from yesterday! Also, could you add H*** A*** on facebook for me? She is one of my teachers that I want to stay in contact with. I will send a picture of me and her later so you know what she looks like.

Sister Brownell: Wow I didn't know they were going to show that here comes the sun video at the homecoming spectacular! We filmed it last year for our final women's chorus concert. I'm glad you got to see it! Also I've loved all the updates! You are the greatest.

Katie Ballantyne: Excuse my spelling of your last name, but your letter made me laugh soooo hard! Annie told me the gist of the story but I loved hearing all the details. It was just like I was talking to you. Also there is an Elder in my zone from Modesto that knows you. His name is Jake Bringhurst? Anyway, weird MTC connections.

Alyssa: I would love it if you would email me some of your wedding pictures if you ever get the chance! I was thinking about you last friday! Congrats

Dad: I did get the DearElder! Thanks sooo much. Also I need to have two hundred dollars in my account to pay for luggage if I need to. I think it should all be there because the only thing I spend money on here is breakfast at the temple cafeteria, but it would be good to know for sure. Does someone need to tell the bank that I'm going out of the country? That might be good.

Anyway, its been an interesting week and I don't even know where to start. This is getting real now! I'm going to Argentina! What?! Sister Scott also got her travel plans and originally we were leaving on the same day, but now she leaves two days before I do. Soo exciting! My Spanish is alright. I understand all the rules and conjugations and when to use them, I just need to put them into practice because no matter how well I know the rules, when I get downs to it, I forget to use them. I'm just expecting to not speak very much for a little while, but I know the gift of tongues is real and that if I need to be able to say something, God will help me say it. I was released from being Sister Training Leader, and we are getting ready to go!

My district has become like my family here. Its crazy how you can put seven people from all different backgrounds together for sixteen hours every day and watch them grow. We've come soooo far. We've seen each other cry when the spirit testifies of a truth, and struggle through some of the most difficult of life's challenges. I seriously can't even believe what some of these missionaries are facing right now, but they are still here and being strong for the Lord. Its really touching to see. For example, Elder Ceran, one of our Elder's from the zone is just about the happiest and most upbeat person you could ever meet. We found out he has a Mormon Message called "We're still a family". Go watch it. Its inspiring. Sometimes, we have to role play as our friends or family that need the message of the church and we practice teaching each other. Elder V**** was playing his inactive sister and Hermana Foutz and I got to practice teaching him. By the end of the lesson, this sweet tough elder was in tears as the spirit testified about simple faith and the gift of the atonement. Missionary work is amazing. A couple of times when we've felt a little bit of a negative attitude in our district, we will stop what we are doing and take turns saying one nice thing about each other. The first time we did it, we heard a lot of nice superficial things like, you have a nice voice, I like your laugh, you are friendly, etc. After a month and a half, we really have come to know each other and we trust each other enough to be completely honest. The last time we did this, we heard things more like, I admire your ability to stand up for what you believe in, you are very intuitive to the spirit, and other wonderful compliments that came straight from the heart. It really built our district and I am so grateful that I get to travel to Argentina with them and continue to watch them grow throughout the next seventeen months.

We had a lot happen this week with our technology stuff! Now that we are used to the process, the skype meetings become so much more meaningful and exciting. This week we talked to a wonderful woman name Anna Laura who is from mexico. She really showed us how strong the membership of the church is all around the world. She has a non member niece who lives with her and she is always sharing messages of the gospel with her. We talked to her about how she could best help her niece and shared our testimonies. We were about to end the call when our teachers encouraged us to try to talk for twenty more minutes, since the skype also helps us practice our language. So, out of no where we shared a quick message about faith and charity and the holy ghost. It was mostly just sharing a lot of scriptures and talking about experiences to get through twenty minutes. In the end, we had a prayer and Anna Laura started crying and she sincerely thanked us for what we had taught. We still have no idea what we taught that touched her or what she was thinking and feeling, but God knows and we don't have to . Sometimes we won't even know how we've been a tool in his hands. Later on, we had some meetings with some of the bosses over this whole pilot trial thing and we got to talk about how this experience has helped us. In the meeting, Hermana Foutz and I were told that we would be participating in a teaching experience for the study that would help them assess our growth while at the MTC. They would also have a companionship who had not participated in the technology stuff teach the same investigator and compare some of the results. It turned out the teacher/investigator that we taught was Anna Laura's son who happens to work at the MTC and was playing his non member cousin. I think we had a little bit of unfair advantage because we had just taught his mom about how to find her needs so the lesson went fantastic!

Being at the provo MTC does have its perks, one of which is getting to hear from amazing speakers. For relief society this past Sunday, we heard from the General Young Women's president. She talked about the Allegory of the Olive tree and how the Lord is laboring with us in these last days. And on Tuesday........we heard from Dallin H. Oaks!!!! They usually put the name of the speaker on a screen for a half an hour before the meeting, but this time they didn't have a name and nobody knew who it was. They literally kept us in suspense until during the pre hymn when he just walked in. You can imagine that the song lost a lot of singers for a couple of measures as everyone gasped and whispered back and forth. It was seriously like waiting for Christmas to see who it was going to be. He said soooo many wonderful things. One of my favorites was that missionaries face three challenges. 1. The Challenge change from their worldly selves. 2. The challenge to aquire missionary skills (language, teaching, etc.) and 3. the challenge to become a missionary. He then basically taught the entire gospel of Jesus Christ in thirty minutes in one of the clearest ways I have ever heard in my life. So cool. He also admitted that he often quotes the play, "Wicked". (No good deed goes unpunished.) Apostles are people too. After the meeting, we went out a door we'd never been through because of the crazy crowds. We ended up on some part of the MTC campus that we didn't recognize so we started wandering around to find our building. Somehow we ended up right outside the building where Elder Oaks was talking with the MTC presidency. I was seriously like two feet away from him and only separated by the window. We just stared and then smiled and walked right by.

Some random facts about the week. Yes I did see the Singsons after they had dropped off Marisa! It was this weird moment where my missionary world and my home world collided and I didn't know what to think or feel about it. I didn't know she was coming or else I probably could have been her host missionary, but I ran into her later that day. I am sooo excited for her! Also, I am singing a solo in sacrament meeting on Sunday. My companion has a beautiful piano solo of come thou fount and when she was practicing it, we remembered that someone told us you could sing the words of Joseph Smith's first prayer to the tune of Come Thou Fount. We tried it with me singing and it worked perfect! I will record us practicing it once and send it home on the memory card with whatever else I send home. We also had two random elders from another zone get added to our district for just this week. I'm just positive that one of them was sent to us to teach us patience, but its been good for us.

Finally, I had infield training yesterday! It was a long eight our meeting, but we learned sooo many useful things. My favorite part of the whole thing was the quote from preach my gospel that says, "lowering your expectations decreases your effectiveness." We were told a story of when president Monson was a mission president who had an area that hadn't had a baptism for six years. The missionaries who were sent there always struggled and begged to be transferred. Finally, president Monson was reading about a time when Brigham Young was in the area and had great success. He had the idea to wait for all the Elders who knew anything about the area to leave, and then to send the message around that this was an area where Brigham Young had baptized many people and was open to the gospel. Pretty soon he had missionaries begging to be sent there and the baptisms from that area were higher than any other in the mission. So much of what we do as missionaries depends on our attitude. I realized that I had been dreading infield training because I had been told it was long and awful and so that's what I expected. I had been feeling less fond about the MTC because everyone said that I will be sick of the food and dying to leave during the second half and that's what I expected. In reality, after I realized I was being affected to much by lowered expectations, I loved infield training and I remembered how much I really do love being here at the MTC. Who cares what people say. Who cares what people have experienced with my mission in the past. I won't lower my expectations. I expect to love my next companion and no matter what she is like or how little English she speaks, I will love her because I expect to and I will work to meet that expectation. I will find people to teach and baptize because I expect to and I will work to that expectation. I will love Argentina and fit into the culture because I expect to and I will work to that expectation. I am a happy person and my happiness depends on me.

Anyway, I am out of time, but I will probably get to check my email a bit this weekend if you have questions about the logistics of the next week. I will be in Georgia from 5pm to 9pm so expect the call in there some time. I will be on Delta airlines leaving salt lake around eleven and arriving in Georgia around four if you want to track the flight. I leave at 9:13 from Georgia and arrive at 8:30 am in Buenos Aires on Thursday. I will need you to send me that phone and I will be sending a big box of stuff home sometime this week.

Love you tons!

Hermana Millett

P.S. What's happening with the government? We just hear bits of pieces of weird rumors so it would be nice to know what's actually going on. Thanks!

We just found out we are going straight to Argentina, so we went out and bought these shirts.