Thank you so much everyone for the updates on Norah! And welcome to the family little girl!
I am doing so much better this week than last week!! I can't believe I'm already done with two weeks here and that I only have one left. I can't believe how much we are learning here! General Conference was awesome. We were promised that if we thought of questions before hand, that they would be answered. I prayed to know what questions Heavenly Father wanted me to ask and then wrote those down. After Conference, I went back through my notes and wrote down all the different ways that my questions were answered, and all the different talks that answered them in their various ways. It was really cool to see that happen. I really can't pinpoint a favorite talk because they all had so many important things and all answered my questions in different ways, but some that I loved especially were President Uchtdorf's, Elder Ardern's, Elder Carl B. Cook's (where he talked about looking up instead of down), Sister Dalton's, President Monson's on Sunday morning, Elder Richard's (real life, real learning, real teaching) and Elder Cornish (we need to not just say our prayers, we need to LIVE them). I think the theme for me this conference was about TRUST. Saturday evening after Conference I finally had time to have a really good study session. It was like Heavenly Father was saying to me, "I see how hard you have been trying to study and not get distracted, so I'm going to give you this evening to not only study the things that you have been asked to work on by your teachers, but as you do that, I am going to give you inspiration for yourself and for you investigators beyond anything you would have imagined possible." It was an incredible hour and a half of just learning from the scriptures and learning from the Spirit.
My goal for this last week was to make week 2 a spiritually progressing week, rather than taking a dive as Sister Christensen (one of my teachers) explained tends to be the phenomenon at the MTC. I think I did a pretty good job of that, though things definitely weren't perfect. 1 Nephi 2:9-10 became my sort of theme. It is where Lehi is telling his sons how he wishes they would choose to be, and I thought, "you know, I can choose to be that. In fact, I DO choose to be that way."
I have also been working a lot on trying to follow the Spirit in my teaching. I am working on being able to simplify my teaching and allowing the Spirit to take charge of the lesson, rather than letting my own knowledge of facts about whatever lesson I am teaching run away with me... It has been very challenging, and I am not always successful at it, but those moments when I am truly able to let the Spirit guide me completely make up unmeasurably for the unsuccessful times. Sister Kearnes and I had a really great lesson yesterday with one of our investigators, Lawanna. We had really taken the time to plan beforehand, and we were so blessed when we finally got into the lesson. We didn't even end up following our plan most of the way through, but the Spirit guided us and I know it was becuase we put in the effort to prepare before. Afterwards, Sister Kearnes just did a dance of celebration down the hallway and I teared up a little I was so filled with joy for the blessing that had come to us from doing things as we have been directed. Because we had PLANNED with the Spirit, we were able to TEACH by the Spirit.
Funny story really quick about last week: I told you I was getting sick, and on Wednesday we were at the TRC waiting to get assigned a room to teach an investigator (really just volunteers). It wasn't even 9 in the morning, but I was exhausted. I just kind of rolled over on the side of the couch and rested until the man came in to tell us where to go. After the lesson we had gym time, so Sister Kearnes made me stay in our room and sleep. I miraculously remembered that Ann gave me ear plugs and I ended up sleeping for like 2 1/2 hours! (I'll have to finish this later!)
I get to call you from the airport on Tuesday! My flight leaves at 7:15 so I'll probably be calling around 6 or 6:30. I guess I'll have to call your cell phone mom since you aren't home. And then I'll call Dad too. I can talk for 15 minutes they said. I wish I had more time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (right now to write that is...)
I love you all so much! Keep the letters coming! I have lots of time to read them, just not much time to write back.
Love,
Sister Hatch
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