MTC week 3

Czesc moj rodzina!

Hello!!! Life is so good here in the MTC. I'm learning a ton. Not only how to teach the gospel but how to teach in unity. Our companionship is getting better each time.

We had this awesome speaker Elder Clayton Christensen from the Seventy. (I wrote about him before with the rotten fridge.) He is AMAZING. I learned so much about teaching and how it's so much more effective to show investigators/inactive members what the gospel is rather than just telling them. So with one man investigating the church he taught him about prayer (which A LOT of people don't understand very well). And instead of telling him ok we pray by 1, addressing our Heavenly Father, 2, thanking Him 3 asking and 4 ending in the name of Jesus Christ he said ok we're going to pray. Then tell us what you notice. So they prayed. Then talked. Then prayed again. And did it again. So he wasn't being 'taught at' but he was using his own mind to see how prayer works. Very cool.

So this week with our new investigator Dominik we decided to try that. He didn't know how to pray and he really dislikes the memorized Catholic way of praying. He said he liked the way we prayed. So we talked about our relationship with God (being our Father in Heaven) and then said ok we're going to pray. Please tell us what you notice and why you think we pray in this way. It's kind of hard because we had to guess what his answers were but I think he noticed good things. Then at the end of the lesson, he prayed with us and it was really great. He asks so many good questions about faith and repentance. It's great teaching him :) He's studying how to mend clothes...we think. Couldn't really understand that part but he pointed to a hole in his jacket and said "studiowac" so hopefully that was it.

But as for our OTHER investigator Wojtek...that is a whole different story. He was super stubborn at first and kept asking, "ok the Book of Mormon is true, SO WHAT?" basically what does it mean for him? why should he stop being Catholic? It was hard to answer with limited polish. Basically he was being so intellectual about it....grrr. Anyway luckily the next lesson he was a lot more open! We told him about Joseph Smith and I think it really helped him see things clearer. Hopefully he will be even more openhearted next time :)

So today is the 50th anniversary of the MTC!!! How exciting is that? We're going to sing in the choir today and that should be fun. Rumor has it that one of the First Presidency is coming but who knows. We'll see.

I hope this email uplifted you in some way. If not, there is always Mosiah 2-3! I love those chapters. I've been reading them in Polish to practice my pronunciation and it's really cool. The scriptures are so powerful.

Also, thank you for your dear elders! I enjoyed them a lot. Probably too much...my comps were like sister bezdjian why are you laughing so much? But what can I say, my family's funny! How is work and how is school? Oh man. Two minutes left! I swear there are no clocks here...probably so we don't keep looking at them. Except there ARE some in the cafeteria...where the time goes by way too fast! Haha. Oh yeah, other thing. On Sunday I was asked to serve as Coordinating Sister for our Zone! Yikes eh. Bascially I am the service lady now...oh boy.

Love,

Sara

p.s. I had another speaker to tell you about but I will write it in my letter because I have no time! Also, did you get the pictures?

week 2 in the MTC!

Dearest Family,

What a week! So many things have happened. So last time I wrote I told you about our investigator Krzytof Jainkovski? Well turns out his name is Brother Broadbent and is our third teacher! I had a feeling it wasn't "real" but it was still a very good learning experience. I learned a ton about teaching by the Spirit and not by knowledge. Also teaching in companionship unity is uber important. One of the lessons a sister went off for like 20 min and it was just bad. We had a deep companionship pow wow after that and we really learned a lot about working together and teaching the investigator, not teaching at them.

I also learned that you can't force service. That was a good lesson.

Hmmm what else to tell you about dear family? I have 17 minutes remaining on the computer (yes, there is a countdown thingy in the corner).

Can you believe it snowed? It was Sunday so we all get to walk around the temple in the afternoons. Well one Elder decided to be crazy and somehow cracked his head open on the ice. He was going stateside but now since he will be in the MTC for 9 more weeks he is learning Mandarin! Sucker hahaa. But now the english-speaking Elders in our zone are like oooh let's do that, then we can go foreign.

We're learning more and more Polish which is cool. Sorry this story is repeating for you andrew but it's too funny. The other day in class our Teacher Brat Rushton was teaching us about past tense. After we said some sentences in the past tense, a Sister goes To Jest Co Jestem Movic Koschol!!! Which means That's what I'm talking about. Well that's what she THOUGHT it meant. But really it meant "That's what I'm talking circle!" Because she looked up how to say about in the dictionary and it meant about, like around in a circle. It was so funny. Our teacher was schocked but laughing super hard.

Oh. Other cool thing that happened this week. On Sunday we had a devotional from Elder Clayton Christensen. He is sooooo amazing. I learned a ton from him!!! He is uber smart (look at his credentials, he's full of Harvard, BYU, and Oxford. He's super super smart). He told us about being a missionary and HOW we can teach. He gave us some examples. One story was about this old widow. She had received a crate of grapefruit one day and she put it in her extra fridge downstairs. Then a few weeks later she saw a commercial about unplugging unused appliances and so she unplugged it. This was in Boston in the summer. So it was super hot and humid. It was SIX MONTHS LATER, when Elder Christensen walked in for home teaching he said "Sister, something died in here." So then he helped to get rid of the awful fridge. And it was an old cast iron one. He said it was awful. So he called one of his friends named Dave who had never been interested in the church to help. Long story short the man saw the service they were doing and started asking questions about the church and was eventually converted. It was a cool story but I don't have more time to expound. Oh well I hope you enjoyed it!

We also love the Bulgarians. Apparently the Poles and Bulgarians have been bff for eons. And we love the Finns too! Except one of them always sings LOUDLY in the hallway. In Finnish. It drives me crazy while I'm trying to study but I'm learning to love it :)

Kocham wy!!!!!

Sara

the drop off

Dropping off Sister Bezdjian was a very bittersweet experience.

We love our missionary and can't wait to hear about the work she will be doing!

Sara MTC week one

Sara's first letter from the mtc. sounds very happy :)

Hi family!

CZESC!!!!

Guess what? Tuesdays are our Pday so while our laundry is going we get to check our email and write letters! How are you all? Please reply me! I love hearing from you :) Mom and Hannah thank you for the dear elders. They're so nice to read, especially after a long day of po Polsku.

We have an investigator (who is one of our teachers) named Krzytof Jainkovski and we teach him in Polish about every other days. It's so fun! We try to make simple Polish sentences and then we are totally guided by the Spirit. It's really amazing to see him grow as we teach by the Holy Spirit. We taught him how to pray the other day and it was really awesome. Even though he's a member of the church, the way we teach him is as if he's a Polish student studying abroad at BYU. And we are still learning a lot about how to teach people, how to teach with each other, and how to trust in the Spirit's promptings.

So we learned how to read Polish this week and we practice reading the Book of Mormon out loud. It's kind of hard because the strings of consonants are difficult but there are certain weird things to remember. There are a lot of shh, and ch, and dge sounds in Polish. It sounds like french and ch shhhh a lot. Weird huh.

My companions are Sister Masters from Sandy and Sister Young from Michigan. Sister Masters is 21, tall, has reddish hair and went to Alta and the U. She's really positive and way cool. I like her a lot. Sister Young is 26, just got her Masters in English from BYU, and has short blonde hair. It's hard learning to work in a 3some companionship because sometimes two are more close you know? But for the next 3 weeks I'm serving as the senior companion so I'm working to make sure we all get along together and everyone feels included.

Anyway how is everyone? Dear Elder write me please!! :) Andrew, how is school? Is it as hard or harder than last semester? If you ever see Brother Petersen, please tell him hi and THANK YOU from me! His class was soooo helpful, and I'm using a lot of the lessons I learned from him. Also, how are the dorms? And rock climbing? Sister Masters loooves to rock climb so we've been talking about it and I told her about you! I love you Broseph :D

Hannah, how is school? The cute little house? Work? Anything new? Is it cold there?

Mom and Dad! I miss you. Dad why haven't you written me. Not cool. Nie ekstra. (ekstra means super cool in Polish.) Just use Dear Elder! Mom you know me so well. WE're too similar sometimes...your letter about how you feel asleep in class was funny. Because I did the same thing! Not in class, but in our personal study and our language labs. we get on the computer and learn new vocab of polish. WE have headphones and microphones so we can practice pronunciation. Polish is such a subtle lanugage!!!

ANyway I love you all. I hope you are all reading the Book of Mormon! It's such a powerful book, even if you only let it into your life for 5 minutes. Our mission presdient challenged us to read it with coloring. Red is Christ, Green is obedience, Faith is purple, and brown is repentance. Now i'm really seeing the correlation between faith and obedience!

I love you! Kocham vy!!!

Sara

Leaving for The Missionary Training Center...

Leaving for the MTC in t minus 30 minutes. Weird. I have to finish packing!!! Yikes. More updates later.

Oh! Here are my addresses.

For the Missionary Training Center:

Sister Sara Bezdjian
Poland Warsaw Mission
MTC Mailbox #135
2005 N 900 E
Provo, Ut 84604

After March 2012:

Sister Sara Bezdjian
Poland Warsaw Mission
Swietych w Dniach Ostatnich
Ul. Wiertnicza 135, 1 Pietro
02-952 Warszawa
Poland