Feliz Navidad!

Feliz Navidad!

Wow, this week has been incredibly busy. I am so ready to be out of the MTC. It is not my favorite place. It's very spiritual and a good learning experience, but it does feel a lot like a prison. I'm so glad I only have to spend 3 weeks here. I got my travel itinerary and I leave the 28th. Very exciting. I can't wait to be rid of the awful MTC food. Any missionaries who tell you the food is good have no pallette. It's good for food mass produced for thousands of missionaries, but at an individual level it's terrible.

So, this week was quite eventful, especially from a companionship perspective. My companion got in a bit of a scuffle last Wednesday and had to talk to the Branch President. Yikes. I'm a little scared now to make him do anything, because now I know he has a bit of a temper. The worst part is he told himself he can never get angry, and so when he gets angry it just makes him angrier. It's definitely not a very healthy thought process. I tried to comfort him and calm him down as best as I could, and I reminded him why he was here and that the Lord loves him.

We definitely don't get along well. He was pretty mean to me in our companionship inventory we had to discuss our various problems. He seemed to think no one likes me, which I found more amusing than anything. He wants me to change my personality, which is stupid and it'll just make him more frustrated. I don't particularly like his personality either, but I accept that it's not going to change and because of that acceptance I don't feel as frustrated. He's also a projector. He projects his faults onto me, which I find amusing although annoying. He likes to lecture me on obedience, and I'm definitely the more obedient out of the two of us. I'm looking forward to getting a different companion in a week.

Still, it has been a great learning experience. I've been praying a lot for the humility, charity, and patience I need, and I feel as though I've received some of it. And I'm not blameless in the relationship either. I have a lot of pride that I need to work through, but that's okay, because everyone has their faults. I've started to look more for the good in my companion as well. He is a good guy, and he gets along well with some people I don't. I think that's why the Lord blesses everyone with different personalities, so that we can get along with different types of people. The bottom line is that I'm comfortable with who I am, and I don't feel a need to accomodate my personality to others.

I had a very great experience teaching this week. We go to a place where they bring in Church members from the community and we teach them as though they were investigators. Before our session, I prayed that even though it was only practice, that I would be able to touch the hearts of those we were teaching. We were assigned to teach a couple from Guatemala who live here in Utah. We started the lesson, and part of the way through, I had this strong prompting that I needed to tell them that Heavenly Father loves their family very much. So I broke off from where we were in the lesson and told them that prompting I had received. You could really feel the Spirit very strongly, and the couple started to cry. They told us that they had been having some issues with their kids at the moment, and that thought they were good kids, everything wasn't going as well as they'd like. I felt like they weren't pretending to be investigators at that point. I was glad for that experience where I was able to act as a mouthpiece for the Lord and tell them something they needed to hear. It was further evidence that God grants us the righteous desires of our hearts, especially when we pray for those blessings. I've seen a lot of evidence of that here at the MTC.

My attribute I'm focusing on this week is patience. I need to work on that. I'm learning I'm not superman, and that I don't need to be. It's a slow process, but that seems fitting to learn about patience.

Well my time's almost up. I love you all. Merry Christmas y Feliz Navidad. I'll miss you guys on the 25th, but I'm sure we'll get someone special here at the MTC!

Con amor,

Elder Grasley

P.S. All the Marshallese elders in my building know Justin. It seems like he was a pretty popular guys there.