Please don't kill the cat

In 14 days I will be on an airplane, flying to my new home in New York City.  :)

First off: SUPER EXCITED for Hunter Hoopes and Stacy Mero getting their mission calls!  You both are going to be wonderful missionaries.

This week was so good!  I feel like as we get closer to the end of our MTC stays, we are all getting more nervous, excited, and dedicated in our study.  I think we are all realizing that in a couple short weeks we are actually going to be teaching people, which is a little frightening and super exciting at the same time.  On Sunday I met another girl going to my mission Mandarin speaking.  She is from Singapore and because she is a native speaker, she is on the international track.  We will be flying out together, I think, and more likely than not she will be my companion at some point on my mission.  I'm happy to say I actually understood most of what she said to me, and was able to respond, even.  Good stuff.

This week was very musical, as well.  I had the opportunity to sing an arrangement of "Where Can I Turn For Peace" (arranged by Michael R Hicks, if you want to look it up) in Relief Society on Sunday.  Elder Murray, the other New York North bound elder in my district, accompanied me.  It was great to be able to share my testimony through music with the sisters at the MTC, and to really think about the words to that song as I prepared and performed.  I would recommend all of you go check out the lyrics of that hymn next chance you get.  It is a wonderful example of how the Savior helps each of us in a very personal way.  It was also cool to listen to the talk that day, given by Renee Hill, the General Relief Society Secretary.  She spoke all about a time when her family needed the Savior and how they were able to turn to Him in order to find the peace they needed.  I don't know if it was planned or not to have those two topics together, but it was pretty awesome.

I also had some other fun music times this week with my friend Sister Emily Brown.  She is going to Russia on her mission, and we met freshman year at Late Summer Honors, a week of classes before freshman year at BYU for overachievers/nerds/pretty awesome people.  Sister Brown is a fantastic musician that plays a lot in Provo, and actually wrote some of my favorite songs in the world.  (Side note - you should all go check out her album "It Goes With Us" because it is AMAZING.  You should also probably check out her new album, too, mostly because I can't and I'm sad about it.)  Any way, we had fun making music and catching up.  It's crazy all the people you see at the MTC.

Some of you may have been wondering what on earth the title of this post is about.  This week we taught Spring, one of our practice investigators.  Spring is an elderly Taiwanese gentleman who is very open and talkative (which is great, let me tell you) and who also is allergic to cats.  This is rather unfortunate, since there is a cat that has been wandering around his neighborhood for the past few lessons.  This last lesson we asked him if his allergies were still bothering him, and he started off about the cat.  After about a minute of explaining that it was loud and annoying because of his allergies, he got this somewhat crazed look on his face and said "Wo yao SHA zheige xiaomao!" ("I want to KILL the cat!")  Accompanying his exclamation was a wringing motion.  It took all of us (we had a couple of elders playing church members this lesson) by surprise and we could not stop laughing for about three minutes.  He then went on to tell us about how he was thinking of paying his son to go find it and kill it, or at least kick it.  We calmed down a bit and told him that he probably shouldn't kill the cat and that we would see if there was anything we could do about it.  As we left, he told us to kick it if we saw it, but I think we are going to tell him that Elder Hare took it home so it wouldn't bother him anymore.  We love teaching Spring.

Last Tuesday Elder and Sister Kopischke of the Seventy came to speak to us.  You could feel how much they loved the missionaries as they spoke to us.  I loved this topic that Elder Kopischke talked about: he spoke about the cleansing and edifying power of the Atonement and how if we use it in our lives we will be we can have a greater relationship with the Savior and will be better able to share this message with others.  We cannot teach and invite others to do what we do not understand ourselves.  He also pointed out that we do not have to have committed a horrible, awful sin to feel the redeeming power of the Atonement. Any sin separates us from God, not just the big ones, and by taking the step and repenting of our sins we can feel the same joy that Alma describes in Alma 36:17-20.  I don't know about all of you, but I want to feel that happiness.

I love you all, and I hope you are having a wonderful week!

Love,

Sister Beer