"BACK" TO THE MTC

Dear Friends and Family,

I had a really good week this week. I was inspired to work harder than I ever have before, and we did some fun things this week as well. On Tuesday as you know, we had our Zone Conference. That was better than I ever expected!! Our meetings are so incredibly inspired by the Lord and are carefully planned to meet everyone's needs in the zone. I can testify of that! 

It started great from the moment we walked in the church. We were greeted by our Zone leaders, Assistants to the President, and Sister training leaders as we walked in the door. They were all saying "Welcome to the MTC!" and they gave us the little orange dot sticker to put on our name tags. (Just like all of the new kids got right when they got to the MTC to indicate they are new) We were then placed in rooms through out the church and pretty much got to experience the MTC all over again. I remember when I first got there last year, I had so much excitement to get to my mission!! I couldn't wait to get out there in the mission field and start my 18 month journey of bringing souls unto Christ. The whole purpose of this experience was to remind us how exciting it is to be here in the NYUM. I got to remember all over again what it was like to be in the MTC and have that excited feeling of being a missionary. Sometimes, we forget how great our calling is. Sometimes, we lose focus of our purpose. And sometimes, we forget how fun missionary work can be. I truly needed this experience. I have a whole new burst of energy to get out there and WORK WORK WORK! 

We also learned how to use Family History more effectively in our proselyting. If you were told that families are forever and we can be together with them for eternity, even after we die, wouldn't you want to hear what I had to say? I sure would! I love my family! I would want to do what ever it takes to make sure we could be together forever! So we introduce little booklets that help people get involved with learning who their ancestors are, and showing Familysearch.org. Then we get to talk about the restored gospel and how all of this is possible because of Jesus Christ. We were introduced to a really cool website that we can look up people we are related to. The URL is: roots-fb.cs.byu.edu. I found out some pretty cool stuff! Like, I am related to Walter Elias Disney, Elvis Aaron Presley, Benjaman Franklin, Jeffrey Roy Holland, and Thomas Spencer Monson!!! Those are just a few of the people I found. There are many more! Family History is so cool!

One of the members in the ward invited us over for dinner on Saturday and also invited one of our investigators. We watched Meet The Mormons over there as well. That was a pretty fun evening. There is another woman, whom we are not teaching... yet, that we have been doing service for. She basically says that she wants to be baptized, but there is a lot she needs to do before that happens. The member who told us to go help her told her that she will invite the "sisters" to come help. She has a very Catholic background and thought she meant "nuns". She was so relieved to see some cute young sister missionaries at her door! I thought that was funny.

Everything is going great here! We have a pretty fun day planned today. We are going to play Volley ball in the gym around 2 and then go to a members house to watch The Best Two Years. This weekend is Stake Conference, so we will be traveling to Owego and Ithaca for those. That should be fun! We will also be having 3 day exchanges. 3 of us in Vestal this time. Sister Bladh and I are pretty good friends! I really like serving with her! We have done a lot of really great things in this area.  I hope you all have a fabulous week! I love you! The church is true!

Love, Sister Keller