Wow this week flew by! Time is really weird here in the MTC. Some days pass by super fast and others seem to never end. But the week absolutely flew by! Thank you to Mom, Dad, Emmy, Tara, and Johnny for the letters this week. Thanks to Morgan and G&G Christensen for the emails, and thanks to Sister Jakins for the brownies. I haven't weighed myself this week, but this life style is starting to take its toll a little bit.
I have no idea how this happened, but almost everybody in our district hit a point this week that we just needed to sit back a second and cool down a little bit. The schedule here is so demanding and you are going all the time. Everyday is 16 hours long and you do something productive literally every minute. Before the MTC, I wondered how it's possible to grow so fast in the MTC. Now I understand. It's because you are working hard all the time and the Spirit is always present. It sounds kinda rough, but with the right attitude this place is amazing!
Congrats to Verina, Lydia, and Aya with your mission calls! This week, Elder Zwick from the Seventy came and spoke to us and he said that within the 1 month that Sisters have been able to apply, there have been as many applications as there are Sister missionaries in the field right now. So to clarify, once all the Sisters that currently have their mission calls are out in the field, the number of Sisters will have doubled (ignoring the Sisters that return home during that time). I think that is a huge testament to the faith of all you Sisters! Congrats to all of you! Keep letting me know as mission calls come in! I love hearing about it.
This week, as I've already alluded to, has been kind of a roller coaster. There have been some moments that I am ready to go convert the world, and other times that I'm not sure if I can handle the weight of it all. Something one of my teachers said this week made me realize what was happening. There is opposition in all things. After Moses saw Christ face to face, Satan came and tempted Moses. A lot of things in this world are clearly worse than ever before. Sometimes it's easy to lose hope for the future. But it is important to remember that we currently have more temples on the Earth than any time in the history of the World and we (soon) will have the most missionaries for the Church any time in the history of the World. God's army is growing and Satan's army is growing power. But we know how the battle ends so there's no reason to get down.
Now, the craziest thing that happened this week. To start, President Brown is an amazing MTC president. He is so personal with the missionaries. I hope some of you will be able to be around him. So every Fast Sunday, we have a Mission Conference. One little tradition that I wasn't aware of, is that President Brown likes to invite missionaries up to bare their testimonies. President Brown knows all my grandparents and my dad, so naturally, I got called up. I was called up to bare my testimony in front of 1700ish missionaries. Holy...cow... It was like there were so many people that it didn't even register that they were all real people. My voice was super shaky, and I'd like to think that was because of the Spirit being so strong and not because I was a nervous wreck. It was a really cool experience though. I don't remember everything I said, but it was cool nonetheless. Another funny part, President Brown also called up a sister from my district to bare her testimony (he had no idea we were in the same district). He called her before he called me, so I had a few seconds to laugh...and then the laughing stopped abruptly. Hahaha, it really was a cool experience.
Thank you all for the support. I ask for your continued prayers. Love you all!
Elder Tanner Christensen
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