Called to Serve: week 3: MTC grads

The elders spouting off pickup lines on Tuesday night:
“Are you a Golden Corral? Because you’re a whole buffet!” -Elder Swendsen

Well this is it!!I have officially graduated from the at home MTC!!! Hopefully those 100+ zoom hours made me somewhat prepared to be thrown into the field next week! We focused so much on Christ’s atonement and how it applies to us as missionaries, but I am so excited to share that message with the people of Provo. I am so grateful for Jesus Christ and the blessings we’ve been given because of Him!!

This week we taught 3 more TRCs and they were so much better than last week! Sister Taylor and I learned from our mistakes and were able to connect with the people we were teaching, share videos and scriptures, teach them to pray, and address their questions and concerns. It made me so much more excited and confident for teaching real people (not return missionaries from BYU that we FB stalked later hehehe)!

Also I love love my district!! I never thought I could say that about a group of strangers I met on zoom, but I love them even more everyday! Every Tuesday night we watch a devotional together and then spend a half hour after discussing our thoughts. This week we stayed on the call for almost 3 hours after the devotional ended and didn’t stop talking the entire time. It was a blast and made me wish I was with them in real life! We pranked one of our teachers this week too! Brother Thomas still butchers my name and calls me Sister DUGall every time, so everyone changed their names to “Google with a D”, “Dooogall,” “Doogle,” “Dougall like Google,” etc. It was so funny and you best believe he didn’t mess my name up after that haha. I will miss my awesome group and saying goodbye was so bittersweet!

this week’s miracle:
I was able to go through the Portland temple on Thursday evening to receive my endowments! A handful of my friends had to wait until this mission field to go through, so the fact that I could go through 4 days before leaving was a miracle!! I was so so grateful to have my parents, grandparents, and friends come with me. I felt so much love and joy inside the Lord’s house and look forward to being able to go again. We are so blessed to have a little peace of heaven on earth to go and feel peace in a world of crazy! I love the temple!
OH and my mom and I packed all my stuff for 18 months in 3 suitcases, so that was a miracle too honestly. ;)

Alma 26:1 says, “how great reason we have to rejoice; for could we have supposed when we started...that God would have granted to us such great blessings?” This year has been “quite the journey,” but among it all we have seen more blessings than we can count from the Lord. With thanksgiving in a few weeks, I would encourage you all to look for blessings in your life and give thanks to the Lord for all that we are given!!

I fly out at 6am on Monday morning from Portland and land in SLC at 8:30!! It will be one longggg day and I AM SO EXCITED! Next email I send will be from Utah!!!!

love you all! <3 sister dougall