Love, Sister Lemon: Episode 3: The One with the Football Devotional

Hello friends! It is Monday once again, which means it is time for my weekly update!

Yesterday was Sunday, which means we have a speaker come for a devotional. Basically cool people come here twice a week and share an uplifting or motivating message with is. They are always amazing, but yesterday's was really cool because my companion, Sister Pace, was asked to give the opening prayer, so we got to sit up on the stage with the speakers. It was cool to be so close to them. The three people who spoke were Chad Lewis (a former NFL tight end and the NFL ambassador to China), Taysom Hill (the BYU quarterback who apparently everyone loves), and Steve Young's nephew (who is in the MTC right now learning Mandarin and preparing to serve in Australia!). I have therefore dubbed this the football devotional. Now, if you now me well, which you all do, you probably know how clueless I am about football. I was therefore a little disappointed to find out that the speakers were all football players, but they were actually super cool! I don't have time to tell you everything that they said, which was all amazing, but I will share with you this thought: There are going to be hard things in your life no matter what. There is nothing you can do to change that. What you can do is decide how to respond to hardships and what kind of attitude you will have through it all. I feel like I've heard that about a billion times, but it has so much more impact when a pro football player is telling you about the time when he hiked Mt. Kilimanjaro with a man who had lost his leg in the Afghanistan war, and the attitude this man had.

In other news, my companions and I taught Relief Society (a Sunday school class for women) yesterday. Our adult leader was super impressed and told us it was the best Relief Society lesson she has ever been to in the MTC! She was either just being nice, or Heavenly Father taught her directly, because I don't feel like we really taught anything so much as just learned from everyone's comments. It was a great experience for me.

Now for a funny story! Most of our time here is spent preparing and practicing to teach in Cambodian. One of the ways we do this is by role playing, in which our teachers act as people that they taught on their missions, and we practice teaching them each day. This week, I was trying to encourage one of the people we were practicing teaching. He said he felt like he wasn't good enough at praying and sometimes he felt embarrassed about it. I was trying to say "we aren't perfect at teaching in Cambodian, and you aren't perfect at praying, but if we just keep trying, God will help us get better ". What I actually ended up saying was "we aren't perfect, but you are", and then I realized my mistake, and in trying to correct it, I said "wait, no you're not. You're not good at praying". Oh, man! I felt so silly. Luckily, he was very understanding, and he said he understood what I meant to say, and that my mistake actually made him feel better about not being perfect. So I guess it was an inspired goof!

I can also read some Cambodian now! It takes me a really long time, and I have to check my alphabet chart pretty frequently, but I'm working on it! Maybe by my next update, I'll be able to read whole sentences! I can only hope.

Well, that is all for this week! You guys are the best, and it means a lot to me that I have all your support. What an amazing life I am blessed with!

Love,

Sister Lemon