Oh my goodness what a week!!!!

Okay, so the first and foremost biggest news is that I GOT MY FLIGHT PLANS!!!!!!!!! If you haven't been on a mission, this may not seem like that big of a deal, but here at the MTC it's pretty much better than Christmas. The end is in sight and I can basically smell the Philippines, I'm so close now. I'm totally excited. I'm also terrified out of my mind, but mostly I am just excited. It's going to be awesome. No, the language is not perfect, anything but actually, but I know that that will come with time and with hard work. I worry about the giant spiders and the crazy hot temperatures, but mostly I'm just excited to serve those people. We've learned so much about them from our teachers and I am just so excited to love them and know them. It will be awesome.

So with the flight plans has come some other stress. Our district is getting antsy and very stressed out with the language, so there has been some contention and just craziness, but I think we all are just strung out and ready to get to the field. It's nuts to think that we have been here for 8 weeks already. I feel like it's only been 2 weeks. So along with all this stress has come some major impatience on my part. I'm sure that none of you are too surprised by this fact, it has always been a big weakness of mine. So after feeling terrible for a couple of days because I wanted to kill all the elders every day, I decided to try to work on the patience. I made it a plan to study the Christlike attribute in Preach My Gospel and study it out in the scriptures. I also prayed like you wouldn't believe so that I could work on refining myself. And let me tell you what happened. I was reading a bunch of scriptures, but none of them really seemed to apply to me in that moment. Then I came to Romans 5:3-5. And it says that we should glory in our tribulations because they try our patience. I thought that was totally a bunch of bunk, as my mom would say, but kept reading on. Then it said that with patience, experience, and with experience hope. In that moment the Lord let me know what I needed to understand about patience. Patience is not just something we have so that we can be nicer to those around us, patience is our opportunity to show the Lord that we have hope in Him, in His ability to change our hearts and the hearts of those around us. It's showing our hope in the atonement. Let me just say that this hit me like a ton of bricks. I had never thought about my impatience as being a lack of hope in the Savior. But that is exactly what it is. I just want you all to know how incredibly grateful I am for this lesson and I hope that maybe some of you can find application if you are struggling. Embrace the atonement with every part of yourself. Seek for the Lord to help refine your weaknesses. The atonement applies to ALL of them. I am learning that lesson so well here. It is an incredible blessig to be here in the MTC. I need this experience, as hard as it is and as hard as it will become over the next 16 months. The Lord loves me, and I have no doubts about that.

Well, that's really all I have to report. I am finally feeling WAY better from being sick, I think that the antibiotics have been helping a TON, thank goodness. So no fears there. I will be in tip-top shape for the field come next Monday!

I hope that you are all doing well and I hope to hear from you whenever you get the chance. I won't be here after next Monday, so mail won't get to me, but if you need to contact me my email is hayleyjackson@myldsmail.net

Mahal kita!!!

Sister Jackson