Love you all!!

I don't have much time today. Well it seems like it is like that every week, and 10 minutes of my email time has already passed with reading emails. So I will focus on how crazy this week has been!

Visitors' Center (VC) training started on Wednesday. There are 5 of us in the district, all going to Mesa on Tuesday. 2 are English speaking and 3 of us are Spanish. We all get along so well, I am really looking forward to meeting all the sisters in Mesa. Besides my comp the other Spanish sister is from Washington, but her parents are Mexican. The 2 English sisters are from Alpine, Utah and Acworth, GA. It is fun having another Georgian, and one of our teachers is from Marietta, so that makes up half of us!

The VC training is really intense. Wednesday was like another first day at the MTC. We had some hardcore Referral Center training. We found out that we spend about 6 hours a day at the VC and 2 of those hours are spent on the phone calling potential referrals that we have gotten. That was news to all of us. Whoever said that a Visitors' Center is not a real mission and is really easy needs to go through the training we have. Regular missionaries really get to know their investigators one on one and can sit down with them to find out their concerns. We have about 5 minutes to find out the concerns for groups of up to 30 people sometimes. We have to get to know them, find out their background, their questions, and then make a "lesson" plan right then, based on what we learn. It is kind of intimidating, but at the same time exhilarating. The sister who trained us in the phone program said that the Lord requires a great amount of faith from His VC sisters, because most of the time we won't ever see the fruits of our labors. We see these people in the VC for about 30 minutes, and then they go home. If they were in tune with the Spirit, they will give us their information, and then we will send other missionaries to go teach them. We have to trust the Lord and other missionaries enough to leave these people in their hands. I know that this is one of the big reasons I must have been called to serve in a VC. Having the trust to do that has been a struggle I have had while here and the person that the Lord wants me to be is someone with great faith, hope and humility, so he has given me this call to be able to develop those attributes. I am so thankful for that.

I am so excited for Tuesday! I have already packed up half my clothes, because we have hardly any time on Monday to pack and the Oquirrh Mountain Temple Dedication is on Sunday when we would normal pack. Last night we had our first VC TRC. We set up a VC with pictures in a room in the MTC and took people on tours. Oh! Sorry, this is going to be a scattered email... We have so many resources as a VC sister! There is a room next to our class room that has some electronic kiosks about the temples and families, etc that they have in VCs. There is a big screen TV where we can watch some of the exhibits that VCs have, like the Christus. We even have a huge cardboard Christus cutout. I will take pictures and send them home.

Anyways, tomorrow is Temple Square day! I can't wait. We are going to be put with a companion there and will follow her schedule from 4-8 in the afternoon. Oh, and tonight, we go around the MTC collecting real referrals from the missionaries here. We then call these people tomorrow morning and invite them to be taught by the missionaries! We are already starting real missionary work! There is so much more to talk about and learn about, I'm sure we will learn more our first day in the field than we have in 9 weeks. I will have to try and write a longer email then and tell all about it!

I love you all and am sorry if my emails are scattered! Speaking of scattered, the little miracle from God today was that we found a Russian vocab, phrase and grammar book in one of the give-away boxes, so now I have a Russian PMG and the MTC language book that goes with it. But don't worry, Spanish is of course my focus, I am just grateful for the gospel oriented opportunity to keep up my Russian.

De Provo con amor,
Hermana Ladd