Goodbye Utah!!

I leave for California tomorrow at 4 in the morning which is kind of crazy because my companion left this morning and the other two girls in my district leave at3 p.m. So I am going to have to be a Solo missionary for 13 hours!!! I have never had a problem being alone or doing my own thing, in fact, i actually liked having my space and doing what i wanted to do but after having a companion around 24/7 if feels kind of weird to be with someone else. 

I taught my last lesson to my MTC investigator Saturday night. Ruben agreed to read the Book of Mormon and i invited him to pray to receive a confirmation about our message. Even thought it is just my teacher pretending to be an investigator Hermana Oteiza and I prepare real lessons and constantly pray to have the Spirit with us to guide us what to say and what to do. People have told me that if you prepare yourself the spirit will tell you what you should say and I believed it was true but now I KNOW that it is true and it feels so surreal. You know you are teaching by the spirit when you learn something from what you have just said. I have also learned to love people. Sometimes in practices we come across difficult scenarios and I have no idea how to answer or what the proper thing to do is but I open my mouth to say what I do know and that is that We are Children of our Heavenly Father and He loves us no matter what. 

I also testify again and again about prayer. Our purpose as missionaries is to "Invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored Gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end." The word "convince" is nowhere in that purpose, that is the Spirit's Job and I am so thankful that He takes care of that because that is honestly the hardest part. 

I am personally learning a lot about the atonement and strengthening my testimony through constant repentance. Exact obedience to the missionary rules and the Spirit is the only way to grow and learn out here and I can feel how fast and easily the spirit retreats when we get too rowdy or conversation turns into debate. There are a lot of crazy theories out there about Kolob and the Church's stand on specific political things but the truth is that those things are not part of our missionary purpose and thinking about them just distracts us from what we came here to do. Our district has been having some issues with that but we all love each other anyway. I was sad to see Elder Beltran leave yesterday, he reminded me of my little brother and his testimony really touched and strengthened mine. Elder Akhmetov left this morning with Hermana Oteiza, we joked that he was a russian spy because his family is Russian and he is kind of athletic but we confirmed our suspicions when we saw him climb to the balcony of the second story apartment with his bare hands! I thought he was going to fall down and break something. 

I am super excited to be able to go to California tomorrow. I am nervous about the airport and the ride over there but President Tyler helped me to calm down and answered some questions about what to do once we get there. I feel like the MTC was like drinking water from a fire hydrant but at the same time I know that most of the learning will come once I am out in the field.

Here are some pictures of our last night as a district. Us girls moved our mattresses to the living room and stole some of the Elder's food (Elder Akhmetov had 3 boxes full). It was so much fun!