One Month Down, 17 to Go!

Hello family and loved ones!

My teacher, Hermana McBride fell and hit her head on a shelf and got a concussion this week!! She's doing better now, but please keep her in your prayers!

My friends!

I'm playing volleyball a lot lately and I'm starting to get actually decent at it. At first I was awful because I had never played it before, but Hermana Alexander was on a team and so she gave me a lot of tips and helped me practice and now I'm slowly improving. I'm not really good at sports, but I love to play them. Gym time is one of the highlights of my day.

I noticed something really cool this week, I got here on 10/21 and I'm leaving the MTC 12/01! Interesting, huh?

Hermanas Knight and Hulme

Other exciting things this week were first of all, I got to teach Relief Society (women’s Sunday class), which was really great. The subject was on the Spirit's influence in our lives and trusting God's plan for us. I shared a personal story about my sister, Libbie, and it made me cry because I sure miss and love her so much. It was hard talking about her because I miss her so much, but it was worth it because it really brought the spirit into the lesson and several of the sisters came up to me afterwards and thanked me.

The second “exciting” thing that has been happening is that I have been having horrible, gushing nosebleeds every day for like 10 days now. I went to the clinic here to have them look at my nose, and the second he touched it, it started to bleed again!! It was crazy and it wouldn't stop for like an hour! So I actually got sent to an ENT here in Provo and got to leave campus for the afternoon. It was SO WEIRD and FUN. They were playing country songs in the lobby at the doctor’s office, and I was in heaven. I seriously almost cried tears of joy when "after the storm blows through" by Maddie and Tae came on. It was so refreshing and just the boost I needed, because right after that I had my nose cauterized!! THEY STUCK A FLAME UP MY NOSE. They had to get the veins shut though (sorry kind of gross) It hurt so, so, so bad and I was sneezing all the whole rest of the day. But now it’s been almost three days since my last nose bleed, so I think it's working. I also have to put Vaseline up my nose every morning and night. This dry air is killing me! So anyway, that was fun.

When we got on the shuttle to go back to the MTC, we met a pair of elders from Hungary! It was so cool. They both speak German, Hungarian, Italian, and English fluently. Impressive.

In other news, I wrote a song for my district this week! One of the other districts just left (sad), and they wrote a parody of the “cup song” about their district and sang it to us before they left. My district liked it so much they asked me to write one for us. It's to the tune of "Battle Hymn of the Republic," because that song is really fun to sing in Spanish, so we sing it every day. It's kind of our district’s theme song.

I wrote Elder Rogers a song, he drew me a picture!

Last night at choir practice the director said something that was really true and inspiring to me. He said that Love is the essence of life, and that when you think about it, it's so true because everything good that happens in the world is because somebody loves somebody else, and everything bad is because somebody is being selfish. Genius. 

Our investigator, Olga was sick this week, so unfortunately we didn't get to teach her, we did get to leave her a short video message on Skype though. It was actually really fun. Hermana Aldrich and I were being so dorky. We had fun with it though, and it was fun to use the computer.

Elders, being studly!

Before I go I want to tell an amazing story we were told at the devotional last night by Kim. B Clark of The Seventy. He said there was this man who grew up in Idaho Falls in a faithful Mormon family, who ran away from home when he was 14 and went down a dark path of life. He joined the Hell's angels and got heavily into drugs and alcohol. One day he was passed out in the front yard of the home the Hell's Angels have in L.A California (a place to dry out if you are too wasted to drive), and some Mormon missionaries came walking up their street. He started mocking them, because he used to be Mormon and thought these elders were so naive. They had two dogs in the yard that were trained to attack and kill anyone who tried to come into the yard, so he wasn't too worried about them trying to preach to him when they walked by. But then when they got to the end of the street, they talked for a minute and turned around and came back to the Hell's Angels house. The dogs started growling and acting like they were going to attack. But as soon as the Elders stepped foot on their sidewalk, the dogs walked away and laid down and went to sleep. Then one of the elders came up to the wasted man from Idaho, and said, "What's up?" The man said, “Oh, nothing,” and then the elder asked, "Where are you from?" and he said "Idaho Falls." Then the elder said, "No way! Me too! Do you happen to know the So-and-sos?" And then the wasted man said, "Yeah, they're my parents." Then the elder said something that changed both of their lives. "They're my parents, too."

It was the Hell's Angel's younger brother, all grown up and called to serve a mission in California. The elder said to his older brother he never knew what happened to him, but that he knows that God sent him there to bring him home. He ended up helping his brother turn his life around, go back to church, find Jesus again, move back home to Idaho, and reconnect with their parents. He ended up getting married in the temple five years later. The Hell's Angel ended up being in the Stake Presidency (local church leadership) with Kim B. Clark, which is where he learned the story from.

HOW AMAZING IS THAT?! God sure works in mysterious and amazing ways.

I love you all and I love my Father in Heaven. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to go out and help the people I know God needs me to help. Thanks for all the support. Please keep the letters coming! They are such an encouragement.

Much love, Hermana Alison Knight

My Zone

Elders in my Zone

View of the mountains