Email #5 - MACANUDO

August 30, 2016

Provo MTC

FAMILY! This week has been very eventful! So let's start from the top if I can remember much.... Yeah that might be the topic to start with. I was playing basketball yesterday and more or less just got head butted... So I went to the trainer and then got taken to the BYU Student Health Clinic and was diagnosed with a mild concussion. So that's been a little interesting these last 24 hours since it happened. But lets see what I can remember!  

Last Tuesday for the devotional we had Elder Uceda from the Seventy come and it was incredible. He talked a lot about his conversion story and how we was influenced by missionaries like us. His conversion story is completely amazing. I was in awe the entire time he was talking. This Sunday for the devotional we had Elder Watson who is the director of the curriculum for missionaries. He talked a lot about how we can influence others by Preach My Gospel and the power that is in the book. The devotionals were amazing this week!

Last night, a few elders that arrived here last week, were struggling a little and so Elder Ham and I went over to the other building where the rest of the elders in our zone are. Elder Ham, Gibbons, Hanna and I are the only elders in the zone in a different building and the rest of the zone is in a different building so that makes it a little harder trying to help out the other elders when our keys don't get us into that building. But we went over and just talked and they opened up about their doubts and concerns of being here. It was really cool to be able to share some advice with them. I shared Alma 37:37 with them about counseling with the Lord in all things. I told them that as hard as it is during these hard times, this is where you truly find out who you are and what you can handle. That relying on the Lord is all you can do. He is always there and he is waiting for you to reach to him for help. I talked about how my first week was extremely hard and I finally got to the tipping point and I realized that all I could do is turn to the Savior for help. Jesus Christ lives and is the Savior of the world. He loves each and everyone of us. He knows the feelings of our heart and we just need to reach out to him and ask for help and he will be there for us. It has been amazing to develop an even closer relationship with the Lord through this. My love for the Lord has grown so much and I love him. I have now caught a little bit of a glimpse of what is to come and why a mission truly changes people. This is the work of the Lord and we are representatives of Jesus Christ whether we are wearing his name on our chest or not. I haven't even gotten to Alabama yet and I already love the people there so much! It truly was an amazing experience to be able to talk to some of the new missionaries.

So! That is about it for this week! I love this gospel and I love the Lord! Love you all so much! Thank you so much for your support! I love seeing all the pictures of the family! I saw a few pictures of the kids and it feels like they are so old.... I have only been gone a month. What is this.... Miss you Max, Laurel, Millie, Scotti, and Jane! Love you all!

Strength and Honor

Elder Noah Featherstone

Also, cool story of the week! I forgot about this one. But I was in computer lab a few days ago just doing some spanish exercises on the computer and I went to lds.org to listen to some church music on there and I pulled up and EFY and church music playlist they have on lds.org and GUESS WHAT I LISTENED TO AND I WAS SO HAPPY!!!!!! Tender Mercies of the Lord. Wow. I was in tears just listening to it. Love you so much Megan! Thanks for everything Family!!!

Email #4 - Mission Work. The Final Frontier

August 23, 2016

Provo MTC

Family! How are you all? I've heard some pretty dang good news this week and it makes me SO HAPPY!!! Welcome to the Family Jane! So I'm 1 for 3 on new nieces and nephews while I am gone! So I'm praying that there will be 2 more before I get home! So I'll be praying real hard. Please don't let me down! Ha! So this week was a good one!

So last night I somehow talked everyone into going to the temple this morning. It was not that hard to convince them but, the hard part was we ended up going to the 5:40 session. Ha! I got up at 4:45. So running low on sleep today! Everyone kept asking "Por qué?" and my response was "Aquí en Districto 24-B Nosotros somos todos sobre la experencia." I´ll let you figure out what that means. Probably not too hard. So... So far it has been a completely great morning!

On Sunday the devotional was by the Nashville Tribute Band which was incredible! I was in the MTC Choir and we ended up singing a few songs with them and it was spectacular! Mom I don't want to make you cry but go look them up on Youtube or something and listen to "The hardest thing I've ever loved to do." As well as the rest of you RM's you would love it. So that was fun to sing with them! Such an amazing experience.

Speak of the devil. I just saw Benny again about 30 seconds ago! Ha! We are planning on having lunch with him today! So that should be fun! He is a stud! But every week that goes by I don't know what to tell you cause we just sit in the classroom and speak Spanish all day! So I don't have much to tell you. I mean we have hilarious experiences with the residence halls at night but I'm not sure those should be spoken about. Especially this weeks....

This week we began our zone leader duties which has been interesting. We are so much busier... Like we have zero time for anything else but I guess that's what missionaries do. But it has been good! Especially our lessons. For some reason this weeks lessons were amazing. It was amazing to understand what they were saying clearly. The gift of Tongues is real and I have experienced that since I've been here. It was hard but amazing that I could respond to the investigators needs in Spanish. I do  far better at understanding and comprehending what they are saying rather than speaking. I'm still picking up on all the tenses but they are coming along.

Well that's about it for this week! Love you Guys! Thank you so much for the love you show me! Love you Family!!!!!!!!!

Strength and Honor

-Elder Noah Featherstone

Email #3 - Halfway point

August 16, 2016

Provo MTC

FAMILY! Hope you are all doing amazing! and I mean AMAZING!!! So I have almost zero time this week! It's been crazy today! So I'll get right into it. 

Last Tuesday night after I finished emailing you, Elder Andersen was here for the Tuesday evening devotional. It was incredible. Learning from the apostles of the Lord is amazing. I enjoyed every minute of it. It was pretty spectacular! So I also told Dad this but yesterday I had the opportunity to go play the piano for about 30 minutes and it was the GREATEST!!! Such an "ESCAAAPPE" from everything else! It is such a stress reliever to go sit down and just play. So thank you so much for keeping me in piano! I knew I would be grateful for it but not this grateful! It reminded me of sitting down on a school night late with Mom and Dad and just giving them a little concert. Ha I wish I could still do that! 

I was called as the new Zone Leader this week. So I'm still kind of taking it all in but I'm excited. 

So honestly I don't know what else to tell you. We literally just sit in class everyday and learn and learn and learn. Oh I almost forgot what else we do. LEARN!!! In class our teachers don't teach a word of English. The whole thing is in Spanish! So I'm getting good at understanding but speaking is hard with all the conjugations and stuff but it's coming along. 

OHHHHH!!!! I almost forgot!! I went over during CICLO last night with my comp Elder Ham to 4M which is where I heard from the ASL missionaries that Ben Feathy was teaching! I couldn't find him so I decided to ask someone and they said "Oh yeah he is in this room." So I went and looked through the window in the door and there he was! BENNNYYYY!!! Such a stud! So he looked over with this face of confusion not knowing who it was and just did this nice wave like I was a stranger and then you could see it click. He ran over to the door and gave me a massive hug! Ha so good to see him! So the plan is to hook up during lunch and he can come join my companion and I during it. So that should be fun! 

Thanks for everything you are all doing to support me! You guys are the best. Love you so much! Don't have too much fun without me! Love you all! 

Strength and Honor

-Elder Noah Featherstone

​Studies with Elder Ham in the Jail  

Some of the other Elders in the Zone

         Some random missionary that had the same tie on as me! Ha!​

                                                 The Feathy cousins

                                   The Feathy Cousins Name Tags

                                               Elder Little and Elder Hansen!​

Email #2 - SEMANA DOS

August 9, 2016

Provo MTC

Family!!! How are you guys?? Hope you are doing well! This week has been STELLAR!!!! So I'll get right into it because I don't really have a ton of time as you RM's know... That MTC moves so dang fast... ha!

So this week has been pretty dang good! It is literally just CICLO (Personal, Companion, Language Study) (ciclo is cycle in Spanish), Language, and more language. We do our best to say everything in Spanish but sometimes you just want to say stuff in English. But the Spanish is coming along. We finished teaching Eric last week and it went well. This week we got two new investigators. Maribel and Franco. So those have been good! It gets frustrating when you can't say what you want to say in Spanish but we are slowly figuring it out. I'm slowing understanding more and more.

This week Elder Holland’s son Matt Holland spoke at the Sunday night devotional.  He is the President of UVU. He has done tons of studying on Joseph Smith and all the things that happened in his life and it was incredible. After he spoke I sang with the MTC Choir and we sang "Praise to the Man." It was the arrangement that the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sings. It was incredible. I can tell you all that Joseph Smith saw Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father. He translated the Book of Mormon and is one of my heroes. He was truly converted to the gospel and Christ. I want to have a testimony as rock solid as Joseph's. He was truly an amazing prophet. The talk was truly remarkable and was a testimony builder.

Well that's about it for this week! Hope you are all doing well! I'll talk to you all more next week! Love you all!

Strength and Honor

-Elder Noah Featherstone

Email #1 - HEY. YOU. GUYYSSSSS

August 2, 2016
Provo MTC

Family! How are you doing! I hope you are doing completely STELLAR! This week was good! So after the completely terrible drop off... "THE DROP OFF!!" Name that movie. Anyways that was horrible. But then there was nowhere to go but up. Ha so my companions name is Elder Ham. He is a stud! He is from Portland and I honestly couldn't have asked for a better first companion. You know how I hate to be late for things so I was expecting a companion that I would have to drag out of bed and help get going every morning. He could not be more like me in that way. We both are loving it. Also he is an athlete which helps when I want to go play basketball. But the first few days went super slow... They have you doing orientation and stuff like that and it's completely terrible. But it has picked up since then. It's crazy how much studying you do in the MTC. That has definitely been hard but good! 

The language is coming along but you all know me well enough that it is hard for me to not worry about things so that's a bit of a challenge. But everyone tells me not to worry and it'll come so hopefully it does! ha!

Everyone in my district is awesome. Oh and speaking of districts. I got called as the District Leader. That has been cool too. I've met so many awesome people since I've been here. I have become good friends with an elder who left to Argentina yesterday. But he is incredible. His name is Elder Crowther. He has helped us get in the groove of things and adjust to the MTC. It's been super nice to hear from him cause he reminds me a ton of Caleb so that was nice cause I've missed all my HERMANOS! Brian, Greg, Preston, and Caleb... YOU GUYS ARE STUDS!!!! I love hearing from you!

On Sunday night after the devotional my companion and I went to see a talk by Elder Bednar. It's called "Character of Christ." It was amazing. Truly what I needed to hear. But everything is going well. You know just partying it up with all the Spanish elders! Anyways that is about it for the week! I'll send some pictures but the MTC computers are weirddddd so let's hope it happens! Love you all! Talk to you next week!

-Elder Featherstone

Strength and Honor