HALLO ALLES!!!
I am SO excited to tell you all about our first few days here! It's a good thing I'm a fast typer cause there's seriously so much to say. Sorry if this is scattered.
After I was dropped off, I was taken by a host missionary to get a packet which had my nametags, dorm key, MTC card, and a few other things. My host missionary then took me to my residence hall and we dropped off my stuff, and then she took me to my classroom, where I met my companions. THAT'S RIGHT, I have two companions, Sister Bell and Sister Bollwinkel, and our district (the people in your class) has two other Elders in it, Elders Hardy and Wallis. Immediately when you come to class, the teachers speak nothing but your language. I'm lucky because I know a lot of German already so I was able to understand probably 95% of what he was saying. When he asks us what a word in German means, I usually have to wait a few seconds for the others to have a chance to think of what it might mean, and then the teacher looks at me and that's basically the "okay" for me to give the answer haha. I am definitely the most experienced with the German language of the five of us. Our zone has two other districts in it, and there are a total of 13 of us, the only German speakers in the whole MTC. 10 of us are going to Berlin and three are going to Frankfurt. There are two other sisters in our zone, Sisters Blackhurst and Jefferies. Sister Cabrina Blackhurst is the one person I knew before coming here. Her missionary, Josh Beck, and my missionary are really good friends and apparently Elder Beck told her to find me here and lo and behold, we live together! Haha so that's fun. Sister Jefferies is the cousin of one of my friends, Brianna Elzey, and I swear they are twins! My companions are awesome. Sister Bell is SO fabulous and we are basically soul sisters. She's from Salt Lake and she loves sports and also has a missionary serving in Milan, Italy. My other companion is Sister Bollwinkel and she is from Arizona. It's so fun being in a trio!
For those of you who are wondering, YES, we DO teach an investigator two days after you get here. In your new language. It was so rough. To be honest, that has been the only hard part about being in the MTC. This investigator is a person who has been on a mission before and comes here and basically pretends to be one of the investigators they had when they were on a mission. They show a little clip they made where they introduce themselves so you go into the lesson knowing a little bit about them. It was pretty cool because at one point in the clip, none of us understood what he said so our teacher replayed a little bit of it, and I seriously understood every single word he said. The gift of tongues is already brewing. We've taught him twice already and we're teaching him again tonight. The very first time was hard because I felt like I needed to take the lead because I know the most German and it was just a train wreck. He was really confused. The second time was better because we started taking a little more time to put our sentences together and he was really patient with us. We had a lesson plan but his questions were about the apostasy, how the BoM came about, and Joseph Smith and we had NO words to answer him with. It's really hard and a little cruel but refiner's fire I guess.
The food here is nicht so gut. There's a lot of options but a lot of the time we just get either a wrap, toast, or cereal. They have all sorts of stuff though, including soda, milk, juice, almost anything you'd ever want.
One of the people in our zone is from Australia and he's actually our zone leader. He's pretty cool and really funny. He talks about Australia all. the. time. I kid you not. The rest of our zone is pretty cool. Like I said, there's only 13 of us total here so we have gotten to know each other pretty well. I have seen Lincoln Bangerter a lot here but I have yet to see Taylor Shumway! Other than that I don't really know anyone here. Right now there isn't a lot of people at the MTC. In a few weeks we're getting 20 new German speakers, and they'll get here a week before we leave because of conference. After that 25 more German speakers will come, so we're pretty low on numbers this transfer. But that's okay.
Basically all we do here is sit in class, eat, sit in class, eat, sit in class, eat, sit in class, sleep. Sometimes we have a teacher here teaching us German but most of the time we are supposed to be studying. The elders in my district talk A LOT so it's hard to study so sometimes we leave the room. Actually all of our elders talk a lot so it's hard being in meetings and stuff.
Deutsch is coming along just fine. Like I said, the only hard thing I've experienced here is teaching our investigator. I actually learned this morning that every other one of the sisters has cried here except for me. Is that weird? The MTC is easy! I feel like that shouldn't be the case, so I'll keep you updated on that.
I guess I'll end with a spiritual thought: While I was packing before I came here, I was wondering if I should bring a pillow from home. I'm a two pillow person and I really wanted to bring it but it wasn't fitting in my suitcase. I prayed to know whether or not I should bring it, and I came to the conclusion that I should, so I made everything fit. The first night here, it was really late when Sister Blackhurst realized that they didn't give her a pillow to use, so I was able to give her the one they gave me and I got to use mine! So I was able to help her out through an answer to my prayer. God answers prayers and wants to bless us. I'm grateful to be here! The MTC is great, but time goes by so slowly so it feels like we've been here forever.
I love you all, PLEASE WRITE ME LETTERS/DEAR ELDER ME. The first time we got mail I didn't have any so PLEASE. Also packages are great ;) ask me any questions you might have because once you come to email, your mind goes blank. Sorry! I'll talk to you all next week. I hear that pictures aren't working here so you may not get any from me, sosososososooooo sorry! Eventually you will. Anyway, auf wiedersehen!
Sister Seamons
No comments:
Post a Comment