Hola mi familia y amigos!
How is everybody doing? I am muy bien! It feels like I've been her FOREVER and at the same time it seems like I just barely got here! No joke, the first 4 days of being here literally - LITERALLY - felt like I'd been here for three weeks. Not even joking, I wish I could somehow get you guys to understand the weirdness of the time warp here, but it's impossible to understand unless you're here I think! This last week felt like 2 days... It's inexplicable!
I guess I didn't write much about my companion last week. She grew up in Japan, but she's American. She lived there with her family because her parents are teachers for the government and they were teaching in Japan, so that's where she grew up. She went to American schools so she doesn't speak fluent Japanese, but she does know some. She's 24 and has a degree in Opera, which is pretty cool! There's this huge Tongan that we see frequently downstairs and he always tries to get her to sing for him, and she hates it! We've been getting along much better and we're communicating better which is making things much easier!
So we originally only had 4 sisters total in our room, but we had 6 beds and storage for 6 people, which was super nice because we had tons of extra space! Then last Tuesday me and Hermana Johansen (my companion) were walking to the bookstore and there was this companionship in front of us and one had crutches and they were moving along really slowly because of it. So they turned around and asked us if we'd be willing to go on temporary splits so they could quickly go grab something from their room (they live in a totally different building than we do) and we said sure! I went with the non-crutches one while Hma Johansen stayed behind with the other one. Anyways, that night after our studying and planning we were going back up to our room expecting to just go to sleep and we open the door and BAM! There's all this luggage in our room and those two sisters are sitting in there just waiting for us to come back. Turns out they got put into our room because we had two extra beds and our building has an elevator where their old one didn't! But they had no idea who's room they got put into until we walked in and I just thought it was so crazy that we had JUST helped them that morning and then they got put into our room!
The sister with crutches tore her ACL playing basketball in gym and it was a mess - she had to go get surgery and she's just been recovering the last few days. But they're way funny and I love having them in our room :) All the other sisters were all ticked that we had to get rid of our extra beds and stuff, but I just told them to think how grateful they'd be if you had to hobble around on crutches all day, up and down the stairs every, and then you finally got to move into a building with an elevator! One of the sisters said, "wow, way to make me feel guilty...." And another one said, "well, I guess we only feel guilty if there is something to be guilty about..." Which is so true! :)
I LOVE the other companionship in our room (the ones that were originally with us - Hermana Severinsen and Royle) and I love the elders in our disctrict! We have a super cool district and we all get along really well. The branch president and everyone is always talking about how the districts need to do stuff together for unity and we always say that we're too united, we just distract each other because we get along so well and we can talk forever! I really like the Elders though, their names are Elder Ogden and Elder Lehr. Elder Lehr is actually from Layton and went to LHS, which I thought was kind of funny :)
Our favorite, well only, Hermanas in our zone left yesterday morning and I was so sad! They were way funny and I really loved talking to all of them and now we have no sisters in our zone! One of them, Hermana Hong, can seriously talk to you for an hour straight without any pauses between comments or stories... haha it's so funny, I love talking to her! On Sunday we had a going away "party" for them. You might be thinking, "what kind of party do you have at the MTC?" This is the kind of party: There's candy, pop, and we all took a color code test from a contraband book that one of their moms sent to them! Hahahah it sounds super lame, but it was actually pretty fun! It was fun just hanging out with people :)
Here are some of the torterous things about the MTC;
1. When I exercise in the gym upstairs they have these beautifu, big windows that you can look out of as you're riding the stationary bike. I love doing that, but what I hate is that I can see people walking on the sidewalk outside of the MTC and I sit there and wonder "I wonder if they're going to school, or work, or home to their family." And it's so weird to know that they're living their totally normal, every day life while I'm in the MTC living totally different than them!
2. Teachers here use their cell phones in front of us and I'm like, "seriously??" Sometimes I'm tempted to steal one for a while, but then I think, "no, it's not worth it..." Haha :) It's always way weird to think that when our teachers leave they're just going to go home and be with their family and do whatever they want to do!
I really do like my teachers though, they are way awesome! They really know how to teach and get you to understand the things that we're learning about and they really help you rely on the Spirit. They make you figure out answers for yourself instead of just spitting out the answer to you. Hermana Sandoval is our Sister teacher and is from Columbia and she's super short! She's only like 4'9", no kidding, and she's so cute and little! She reminds me of Gladys a lot and I always laugh at stuff she does that reminds me of Gladys and she's always asking, "Hermana Roberts, what's so funny??" Haha :)
Spanish is coming along well enough! The hardest part for me is definitely the grammer! I don't even know English grammer so I'm having to learn English and Spanish grammer at the same time - it's kind of dificult! Seriously, I don't know the difference between regular and irregular verbs and they talk about stemming and all this other weird stuff that I have to ask my companion about because I have NO IDEA what they're talking about!! But it will come, I just have to work hard at it.
So to practice teaching lessons we frequently teach people in our own district or zone and I guess I never really thought that I would feel the Spirit while fake teaching because it's totally fake, but after the first lesson and ever since than, it's crazy how much I feel the Spirit while I'm teaching or while I'm being taught as an investigator. It's super cool! I seriously have felt the Spirit more doing that than at any other time in my life.
The hardest thing for me so far is learning to totally rely on the Spirit while teaching because I'm always worried about what to say, what questions to ask and so on, but if I really just rely on the Spirit to tell me what to say, I'll be such a more effective and powerful teacher. But that's the hard part -- listening to the Spirit.
It's funny to see how people perceive me here. They all think I'm so innocent and the sweetest person on the Earth! The other day me and my companion and the other companionship were walking to lunch together and I said, "I've always wanted to punch someone-" and as I'm about to continue with the story I was telling them I realized that I was walking alone! They all had literally stopped walking because they were so shocked that I would want to punch someone! They were all like "what???" Hahaha it was so funny! ANd I've been totally being myself, I guess I just hadn't gotten to the violent side of me....
Funny story of the week about me: The other day I went to the bathroom and I was trying to hurry because my companion was outside waiting for me. So I tuck my shirts in, wash my hands, and hurry outside. When I got out there she was talking to this group of elders so I started talking to them, all the while my skirt felt super weird!! So I kept readjusting it, but something was super weird about it. Once we were done talking to them and walked away I realized I have forgotten to zip my skirt up!! Hahaha luckily I don't think any of the Elders saw :) I make a fool of myself at least once a day :)
My new favorite game in gym is 4-square! Ash convinced me into playing and now it's my favorite! She left yesterday morning and I'm so sad I won't see her forever now :(
Well, I'm almost out of time! I love you guys all SOOO much! Use DearElder if you can, it's super nice because I get it the same day you write it!!
Mom, can you please send me: more Trio bars, some gluten free/dairy free desserts, and at Downeast Basics they have tanktops called Wonder Cami's and could you buy 4 white ones of those and send them to me? I have a shirt that's turned mine way blue.... Thanks!
