Visas and Bednar

Visas & Bednar

They say no gang signs but we're pretty rebellious

The Dutch Elders left on Monday and it was the saddest thing in the world.
Who knew a goodbye handshake could be so sad?
​

Bronwen's letter from Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Hallå!

Wow I'm pretty sure I'll say this in the next seventy something emails but HOLY COW I can't believe that it's already been a week! Seriously this past week flew by! 

This week has been so good. Our district has grown together so much and our whole zone has so much fun together. Okay so last Friday we found out our investigator, Molli, is our second teacher! (Actually we all already knew that but we had to pretend we didn't) So her real name is Sister Bass and she is so sweet. It's so nice to finally have two teachers! Before we just had one of our 3 hour blocks in the classroom with a teacher so it's nice to have two of them with a teacher so that we don't waste as much time away doing stupid stuff like playing hangman with Swedish words or throwing pens at a roll of tape and seeing who could hit it (expectations for fun are severely decreased here at the MTC). I learn more everyday both of the language and how to be more effective missionary. 

Sunday was so good! It's by far the best day at the MTC. Every week we all have to prepare a talk on the weekly topic in our language. Then at the beginning of sacrament meeting the conductor lays out the program and you find out if you have to give your talk. Slightly scary but also not because no one can really understand you no matter what you say. Then Sunday night was MOVIE TIME. We got to see Meet the Mormons and it was so good! All of us chose to go see that because there's actual real music in it. Everyone was getting so excited when "glorious" is played at the end.
This week Syster Davis and I got another investigator! His name is Ronnie. It was so fun to go teach him for the first time on Monday. Our lessons are slowly getting better and we're able to understand more. So now we teach Molli and Ronnie. It was so funny, yesterday one companionship of Elders went in to teach Molli and they came back and were talking to Sister Bass (they're actually the same person remember) and they were like we thought it went pretty good. And she was like yeah but did you hear what she said at the end? Apparently she told them that she had just lost her job...but they didn't understand what she said so they were just like "good good." Pretty much all of our teaching experiences in a nutshell. But we're gaining more understanding. It's exciting to go into a lesson and basically understand everything that's happening. But it's frustrating to know what you want to say in English but then not have the words for it in Swedish.

Yesterday we had the MTC Devotional and Elder Hugo Montoya came from the quorum of the 70. It was so good! His first language is clearly Spanish and his English isn't very good. At the end of his talk he had all of us who are going to teach in languages other than our first language and, of course, so many hands went up. Then he told us that he also isn't speaking in his native language and that it's really hard but he does it to be obedient to what the Lord wants. The spirit was so strong during the whole devotional and it affirmed to my mind again (plus we're taught this every day of our lives here) that we are not the teacher. The Holy Ghost is the real teacher. No matter how well we can speak the language, the Spirit can be there and teach things that we have no capability of conveying. 

We know that we'll most likely get an apostle for our devotional on Thanksgiving and we all really want it to be Elder Bednar. And we really want our visas to go through. Basically that's all a missionary needs, visas & Bendar. 

I love volleyball so you are going to have to deal with me talking about it every single time I write from the MTC. But GUYS it's such a struggle. We try to form a dream team but then it isn't very fun because the other team is just a mess and cant even pass a serve. We've also tried establishing a varsity and jv court but that has failed as well. You just have to deal. But overall it really is fun. Today we got to play for like an hour and a half with just our zone which was really really fun! 

In case any of you were wondering how a bunch of 18/19/20 year olds are coping without social media, never fear. There's a new kind of social media stalking that we like to participate in. Its....drum roll....I'm a Mormon profiles. Its simultaneously the worst and funniest thing. We were all supposed to make one before we came to the MTC. On the computers here we can only access things from LDS.org because the search bar is disabled. We figure out each others first names and then search each other. It's all fun and games until your profile gets looked up and then its just embarrassing because none of us knew what to write on those things so everyone just laughs. 

Karlie Johnson enters today! I hope I see her often! Mom, to be a host you have to be scheduled to be one and they normally just pick missionaries who will be here for 9 weeks. But i'll get to see her sometime, I'm sure! 

Wow my bathroom cleaning abilities have exponentially increased these past two weeks. In the mornings on Saturdays at 8:30 and Mondays at 6:15 we have "service." AKA cleaning bathrooms. Well, I guess there are other possibilities but me and Syster Davis ALWAYS get assigned bathrooms. We have to wear those embarrassing plastic goggle things that you always had to wear in middle school and high school when you did science experiments because "one time an elder didn't wear them and he got cleaner in his eye and then his contact fused to his eyeball." So, out of fear of my contact fusing to my eyeball, I follow the rule. 

The best day of probably all of our lives was Monday night when we got Chick-Fil-A for dinner. Nothing else even needs to be said about that because chick-fil-a would make your day if you live outside of the MTC so it pretty much makes your whole week when you're in here.

Well, until next week!

Mycket kärlek,

Syster May