Dear family and friends,
Hermana Lindsey & Hermana Bjorn (Hermana Frozen)
WHAT A BEAUTIFUL THING P-DAY IS!!! haha, this morning I woke up feeling like I was on cloud 9 for getting through to the first P-day, and to top it all off we had pancakes for breakfast, and purely because I was so pleased with life and because it was sitting right there in front of my overly happy face waiting for me, I decided to put chocolate syrup on my pancakes. I have never done this before. haha. It was SO GOOD. Anyways, time is short and I am determined to give a BIG HUGE GOOD LONG WONDERFUL EMAIL so here it comes!!! I shall split this up into three sections. Section 1) General Overview of the Week, Section 2) Top Ten favorite moments (I think I shall try for five spiritual and five funny) and Section 3) Spiritual Lightbulb of the week. My plan is to always do the emails this way. It will keep my thoughts organized-- as most people who have ever read anything I have written would know-- I tend to go a bit crazy and tangential and get really confusing. So this organization will probably help. I hope to bring laughter, the spirit, and a sense of my general existence with each email. I love you guys so much!!! Ok, HERE GOES
OVERVIEW
Ok, so first of all, I have way more respect for every person I have ever known that has served a mission now. The past six days have QUITE HONESTLY been some of the busiest, hardest working days of my life. And for anyone who knows me, and what my practicing schedules were like, that´s saying a lot. We speak spanish, or shall I say "spanglish" almost 100% of the time, especially since my companion and I made the rule that we would only speak english when the sun is not up. (haha I created that rule porque sleep deprivation haha). My first two days here were, in all honesty, SHOCKINGLY difficult. The MTC (or the CCM is what it´s called here) is kind of like language and spiritual bootcamp. I have no problem with the spiritual part, and ironically due to the amount of classes I have during the day I actually have way less time for personal scripture reading (but I´m going to try to remedy that next week) but the language is MUCHO MUCHO MUCHO SERIOUS BUSINESS. And at first, all I could think was, "I can´t speak spanish, I can´t speak spanish, I can´t speak spanish....WHAT AM I DOING." Thankfully, based on some personal spiritual moments that I had, I got over this about the third day here and me and my companion decided on the motto that we´ll "fake it until we make it," Meaning we put all of ourselves into everything-- participating with one hundred percent of ourselves, putting all of our effort into it, and simply hoping that we will become the missionaries we want to be-- by sort of being them already. It takes faith to teach lessons in spanish (we taught on the SECOND DAY OF CLASSES ISN´T THAT CRAZY???) and it took faith to bear our testimonies in spanish, and it takes faith to make comments at devotionals where there are literally HUNDREDS of missionaries, but we JUST DO IT. (as Nike would say, haha) And it is working out! It must be slightly working out to because after only 5 days of being here, we got called to be sister training leaders (on Sunday) and I was literally SHOCKED. haha the branch president was apparently really impressed with our testimonies being in spanish the first week, and he expressed that. We officially become the trainers next week after the old ones leave. They are taking us under their wing this week and teaching us what we need to know, and that´s pretty great. Other things--- the food took some getting used to, but I eat like crazy, Haha my companion thinks it is really funny. I eat a lot at the meals though, cause snacks are NOT A THING. You are not allowed to eat in classrooms or in the casa, so your meals are the END ALL BE ALL OF FOOD. ALSO though no worries, I´m not going to become a GIANT because we have gym time for like 45 minutes every day. My companion and I go running, do abs or elliptical most days. It´s so great!!! ALSO the first day I was here a sweet little old lady asked if anyone played musical instruments and I was like "SI SI SI SENORITA" so I might get to play while I´m here! Which would be AWESOME! We will see!! There have been some amazing musical numbers already. CRAZY GOOD ELDER PIANIST PERSON and also a singer so THAT WAS COOL. What else? Well, MY COMPANION IS ACTUALLY THE COOLEST PERSON IN THE WORLD AND MY BEST FRIEND AND SHE LOOKS LIKE ELSA FROM FROZEN SO EVERYBODY CALLS HER "HERMANA FROZEN" including the mission president haha. She´s a super hard worker, super focused, and she definitely keeps me on my toes. Ironically, I´m the chiller one of the companionship and I make sure that we take breaks, eat all our meals, and laugh a lot. HAHA she thinks I am super funny hahahahah Anyways, I think that´s good for overall.
TOP TEN OF THE WEEK (doing this simply in backwards chronological order, not in order of importance, purely due to time sorry)
1) Yesterday, we had a really, really excellent lesson in spanish. MEANING we didn´t just read off of a script. We actually talked back in forth with the investigator (fake investigator of course haha but still) and I ACTUALLY UNDERSTOOD HIM. It was AMAZING and it TOTALLY testified to me the power of prayer because I was praying every second I didn´t understand him and I always eventually figured it out haha. To celebrate Heramana Bjork and I got chocolate bars from the tienda and SHE ATE CHOCOLATE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN FIVE YEARS ISN´T THAT CRAZY???
2) Everybody in our district bore their testimonies in spanish on Sunday. I was so proud of us and happy for everybody because at the beginnning of the week we couldn´t speak like ANY spanish. It was AMAZING. The branch president called it a "miracle" haha
3) Our district leader, on Saturday, bore his testimony to us during our district meeting/planning time and shared Ether 12:27 about weak things becoming strong. It was so pertinent to the inadequacy we were all feeling about spanish and I feel like it really strengthened us all to be able to share our testimonies the next day. I´d been feeling particularly bad at spanish all day, and that really helped me!! We have such a great district leader, I´m really happy about it :)
4) Friday was by far my hardest day at the CCM. I was totally doubting my ability to be a good missionary, but my best moment-- by FAR-- in that day was when I got home and read the card from Eumene and Vani that I had saved for a pertinent moment. I cried when I read it, but it gave me a lot of strength. I am so happy to have such beautiful people supporting me.
5) haha ok so here is a funny one. We had a "dress and grooming" meeting for sisters, which frankly could have been pretty awkward or just boring but the mission president´s wife was HILARIOUS so it was SUPER FUNNY hahaha
6) Also on that same day, we went to a workshop called "People and our Purpose". It was really helpful for me, because they played videos of people describing themselves and their relationship with faith and then we had to describe how we would respond to each of them and try to teach them. There was one women in particular that I felt such empathy for-- an elderly women whose husband had died who threw herself into her art after his death. I know what it´s like to depend on art for purpose, strength, comfort and peace-- and so I really felt for her and felt like I could teach her with great love and that was such a wonderful feeling. It really reminded me why I am here. I am here for the people who need someone like me. God sent me to be this missionary-- not somebody else-- and I am going to be important to someone´s conversion process, and it was only in that moment that my worth as a missionary, and even just as a human, really hit me. That was a super special moment, and I´m tearing up just thinking about it now!!
7) haha ok so now a funny one. So yesterday, me and my companion had two really embarassin g moments consecutively. We tend to embarass ourselves a lot, but these were PARTICULARLY great hahahahahah ok so anyways. I can´t tell you her story because it´s hers not mine but RIGHT AFTER HERS we walked outside in the rain with our umbrellas and I was in a SUPER HAPPY MOOD because our lesson had gone so well and I just sort of started skipping. I then slipped straight onto the ground in one fell swoop. HAHAH I hurt myself but it was actually so funny that it didn´t matter. Unfortunately it got one of my skirts REALLY dirty, but I am going to try to fix that today. hahaha also elders across the street were so shocked it was kind of funny. They were also really nice and asked if I was ok. I was laughing too hard to really say yes but I smiled/laughed so they knew I was fine haha.
8) ok so another funny one. In the lesson yesterday, we remembered everything except how to say Wednesday, it took me like 5 minutes to figure out we could just say our next meeting was in two days...ahhaha but it was an epic fail. But everything else went well so it was ok. hahaha
9) Also, last night the other districts in our brach invited us to a F.H.E (family home evening) in which we played a game of "signs" Last night was definitely the most relaxed my companion and I have been (leading up to the meeting and during) We had a lot of fun. It was great. Also, it was just really nice of them to reach out to the newbies haha
10) Lastly, I will describe my most spiritual moment of the week which will lead to my spiritual lightbulb moment. On Sunday afternoon after sacrament meeting, we watched a devotional from Elder Bednar about the characteristics of Christ and how we can obtain them and it totally turned around my general feeling about everything, especially since now I have other sisters to think about as a trainer.
SPIRITUAL LIGHTBULB MOMENT
Ok so I have to get off the computer soon so this will be short. BUT basically, what I realized during the Elder Bednar devotional is that life is not about being selfless when it´s easy to be selfless. Life is about being selfless when it´s NOT. He shared a story about a Relief Society President that helped all the mothers of people who had been in a car accident, and the women in her ward the same day that her only child died. I was positively BLOWN AWAY and in that moment, any internal (or external) problem I may have been happening seemed to mean almost nothing. Just because I´m a missionary doesn´t mean that hard things won´t happen, but the impressive and amazing and beautiful thing is that just because things go wrong for missionaries just like they go wrong for everyone else doesn´t mean that we can´t always put other people first. I think my calling will really help me to TURN OUTWARD rather than INWARD when things are hard. I am so thankful for this and I feel truly blessed.
I love it here at the CCM even though I miss you all. Try to think about others, as much or more than you think about yourself, and I promise that your problems will begin to appear smaller and you will become more Christlike.
AH HAVE AN AMAZING WEEK EVERYONE!!!!
MUCHO MUCHO MUCHO MUCHO MUCHO AMOR
ADIOS
Hermana Lindsey