Longest week of my life

At the temple with one of my Comps.

Mom - Friends and Family,

I  know you've got my letters, but I'm going to tell you everything that has happened so far anyway.

 

Wednesday after you dropped me off, the host missionaries helped me get my books and nametags and put me right to work. I got to take all my stuff to the apartment, but didn't get to unpack until that night. And yes, I'm on west campus--all the spanish speakers are on west campus--so we have apartments instead of dorms and basically it's super awesome down here. Everyone is super friendly and we all love and support each other. We had class that night and I met my compañeras. Long story short, we had an extra missionary that was supposed to go to another MTC so we are in a trio. Hermana E and Hermana M are my companions. We had lots of orientation meetings and stuff the first few days so we were pretty sleep deprived. They kept keeping us out late.

Every day up until Sunday had been super super long. But now time is flying. I am sorry you didn´t hear from me for so long. I sent letters every day. Basically every day goes like this, breakfast at 645, class, personal study, language study, lunch, teach investigator, companion study, dinner, gym, TALL (a language program on the computer), additional study, bed. Sometimes language study and gym are switched. But I have some highlights I´ve been writing down all week that I want to tell you.

• Wednesday at our orientation meeting we sang Army of Helamen from the Childrens songbook, but it was super cool because we don´t sing "And we will be the Lord's missionaries" we sing "And now we are the Lord's missionaries." I thought that was pretty cool. 
• We can't call eachother "guys" and that has been one of the hardest things to get used to. I always catch myself saying "Are you gu--hermanas ready to go?" or something like that.
• We pray a LOT. Which was weird at first. When we teach, we pray before we leave the class, pray outside the door, pray to start the lesson, pray to end the lesson, pray outside the door. It was weird, but I had a revelation. Why wouldn't we pray that much? We're doing the Lord's work. Don't you think he wants to be updated on how it's going?
• It's hard to have no alone time or personal space.
• When we first got to our apartment, the fire alarm in Hna J and Hna R's room was beeping because the battery was dead, so we took out the battery. but it still beeped. So for 4 days until someone could get us a new battery, our fire alarm beeped every 30 seconds. it was rough
• My favorite quote I've heard about MTC life is "the days are like weeks and the weeks are like days." so true! it doesn't make sense, but thats how it is
• Friday was the first day that I truly let myself be guided by the Spirit when I was teaching without thinking ahead about what I wanted to say. IT was awesome. I was just teaching Hna M, but it was awesome and I cried a lot. It was embarrassing.

Now here are some of the things that our district says that don't translate well. They don't make sense in spanish.

• Que en el mundo= What in the world? But not really. People who speak spanish don't get it
• Suertes Patos= lucky ducks. haha 
• Quien es su papa= who's your daddy? Only the Elders say this...to eachother..it's awkward

We have an elder in our district, Elder C, that is airheaded but hilarious. I really want to start writing his quotes down and calling them Cs' Quotes. The first time we taught our investigator, Luisa, he asked about her grandparents and she told him they were dead. However, he didn't know the word for dead, so he thought "muerte" meant murdered and he way overreacted. He was like "Oh! No bueno! Lo siento!!!" and she was super confused. He writes spanish words that he needs to study on his hand so he can look at them whenever he wants, and a few days ago, he wrote the wrong definition for a word and was like "Dangit! that's a whole section of my hand wasted today!" We didn't understand what he was talking about, so it was super funny.  Yesterday he was eating ice cream in class--the stopped and got some at the BYU creamery--and all of the sudden he was like "That wasn't ice cream I just ate. I don't know what it was....But it was good." He's just super awkardly hilarious. 

This paragraph is a bunch of things I'm remember I want to tell everyone, but they are in no specific order. sorry. Things are great here. The first few days were pretty hard for my companions; they were really homesick and struggling with Spanish.  But neither of those things has hit me  yet. (keep your fingers crossed and knock on wood) We've taught our first investigator for the last time. We had 5 lessons and she agreed to be baptized. I know it was pretend, but I was still super excited! The food is awesome. Like way good. We've had Chicken cordon bleu, salmon, steak, these super delicious burritos. It's all fantastic. The rumors are true though. Warning to all future missionaries: DO NOT DRINK THE ORANGE JUICE! It's bad. Like way bad. We've had a couple days that we have missed class. Once Hna M had to go get her Tyhpoid stuff taken care of so we went up to main campus. It's no bueno up there. It is like spirit prison. No one talks to eachother. Here on west campus EVERYONE says "Hola" to eachother. We're all speaking the same language, so that helps. But still. West campus is way better.  One day, we had to go up to the Medical Clinic for Hna E. (P.S. we usually call her Hermana Ojo). We've only had one day where the companionship struggled. We all got on eachothers nerves. But since then we've been fine. For part of the day we have a teacher and for part we don't. The part we dont, the elders always ask me a million spanish questions and so far I've been able to answer most of them. It makes me feel good. Sundays are freaking awesome. Except our chapel is like a hundred thousand blocks away so it takes a long time to walk there. But thats one of the good things about west campus, we walk a lot. So the food isn't going to make us fat. :)  Elder L. Tom. Perry gave our devotional on Tuesday and it was super cool. He talked about how important it is to work as a companionship. It was way good. The temple today was awesome. P-day has been great. We did initiatories at the temple because I haven't been able to do them since I received my endowments. I just found out that the temple is going to be closed after next week though. I'm so sad! 

Anyways, as you can tell, life is good. I love the MTC. Keslie--I mean, Hermana Reed is in my zone so I see her all the time and she is so good about taking care of me and making sure all my questions are answered. 

I better go for now. Love you all. Yo se que la Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Ultimos Dias es verdadera. Yo se que el Libro de Mormon fue inspirado. Yo se que Jesucristo es mi Salvador y mi Padre Celestial tiene much amor por todos sus hijos. 

Hermana Alexa Nielsen

Our District

Our Comp Trio
 

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