Week Two in the MTC

Bonjour mes Amies!

Hello how is everyone doing? This week went by so fast, a lot faster then the first one by far. The week started off a little rough on Tuesday somebody didn’t want me to be happy because when I was putting my mascara on in the morning my mascara flipped up in the air, did a couple gymnastics moves and then landed on my brand new white shirt! In gym I landed wrong on my knee playing volleyball and couldn’t walk on it. They made me go to a clinic down the street on a shuttle and my companion and me couldn’t believe how fast we wanted to get back to the MTC, the feeling just wasn’t the same.  The MTC just has the best feeling ever. Plus people just couldn’t understand why I was saying “bonjour” to everyone, but what they didn’t know is if I didn’t use French I would be doing pushups in gym for my punishment. I was complaining a lot about my knee, but I thought of my dad’s wise old words and said to my self “just rub some dirt on it because it’s a long ways from your heart! “ At dinner that night I flipped my tray upside down and mustard and ketchup went everywhere on me, my watch still tastes like it. It was rough but it all didn’t matter later that night when we got to give our last lesson to our investigator; Francois and feel the spirit we were creating. This weekend we found out that our investigator who we have been teaching for a week and a half is actually another one of our teachers. I about died when he walked in.   I did not want to know what he had to say about my horrible French, but it actually went really well he told me and my companion that we work really well together and he appreciated our simple lessons because that’s what real investigators need is simple lessons! I’m excited for him to be our teacher he just got off his mission three months ago so he still has that enthusiastic personality about this amazing work! My French is getting better, I’m working really hard to figure it all out and you know you have been working really hard when you walk out of the class room and you read an elders shirt with a French accent when it’s clearly English words. There are a couple bad things though, for one I grew up in Oakley and so I went to South Summit High School, hence my native language English is not very good, so when you try and convert slang South Summit English into correct French it just doesn’t come out good. The other bad thing is I have a hard time pronouncing words right sometimes, so when I told my investigator I know that Joseph Smith is a true prophet I actually told him that I know Joseph Smith is a Green Prophet!! Everyone makes mistakes so you might as well laugh about them.  At least I did not tell the investigator to repent for his farts instead of his sins like a companionship did in my district =)  I really am loving the MTC I’m not actually sure why so many missionaries say they hate it?? I think that this is the happiest place on earth everyone had it wrong to say Disney Land was! The food is not bad at all and it’s all you can eat! Everyone of course says prayers before they eat which is great because when they are saying there prayers you snatch their cookie that you never saw to get when you were in line!! The best part is they Have POG, that is the juice that I could only ever find in Hawaii so I was so excited to see that. One of the coolest things here though is all the different cultures mixing you will have someone opening the door that says hello in Chinese and the one who went through saying thank you in Spanish. Its crazy I met four elders going to my mission this week and they can all speak French as their first language but they are learning Mandarin Chinese! Elder Jules a black elder going to my mission will be speaking French, Spanish, Chinese, Haitian, Creole and of course English all in one mission. I will be glad to just try French! One French elder tries to talk to me in French all the time because he sees my name tag but after I give him the I don’t know what your saying look he says it in English and then I still cant understand him with his strong French accent. It makes for a tough conversation. Days go by so fast here its creepy I never imagined being able to sit in a classroom that long and study French and the gospel but it is possible.  All I want to do is study and get as much information as possible. Pretty much our whole zone left today.  Thirty missionaries, they were all going to Paris France or Léon France.  I’m going to miss them a lot they helped us out a lot with starting our French. When lots of people go out though that means lots of French speakers are coming in and that’s the case for this Wednesday. We are getting a lot of new French speakers and six of them are sisters that my companion and me will be over to take care of as sister zone leaders. I’m really excited to welcome them in to this awesome place. Our district loves choir and we go to it every Sunday and Tuesday they informed us this past Sunday that the sisters will be singing at the Relief Society conference on September 28 I believe.  So you will have to watch out for me!! Sundays are still my favorite day! They bring the most spirit into this place. This last Sunday we had a devotional and Ron Tanner spoke.  He is the producer of 17 miracles, Only a Stone Cutter, John Tanner and his new movie Ephraim’s Rescue they are all amazing movies and his last one Ephraim’s Rescue was filmed a lot in Oakley which I thought was really cool! I still love my companion to death she taught me how to say my testimony in Spanish so I sound really cool. I’m not sure though if my dad didn’t contact her before coming here because you should see the way she gets me out of bed she has this little but BRIGHT flash light that she shines in my face at 5:30am and whispers... (Yells) in her soft voice “Sister Dick, Sister Dick, wake up Sister Dick, its time to get up. It’s too bad she is so sweet because I might accidentally kick her while getting up ha ha jk. The only person I have seen here that I know is Elder Goodwin and sadly I don’t know his first name but I talked to him and he looked really confused so I taped on my name tag and said remember me we went to high school together...he was like Carlee! I’m sad I haven’t seen anyone else but I still have four weeks! It has been pretty rainy here, which I’m sure it has been everywhere else it makes it a lot easier to study inside with that weather! I love you all and I’m so thankful for all the letters and packages it really does get me through my week I hope you all have a great week!! 

The scripture I have been relying on this week is 2 Nephi 32: 2-3

Love,

Seour Dick

Thank you for the chips and caso mom!