Crazy Week 3

Bonjour,

This week has been soooo crazy with being a Sister Training Leader. On Tuesday, my companion and I had to go and pick up ten new international missionaries coming into our zone! They gave me this piece of paper that had all their names on it and I had to yell them out as loud as I could for them to hear me and come stand by me. Oh my, did I slaughter their names.  Half of there names had dots on letters that I have never seen before!  Some how they knew I was saying their name and they came over to us.  We got two missionaries from Germany, two from England, two from Denmark, two from Finland, one from Spain, and one from Brazil. We took them to dinner and then we walked them over to the Marriott center to watch the Tuesday devotional. It was so neat to talk to them all and switch from one accent to the other. I asked the British girl if she could please read Harry Potter to me in her British accent! She said she would! On Wednesday we received 26 new French missionaries all going to Paris or Leon, France mission. The zone leaders and my companion and I had to give them a welcome meeting on Wednesday to explain some rules, get to know them and share our testimony….. Of course in French. It was really good and I am excited to be able to help these 7 new sisters in our zone.

This week has been very stressful! We have been giving different lessons every day to investigators. On Thursday we got to do our first TRC session which is were you go in a room with your companion and a member of the church who can speak French and you have a “Get to know you conversation” and share a little spiritual thought. There are cameras in the room so your teacher can watch you on a computer outside. We started talking to this sister about who we were and I was talking and following pretty good, but the bad thing is my companion is from Mexico so she has a very strong Mexican accent, so when she speaks French I have the hardest time understanding what she was saying. I became very lost in what she was saying and none of it was in our notes. She kept asking me to share things but I honestly did not even know what she was talking about. When the member would speak I could answer back pretty good because I understood her. I became really frustrated and I had to hold my tears back pretty hard. When we finished with the meeting we walked out and my teacher, could tell I got frustrated because she was there at the door to give me a big hug as I cried. I was not mad about my French or sad, but I was so tired and frustrated that my emotions broke. I am so lucky I have such a great teacher. Later that day as I was still feeling pretty down on my self with my French. My teacher was having us quiz each other in French about different scriptures and then he randomly for our last scripture had us share our favorite scripture. I shared my favorite scripture with my partner which is 1 Nephi 3:7 and it pretty much says I will go and do the things which the lord has commanded for I know that the lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men that they can not accomplish. This really hit me hard that I wasn't believing in my favorite scripture! I shouldn’t be so down on my self I have to just keep being positive because Heavenly Father knows I can speak French so I have to believe I can speak French! On Friday my companion and I worked really hard on our lesson for our investigator we did a lot of role-play so I can better understand her French. We wrote the whole lesson in English and when we went in there we gave the whole lesson with out looking at our note books because it didn’t matter if we looked down because it was in English! The teacher was so impressed from our improvement from the first lesson to this one. We are really proud of our selves for stepping it up and being better.

 On Thursday all the girls in my district received in the mail a letter from the music department that we have been chosen to sing in the Relief Society Conference. They are having a sister missionary choir group sing because they thought it would be cool after a year later of the age change to have a sister missionary group! We were so excited to be picked we have already had three practices and it sounds so good! One of the songs we are singing is “Go forth in faith and As sisters in Zion. The Relief Society Presidency had Sally Deford mix the two songs together. I thought that was really neat because Sally is the lady who wrote the song Kyler sang at my farewell! On Friday mornings practice the entire Relief Society Presidency came and watched us practice. After our choir practice was over me, and my roommates went over and gave the Relief Society President a hug. When she gave me a hug she said here let me give you a mom hug and she gave me a big bear hug. She is such sweet lady I could feel the spirit in here when I just hugged her! Even though I’m in the MTC I knew that this weekend BYU was playing U of U.  Every teacher at the MTC had blue on it was crazy! Too bad they lost lol!   My councilor in my branch had a toilet tie on Sunday because he said that’s where BYU is right now. I finally saw people I know this week, but the funny this is I didn’t see them at the MTC. On Tuesday when I was walking to the devotional I was about to enter into the Marriott center when I looked over and Camille Kajar was walking down the road! I ran over and gave her a hug it was so crazy I haven not seen her since 5th grade!!!! She looked so good. Then on Sunday when I was going for our Sunday temple walked I ran into Jonsen Crandall and Carli Sorensen cool huh! It was so weird to see them but fun as well! This time at the MTC is flying by so fast and I’m trying to enjoy and soak in every bit of it! I’m so thankful that I have this opportunity to serve the lord! The thing that has touched me the most since I have been here at the MTC is the most important convert you have on your mission is yourself. That was so crazy for me to hear. When I came on this mission I was so excited to be able to convert other people, but I never thought that I would be converting my self! Every day we should wake up and try and better ourselves. How do we expect us as missionaries to be able to help non-members when us our selves’ don’t have the strongest testimonies we can possibly have! I hope everyone is doing great and getting ready for fall! I wish everyone good luck at rodeos, school, and everything else. Have a Fantastic Week!

Love,

Soeur Dick