Hey everyone!
That life advice was given to me in high school by Ashley Brown as a bit of a joke, but it actually sums up my experience here. I’m battling a cold, so I’m trying to stay hydrated, and obviously we’re not supposed to hang out with the elders too much. Though I overheard a Sister in the halls say “I think I’m in love! My heart is not locked!” which made me laugh. We’re all still learning and adjusting here. Someone once said that the fact that our church is still growing, despite the fact that we send out a whole bunch of teenagers and young adults (predominantly teenage guys) to share the gospel has got to be the strongest testimony that it’s true. We’re definitely all only human, but we become more refined as we try to be representatives of Christ.
So I’ve been in the MTC for two days now, and I’m having an incredible time, despite the fact that they clearly do not believe in free time here. That will take some getting used to. The fun part is that I’m in an international district. Everyone was really surprised when we had three Americans in the group, apparently that’s really rare. Most of the time Americans don’t speak other languages. My companion and I are practically twins- both from Virginia, both one of seven kids, both allergic to cats... she just spent the last 8 years of her life in Frankfurt Germany. She brought such wonderful chocolate. One of the other sisters is from Washington and knows Russian from school, but the other is from the Philippines. The elders are from Finland, Switzerland, Germany, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Mongolia. It’s been such a fun experience, and it’s really testified to me that this is a global church, with a gospel message intended for all of his children. I’ve had fun learning a bit about their languages and cultures, and laughing at the novelty of being the odd one out for being an American.
We just went to the temple, which was a bit hard, because I'm used to being there with friends, but it was cool because I got to do work for family names. I gave my companion my hardest German name, and it happened to be the mother of the person I was doing work for, so a mother and daughter got to go through together. Which was cool to think about! The journey to and from the temple was an adventure though, it was more or less a snowball gauntlet provided by our eternally mature elders. Again, the fact that we can send out teenage guys and that our church still grows is rather remarkable to me.
Basically, life has been good. Getting up in the morning is miserably hard (by the way, Laura, the other sisters in my district legit want that list of how to wake me up), but it's amazing all the things we're learning. I have no time set aside in my schedule for learning French, and almost no free time. So that's exciting. But I'm sure it'll work out, I'll adjust when I get to France. I feel like I understand why I'm here a lot better now, and I understand why it matters so much to share this message with everyone.
I hope you are all doing great!
Sœur Cate
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| World map, going to Lyon! |
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| My district |
