Hermana in Pittsburgh: Week 4

Hi Family! I´m glad you like my funny stories! I have a few more from this week! I´m just going to try to answer everybody´s questions here because I feel like it´s easier. Kell, I´m really good friends with everyone in my district. We do everything together. We play sports at gym time, eat together (well we just eat with the other two hermanas because you´re not supposed to sit at the same table as the elders, but the elders just sit at the table right in front of us, so we talk to them), and then obviously we are together pretty much all day in class.

I don´t take more pictures because we´re only supposed to take pictures on pday. And most of our pday we play sports with our district or zone, so we don´t get a ton of pictures. But I think once I´m out in the field you can take pictures every day. It´s not that hard to wake up early because we go to bed so early. 10:30 and the lights are off, and I actually wake up at around 6:10 each day now on my own which is SUPER ANNOYING. I get so mad when I´m laying in my bed that I didn´t just sleep until 6:30! But I´m never really that tired when I wake up. Sometimes throughout the day I get tired but not really a lot. I´m always ready for it to be 9:30 though so I can go home and get ready for bed. And there is not really time to get bored. Our schedule is packed all day every day. I should take a picture of it and send it to you guys next week because we always have somewhere to go. Our only breaks are during meals- 30 minutes for breakfast, 1 hour for lunch, and 45 minutes for dinner. Honestly it is so fun here. We have so much fun, even in class. During our breaks during class time, we always play games. The floors are tile, and most of our shoes are slidey, so we run and slide a lot. Sometimes we do competitions to see who can slide the farthest. And our whole zone has class in the same building, so sometimes we talk to them at break if we have it at the same time. There´s a district in our zone of just 12 elders, and they´re really fun. They just got here a week before us so they´re leaving at the end of this week.

So Thanksgiving was really fun! We had a devotional in the morning, and elder bednar was speaking in provo, so they broadcast it here. It was like a question and answer type session, so all the missionaries in provo got phones, and they texted their questions to his ipad. and then here, we could just write our questions on an index card, and they emailed the questions to him. I was pretty mad that I didn´t get to text my question to him. How cool is that to text an apostle? but I wasn´t lucky enough to get that experience haha. He answered the questions so well. Even if the question wasn´t that interesting, his answer was so cool. One of the really cool things he talked about was agency, and he said that once you have been baptized, you can´t just say that you are using your agency to not follow Christ anymore. he said that at this point, it´s not the same type of agency. We already used our agency to be baptized and make covenants, so when we choose to not follow Christ, we are breaking our covenants not just ¨using our agency that God gave us to do whatever we want.¨ I had just never thought of that before. He´s so cool, and it was cool to see him in that type of a setting because he and his wife were hilarious. You could see a lot more of his personality because he wasn´t just giving a talk. And then they did a thanksgiving lunch for us! I´m pretty sure there are a lot more americans here than natives, but it was so nice because they obviously don´t even celebrate it here. They had pie with ice cream, turkey, really good mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls, and tons of other food. And they put tablecloths on the tables for us and had us use real plates and silverware instead of plastic and paper. And they had christmas music playing too in the background. It was so good!

My spanish is coming! My teacher tells me that it´s really good. He says I pick up on things really fast, but I know the 4 years from high school really help! It´s cool though because things that I never understood in high school make so much sense here! Like I used to be really confused about the subjunctive tense in spanish, but I´m understanding it more now, so I´ll try to make up sentences where I think I would use subjunctive, and he says they are right. He told me that once we get to that lesson in class, he wants me to teach it because I speak better english so I can probably teach it better haha. But I told him that I was a student, and he is the teacher, so I think he should teach it. And I said that he taught it to me, so obviously he knows how to teach it, but he said I just understood it because I´m smart. Hahah he told me and my companion that he loves having us in class because we understand what he is saying in spanish. But I obviously still have a long way to go with the spanish, but I understand a ton now, and I can read the scriptures pretty well without looking at the english translation. It´s crazy how much better my spanish is when we are giving lessons though. During the lessons, our teachers told us that our spanish grammar is almost perfect, and it´s so cool because I can just think of things to say in the lessons (obviously with the help of the spirit.) and if they are asking a question and they use a word I don´t know that isn´t even similar to the word in english, we understand the question and can figure out ways to answer it. It´s really cool to see the gift of tongues working.

The wreath is on the door to the enfermeria. infirmary in english right? man my spelling is seriously taking a hard hit here. okay so this is HILARIOUS and so embarrassing!!! So our whole district decided to sing in choir, (and we're also going to the temple on December 14 at night to do a music program for the visitors´center, so that will be pretty fun! Only 36 missionaries are going, so it should be really cool to see everything all lit up and be able to sing there.) But anyway, the choir just normally sings at the Tuesday devotional. So my companion and i had colds this week, and she lost her voice with hers. So she couldn´t really sing, but she was just going to go up there to sing anyways and stand next to me and just mouth the words and try to sing it. So at the devotional when we stand up and start walking to the front, I say to her "okay i can't look at you while we are up there because I will probably start laughing." I guess I just think it's really funny that she is mouthing the words but not singing. And we are standing on the end and at the top, so we are pretty visible. So of course because I said that, I start laughing while we are singing. And I can't stop. Like once you start laughing it's just so hard to stop especially when you know that you need to stop! I was like silent laughing, but I can't sing because I'm laughing, and I am standing up there shaking because I am laughing. And the whole time I am just trying to stop because I could see everyone in the auditorium pretty well, so I was pretty sure that they could all see me too. So we sit down after the song that I was only able to sing a few lines to because I couldn't control my laughter, and I am so red! So after we ask the some of the elders in another district in our zone if they could see us laughing. And one said that he wasn't paying attention to us laughing, but before the song started he said he could see me really well. And another elder said that he did see us laughing during it! hahhaa so embarrassing but also pretty funny.

Oh okay this is hilarious too. so one of the districts in our zone had their last day sunday. and so we were all taking pictures sunday night as a zone, and their teacher was taking the picture for us. So he was kneeling on the cabinet in the back of the room taking the pictures, and after he is done, he goes to step off the cabinet and kind of falls off of it at the end, and he ripped his pants right up the back!!!! I didn't actually see it but my companion did and hermana sperry (another hermana in our district). so they are laughing so hard and they tell us why, and then we start to laugh. so the teacher is just like skirting around the room with his back to the wall. and elder prince (one of the elders who is leaving, so it's his teacher) goes up to give him a hug, and he says "man i love you, i'll never forget you" and then the teacher says "i just ripped my pants, i need you to get my sweater off of my desk" hahahhaa so he wraps the sweater around his waist and just walks out. we were dying!!!!

PS i can't believe its december already! how did that happen!!! also this is so weird. so when my companion and I are walking, I get this really sharp pain up my right thigh, and it hurts really bad for like 30 seconds, so I have to like stop walking for a second! It´s really weird! I think I noticed that it happened before my mission, but we walk everywhere here so I notice it a lot more.

We went to the temple today for our pday! Since it was closed we just saw the outside and we got a tour of the visitors´center. it is so pretty inside there!

and then we got to go to a store right on the temple grounds, and I bought a key chain. But it was really fun! I´ll send pictures! Too bad we didn´t get to go inside because that would have been awesome! we were only there from like 9-11:20. It takes like 35 minutes to get there, so we were gone from like 815 to 12. I am so glad I live in the united states! Just looking out the window of the bus and seeing how rundown everything is here is crazy!

Also I just love it here! It´s so cool that there are not that many missionaries because you see the same people around all the time! Obviously I´m with my district all day and I see my zone a lot. But they do like staggered meals, so we eat with the same people at mealtimes every day, so everyone is pretty familiar. And also we have the first meal time which is awesome because we get the first pick of everything haha. Hahaha so on monday, hna everett and I were at home after gym time changing and getting ready again, and we kept hearing this beeping sound in our house that was really loud and really annoying. it sounded like when the fire alarm needs a battery change. so we decide to look around and see what the source of the noise is. and hna everett finds out that it is the carbon monoxide alarm! but just doing the beeping like once every minute or 2 minutes or whatever. so we decide to call reception and tell them, but our phone doesnt work. but it was so funny because we knew that the alarm wasn´t actually going off and it only needed a battery change, but we were about to go to tall time (like the computer program to learn spanish), and so we get there and tell our teacher ¨we have a major problem in casa 20. we have to go to reception right now. our carbon monoxide alarm is going off, and we don´t know if we have carbon monoxide poisioning or what.¨ we were laughing so hard. and getting out of a little bit of tall time was pretty awesome too.

oh on sunday we watched another old devotional that elder holland gave. obviously it was incredible. really similar to the last one we watched, but it was so good that I didn't even care. I would watch it every week.

it´s honestly the best thing ever to be surrounded by missionaries. I´ve never felt the spirit so strong on a regular basis in my whole life. I will miss it here so much when I go. and being able to watch devotionals all the time and have district reviews and just talk about the gospel are awesome! my comp and I were talking about how weird it will be to just be with your comp all the time in the field. we´re together all the time here obviously but most of the time we are also with other people. the only times we are really alone are when we are walking back home at night or walking to breakfast or doing comp study. but even then, we study in class so we´re still around our district. it will definitely be a change in the field, but i´m excited to go!

I think that is all I have to say! I wish you could just all be here with me because it is seriously so much fun. the hermanas in my district are seriously hilarious. we laugh all the time. and it´s so fun that there are only 4 hermanas and 4 elders because we are all really close! I hope you come to the ccm chris! I was so bummed that I didn´t get to go to the provo mtc but now I am so glad I am here! i am going to miss it soooo much when I leave! okay well i love you all! This week I was just thinking how happy I am that I came on a mission. I know that it was definitely the right decision, and I´ve already learned more about the gospel and grown my testimony more in this past month than I honestly think I would have my whole life if I had never come on a mission. It was just what I needed! You guys are pretty great! Miss you! Love you!

Hermana davis