Week 3!

Word.

I am almost graduated from the mtc! The elders in my district left on Tuesday and we started our visitor centre training on Wednesday.  We got a mini tour of temple square.  I tried really hard not to look for the closest bench to sit on and not judge the cheesy family videos.  I hate museums.  So much.  But I know I'll love it when I learn more Church history and when I get to talk to real people and teach them about the things around.  Yeah, I already know that it's the visitors that will make my life. 

We started training on how to use the chat system online.  That's where people go on mormon.org with questions or when they just want to talk to a Church representative.  Turns out I'm a Church representative now.  Sister Elliott and I were both super scared to start but I'm actually excited for it.  Chatting seems easy especially since you have your companion's help the whole time.  I'm just scared of using the phone now for referrals and teaching lessons.  Sis E and I did get to chat online to one individual already.  She asked about the Church's stance on sperm donation and if she should choose Mormon sperm.  Awk.  This nice person is what we call a troll.  She was an entertaining troll at least.  I guess there's a bunch of people in the world who think it's funny to throw us off.  This one was clearly a troll as soon as she said, "It's urgent, I'm ovulating!"  We still have to treat these creatures with respect though.  I wish I could just mess with their minds but I'm a missionary so I'm suppose to act like one.  We gave her as much as we knew about the topic and asked if she had spoken to any of her Church leaders about it.  She said she was a new member.  Then later on the conversation ended with her saying that sperm donation is the only option since she's in a homosexual relationship.  Good times.  I hope I'll be able to get a real human being who cares about the Church's beliefs next time.   

I was sad to see our district elders go mostly because I'm scared of getting a sister missionary headache.  So far no advil needed.  There's about 25 sisters in the visitor centre training, 23 of which are temple square bound.  Everyone seems awesome so far.  I was also scared of being surrounded by really serious people but there's a bunch that are crazy so that's always good.  Last night a bunch of us gathered for a 9:30 party (wooo!) before quiet time.  It was so fun!  I'm excited to get to know all of these sisters. 

Last Sunday my roomies Sisters Elliott, Beller, Reynders and I were searching everywhere for a place to sit at the mtc fireside.  We didn't want to divide and conquer so we crept upstairs on the running track and just sat in the dark where no one could see us as we sprawled out on the track and looked down below to watch.  At the end, the music director lady directed us to sing Called to Serve in a very specific way.  On the chorus of the last verse she had everyone stand up to finish the song.  I was semi jealous that I wasn't part of the real crowd but it was so sweet to see hundreds of missionaries stand up and finish that song.  Sisters Beller/Reynders were able to creep a video of it too since no one could see us. 

Typically when we have free time, we enjoy finding secret piano rooms to play/sing.  My homie sisters and our zone leaders are so musically gifted.  We do a lot of improv-ish things throughout the day like make up different words to songs we know.  Last Sunday we had a good time embarassing oursleves with interpreting dancing to the piano music.  We work/study so much that when we have time to breathe, we go kind of psycho but that's how we keep normal. 

Well folks that's all I got for you today.  Life is good.  I love the mtc and I'm excited to be a greenie next week!  HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD/MORGANNNNNN!!!!!

Love you all!

TERVE!

Sister Elliott, Sister Kyle Junior, Sister Kyle Senior, Elder Kyle

Terve,

That's Finnish and/or Estonian for hello.  I just feel left out sometimes when I don't know weird greetings in other languages like everyone else so I stole this one from my zone leaders.  They're at the point of breaking out of jail because they've been here so long but they're off next week so they are excited. 

This week was grand as every week in the mtc should be.  I can't help but love this place.  I think what I like the best about learning here is how we teach progressing investigators.  My teachers get in their alter ego mode for us to teach in our companionships.  This way, we learn how to teach to different personalities and we learn how to continue the lessons.  Also every so often we go to another building to teach a real(ish) investigator.  These investigators are kind of like the unit tests.  Teaching our teacher is like a normal test and teaching other missionaries in zone teaching is like a quiz.  I guess teaching in the field will be like... the ACT?  Our real(ish) investigator keeps standing us up.  Everytime we go to teach I feel slightly nervous to do it but also excited.  And everytime I go it's like the teacher's sick so we don't have to take the test... which always seemed to happen to me in real school. I'm always secretly relieved but at the same time I know that we would have benefited from teaching her.  Anywho, Sister Elliott and I learned a lot when we taught James aka Bro Nate this week.  We went in there ready to teach more about the Atonement and about Alma's conversion story.  We went in there and he was super excited to see us.  We committed him to a baptism date right when we started so we were all super pumped.  Then after the prayer he told us that his Mormon roommate told him about the Word of Wisdom and asked if it was true.  I wanted to make sure he was told the truth about it which he was so then I confirmed it.  He immediately got really frustrated.  We continued asking him questions and we tried to read some scriptures with him but he just kept hiding his face and pulling his hair.  He told us that he just doesn't want to do anything anymore.  He told us to forget about his baptism date because he didn't want any part of it anymore.  Everything was so real for all three of us.  We tried really hard to see where he was coming from as well as testify about the power of the Atonement.  He just kept opening the door and asking us to leave.  We stayed as long as we could get away with and were at least able to pray with him again.  I tried to pull the whole, Other side of Heaven thing, where you teach the lesson in the prayer so it was a semi long prayer.  Sis E was in tears this whole time and after the prayer we could tell that his heart was somewhat softened.  Sis E gave her powerful testimony about how God loves James and that he will help him through everything.  After class Bro Nate pulled us aside to make sure we knew that it's not our fault that the lesson went that way.  He explained to us that we got our first taste of why missions are hard.  They're not hard because you have to wake up early and study and walk around all day.  They're hard when you have so much love for the people and they aren't able to receive or understand your message.  So the rest of the day was just kind of low for the two of us.  We prayed pretty hard that we'd be able to know how to teach James next week and that our spirits would be lifted somehow.  Later that night we got to teach a volunteer "investigator" for the first time.  We taught the Restoration and it went really well.  I don't want to measure the Spirit by how many tears come but this investigator who is LDS in real life was touched so much by the simplicity of the message.  So that was definately the cure for the day. 

Welp, I've been capitalizing on the chocolate milk and making the most of the mtc.  I enjoy being a ten year old in the cafeteria and daring people to do awkward things in big groups.  We have a bet going to find out why our teacher Brother Pinnock is so skinny.  I figured it's cuz he's a hard core runner but Sister Reynders thinks he has a secret disease.  So we casually brought up cross country running in class but turns out I was wrong.  We have yet to figure out what disease he suffers from if any.  Hopefully he's not dying. 

Thanks so much for the letters this week!  I love them so much.  Keep 'em coming. 

Love,

Sister Katie

Yo homies.  I exist in the world.  Except not really in the world.  I occasionally see the sun or mountains and remember that I'm in Utah.  I love the MTC.  Every day seems like a week.  I fell like I've been out for a month.  Okay, so firsties, my companion was a no show for the first day so I went in a trio with two other sisters serving in Temple Square.  They are way cool.  One of them is from California and went to BYU-Idaho so we have a lot in common and the other one is super sarcastic from Montana.  I met my companion the next day.  We get along so well.  I feel like she's another version of me.  Her Dad's in the military so she's lived all over and recently came from Germany.  Her Dad's from New Mexico and her Mom's from Tahiti so we sometimes speak secret French to each other when we don't want everyone to listen, kind of like I do with Jasmine.  The Elders in my district are uber presh.  On Monday, Elder Jones in our distdrict had to go home.  He asked for a preisthood blessing right before he left so his companion who had never given one was able to do that.  They were all crying and it was sad but cool to see how much every Elder has grown up already.  We met our mission President on Moday since he's being trained here this week.  He seems like a friendly fella and his wife seems like a nice mom who's taller when she's sits down... There's about 20ish Sisters here who are headed to Temple Square.  We training to be normal missionaries the first three weeks then we go get trained with all of the visitor centre sisters in Salt Lake but we come back to the MTC every night, I think.  We pretty tight with Emily Turner from BC and her companion Sister Wong from Hawaii.  I refer to them as Miss Canada and Miss Hawaii because they're so perfect and they both answered a question in class on the mic and I swear they wished for world peace after they spoke.  The 4 sisters (inclusing me) in my district seem to be a lot less refined so we make fun of ourselves and how we're going to fit in at temple square.  Elder Russell M. Nelson came and spoke at the devotional yesterday.  I sang in the choir because I wanted to be famous.  I even scored and got to be in the front row while we sang.  The hardest thing was to not look at the screen above to see how famous I was getting.  I'm doing well with the schedule and waking up in the morning and such.  They offer fitness classes at six in the morning for the sisters so I've been hitting those up a lot.  We get gym time five times a week so that keeps me sane.  I was so restless the other day after class that I made my companion walk around with me and do stairs while we planned instead of sitting like normal humans.  In gym time, girls can only guard girls if they play basketball so after playing against one brutal sister, I found some scary girls to play against.  I'm learning a ton every day about how to be a better teacher.  I think sister Elliott (my companion) and I teach really well together.  Oh ya, so every Sunday everyone in our branch needs to have a 3-5 min talk ready in case we get called on.  So of course we had a week to do it and of course I didn't.  And of course he said my name to speak first.  He didn't even give us time to prepare during the sacrament because he said our names after.  But turns out it went well I think.  I talked about baptism because that's what our topic was.  I mostly talked about how I had an issue with being able to challenge an investigator to be baptized on the first appointment.  It's hard but I understand how to do it better now so that it's not so crazy and I realized the benefit of it.  Well, I'm out of time, kids.  My PDay is Wednesday in the MTC so that's when I'll be emailing.  Feel free to send me a nice message through dearelder.com because I'll be able to read those letters the same day you send it. 

Love you all, I guess.  PEACE.

-Sister Kyle