You know how they say that on a mission the days seem like weeks and the weeks seem like days? Right now the days seem like years and I haven't even been here a week. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, the MTC is FANTASTIC, but our days are packed. Of course, I only just got here Wednesday, but that feels like ages ago.
All of the Spanish-speaking missionaries are at the MTC West (aka MTC Best) campus. So I'm living in Wyview and our classroom is in Raintree in what used to be someone's living room. We use the Wyview central building for a lot of our meetings. We take buses to the temple and to the Cougar Stadium Chapel a few other meetings (right by Lavell Edwards Stadium... football!!!!!). We also have the option of going to Brighams Landing on p-days and a few stores there give awesome discounts to missionaries (1/2 off Jamba Juice anyone?).
The experience at MTC West is definitely different from the one a main campus (the compound). It's very fun to have all the Spanish missionaries in the same place because everywhere you go you hear choruses of "Hola Hermanas y Elders!" and "Bienvenidos." All the conversations in broken Spanish you hear everywhere are also enormously entertaining. Speaking of Spanish, we've only really had one class. We learned how to pray (very badly). Today we get to put that knowledge to the test and teach our first lesson! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ok, I might be just a little nervous. Hermana S and I are going to be fine though.
Oh! Mi compernera es Hermana Schaumkel. It took us a full day to get her name down, and I still hesitate when I say it. She is from Tonga/Draper UT and she is one of the wisest, humblest, kindest, hard-workingest, happiest, people I know. We are well suited to each other which is good since we are together 24-7.
My district is great, 4 elders going to Argentina and 4 sisters going to Pachuca. We have a district in our zone that is all sisters, not a very common occurrence. Our zone leaders and sister training leaders (like zone leaders for the sisters) are fantastic. Our Branch Presidency is awesome and I feel like I should record everything President Tyler says so I can sell them as motivational talks.
Last night he spoke about a Sister in Guatemala teaching a literacy class to the sisters in her Relief Society who worked with the sisters until they could read and write the sentence "Mi Dios me ama," My God love me. The sister then bore a powerful testimony about the love of God. I am striving to be as faithful, loving, and hard-working as that Sister! Not to mention as good at Spanish as her 😉
Today is our p-day (obviously) so we got to go to the temple this morning. We participated in a sealing session (as children!), it was absolutely beautiful. We haven't had any time whatsoever to really stop and organize our minds and things so I'm kind of all over the place today. That's why this is all kind of rambling.
Sorry, no pictures today, I wasn't sure we'd have time to do our emails now so I didn't bring my USB cable. My time is almost up. Hopefully next week I'll be a little more sane. In the meantime; I love this work, I love the Gospel of Christ! All of you be good and keep working hard.
Alysa is serving a 18 month mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She is currently serving in the Mexico Pachuca Mission after six weeks training in the Provo Missionary Training Center. She'll be serving from November 2013 - May 2015.