Subject: MTC stuff
My dear family and friends,
This week has felt a little lacking in excitement area. Not because the MTC isn't exciting, but because the other weeks were almost mind-blowing exciting. This week I had a cold, but I'm almost over it now. I was hacking and sneezing all over the place. But at least I didn't have what Soeur Fortuna and Soeur BN had. They got some 24 hour thing that hit them in a couple minutes and had them in bed for the next day and a half. They fine and dandy now, but for a while they were a sorry sight.
Our schedule changed, so now I have P-day on tuesdays and class at 6:30 in the morning. They also told us we shouldn't be waking up any earlier than 6, so I will be showering at night from now on. It feels like waking up for seminary all over again, but once I'm awake, I feel ready to take on almost anything. And then I go back to residence at night feeling completely sapped. But that is probably a good thing because it means I'm trying hard. I keep saying, MTC life (and I'm sure all missionary life) is exhausting, but its probably the best kind of exhausting there is.
So, we have been doing volleyball every gym time the past week and I know I haven't always been this bad at volleyball. I'm great when it comes to moving my arms (maybe too great), but moving my feet is harder for some reason. If the ball is like three feet away, I find myself staring at it as it touches the ground. Or I might even turn to face that direction so I get a nice veiw of the the ball heading back to mother earth. But luckily, everyone at the MTC is so nice they just smile and continue on with the game. We challenged the Elders in our district for a volleyball match tommorrow, so I'm sure you will get a fun story next time I write.
So, Mommy, you will be happy to hear this, I was going to sing in sacrament meeting this last Sunday. I was going to do a duet with S BN while S F played the violin and Elder Erikson played the piano, and it was sounding great in practice. S F plays the violin gorgeously ( is that a word) and even fiddled for us a little. Yes Zach there are fiddlers. But, like I mentioned before, They got sick and I was already sick so I didn't want to do a solo or anything. Maybe we could try again later?
On sunday, for relief society, the new YW's president came and spoke to us. I'm going to miss Sister Dalton tons, but this new president seems awesome. We were her first assignment as president and she did a wonderful job. She told us that she served as a mission presidnet's wife at 25. 25! Isn't that mindblowing. That's just a little more than 5 years older than me. I am no where near to being a mission president's wife. Amazing. She talked about how we, as missionaries, are the servants the Lord sent for at the end of Jacob 5. It was really interesting. We even got to meet her afterwards. So cool. We had a devotional by Stephan B Allen later and he was a hoot. At one point he had some missionaries come up and mention things they had given up. One Elder said, "My girl" and he responded with " On behalf of the RMs, thank you for your donation." And there were like 50 lines that he said that were just as funny. Like I said, a hoot. ( what's a hoot?) Of course not all of it was funny, but it was very spiritual as well as he described the buttons Satan will push on our missions. We watched a video later by Holland, and I've realized his talks have a pattern. He starts off kinda funny and comfy, then at some point it turns into yelling, and the next moment he is tearfully describing the depth of the Lord's love for the world and what the gospel means to him. His talks are such an emotionally rollercaoster and I love it. He makes me want to go out and start bearing my testimony over a microphone. I don't think I'll ever end up doing that, but if you hear somebody shouting over a microphone after Holland gives a talk, its probably me.
Elder Dover had his B-day earlier and we post-it noted his desk. At first all the post-it notes had nice balloons and "have a great day" sorts of things, but afetr a bit it got kind of creative anf I found pictures of pancakes and llammas and one that said " you will marry a dog named clifford". Not sure who wrote those. But we have been getting cupcakes and cookies and cakes like nobody's business. ( Any idea where that wierd phrase came from?) And our room smells nasty. Its a wierd combination of sweets, smelly feet (I swear they are not mine), and dayquil. Now that last one needs some explaining. So I didn't put the cap back on the liquid dayquil I bought that day and of course I tipped it over. So we grabbed some rags to clean up the mess on the floor and I tipped over the dayquil again while cleaning up the first mess so that it got all over the floor and my companion's chair (not her thankfully). We cleaned it up nicely but it smells funny and my district is still laughing about it. I also ate Soeur Luthi's cookie while she was gone finding a better one( She said she probably wouldn't eat it!) and she came back with no cookie to no cookie and a red haired companion chewing something with chocolate on her cheeks. She uses it to manipulate me into getting her cookies in the cafeteria. We (maybe just me) have decided that the Sisters in or district are like a family. S Luthi is the Mom, S F the dad, S BN the exchange student, S Recevuer the teenager, Me the baby, and S Kupfer the pet/ gremlin thing. We get along so well. Soeur Luthi and I are great companions. We are so different but compliment each other really well. She keeps me organized and focused and I keep her entertained. I'll get up to do something I didn't really think about and she will look at me and say nono (literally she says Nono) and I'll think for second, realize what I was about to do was really thoughtless and sit back down and S Luthi smiles at me. She has the prettiest smile I have ever seen. She doesn't smile too often but when she does its like a ray of sunshine. But she walks like a cheetah. I walk pretty fast, and she is a little shorter than me but I still find myself panting to keep up with her. I don't know how she does it.
Thank you for the letters and pictures!
I'll be on the hunt for more crazy smelling trees!
Love you all!
I love the gospel!
Love!
Soeur Russell