Saturday, November 29, 2014

Week 1!!! Hejsan! - November 26, 2014

I cant believe it's already been a week at the MTC!! The days are long but the weeks are so short! I have been learning so much and have had so much fun! So, I'll just try to start with where I left you guys at the curb!

The sister that hosted me took me into the MTC to get my nametag and my other important things.  As I was walking out I ran into Heather Kofford!!! I almost started bawling, its SO GOOD to see her again! She ended up taking over as host for me and we caught up as best as we could in the short amount of time we had together.  She took me to my residence and then dropped me off in my class room where my teacher Bröder Marchant was.  

He would only speak to us på svenska so that was kind of interesting but I understood almost everything he said! (hooray for rosetta stone!!!) My companion is Syster Giles, shes from Manhattan beach CA and is a professional surfer.  She goes to competitions and was sponsored by Neff until she decided to go on her mission.  She and I get along really well and we have the greatest times together! I'm seriously so happy I got a companion that's normal and can laugh with me!

We have been teaching this investigator named Isabel.  She's adorable and she's seriously the nicest person.  Even with all the language mistakes and dumb things we've done she's always just been really nice about it.  
Language mistake #1) I was trying to explain that the Holy Ghost was the 3rd member of the godhead and we didn't have the word for Godhead in our svenska till engleska dictionaries so I just used the words for god and head.  But I accidentally used the word for head as in on your body head and told her the Holy Ghost was God's 3rd head. And she's all, "Vad?" Oh it was bad! hahah :) and then in another lesson we were going to have her read a verse from the bible and we look around and we realized we forgot to bring the bible with us!!! So I'm all, "Har du en bibel?" And she's like, "Nej...." so we're like, "Vi vill kommer tillbacka in tre minuter..." and had to literally sprint up the stairs to get our bible because that verse was so vital to our lesson! So embarassing!! Never again will I forget to bring my bible!!!  But then we were teaching after that and we said, "Jesus Christ has a plan for us, do you want to see it?" and she's like, "Yeah I totally want to see it!!!" so we taught her the plan of salvation totally unscripted! It was very watered down because we don't know a lot of words yet but the spirit was there and we could all feel it! She is learning so much and I'm so excited for her!!!

Also they have us do service projects here.  On Sat. S. Giles and I got assigned to clean out the showers and we were pulling all this nasty hair out of the drain.  It was so gross!! There must have been a lot of polynesian sisters on that floor because the hair was thick, long and dark *Bleh* It was like The Ring!!!!  

There's this elder in our zone going to Iceland.  He's actually the ZL.  We found out on like the 2nd day that he's obsessed with forks. Like he literally gets 5 forks for every meal and takes the extra ones back to his residence.  We don't really know what he does with them or why he's got this fork fetish but S. Giles and I decided we wanted to fuel the obsession.  So after the temple walk on Sunday we went a little klepto... We stole 100 forks in two days and made the Icelandic elder a present.  At first we were just going to give him a whole bunch of forks and then it escalated into wrapping the forks individually and giving them to him everyday and then it escalated again into a fork chandelier.  So S. Giles and I made this (prison craft) fork chandelier.  We used a wire hanger, dental floss, a shoelace, and 100 forks.  I have a picture of his face when he saw it.  Pure joy and amazement.  He loves it!!! (how was your first week in the MTC? Oh it was fine, I just made a chandelier out of forks...)

S. Giles and I got sucked into a wormhole/timewarp the other day.  It was like 8:45 and we decided to shower before everybody got back from gym and the line got super long.  When we were getting ready S. Adamson and S. Smith (our roommates) walk in and we're like, "how was gym?" and they're like, "we havent been yet, it hasn't started." and we're like, "what time is it?" and they're all, "Its 8:30" it was the weirdest thing and literally through us off all day. 

DALLIN H. OAKS AND HIS WIFE CAME FOR DEVOTIONAL LAST NIGHT AND WE HAD GREAT SEATS.  It was seriously so amazing! Sister Oaks was great and then when Elder Oaks spoke I literally couldn't stop writing! It was so good!!!!

Swedish hymns are beautiful.  Forks are really heavy. My district is awesome and we have so many great jokes. The language is coming along well. Our teachers are great. I've taken so many pictures already and its only been 1 week. It was S. Giles's first time seeing snow this week.  We met Thomas S. Monson's nephew at the temple on sunday and he told us about his great grandpa who served in sweden.  Hotpockets cause issues with stomach lining (sister giles, not mine.) Sister Giles literally drinks 8 bottles of juice everyday. The food is disgusting but we can't stop eating it. 20 birds flew into our window during class on friday and it was hilarious :) elders are still boys. 

MTC life is underbar (wonderful) and I'm so happy to put on my name tag every morning at 6:30 a.m.  We are living on holy ground here at the MTC and it's the only place where we will ever do that in our lives. The spirit is always the 3rd member of our companionship. We have Christ on our side and we love it so much! I don't want you guys to miss me, not even on thanksgiving, because we are being blessed so so so much here I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Please keep us in your prayers because we pray for you every single day IN SWEDISH. We love you all so much! 

I love you guys so much!!! Have a great week!
Love, Syster Brink :)


^We are the best companionship ever!!!!^



^these are all the new swedes!! in the back is Äldste Linchenko, Äldste Scott, Äldste Moody, Äldste Simmonson, Äldste Larson, and Äldste Backman.  Then all of us sisters are Syster Bateman, me, Syster Gardiner, Syster Irene, Syster Stoughton, Syster Smith, Syster Giles, and Syster Adamson^


^this is my district^ Äldste Larson, Äldste Simmonson, Äldste Moody, Äldste Backman, me, Syster Giles, Syster Adamson, och Syster Smith.


^this is what the fork chandelier looked like when we made it^


^LOOK HOW HAPPY HE IS^


^He literally can't believe this, he's so happy^


^this is the only picture we got of the chandelier! Syster Adamson had told us to be quiet so she could sleep and we were trying so hard to not fall apart. It was only 10:45ish. We were laughing so hard! that thing was so heavy and super loud!!! (Don't worry, S. Adamson got plenty of sleep) We hid it in my closet until we could give it to the Elder the next day^


 ^My district is seriously so fun! S. Gile's aunt sent us all some rice crispy treat things^



(I am missing eight pictures from this email post.  They never loaded correctly.)






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