First of all, I want you all to know that the MTC is great and I am having a great time. My companion is Sister Jeppson who is from he Tri-cities and she is great. She is funny and fun to hang out with. She used to clog and she played volleyball. She is a great missionary and I love having her as my companion. We have 6 sisters and 4 elders in our district: Sister King (who is from Salt Lake and is hilarious! She is almost 23 and is so caring and loving and just cracks me up); Sister Newhouse (she is from Farmington, UT and is so sarcastic and hilarious, as well. We get along really well and can joke around for a really long time); Sister Tau (she is from Tonga! She is so funny and animated and is always yelling "Where is my companion?!" She is so cool to hang ou with); and Sister Bonner (She is from Utah, as well and she looks like Taylor Swft. She is really tall, and really great); Elder Strong (He is from Utah and has quite the ego, but we love him anyway. He is funny and really is a great guy. Although he jokes around a lot, and we never know if what he says is true or not); Elder Redhouse (he is Native American and loves to play the drums); Elder Tombs (who is engaged and has a Masters degree in Personal Finance Planning. it's ridiculous. He is great and really funny); Elder Schwallier (he's really sweet and nice). Everyone gets along really well and we do pretty much everything together. I feel like I'm just as much companions with all the sisters as I am with Sister Jeppson. I guess we all got the same advice to "have fun" because we do have a lot of fun. We seem to be the only ones who ever laugh (like really crack up laughing) at meals; and we laugh all of the time, so it's kind of awkward, but we don't really care.
The MTC really is awesome. The first few days were really really, really long, but everybody said that all you have to do is make it until Sunday. Which was pretty true. Ever since Sunday, the days have gone by SO much faster. Sunday was great. For Relief Society the president's wives bore their testimonies about Joseph Smith and it was really cool. One of them was in the Independence, Missouri mission with her husband as mission president, and so she talked a lot about Liberty Jail and I loved it.
My favorite Spiritual thing so far was when we talked about Revelation through Prayer. The Spirit was so strong. Our teacher, Brother Terry, had us imagine Heavenly Father and Christ standing in the room and what we would say to them or ask them. Then we all knelt down and offered our own prayers to say those things. The Spirit was so strong and it was like there was this tunnel from our classroom to Heaven. Then Brother Terry did an example lesson with Elder Schwallier and he pretended to be his dad, who was a convert, and he started bawling. He really felt what his dad must have felt. All of us sisters just wanted to give him a hug. I also realized why I love prayer so much. Prayer both humbles me and makes me feel invincible at the same time. It humbles me because I remember how much I depend on Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and how much they do and have done for me. And it makes me feel invincible because I know that with strength of the Lord, I can do anything that he needs me to do and I feel like Christ and I are a team - He guides me and gives me strength, and I am his feet and mouthpiece.
We have had two investigators that we have taught multiple times - Aaron and Gabby. They are both really awesome. We still have a lot to learn, but we are slowly getting better, and I know that eventually we will be great missionaries.
We have had gym time quite a few times and every time we end up playing volleyball and it is a lot of fun. We played beach volleyball once at the field, and it was way fun. We ended up finding out that two of the elders we were playing with are going to our same mission, but they are Spanish speaking, and we are one the same flight as them.
So my first day at the MTC, everybody kept saying "Welcome to the MTC, sister" and it was nice, but kind of got annoying after awhile. So yesterday, all the new missionaries came and we were all really excited to tell them "welcome to the MTC", but we wanted to make it seem like we were speaking some cool language. So Sister Tau taught us how to say hello in Tongan (Malo e leilei), and we just said that to everybody and then missionaries who were really going to Tonga would ask us if we were going there to.
One of our favorite things to do is talk about really irrelevant things for a ridiculously long time...it's not really our favorite thing, but it happens a lot. We have talked about where beans come from, if Walt Disney's wife was Mormon, if the wagon that Brigham Young came into the valley in is in front of the Haunted Mansion, stupid word games, and a bunch of other things forever. Sister King realized that the reason we keep doing it is because we can't just whip out our phones and look it up on the internet. So if somebody wanted to figure those answers out and email me, my district would really appreciated it :)
Well I am running out of time and this keyboard is ridiculously hard to type on, so I am going to go. I don't know when I will be able to email again, since I don't know when P-day is in Houston, but I will email you as soon as I can.
Love,
Sister Sylvester (Sheridan)
