First Email From Houston

Sister Sylvester (right) and her trainer, Sister Garlick (left)
6/6/2013

Well everybody, I made it to Houston. I will say that I loved every minute of the MTC. I had so much fun and learned a ton. My testimony grew and was strengthened and I made a lot of really great friends that I miss a lot. 

We woke up at 1:30 am on Wednesday morning to do last minute packing and be to the bus at 3 am. Needless to say, after 2 1/1 hours of sleep and lots of traveling, we were all exhausted by the time we actually arrived in Houston. We stopped in Dallas and had a 3 hour layover. When our plane landed in Dallas, a man who was on our plane bought all of us missionaries breakfast at McDonalds. It was really good and so nice of him, especially because there were about 30 of us missionaries. On the 40 minute flight to Houston from Dallas, I sat by a girl named Asia and Elder Joquera sat on the other side of her. I started talking to her and she asked me why I was going to Houston, so I told her and we started talking about our religion and she was really interested. I didn't have a Book of Mormon to give her, so I gave her a pass along card instead, which she was very excited about and said that she would definitely look into the Book of Mormon. But then Elder Perkins, gave her a Book of Mormon and she started reading it right away. Elder Joquera and I taught her and answered some of her questions. We started teaching her the Restoration, but didn't teach her the whole thing because we wanted the Spirit to be there and it was hard on the plane for that to happen. Anyway, I really hope something happens with her. I really enjoyed it and it made me feel like a real missionary. It also got me really excited to be an actual missionary in the field to bring real investigators into the gospel. 

President and Sister Pingree met us at the Houston airport and we went to a church building by the mission home where we had lots of administrative training. It was pretty rough since we were all so tired and I'm pretty sure I ended up sleeping through half of it. We had dinner and a really quick fireside by President Pingree. He wanted to make it quick so that we could all get to bed and catch up on some sleep. He is really nice and I'm excited that he is our mission president. I like him a lot and I think we will get along well. Then all of us went to different places to stay the night. I ended up staying the night at the mission home with five other sisters, two of which were from my MTC district, so we just hung out together. We got to bed as soon as we could, which was still a little past 10:30 because none of us had been interviewed by President Pingree yet and we had to do that first. 

Thursday we woke up and had a delicious breakfast of french toast with buttermilk syrup. Then we went back to the church building, did some more training and met our trainers. My trainer is Sister Garlick and she is from Ogden, Utah. She is 20 and has only been out for 1 transfer (6 weeks), so she is almost as new as I am. She is super nice and outgoing and we get along really well. Of course she is still learning, so we are learning together and it is going pretty well so far. 

Right now what we are trying to do is visit members in the ward and get them to commit to a date to have somebody in there home for us to teach. It has been going well so far, but we will see in a month if anybody has any investigators for us. We also visited this older lady in our ward, Sister Ruhlman. I guess the missionaries have been visiting her regularly for years and they just go over there and talk to her so that she has somebody to talk to. We were over there for about 1 1/2 hours and it was one of the coolest conversations I have ever had. We talked about her family heirlooms she has and the 100-150 year old picture she has hanging over her fireplace; her chidlhood which included music and the debut of Elvis Presley, who she loves; She talked about how after the war (which she was 5 when the war started) really was a great time to live and everything was really nice; her travels to Europe and all of the cool things she saw there; and lots of other things. Everything we talked about was things I loved and so I was completely intrigued the whole time. 

Yesterday we visited a new convert, Marla, and her husband Gabriel. They are awesome and are moving soon, so we just wanted to make sure that everything was going well. We ended up going to a pond and feeding the fish and the turtles. It was so fun and really relaxing. 

My area is really great. We have two wards: the White Oak Ward and the Sam Houston 2nd Ward, which is a singles ward. All of the people are super awesome and take very good care of us. I think the singles ward will be my favorite though because they are my age and there are lots of return missionaries that are excited about what we are doing. 

I'm doing great and I am excited for this transfer and to start growing as a missionary. Thank you for all of your letters and emails and your prayers. 

Sister Sylvester and Sister Garlick at a member's home

Love,

Sister Sylvester