MTC - Week 4

Hola!

Ok so first thing, Me and my companion are sister training leaders for our zone! The branch president gave us the assignment Sunday. We're basically zone leaders, but for the sisters. All we do is go to meetings and interview the girls once a week. Pretty exciting. Right now we have 4 districts in our zone. Two of complete elders. Mine, which is all sisters since our two elders left us for the Colombia MTC a few days ago. And our newest district which is about half elders and half sisters. One of the girls I knew from USU. She knows my first roommate Christy really well too!

Yesterday I went to VEGAS! I had to be ready and waiting for the bus at 4:30am. My group consisted of like 9ish elders and one other sister. We are all going to the same mission, same day, so that instantly bonded us I think. It was fun being at the airport in the real world! Everyone knows the missionaries it seems like, so we talked to lots of people.

Flight to Las Vegas

The flight was only like 50 min, so that was nice. When we got there, there was this grandpa service missionary who picked us up. We drove in his big van to Del Taco and got our food to-go. Then went to the Institute building in Paradise, NV and ate while he talked to us. He just went on and on about Mexico and what he thought we should know. One of the Elders was like, "So you've been to the Yucatan?" And he's just like, no a different part. So half of what he said probably wasn't relevant. He was weird too because he didn't care if we slept, but he said we should be taking notes rather than snacking on the candy this elder brought. One of the elders literally filled his bag up with snacks and candy; it was pretty funny. After 3 hours of grandpa teaching us about Mexico and the Old Testament, we finally went to the Mexican consultant or whatever it's called. Our grandpa guide guy made it seem like such a serious thing. He told us when we got in there, we were on Mexico territory so we had to be on our best behavior and be SUPER respectful. It felt like a DMV, but in Mexico. Nothing was in English, so they'd call numbers for people to come to different windows and stuff all in Spanish. Missionaries do it differently than everyone else though. Once the guy was ready for us, we went up one by one to get a picture and have our finger scanned. And that was it. Then we all waited for our visas. We were probably there about an hour. I sat by this one lady and she asked if I was a lawyer. Except I didn't know the word for lawyer, so I was trying to get her to give an example or something so I could figure it out. The grandpa missionary who brought us whispered "lawyer" to me, so then I was like, "oh no, I'm a missionary!" to her, but then the grandpa told me "no proselyting!" so I kinda stopped talking to her. She was so nice and would have kept talking to me, but I didn't trust my Spanish enough. The elders thought it was cool I talked to someone there for a second because I think the rest of them were scared to, especially since we got warned to be on our very best behavior.

Las Vegas Airport

After all that, we got to hang out at the airport for a while, then we flew home! It was super funny watching some of the missionaries try and start gospel conversations. One of the elders held one on the whole flight home with this guy. He tried to give him a BOM on the plane, but the guy "forgot" it. Luckily we made friends with some members too, and they had been watching, so they ran to "return" the forgotten BOM haha. It was a really fun trip! It was cool how good of friends I got to be with them after just a day. A couple of them told me all about how decided to come on a mission and cool things that had happened already in the MTC. Sweet elders, haha.

LOVE YOU GUYS! Hope you enjoyed my rambling...I'll try and send more spiritual messages from now on haha :) FELIZ NAVIDAD IN LESS THAN ONE WEEK :)

<3 / Hermana Harper