First week at the MTC!

The MTC is pretty great! We have seven missionaries in my district. There are four sisters and three elders. We did have another elder from Costa Rica, but he is a linguistic genius (he knows Spanish, English, German, a "little" Italian and Russian). His one month of tutored Russian at home allowed him to advance to the older district who is leaving to Ukraine in two weeks. So that's exciting for him, but the rest of us are definitely grateful for the next 8 weeks - there's a lot to learn in the Russian language.

 

Russian is hard, but it's a lot of fun. On our third day here, they had us teach a half hour lesson in Russian to an "investigator." Our lesson ended up being only about fifteen minutes, but it was in Russian! We had to read a lot of the Russian from out notes, but I was able to bear my testimony at the end in Russian and the Spirit was so strong. It was really neat to share my testimony in a foreign language. Since that time, we've taught a couple more lessons, and our Russian has improved a lot during that time. The gift of tongues is real. It's really incredible to see how far we've come in only one week.

 

My companion is Sister Lewis from England, and she has a great accent! She's a very sweet girl. Because of visa things, she ended up entering the MTC on February 1 and working in an English district until the rest of us arrived on February 15th and we started learning Russian together. She graduated from a university in Bristol in psychology and taught English and Hong Kong for a year. There are six girls in my room, and I'm by far the youngest. Three of them have already graduated from college (one from BYU, one from Bristol, and from BYU Hawaii), and everybody but me is at least 23. So it's fun to be the little one. :) We all get along really well and we've been having a fun time together.

 

Saturday nights are neat. After class all the Russian speakers who want meet by the bicycle statues and sing hymns in Russian. There's a lot of power in that group, and I enjoy hearing the experienced Russian speakers sing. (I guess 'experienced' is a relative term - they've only had 10 weeks of Russian experience, but they sure know a lot more than we do.) I like that tradition a lot.

 

My first Sunday here was wonderful! I think my favorite meeting was Relief Society. All of the sisters at the MTC meet together in the gym, and there's such power and unity in that group. Lucia Joeng was one of the speakers! She was in my ward one spring term, and she served with me in the RS presidency. It was really good to see her and hear her share her conversion story with us. We got to talk a little bit afterward. She left early Monday morning for her mission in Canada, so it was really neat to see her here before she left.

 

I've run into a bunch of people I know here, and that's been a lot of fun! There are a lot of elders who went to high school with me, and sisters that I know from BYU. It's exciting to see all these friends who are dedicating this time of their lives to the Lord.

 

The Spirit here is so strong. It's neat to pray so frequently with my district, companion, and so many other people. The firesides are wonderful. Sunday we heard from the MTC president and last night we heard from Elder Wilson of the 70. I enjoy how we sing together before the meetings for 10 or 15 minutes. It's especially neat to sing "Called to Serve" at firesides with 2000 other missionaries. That's powerful. I've really learned so much in the few days that I've been here. They emphasize so much "Our Purpose," which is to invite people to come unto Christ. It's so humbling and empowering at the same time to realize that we are representatives of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm grateful for this opportunity to be serving my Savior whom I love so much.

-Sharisa