Friday October 17th, 2014

Well hello everyone!

These past few days have been quite the adventure! There's been a lot of information given to us but they don't really expect us to remember it all so that's good. Everyone's been right about the food, it's really good. My companion is super great! I'll attach some pictures next week. Her name is Sister Jarman and she's from Orem. She's really nice and has a great testimony that's helped strengthen me. We've been in class learning a lot already. We've mostly covered how to teach by the Spirit and how to recognize the Spirit. We've learned a lot about focusing on the investigator as an individual and praying a lot to know their needs, and to see them how Heavenly Father sees them. We're going to be teaching lessons starting tomorrow! Not to real investigators, that starts next week. It's crazy how fast things go here, it already feels like I've been here forever and it's only been two days!

Our district is really great! My roommates are Sister Bunker and Sister Kempton and they're really friendly and we get along really well. We also have two companionships of elders, including Elder Ashcraft from American Fork! He's our district leader. Our whole district is going to the same mission so we'll probably see each other once we get out in the field. It's really cool. Our zone is great, we get to be in a zone with the ASL missionaries, and it's really fun to watch them sign to each other. Our sister training leaders and zone leaders are all ASL missionaries so they've been here a while.

It's funny how quick you get used to calling everyone Elder and Sister. No one has first names anymore, I don't even know the first names of the elders in our district. Everyone here is really friendly, they're always saying hello, and when we first got here people were always saying welcome to the MTC. I arrived with a sister going to Bulgaria! There are a lot of Asian language missionaries as well here. We're lucky because we don't have to learn a language. Learning everything is hard enough without the extra language study added in ;) It's really cool how many missionaries have come here from foreign countries. You hear a lot of different languages and accents here. We heard a testimony from an Australian sister the first day we were here. There was also sisters from Denmark and the Marshall Islands! They keep you busy pretty much all day studying or learning in class or attending workshops. It's hard but it's also really great because there's no time to focus on yourself. 

We're going to check out the bookshop today and see what's there. We only have the morning for preparation we still have class in the afternoon since we just got here. Gym time is pretty great there's lots of different activities to do, but we don't have it every day. I'm learning a lot about Preach my Gospel and how it really is scripture. It's the book we learn from the most because it'll help us become better missionaries more than any of the study materials we have. It's a great book! 

Well, I hope you're all doing good. I sure am! We are heading out to Kentucky on Monday the 27th so we only have ten more days here! I'm really excited to go out into the field and help others come unto Christ! Thank you all for supporting me!

-Sister Brouwer