Once upon a time, normal
missionaries spent about 9 weeks at the MTC and if they were fast tracked, they
spent 3-6 weeks reviewing the language and being initiated as a real
missionary. When I walked into my German classroom the first day, I was told my
good friend from BYU Sister Jensen that we would get 12 days here. Insert missionary
appropriate swears. Which are actually none. But today, I got my flight plan
and as it turns out, I actually get 11 days in the MTC, because I leave on
Logan's birthday—February 17th! Oh goodness gracious, that is just over a week.
I therefore decided to not really unpack and haven't been to find anything very
quickly because of that decision.
In case you missed it the
first time I wrote it, I WILL BE IN GERMANY VERY SOON! While terrified at
first, I'm excited now and can't wait to go.
My district of 14 fast
track German speakers is the first group of missionaries with such a short
sojourn at the MTC. Needless to say (and so written), we are all freaking out
but so pumped to go teach people about Christ's Gospel so soon! There are 10
sisters (5 Berliners, 3 Frankfurters, and 2 Alpines) and 4 elders, who all have
just taken German in high school. But they are great and have good, strong
German names like Elder Krieger and Rasband. I love my district. I fly out with
the Alpine Germany sisters as well and we fly from Salt Lake to Amsterdam, and
then we fly to Berlin. The Frankfurters leave Tuesday. I share a room with the
Frankfurt sisters! We actually didn't get assigned a companion the first day
and then some and just moved around as a big German blob and picked our
companions as we liked. Last night, we finally got assigned a real companion
(who we will have for 8 days) and Elder Krieger got assigned as our district
leader. Which means we got mail! Thanks to those of you who wrote me. For those
of you who didn't, you only have a week to send free dearelder.com letters!
Anyways, my companion's
name is Sister Teusch (pronounced Tishe) and she is great. She is quirky
and outspoken and lived in Germany for a while and she's probably the most
different from me out of all the other sisters in my district, but
we've gotten along fine. Plus 8 days is not that long. My other roommates are
Sisters Muncie and Leavitt and I like them too.
There are 3 districts
in my branch and they other two districts comprise of
foreign missionaries (representatives from Fiji, Haiti, Germany,
Chile, Mexico, and Samoa). They're leaving just as fast as we are and most
are staying in the United States, but teaching in their native tongue.
Yup, we German speakers feel pretty cool being lumped together
with those missionaries.
My MTC teachers are
Brother Hunsaker and Sister Singer and they are awesome. Except I only get them
for a week pretty much. We've mostly talked about the Gospel in English because
our German is proficient enough (we all laughed when they told us that), but we
will be practicing teaching lessons to people in German.
Lessons that
have stuck out to me in the past couple days include the fact that
missions change everything (your life, the people you serve, your companions,
your future spouse and kids, the bugs on the street, etc). For the better
naturally. It's nice to focus on how what I'm doing will affect others.
I like that people smile
here all of the time too. Everyone is so excited to learn and teach more
about Christ's restored Gospel and even if they have no idea how to not use
Mormon lingo (pardon me, I know I've used some in this email--ask a friend),
they are great examples to me. We focus a lot on baptism in the MTC, but
that's because that is kind of the big overarching theme of teaching. Baptism shows
that you understand the restoration of the Gospel of Christ and
believe His principle and are ready to act on that truth.
Wish me luck with my
last/first full week here! I know that God loves and cares about me and
somehow everything will be okay. Love you all :)
--
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Sister
Claire Michelle Woodward
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