Week 2 at the Missionary Training Center!

Bonjour ma famille!!!

 

I am absolutely LOVING my time here at the MTC. I am a little bit sad that I only get to be here for 2 weeks, since I will have a shorter MTC experience and because I love my district!!! At first when I found out that I was in an English speaking district and that I was the only American I felt SO out of place, but the Lord knows exactly what I needed and I couldn't be more blessed to be in the district that I'm in.

 

To clarify a couple of things, yes I am getting all of your letters! All of them! It's just an MTC rule that you can only write letters on P-day, so that is the only day you can be able to hear from me. I got your packages too! To everyone who has written me THANK YOU! I really do love hearing from you even if I never have time to respond... Also my district thinks I'm the most popular person in the world. One day my district leader Elder Gledhill came in with a stack of letters and Sister Oliveira said "Let me guess, they're all for Sister Everett." Elder Gledhill then said no and proceeded to give one to Sister Oliveira and then the rest of the stack to me. Also, we got to go to the temple last week, but it is not closed for like 2 months, so good thing we got there just in time!

 

Yes the rumors are true, my departure date is set for Monday! But I'm not quite sure if my visa is going to go through on time, so I may have to get transferred to a new district. We'll see!! I'm not sure if I can even let you know when I find out but maybe I could get back on and email later today when I double check with the travel office! Also, I haven't heard anything about a phone call, but possibly? And I'm pretty sure I will be travelling alone since there aren't any other French missionaries set for my departure date, but we'll see!

 

Elder Gledhill (left) and Elder Huhane (right)

So as a Sister Training Leader one of my responsibilities was to pick up the new foreign missionaries and take them with me and my temporary companion (Sister Perkins) to the devotional. As we were walking back from the devotional, one of the sisters said to me "Sister Everett is your foot ok?" I look back and realize that my foot is GUSHING blood. One of my more embarrassing moments since I've been here since I couldn't walk barefoot so I just had to leave my foot bleeding everywhere until I got back to the room. Then I had to ask EVERYONE for a Band-Aid and when I finally found one I had about a 20 person audience as I a sister attended my "wound" and gave me a Band-Aid. Moral of the story, never wearing those shoes again...

 

Ok so let me talk about my trip to San Francisco! On Monday I had to get up at 2 am and meet my temporary French district! [Photo Above] I thought there was no way in the world that any district could be better than mine, and then I realized that some can be just as good! This district is INCREDIBLE. They're all going to my same mission except for one Elder, so it was great to be able to meet them all and get close to them! On the way to the airport I sat by Sister Bragg (Sister Hodges I think this is the sister you were telling me to look out for?). She is the sweetest girl EVER!!! I'm so glad that I had such a fun district to be with all day because we were travelling a ton and it would have been miserable without them. When we finally got into the city we decided to stop for breakfast since none of us had eaten all day. We went to this little bakery on the corner (don't remember what it was called) but we thought we were so adorable for going to a French bakery when we're going to France... And me and Elder Pettingill both got the "Paris" breakfast sandwich. Hilarious, I know. But this part of the day was probably the highlight because the food was soooo good!! After eating breakfast we all headed over to the French Consulate. As we waited in line to get our visas, Elder Pettingill set the example and started handing out pass-along cards!! We were all just staring in awe as he connected with every single person he talked to. So he handed me a pass along card and told me to give it to the lady helping me with my visa. I was actually a little surprised when she took it! But it also seemed like she got pass-along cards all the time from French missionaries coming through. But hey, as a district we passed out 7 pass-along cards and 1 Book of Mormon while we were on our trip! I'd say that's pretty good! We were all so tired and delirious by the time we got back to the MTC campus that the rest of that day is still a complete blur. The Elders made sure to remind us that staying awake for 18 hours straight is the equivalent of being drunk. Drunk missionaries--super ironic.

 

Anyway, that was super exciting/encouraging that I was able to connect so quickly with the French district and something tells me that I will be with them soon because I'm pretty sure my visa isn't going to go through by Monday. 

 

Oh another cool thing, I met a CELEBRITY while in the MTC. Remember Elder Christensen from "The District" ? Yep, he was my teacher during our In-field Orientation workshop. Be jealous!

 

I also wanted to give a shout out to the best MTC teacher of all time, Brother Matthews! We could not be more blessed to have him! He is so inspiring and my companions and I are pretty sure that he is so close to being translated and just not quite there. But really, he is AWESOME. He always knows just how to inspire us and get us excited about going on our missions and finding success! He says success is all about attitude. Anyone can find people to baptize anywhere, if you have faith, your investigators with have faith (reciprocity). Another thing he always talks about is exact obedience. I know how important it is to be exactly obedient! When we are exactly obedient we WILL see miracles! So as a district we are working on this. Check out Alma 57:21, its awesome.

 

Sorry if I'm missing any questions that you had. I assure you that I'm doing SO WELL. Literally never better. I'm just so happy to be here serving the Lord!

 

Avec amour,

 

Sister Everett