Letter to Home

2/14/13                                                    Letter to Home

Draga Mama Si Tata,

30 min is not enough time to send e-mails!  So I am writing the old fashioned way.  I hope you are well.  

The Lord has blessed me so much since I have been here.  The Spirit is strong here.  I love it when we sing.  It just fills my heart.  I tell ya, "Called to Serve" has never been so powerful.  

I joined the choir!  I love our director.  One sister said he reminded her of Brian Regan.  He's really funny!  The other thing I love is he makes the songs meaningful.  So we aren't just singing words.  We sang "Faith of our Fathers" for the devotional on Tuesday.  It has an interesting history,  and our conductor applied it to us.  I saw Danielle Wilcoxson a few times before she left on Monday.  That was fun.  It was really nice to have a familiar face on my first day.  

I am learning so much.  I have a hard time falling asleep at night because I can't get my brain to shut up.  I need a little Bob in my life. Ha Ha.  (Note- as a family we watch an old show "Bob Newhart"  before we go to bed.  Helps us wind down )

There's a Mormom Message you should watch.  I couldn't hear it because it was in the gym and I don't have headphones. But it still touched me because I pulled some training from it.  I think Elder Oaks is the one speaking.  They compare missionaries to our pioneers.  I thought that was a cool comparison.  

Oh, more about Sora Stewart.  She seems so in tune to receiving answers. She also has a great desire to be obedient which I admire.  I really like it because it means we're on time to everything. 

The language can kind of scare us all.  That's probably the most stressful part.  But things don't seem so scary once you make it past Sunday.  Sunday was so amazing.  My heart was so ful and I got some good personal notes.  What I've been learning the past few days concerning the language is that it's okay if we aren't perfect because the Spirit will still testify.  It's the Holy Ghost that converts, not us.  I've felt that through experience too. 

A teacher is acting like one of his old investigators so we can practice teaching lessons.  Today is our last lesson with him.  We fumble a lot with the language.  Sora Stewart and I felt so bad after our second lesson because we couldn't understand. So we were jumping forward, just continuing on with the script we'd made for ourselves.  Basically, we were really down on ourselves.  I couldn't even focus on any more after that.  The next day when we went to teach I offered our prayer before we entered.  We like to pray before hand.  I felt like it was one of my most sincere prayers ever as I asked Heavenly Father for help, knowing we couldn't do it alone.  We had our lesson, and although we still fumbles, we understood the majority of what he said and we could have lept and shouted for joy.  We were so full of happiness!

 I thought of Alma when he talks about feeling joy as exceeding as was his pain.  The context is different, but that's kind of what it felt like.  We made sure we said a prayer of gratitude before we did anything else.  It's funny writing "my heart was full."  I feel like I'm understanding what that phrase means for the first time.  There's really no better way to describe that feeling.  

I almost flooded the bathroom the other day.  My shower was clogged.  I didn't realize it at first and showers are hard to get so I thought I'd just go super fast.  When I was done, the water was pretty much at the edge of my curtain about to go into the bathroom.  That was interesting.  Also, thanks for the flip flops.  The shower floors can get gross.  All the hair would make you gag, Dad. 

This is what my schedule looks like for tomorrow so you can get an idea of what it's like:

Morning-

Wake up- 6:30

Study- 7:00

Breakfast- 7:30

Classroom Instruction- 8:00

Personal Study- 11:05

Lunch- 12:15

Language Study- 1:00

Training/Class- 2;15

Dinner:- 5:15

Gym- 6:10-7:00

TALL (sort of like Rosetta Stone)- 7:35

Planning- 8:35-9:00

Personal Time/ Companion Prayer- 9:30

Quiet time- 10:15

Lights out- 10:30

Mom it looks like I didn't over pack.  I packed perfectly!! =)

I love you all so much.  Talk to you soon.

Dumnezeu Si Isus Hristos te iubesteI

Love,

Danielle