Freude
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
Guten tag!
This week a big group of English-speaking missionaries entered the MTC, making it a lot busier and yet all the more fun. The German is coming along slowly but surely. I can say a pretty good amount of sentences all relating to the Book of Mormon, the Plan of Salvation, prophets, the priesthood, the importance of families etc, so it's crazy to think that only two weeks ago I couldn't say a single word. I'm not quite sure what will happen when I get into the field and don't even know how to say the days of the week, but I am so excited to just be fully immersed in the language and culture so that I'm forced to pick it up!
On the topic of food, we asked our teacher the weirdest thing he was forced to eat in the Alpine German-Speaking mission. I figured it couldn't be too bad, after hearing my dad's story of eating chicken feet in Peru... but then he told us that this elderly woman fed him this frozen mush that was horrifically bittersweet. When he asked what is was, she proudly announced that she'd made up the recipe-- a {very unripe} mango and a half stick of butter mashed together, salted and spiced and then thrown in the freezer for good measure. Not quite as disgusting as chicken feet, but still horrible! We were dying over the story! Maybe it's not even that funny, but my Danish teacher said that she's noticed a trend in new missionaries. The first two weeks they are super intense/scared, and then after that they go giddy. However, our district went into the giddy phase a week early and I kid you not we find EVERYTHING funny. There are so many times that we are just laughing to the point of tears, unable to compose ourselves after someone says something totally dumb like-- well I did type out an example, but then I realized it sounded way too dumb and I felt ashamed at how much we were cracking up over it. Is this what happens when outside entertainment is taken away?
Our schedule is pretty much the same every day, so I don't really have any exciting stories. We learn lots of German and also receive many beautiful and inspirational gospel lessons. Every night we have the opportunity to practice teaching, and we sometimes get other lessons such as stress management. This week I will be part of a trio singing in front of a member of the seventy. After seven months of being at college and not being able to sing due to living in a thin-walled dorm, this is pretty exciting for me.
I LOVE being a missionary. Of course I don't know anything yet because I'm only in the MTC, but it's still so exciting, the prospect of giving people something that will allow them to draw closer to Christ and for their families to be together for all of time. Every day we have an hour set aside for reading scriptures, and already I have come to love and appreciate the Book of Mormon so much more. It's way easier to get something out of what you read when you're not distracted by thoughts of schoolwork or just doing it as a part of your bedtime checklist! Truly making an effort to read its words helps me to understand why my ancestors sacrificedeverything for the testimony of this book when they traveled from Denmark to Utah ... It's an incredible book which testifies that Jesus is our Redeemer and warns us of the dangers of forgetting our faith.
Tschuss!
Swester Lundgreen
1 comments
Wonderful words. Tschuss! My favorite way to say see ya.
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