HELLO friends and family!! This has been the busiest, most intense, funnest week ever, and I’m so excited that I get to be here for the next 8 weeks! Today (Thursday) is finally my P day (aka Preparation day) where I get to respond to and send emails. Since I arrived at the MTC (Missionary Training Center) on Wednesday of last week, I had to wait a week and a day to email. Sit down and grab a snack, because this is going to be a long email!!! 🙂

I flew out of Dallas on Wednesday morning and was picked up at the airport by my sweet Aunt Jana. We went out for breakfast and then she dropped me off at the MTC here in Provo, Utah. I was able to check in a little bit earlier than my scheduled time, so I got the opportunity to meet several other new missionaries arriving that Wednesday.

At check in I got my missionary tag and I got my schedule for the next 9 weeks that I’ll be here in the MTC, and right afterwards I got to meet my companion and leave my bags in my residency and head straight into my first class. In the first class, they start off by speaking to you only in your mission language, but luckily I could understand most of it (shoutout to Wojciech for being the best Polish teacher ever!!!). In that first class, we learned how to introduce ourselves in Polish and we got to meet our district. A district is the group of missionaries that you learn your language with, have class with, and basically become best friends with while you’re at the MTC. My district has 8 Elders and 3 Sisters besides me, so we’re a pretty decent size district. We found out over 550 missionaries entered the Provo MTC on Wednesday, the biggest group of missionaries to arrive all year. Since missionaries arrive weekly, it’s pretty cool to be surrounded by so many new missionaries.

I LOVE my companion!! Her name is Siostra Sjodin and she’s from SWEDEN!! She’s so sweet and funny, and we get along really well. She is fluent in both Swedish and English, so not only have I learned a ton of Polish this week, but I’ve been able to pick up some Swedish too. She is an amazing singer (more on that later) and is one of the most spiritual people I’ve ever met!  🙂

My non-P day days at the MTC consist of meals in the cafeteria, 4-6 hours of class, personal study time, companionship study time, and exercise time. The food here is pretty good, but it’s nothing like homemade food!!

On Saturday morning for exercise time the Elders in our Zone (a zone is group of several districts) played the Russian zone. Our zone has the Polish, Bulgarian, Czech, Slovak, Finnish, Swedish districts, along with several more, so it was the funniest game to watch. More than 50 Elders were on the field at a time chasing one soccer ball!! At the end of the game we tied, so Church on Sunday was amazing! We go to church with our zone, and since we have 13 languages in our zone we get to have Sacrament meeting in English (although the talks are given in your mission language). We had 2 Czech missionaries speak on Sunday, and since Polish and Czech are similar, I could understand a lot of what was said.

I saved the best for last!! This year in General conference there’s going to be an MTC choir, and so missionaries here at the MTC who wanted to got to fill out surveys to be considered for the choir. Over 1300 missionaries filled out surveys for 200 or so available spots, and I wasn’t chosen, BUT my companion  Siostra Sjodin was!!!! I couldn’t be more excited for her and I can’t wait for general conference!!!