Cześć!!!!!!

Tomorrow marks a month down at the MTC. Thanks for all your love and support- getting emails and Dear Elders throughout the week MAKES MY DAY, so don’t hesitate to send me an email even though I can’t respond until Thursday!!

Things I learned at the MTC this week:

PATIENCE is KEY!!!

This week the language started to get a lot harder. Sometimes it feels like I’m not learning Polish fast enough, but I’ve realized I just need to have more patience! I’ve realized that everyone is learning different things-and no one knows everything!!! Some people learn new words really quickly, and others are able to testify really well in Polish. For me, I find strength when I apply a principle to my own life, and know it really well in English. Then it makes it a lot easier to testify in Polish with the words I know.

For example, this week I have really studied patience (Cierpliwość in Polish).

I love Mosiah 23:21-“21 Nevertheless the Lord seeth fit to chasten his people; yea, he trieth their patience and their faith.”

Part of the faith building process is having patience!!! When we have patience, it shows that we trust the Lord enough to wait for whatever He has in store for us. As long as we’re doing our part, He WILL make up the rest!!!

& The Gift of Tongues is REAL

This week I had the coolest experience!! I happened to be sitting next to an Elder during a devotional who had translation headphones on, and I could hear that the translation was in Spanish. After the devotional I started a conversation with him, and we went on to have a pretty lengthy conversation all about the MTC, the mission he was headed to, and where he was from (Mexico!). It was only afterwards that I realized the whole conversation had been in pretty rapid Spanish, and I hadn’t even given it a second thought. It was an awesome testimony to me that the gift of tongues is applicable to every language 🙂

Things I’m so grateful for this week:

1. Gorgeous views from the MTC
2. The temple

& the most important,

3. My Savior, Jesus Christ!!!

I am so grateful for the MTC and for the opportunity I’ve had these past few weeks to come to know my Savior better. I love this gospel, I love Jesus Christ, and I love Polish (even when it’s hard!!! 😉 )

Love you all (Kocham was), and hope this week is the BEST!!!

Siostra Baldwin

It’s been another FANTASTIC week in the MTC!! Between General conference, devotionals, and TRC lessons, it’s been a blast!!!

This weekend was GENERAL CONFERENCE!! BEST EXPERIENCE EVER!!!( twice a year there is a big broadcast from Salt Lake City where the living Prophet of today and his 12 apostles speak to us and it’s called General Conference and it is so good!!!) It was practically the event of the year here! I got to watch it from the MTC in a room with 1800 or so other missionaries. The spiritual high was incredible, and it was so fun to anticipate and hear the announcements from this conference surrounded by missionaries with the same purpose!!

I am so excited for the new programs that were announced!!! The new “Come Follow Me” program is HUGE for countries where it can be very difficult for some members to get to church, and I am so excited to be able to help implement the program once I get to Poland.

Another big highlight was watching the MTC choir at conference!!! I got to see Siostra Sjodin and Siostra Aramaki (two of my fellow Polish sisters!) sing in the MTC choir and it was AMAZING!!!! During the choir parts it was so fun to be with all the missionaries because everyone was watching their missionary friends!! I felt the spirit SO STRONG and it was totally unforgettable!!!

Polish word of the week: żartujesz which basically means “you’re joking!!!!” Feel free to use it anytime someone says something remotely funny or unbelievable- it’s probably the most said word in my district!!!

A cool experience this week:

My goal this last week has been exact obedience. The first week I got here, I struggled to always be out of bed at 6:30 sharp. A few Sundays ago we had testimony meeting and one of our sister training leaders (sister missionary leadership position for the zone) bore her testimony on when she goes to bed at 10:30 exactly (or earlier ) and gets up at 6:30 exactly, it isn’t hard for her to wake up and she doesn’t feel tired. I decided to try it and let me tell you IT WORKS!!!! I haven’t been tired at all since I’ve been exactly obedient to the sleep schedule and everyone around me has been sick lately(sickness travels fast in the MTC) but I haven’t felt sick at all! I’ve been exercising, getting sleep, and staying hydrated and I’ve never felt better. PROOF exact obedience works!!

Not everything is easy at the MTC, and the days can be long! But it is SO WORTH IT!!! I wouldn’t give it up for the world. I love the MTC, I love my district, and I am so grateful for this opportunity I have to serve the Lord.

This week has taught me over and over again that when we make the Lord our #1 priority, EVERYTHING else will fall into place. As we turn outward and focus on others, we will be blessed!! I can testify of that!

Dzien Dobry!!

It’s been another great week here at the MTC!! I hit my 2 week mark yesterday! 2 weeks down and 7 to go, and it just gets better and better!

This week my schedule has evened out and I have almost the same schedule every day which is so nice!

My district has continued to learn a ton of Polish. Every day we have language class and several times a week, we get 2 hr time blocks to study the language. Every other day or so we teach mini 5-10 min practice lessons. It’s AMAZING to think that just a 2 weeks ago, most of my district was learning how to say hello in polish (cześć!) and now we can say fun things like “Co wiesz na temat nauczania Jezusa Chrystusa?” (“What do you know on the subject of Christ’s teachings?”) I have seen the Lord’s hand in my life every day as I have read the scriptures and studied this beautiful language.

Yesterday (Wednesday), we had our first TRC, where you get to teach 2 twenty minute lessons in a row to someone who speaks your mission language. It was SO FUN and went really well!! Siostra Sjodin and I went over our lesson several times beforehand, and it totally paid off. We couldn’t understand every single thing the person we were teaching told us (they are only allowed to speak Polish) BUT it was amazing to realize how much we could understand!!

Well, that’s all for this week!

I’m so grateful for this opportunity I have to be at the MTC and to prepare to serve the people of Poland. Thank you for all the love and support!!

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!!!