Letter from Sister Hall!

It is my half way point through the MTC. how exciting. This week has been gone by relatively quickly which is nice. We have learned all of the major forms of grammar that we should have a basic understanding of. Which basically means I still can not speak Tagalog. But yesterday I finally was able to memorize all of the proper tenses of different root words, that means nothing to you. But I felt very accomplished. Language study is a different kind of memorization than I normally do, so I have had a bit of a hard time catching it as fast as I have wanted to.

So what has happened this week.

During relief society on Sunday the woman that spoke, Mary Edmunds, was hilarious (and she was the first sister missionary in the Philippines). But she talked about how our DL's were '18 going on 12.' Which is completely true. Granted my DL was trying his best, but he is just a baby still. But we got a new DL this week.

One day I felt like my district stole a small piece of my soul though. I was talking about what my plans were in life, things I want to do. And a bunch of them were adamant that I would not do anything that I want to. It just made me miss people who actually are encouraging of what I want to do. It wasn't a big deal. I just stopped adding to the conversation after a little while. But no worries, at least I have plans and ideas. But hey, to each his own.

Also Mary Edmunds at one point was telling all of the Sisters at the MTC to not touch the Elders except for handshakes. Except to keep tabs on the ones you like for after your mission. We almost died of laughter. Thanks, but no thanks.

I forgot to mention this a while ago. But the walls speak. The front desk has the ability to speak and listen through speakers everywhere. Including the dorms. For example we will just be in the room and the speaker will come on for our entire floor and ask us a question and you just respond by talking to the walls (they usually just ask us to find a sister in the hall). Nonetheless they are always there. Listening. I thought it was ridiculous the first few times. And now it has just become so common place that I rarely even listen.

We had TRC the other night. We talked with two guys who have served missions in the Philippines. They don't pretend to be investigators or anything so it is not stressful. We just went in there and practiced talking with them. It went relatively well. On the other hand we also taught our two investigators (aka our teachers). Those stress me out.

The girls in my room love to work out. Ha. I do too.... I have worked out with them a couple of times, because I have to go with them. But most of the time I'm just like eh don't sign me up for cardio. I'm more of a fan of horizontal running. I prefer to actually be playing a game or doing an activity to work out. Otherwise it is no fun. One day I convinced Sister Reddish to pepper with a volleyball. And she is pretty good so it was a lot of fun! Let's hope that I can convince her more often to play volleyball with me. One of the teachers in my zone was in my volleyball class down at school and was super good, he is always asking me if I play in the volleyball games on the courts during gym. I have yet to do that. Because the international kids kind of dominate the courts and can all jump ten feet in the air. So ya. One day..

Two of the girls were on this super strict diet for a week where they only ate veggies. Granted that is pretty much what I eat (plus my body weight in candy-aka lollies in Australia). But they were super extreme. Thus the boys in our district tell us all of the time that we only eat rabbit food. But one of them the other day decided that he needed to go on a diet, he has gained 15 pounds. So he went and got a salad with me. He was pretty much gagging the entire time he was trying to eat it. But he was committed. Although I don't think he quite understands the concept of eating well. He then proceeded to eat an entire package of oreos in class. Silly boy.

We have two districts from our zone leaving on Monday, so we will only have three zones left. It is a bummer, but we will be the oldest ones here! I feel like the kids who got here before me are all older than me and the ones who got here after are all younger. I wish that the districts left the same time as us, most of them are really great. They are all going to the same mission too! Naga. Where as we will all be split up.

Sister Marcucci and I have created two songs in Tagalog. Granted each song only has one word each. One is called (mga)bulaklak. Which means flower(s). We sing it all of the time and it drives our third comp insane. But it is such a catchy song. We even got our other Sisters in on it.

Um I ate three bowls of ice cream on Sunday. Don't judge me. I had not intended on eating all of them. I had gotten bowls for some other sisters and then they got their own too. So pretty much we had a lot of ice cream. It is cool.

Monday I had my volunteering again, cleaning. And I had to take the trash out of a ton of classrooms. I decided that it was a very telling job. I came to the conclusion that all of the kids going to France currently have colds. And all of the kids going to Brazil are candy addicts. All of them.

Quote from Sis. Marcucci for the week, "Welcome to the MTC, let the trials begin." When the newbies were coming in last Wednesday one girl had left her luggage outside by itself and we were joking about moving it. And that was Sister Marcucci's response.

On Sunday night we had a devotional and Greg Droubay came and spoke. He works for the church in the PR area and works on different campaigns and how the Church is viewed by non members. It was super interesting. In New York over Christmas they bought tons of spots on Times Square and a bunch of taxi cabs. And last week they just started a campaign in London. In London there are a total of 1000 double Decker buses. The Church purchases space on 250 of them. 1/4 of the buses are currently advertising Mormon.org. Super cool. They also bought a ton of other stuff as well. Although the entire time I just kept wondering how expensive all of it was. But in the end I suppose it was all worth it. For example in one area referral's went up 90%. It really doesn't take much to change perceptions about the Church.

Well yep there are the random things of my life.

Thanks for the letters!

Sister Hall