Pictures!

Letter from Sister Hall!

Kumusta,

I can't believe it has already been another week!

And Lauren is married!!! And Laura is engaged!!! SOO exciting!!

I have seen so many people this week that I know! Especially Cassie! I saw her once for the first three weeks. And now I see her every day! It is easily a highlight of my days!  There are at least four of us from Jerusalem here. Annaleah, Cassie, Mary and I. SO exciting 

Thanks for the cookies! So maybe we already ate them all. At first they thought they were store bought, no you fools. They are home made! One of my elders was in heaven, well he actually asked multiple times if they were ecstasy. They were great! Smashed, but still soooo good. Apparently we will now be catering every ones weddings here. Surrrreeee...

Last Tuesday at devotional Richard G Scott came and spoke to us!

It was super great, he invoked an apostolic blessing for us that we may be successful missionaries and master our languages. He was so great that the girl who was saying the closing prayer was walking up to say it and he stoped her and started talking again! It was great. He also reminded us that our calls were inspired, and we were called to succeed-not to fail. We also heard from Cheryl Esplin (in the Primary Presidency) on Sunday and the YW president and one of her councilors was there as well. It was a great week for speakers. She talked about how the world needs the joy and light that we have. One of the best things about being in the mtc is that every week we have amazing speakers.

We have been learning a lot of new conjugations in Tagalog, pretty much it is just pure memorization. And when you are trying to think of a sentence to say you have to literally think about it for a few minutes to figure out the proper grammar. But hey at least we are progressing. One day during language study my mga kasama and I made up a game. It was called the kasama beater. On the chalkboard we wrote up the conjugation charts for all of the pronouns and left the 21 spots for the words empty (this is kinda hard to explain), so one person would be the announcer. They would in a boxing fight style voice introduced the contestant. Then there was the caller, they called out the pronouns in English and what form. Then the contestant had to write it sa Tagalog in the correct place in under three seconds. If they could not accomplish this they got a tally. And at the end depending on how many tallies you had, that was how many beatings you got. And I can gladly say that I had the lowest amount of beatings overall.

One day our teacher Brother Nuttell told us how a previous district of his were very proud about completing what is called the tower challenge. I attached a couple of pictures from it. So clearly we took it as a challenge and the next morning decided to accept the challenge. Pretty much there are these giant things filled with cereal and as a district we had to finish off the entire thing. And we were dumb and picked Life to eat, which was perhaps the worst decision ever. I only committed to eat two bowls. And yet I somehow ended up managing to eat four. Cereal for days. A few boys ate around 8 or 9, can't remember. One ate two, we now call him the two bowler. Success. We ate the entire thing, granted we forced a few random people to eat our last few bowls. But all together we ate 47 bowls of cereal. And for the rest of the day we were all so, so sick. Later we found out that our teachers previous district consisted of 12 big boys. We are 5 small girls, 4 small boys. But somehow we still finished.

This week with all of our candy we made a few care packages. One of the Elders in my Zone that is going to Angeles with me had his tonsils out and they found a mass (not cancer luckily) the other week, so he has been pretty sick. We made him a huge box of treats, he absolutely loved it. Another elder dislocated his shoulder so we made one for him. And we made another big package for Sister Watkins (one of our teachers) because she has been super stressed with finals. We loved giving everyone their boxes and they all loved it.

Here are a few great Tagalog mistakes I made this week. I made it into my teachers journal of "dumb things the missionaries say." First I was teaching the lesson on the plan of salvation and I tried to say that everyone on earth will die. But instead I said everyone on earth will suicide. oops. Just making up my own doctrine here. Another one. I was in class and after having a conversation about how to properly use gusto (because it can mean either to like or to want) I jokingly turned to my companions in a hushed tone and said gusto ako. Which means I am wanted. And my teacher overheard me and had quite the laugh over it.

There is this one district of boys here, I think they are going to Peru or something. But they are beyond obnoxious. They think they are super cool, like my freshman year kids who called themselves the 'shiz.' And unfortunately they have the exact same schedule as us so we see them everywhere. Twice this week we were walking past them and they pretended to run into poles and get hurt. Both times they were video taping our reactions. The first time Sister Marcucci yelped, but the second time none of us were even phased. We call this group of boys the pterodactyl tangga (stupid) and friends. Because one of them made this dinosaur type sound at me once, thus the pterodactyl.

Also one day I was peppering with a volleyball with a few of the elders and a sister and I was allowing the Elders to hit it at me as hard as they wanted. So I passed one to Elder Tufele and assumed that he was going to hit it to someone else and next thing I know he is slamming it at me. Even worse I was not ready and screamed and it nailed me. He felt so bad, it didn't hurt physically-it only hurt my pride. Ha.

Now for a few embarrassing moments. Twice this week I had problems with my skirts.One morning I was just minding my own business in class when I looked down and the side seam of one of my brand new skirts was coming loose and had already came loose and had a giant hole! Thus I had to carefully walk back to the room and change. Another day I went to swipe my card to get into a building, because you can't get in any doors with out a card, and it was slightly windy. But apparently where the card swiper was just created a whirlwind with the wind. Thus my skirt completely flew up and I was practically on the ground laughing and trying to push it back down.

Now for the most embarrassing. Luckily this did not happen to me. Yesterday we had a sub teacher, Bro Lopez (we played volleyball together last semester), he took us outside to practice doing street approaches to each other. He sent my two comps and off to say a prayer and then walk over and practice the approach. Sister Marcucci was wearing one of our elders jackets because it was still pretty cold and being the people we are we put both her and Sister Littlefield into the jacket before we started praying. I then proceeded to try to button it closed with both of them in it. We were all laughing really hard and they feel onto their knees. They were stuck in the jacket, so I was trying to help sis Littlefield get out because she was laughing too hard and thought she was going to pee her pants. Once I got her out Sister Marcucci stands up as well, still dying of silent laughter. Low and behold she herself had just peed her pants (skirt). I didn't realize it had actually happened until I noticed the giant puddle under her. Bro Lopez started walking over to see what was going on, noticed what had happened (we were all on the ground at that point laughing) and he allowed us to go back to the room so she could change. It was seriously one of the funniest things. I have absolutely no idea how she let that happen. But it was so funny. And apparently she was the third missionary that Bro. Lopez has had that wet themselves. It was so great and awkward. But she handled it so well. Now we just constantly say remember that one time....

Two of the districts in my zone left on Monday! It was super sad to see them go, because we had gotten pretty close to a lot of them. And most of them I will never see again, because they were international students. We only have 5 districts in our zone, so now about half of them are gone! We get more tomorrow though. But now we are the oldest zone! We will be the next ones to leave, in just under two week! Crazy! And we get our travel plans later this week!! SO excited to go!

Well I have exceeded my time limit. Rebel. Okay disobedient. Hanggan sa susunod!

Sister Lindsay Hall

Pictures!

Temple Day.

 Temple day.

 Laundry Day.

 Someone is a little tired.

 Lindsay and her companions.

Just eating some redvines.

The skirt was too short.

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

Pictures!

 Polka Dot day at the MTC.

 Lindsay and her companions.

 Lindsay with one of her companions.

Lindsay with the Sister's of her district.

 Lindsay and her companions.

 Lindsay and her companions.

One of Lindsay's companions.

(Do you think they have a big enough stash of food!)

Letter from Sister Hall

Magandang hapon,

Let's see. This week seems like it has gone by so fast, yet so slow. The hours are long, the days are short. The days are long, the weeks are short. I feel like I have been here for ages, yet it has only been nearly two weeks. Time is an odd concept.

So this week I decided to play basketball during one of my gym times and I am obviously an accomplished basketball player. We played 3 on 3 with a few sisters, needless to say I got nailed in the head twice (one being my face) with the ball. Then I proceeded to be pushed to the ground and had my hand stomped on. I forgot to take a picture of it, but it pretty much looked like I had been in a fight all of my knuckles were bruised and I had her shoe imprinted on my hand. Needless to say, I won't be playing basketball again. But luckily that was the worst of it for me. Yesterday two of our elders broke bones playing volleyball. One only broke his big toe, but the other broke his ankle. So they had to go to instacare. It was our Fijian that broke his foot and he is too prideful to use crutches or a brace or anything. So he has just been walking around like it was no big deal. Hopefully he doesn't have to be delayed at all because of it, word on the street is he might have to get surgery.

Oh you were wondering about my district. All of the Sisters are going to Angeles with me and all of the Elders are going to Bagio. But the other district that came in the same day as us is just the opposite, so all of their elders are coming with us. Also new missionaries come in tomorrow, apparently we have almost two districts worth coming in for the Philippines. And for temple day, aka today, we have the lovely opportunity of going over at 5:45, pretty much it couldn't be any earlier. But it is great because we get to eat breakfast there afterwards and it is a nice change up. One of our elders has gained 16 pounds in the last two weeks! He is pretty proud of it.

I got to leave the MTC the other day. Out to the real world. Sister Marcucci had a root canal before she came and was still having pain from it. So her and I got to take the MTC shuttle over to the root canal guy. She had actually pulled out a piece of popcorn the day before from it and it had stopped hurting. But we still decided to go to the dentist to check for an infection....and there was no way we were going to pass up our opportunity of visiting the real world.

For conference they played the sessions in the huge room where we have devotionals. But we decided that it wasn't worth sitting in those chairs for hours and hours and went into the overflow rooms. Which were much smaller and had better chairs. And best of all we didn't have to be in our chairs early and even better of all we had made goodie bags from our plethora of food and were able to snack on them in there. Conference was great though, we had a few district discussions about it afterwards. I loved how often missionary work was mentioned, it was exciting for us. Also did you watch the young women's conference? We watched it. You should look it up, it was great. Mainly the little girl who said the opening prayer was awesome. I couldn't even close my eyes while she was praying, I was just too enthralled with her. Via the advice of conference, I have been trying to focus on what I do know. Not what I don't know. Because there sure is a lot that I don't know and that is not too encouraging. Also what language do you think is spoken in Heaven? Pretty sure it is Tagalog (obviously I am bias).

Hmm the other day we came into class in the morning, usually we direct those three hours by ourselves-no teachers. But when we walked in there was Sister Mary Rose, our investigator that we have been teaching. Surprise. She is now our second teacher. So she teaches us for three hours in the morning, then Brother Nuttel teaches for three in the evening. We have moved on from learning really any more vocab, we have to do that on our own now. We have moved into grammar. Lovely. Considering I am not an expert in English grammar, that translates poorly over to Tagalog. I have to super focus, just to make sure that I understand the sentence structure and tenses and on and on and on. It is abnormally tricky. Rosetta stone did not even hint at this.

What else random do I have to tell you....only one other girl in my room hears the alarms in the morning but no one but me wakes up to them. So I get up and just head out of the room, as to not wake them. I don't find it to be my job to be waking them up every morning. But unfortunately that means most days we are late. I just stand by the door for around ten minutes waiting. We are not the best at getting to class on time, obviously. Also neither of my sisters wear watches! Some days they ask me the time at least every five minutes. If I couldn't have read a watch before I sure am an expert by now.

Every Sunday and Wednesday there is ice cream here. BYU creamery ice cream. Last Sunday we (the sisters in my district) couldn't decide on just one each. Thus we got about six bowls and shared them between all of us. It was great. Felt just like home. Even with the cupcakes we would get a knife and cut them up into little pieces, we could each try a bit of each. I am my mothers daughter.

I loved the snow today, I have absolutely no clothes appropriate for snow. But it was still great. I was mainly excited because most of the missionaries in my district had never seen snow! What a sad life.
Thanks to Brianna for sending my district cupcakes, the boys ate themselves sick.

I'm going to try to send some pictures, I found a computer that actually will send!

Love you, miss you.
Sister Lindsay Hall

Pictures!

 Lindsay and her companions.

 Lindsay with the sister's of her district.

 Lindsay's district.

 Lindsay with the sister's of her district.