Coucou mes amis!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! This week, I’m thankful for my district and all of the fun we had celebrating this week:
The first thing we celebrated was Elder Bennion’s golden birthday (the golden part was very important to him.) He was indeed surprised by the surprise party we threw for him. We had golden oreos, pink party hats, and glow sticks. We spent most of the time trying to get pizza delivered only to figure out that we were lied to by the pizza place and you can not get pizza delivered to the MTC. Oh well, it’s the thought that counts.
The next day, we celebrated Frere Hassel’s wedding! Unfortunately, we were not allowed to shirk all missionary duties and go to his reception, but we celebrated by dressing in his wedding colors and Facetiming him for 5 seconds (see photos.)
We have all been having so much fun together as a district. We’ve got eight Sisters and 4 Elders. Eight of us are going to Paris; two to Lyon, France; and two to Yammoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire. It’s been cool to see how well we get along considering how different we are.
We’ve just got one problem, the sisters in our district are absolutely addicted to speaking in a British accent. I started speaking in a British accent because I was sad about us not being able to go to the England MTC. Then, I started using it in public because I wanted to see if I could get random people walking by to believe that I was actually from England. It’s spiraled into us talking in them so often some of us can’t switch back to our American accent without serious effort. We have actually gotten people to believe we’re British though! Sometimes, one of us will (honestly) say we’re from Utah and they won’t believe us until we pretend we’re from London. Don’t worry, we always make sure to tell the truth before they walk away. My favorite interaction happened when I was talking to the one guy here who was actually British. He overheard one of us speaking in our fake accent and got all confused. When he asked her if she was faking her accent, she thought he was faking his accent so she said right back to him, “Of cors no’ this is ‘ow I really towk!”
Now to get back to things I’m celebrating, Thanksgiving this year was one of my favorites. We watched a devotional by Elder Ronald A. Rasband, did a service project where we as an MTC put together 409,248 packages of oatmeal for those who are hungry, and went to a special musical devotional by John Schmidt from the Piano Guys. Elder Rasband is so sharp, service is so fun, and John Schmidt is such an engaging performer. My take away from both devotionals was that we should trust in the Lord because He has the power to make miracles happen both to us and through us. John Schmidt told us about how the artist Minerva Tichert would always pray before she would pick up her paintbrush. When problems arose during the painting process, she would kneel down to pray for guidance. Inspired by this, John Schmidt began to incorporate prayer into creating his music. When he did this, he found that musical solutions to his problems would come into his head before he even got off his knees. This got me thinking, what would my art look like if I asked for guidance from the Lord along the way? What would my life look like if I asked for more guidance from the Lord along the way? I’ve been looking for lots of guidance throughout my time here at the MTC.
And finally, today we celebrated Black Friday by shopping at the R9 store. Our residence hall has tables where people leave stuff behind and you can take it for free if you want it (that’s where we got all of the birthday party stuff from.) I got a trench coat for 100% off. Now that’s what I call a sale!
And now it’s time to start celebrating Christmas for real! Utah decided to celebrate by making it snow on Thanksgiving night;
what a great way to welcome in the Christmas season. I’m here until December 13, so that means I’ll be spending Christmas in France! How exciting is that?
Je vous aime!
Sœur Peterson
