Coucou mes amis!
Welcome to my mission blog! Here, I’ll be posting the contents of all of my emails home each week. Feel free to email me if you want to be added to my email list.
This week I’m sending greetings from the Home MTC. I’ve been having online classes all week, but I’ll be heading down to the official Missionary Training Center in Provo next Wednesday.
In one of our meetings, we were asked to share one word to describe our week. Everyone on the zoom call was saying things like “fun,” “spiritual,” “motivating.” My word? Frustrating. Why? I was so excited to get started with training this week. I was ready to learn and eager to improve my French. Given my French background (I’ve been learning French for a long time now and I’m getting close to becoming fluent,) I’m supposed to be in a district for Advanced French learners and spend three weeks in the MTC. Instead, I’m in a district for people who don’t know any French at all and I’m here for six weeks. So far, we’ve learned the alphabet, basic pronunciation, and some phrases to use when praying.
We emailed the MTC about it to see what was going on. They said they were sorry for the mistake on their part, but there isn’t anything they can do about it. They suggested I make the best of it and use this situation as an opportunity to help the other people in my district. But I also really need to work on my French! I need to brush up on my grammar, learn gospel vocabulary, and practice teaching lessons in French!
I’m trying to find ways to make the best of this, but it’s been excruciating spending these French classes relearning things I’ve known for half my life. Not just because it’s boring, but because it’s wasting time I genuinely need to be spending working on my own French (not to mention it’s cutting three weeks out of the time I could be spending in France!) What I’m doing right now is 1: secretly working on my own study materials during the lesson 2: helping out the other people in my district and 3: looking forward to the private tutors I’m told I’ll get to have next week when I get to the Provo MTC. Let’s hope that this situation ends up being for my good.
Ok but some good news because I really hate to start out on such a downer: my companion has been an absolutely perfect pairing! Sœur Moody is insightful, friendly, and well prepared for the mission! We have a lot of common interests and I really enjoy the time we spend together. Another incredible thing about her is that she also has a good amount of French experience. It’s been great to actually practice with her instead of having to tutor her. We’re both hoping that the French difficulty will start ramping up soon. There was no mistake made when we were paired together!
The rest of my Home MTC experience has been nice. It’s been a bit slower than I’d like, but the people I’m with are making the situation better (if only they could speak French!!!!) I was told the MTC would be hard; I was told the MTC would be challenging; who knew the hardest part of the MTC would be that I need it to be more challenging?
À bientôt!
Sœur Alexia Faye Peterson
P.S. quick pronunciation guide: to pronounce Sœur (with a very heavy American accent, but you’ll already be saying my name with an American accent so it’s fine) just say “suhr” or if that’s confusing say “sir” 🙂
