TWELVE DAYS

Note: Hi everyone! It's Beth, the little sister, and I get to be in charge of this blog while Sister Teusch is off on her mission for a year and a half. I'll be posting the letters that Lauren will be sending every week. Here's the first one. 

Hi Guys!

Actually, missionaries aren't allowed to say guys or dudes. We say Elder and Sister. Because we are respectful and stuff.

I only have to be here 12 days! I fly out on the morning of Feb. 19 and it's a direct flight from SLC to Frankfurt, which will be kind of awful. I'll have to go to the travel office and make sure I have an aisle seat. I depart at 11:25 am MST and arrive at 9:45am German time. I'll let you do that math. My head will explode.

My district is the first to have the shortened fast track, from 3 months to 12 days. Also, this is the very first time there has been a fast track of all German speakers, so we actually get to speak German in class! Usually lots of missionaries with different language skills will all be in a class together. There are some other really staggering facts about numbers here in the MTC, but they're in my journal. I'm not very well prepared. Like, ever.

For the first 2 days we didn't have companions assigned, so we would grab whichever sister was closest to go places. It was nice because I got to know the other 9 sisters in my district a lot better. There are 4 elders, too. I really enjoy everyone and am having a great time with them. The 3 hour long meetings I'm not enjoying so much.

My now-official companion, Sister Woodward, is going to Berlin. She was in some of the German classes that I gave announcements to over the past year at BYU, which is both funny and kinda embarrassing because I didn't really enjoy making those announcements. (Lauren helped with some German classes at BYU)

The Lord has blessed me so much in just the process of getting ready in ways I'm only starting to realize. He knew I wasn't ready when I was 19 to go on a mission. He also knew I wouldn't be able to handle being in the MTC for 3 weeks (if you know the language) or 9 (if I had been sent somewhere non-german speaking), so He saved me until the MTC was ready for a shorter program. Those are just the ones I can think of now.

Oh I suppose I could have added pictures but I don't have my camera cord. We came straight from the temple and then lunch to here so I don't really have much of anything.

The first night I couldn't sleep at all, I just lay there staring at the wall, but last night I slept fine. My companion and I got up at 6 to go to a sisters-only gym class but we were told the wrong gym and narrowly avoided getting in trouble. I love getting in trouble for things that I didn't do. It's my favorite. But we just used these really sweet ellipticals instead.

I feel like a chicken with my head cut off. My whole day is "is my stuff in my room or my classroom? what's next? what time is it? how are we late AGAIN?! where is my companion? WHO is my companion? I didn't know I needed that book! Which building are we going to? where is that? this building isn't even labelled! how was I supposed to know that when it doesn't say it anywhere? can I eat yet? oh, that's in my other bag. why doesn't this dress have pockets?"

etc.

But mostly I'm really enjoying myself. Really. Honest.

Sister Teusch