Week 5?

I can't even remember if it's week 5 or not, but I think it is. Time has really flown by here. I get my reassignment next week! Ah! It's like getting a mission call all over again! Where is Sister Peart going to go? Who knows?

 

Also, I've realized that these blog emails I type make no sense. I think I just type whatever comes into my mind, and usually it's utter nonsense. The sleep deprivation is getting to me. This morning a bunch of sisters in our residence were getting ready (quite loudly) in the bathroom at 5 in the morning. I was filled with a very missinary inappropriate bloodthristy rage. This happens almost every day. I'm tired. :) On the plus side, we all look like we're suffering from severe narcolepsy. (Sorry, I can't spell that word. Although, since I've been learning portuguese, I can't spell anything in English) We've all developed the remarkably ability to fall asleep in the middle of anything. Every morning during personal scripture study I wake up sitting up in my desk drooling down onto my scriputres. The other day I was sitting next to Sister Baldwin during TALL time and she literally fell asleep in the middle of recording a sentence. The temple is hopeless. It's gotten to the point that I only wake Sister Keenan up if she starts snoring. :) A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in between her and Sister Thornton in the temple and it looked like they were both having epileptic fits. I bit through my lip trying not to bust up laughing. Every time I wake them up they're like "Thanks!" and promptly fall right back asleep. Hilarious.

 

Let's see. I sent some pictures to my mom, and I'm assuming she'll put them on the blog so let's get some discriptions of them:

1. They sell T-shirts in the bookstore for every country. Sister Keenan and I have the Brasil shirts, and the other sisters have the Mozambique shirts.

 

 

2. One day I looked up during class and realized that we were a rainbow! We did not plan it (except for Sister Keenan. Originally she was wearing white and was the cloud, but after lunch she changed into red). Pretty sweet. The order is: Sister Keenan, Sister Thornton, Sister Baldwin, Sister Merkely, and Me. :)

 

3. My p-day outfit has devolved into a horrid tourist monstrocity. Mission t-shirt, bright red jogging pants that I have not washed once, and my sister missionary shoes. It's lovely.

 

 

4. Sister Keenan and I in our mission t-shirts.

 

5. The one decent picture that we took. At least I think I included that one. If I didn't, rest assured that one does exist. :D

 

 

Let's seeeee, what elseeeee.  OH! The Church is having some big Worldwide Traning Meeting shindig on the 23rd. The prophet and apostles and all those important people are going to be there, including MYSELF! They're broadcasting it all over the world I believe and I will be there. In the choir. You could see me. They put together a choir of missionaries and members (I think the topic is member missionary work) and they're going to record it and sync it with video clips and other warm and fuzzy things and they're going to put it on the church website and I will forever be able to brag to my posterity that I'm in that video. That is all. I'm only a little bit a lot excited. :)

 

ALSO! I could remember if Merlissah reported this week or next and so I was keeping my eye out for her and when I finally gave up, GUESS WHO WALKED INTO THE CAFETERIA RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY FACE! No, not Merlissah. BABY DEARDON! Elder Daniel Deardon walked right in the door. I had forgotten when he reported! Also, he confirmed my suspicion that Merlissah does not, in fact, report until next week. Good to know.

 

ALSO AGAIN! My companion auditioned to do a musical number in one of the deviontals and she MADE IT! :D It was so scary! All I had to do was sit in the room, and I was terrified. Sister Nally has perfect pitch and is really picky and intimidating, but she loved her! There's an acapella part in the song and Sister Nally said she never allows people to do acapella because she's afraid they'll screw it up, but she said she would let Sister Keenan do it! :D It was so great.

 

Hmmm. Also, I just ran into Sarah Chamberlain's brother just now. Weird. :)

Also congrats to Jake and Megan. :) :)

I'm certain that I'm forgetting something.......

 

But anywho. I'll remember next time, maybe.

 

Bye everybody!

 

P.S. Merlissah, you must see me before I depart. Or I will be quite put out.

Week 4

I can't believe it's week 4!  Ah!  Too weird!  Thanks for everybody who writes me letters and stuff, they're the best part of the day. :)  Also, big thanks to Sister Olsen for the package!  That was awesome!  You are the best. :)

 

So I had a request that I walk y'all through a day at the MTC.  I have pretty much the same schedule on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday and it is this:

 

6:00 Wake up and shower.

 

6:30 The time I'm actually supposed to wake up, but I have no desire to wait in a mile-long line for a shower.

 

7:15 Breakfast

 

7:45 Personal Study. Usually I read the Book of Mormon or some conference talks. It's often hard to stay awake, and I've managed to fall asleep while reading. Eyes open and everything. I feel like I'm falling and spaz out. Lovely time.

 

9:00 Class.  Usually Irma Pike teaches in the morning and she is the cutest little ray of sunshine. She is SO nice and she's just adorable. She usually teaches us about how to teach investigators and how to find answers to their (and our) questions. She tries to help us understand the doctrine more deeply so we can teach it effectively. Sometimes she teaches us a little bit of Portuguese too and makes us do activities like practicing starting conversations with people in Portuguese. We also have our mock appointments with our investigators during class. With Irma Pike they're usually only 15-20 minutes but they're great. She acts like an investigator she had on her mission, and she's a really good actress. She doesn't let you get away with crap.... For Sister Keenan and I, she's a 50 year old Catholic woman named Rosali. I love her.

 

12:00 Lunch.  Usually it's some form of salad (salad, wrap, etc) and some form of potato (curly fries, normal fries, steak fries, tater tots, etc) with water and chocolate chip cookies. The cafeteria is huge and has tons of food, but those are the things that I've found give you the least crippling amounts of gas. :)

 

12:45 TALL  Technology Assisted Language Learning.  When I manage to stay awake it's pretty cool. It is a computer program that helps you learn useful words and phrases and grammar lessons.  Since they expect us to pretty much teach ourselves the language, it's pretty helpful.  You can listen to natives say the words over and over and over and record yourself saying them over and over and over until they sound the same.

 

1:45 Class.  Usually Irmao Owens teaches in the afternoon.  It pretty much is the same as morning class, except we get 30 minutes to teach him as investigator.  For us he is Alex. Alex is loads better than Rafael, but when we started teaching him he didn't even believe in God.  The teachers don't cut you any slack and they act just like a really investigator would, so we've been working hard to get him to believe in God and Christ.  He agreed to be baptized in four weeks though, so we're trying to work with him and prepare him for that.

 

5:00 Dinner. Same as lunch. Except your not as hungry because literally all you've done since lunch is sit.  But it's the last time you get to eat until breakfast, so you usually stuff yourself and get really bad indigestion anyway.

 

5:45 Go to the classroom and pretend to study until Gym time.

 

6:10 GYM TIME!  I HATE WORKING OUT AND EVEN I LOVE GYM TIME!  WE GET TO NOT SIT! :DDD

 

7:40 Back in class.  Studying some more.  Learning some things.

 

9:00 Planning. With your companion write out your schedule for the next day.  Decide what you want to study during personal, companionship, and language study. Boring stuff.

 

9:25 MAIL TIME!  Mob the district leader for the mail and then run back to the residence halls. Best part of the day.

 

9:30 Get ready for bed.

 

10:00 Companionship study

 

10:15 Personal de-stress-and-look-back-over-the-day time.

 

10:30 Lights out.

 

Tuesdays are a little different because we don't have class until after lunch.  Before lunch we do service time and at night we have a devotional.

 

Sundays we have devotionals and meetings and stuff all day.  We have to write a talk in Portuguese every week because the conductor randomly selects a couple people to come up and speak. Boo.

 

Fridays are P-days.  We do our laundry, go to the temple, clean our room and write letters.  P-day ends at dinner and we have TRC then.  TRC you randomly get assigned a volunteer that you have to teach.  It's scary, because you have to talk to real people, but fun.

 

Sadly, I'm out of time.  But now you know.  That's my life.  :)

 

Tchau!

 

--Sister Peart

Week 3

I can't believe that it's already week three!  The first few days went by so slowly and now I'm almost halfway done!  It's crazy!  So I have a funny story to tell:

 

On Tuesday we have service hours, so we can wear P-day clothes until we go to lunch, as long as we get a sack breakfast instead of going in the cafeteria.  So all the sisters in my district, and me, did that.  We were sitting in our bedroom, eating our breakfasts when I looked down.  I was sitting cross-legged (for the first time in FOREVER since I rarely wear jeans) and I noticed a hole in the crotch of my jeans.  Oops.  So I automatically pointed it out to my companion, of course.  We laughed and I was like "I TOLD you I was getting fatter!  It's just harder to notice because I'm always in a skirt."  Then I stood up to throw away my trash and felt a hole in the butt of my jeans.  I ran to the mirror and it was a sizeable hole.  I was like "Sister Keenan!  Worst companion ever!  Why did you let me walk all over the MTC like this?!"  Apparently it wasn't there before, so it must have happened when I was sitting.  I went to sit down and they ripped again!  Within the 30 minutes we were in our room for breakfast, my pants ripped four times.  Terrible.  I only brought two pairs of jeans, and they're the same pair of pants.  One is just a little darker blue.  So now I'm super paranoid whenever I wear my Pday clothes because I'm afraid that my apparently massive self is going to bust through my pants at any moment.  The End.

 

That was probably a terribly told story, but I haven't gotten a decent amount of sleep since I got here, so I don't care too much. :)  Let's see, what else......the little timer in the corner of my computer screen freaks me out and it's hard for me to sit and think about what to right next.  It's like a bomb countdown.

 

I had a dream last night that I got on Facebook at the MTC (out of habit, not from any desire to be disobedient) and they kicked me out of the MTC and I had to go home.  It was scary.  I accidentally did it, then hurried and exited out of it, but in the dream they went through your browser history after you were done with the computers.  I think it was because yesterday this Elder was talking about how his dad was an assistent to a mission president, and one time he had to bring all these elders in.  Apparently, they had all gone to a baseball game and happened to get on the camera, so the mission president wrote down all their names and had them come in.  When the elder's dad got them he was like "sorry, but be honest".  Apparently they all lied about it.  So the mission president showed them the video, then sent them all home.  I guess that's what my subconscious mind was thinking about.

My companion and I are sick, so we get a magical pass.  It means you can go down to the BYU health center whenever you like and get drugs.  Pretty much a get out of jail free card, so it's pretty cool.  This Elder in my district got a nap pass though, so that's more cool.  Not fair, because I have the same thing he has, since he GAVE it to me.  Rude.

 

Somebody needs to smack Lyn and Emily upside the head and get them to write me.  Even just a Dear Elder.  I don't have their addresses until they do.  OH!  That reminds me.  If you're writing me letters, PLEASE don't translate the whole thing in Google Translate.  Parts are fine.  For example, my mom sends me a thought of the day that she translated in Google Translate.  Those are fun.  They're like little puzzles, and make me feel better about my portuguese.  But when you translate your whole letter, I have no idea what's going on for 3 reasons:

1:  I don't speak Portuguese well.

2: Google doesn't speak Portuguese well.  Word patterns and phrases that mean something in English have zero meaning in Portuguese.

3: Dear Elder is not very cultural and hates anything besides English.  If there is a letter that has an accent, or is a non-english character, or is anything remotely foreign, it omits the entire letter and just puts a question mark.

 

Not to rain on the Portuguese parade, but it's frustrating to not be able to read entire letters. I have to slave over them to get only half of what their saying, and then I have to take them to my teacher and have her translate them (hoping there's nothing strange) so I can get the rest of the message. :)  However, if this is too much of a demand, and you will not write me unless you can use Google Translate, then proceed.  It's better to get letters I can't read than to get no letters at all. :)

 

My mom also sent me a list of all the people who wished me Happy Birthday on FB, so thanks guys!  I'm glad to hear you haven't forgotten all about me already!

Mom, Allison, Sarah, Mike, Jared, Rachel, and Chrispy:  I promise I'm writing you back!

 

Love,

Sister Peart

 

P.S. Sorry it took so long for people to get my last letters.  Memorial Day was the destroyer of many dreams.  No mail at all for like four days.  We almost died.  Anway.

 

P.P.S.  If you want to hear about something specific in these emails, you should email me questions or subject prompts.  Because it's really hard for me to think of what to write, so it just gets rambly.

 

P.P.P.S. I got to eat lunch with a general authority the other day, so y'all be jealous.  He and his friend came and sat by me and my companion during lunch and talked to us for the whole lunch hour.  He lived in Monticello when he was at BYU.  Estranho.  His name is Elder Timothy J. Dyches of the second quorum of the seventy.  I had to buy an Ensign and look him up by his picture because I forgot his name...

 

P.P.P.P.S. I saw Claire Thomas.  She reported on Wednesday.  Precious roommate reunion.  :)

Second Week

I can't believe that I've only been in the MTC for a week!  It's really a time warp in here!  Thank you to everyone who sent me letters!  My district is under the impression that I'm super popular because of all the DearElderes I get, so let's keep that up! :P

 

I realized last night that being in the MTC is kind of what I'd imagine prison to be like.  Don't get me wrong, it's wonderful here.  And I'm sure I feel the spirit a lot more in here than I would in actual prison, but still.  Our living quarters remind me of jail.  Unsightly iron bunk beds with one pillow and one nasty, scraggley, ratty, small, thin, cold, hairy blanket.  That they don't wash ever.  They said they only wash it after we leave, but they would wash it if it was covered in something gross.  Apparently lots of other people's hair doesn't count as "gross".

 

Anyway, so today is my 21st birthday!  I'm pretty excited that it landed on a P-day.  Thank you family for the package, and thank you Allison for the cupcakes!  That was the best surprise ever!  I also got to do my laundry today!  It's sad what becomes exciting when all you do is sit and eat all day.

 

So Sister Keenan and I got our investigator Rafael to commit to baptism the other day.  Turns out that the guy who plays Rafael is now our second teacher.  That was embarrassing.  It was just like wonderful, now that you are completely and intimately aware of how much I suck at Portuguese, you get to teach me.  Also, he is incredibly attractive, so that's a little distracting. :P  He's a marketing major at BYU, so you should marry him Sarah!

 

I'm not sure what else to say!  I see lot's of people here, which is nice.  I see Elder Parker every minute of my life since the Spanish and Portuguese missionaries follow the same basic schedule.  I saw Sister Giblette once and Sister Catherine A. once.  I also saw Grant Russell, but he didn't see me.  Tabor works in the cafeteria a lot, so I always see him too!  And I ran into Erin the other day and she showed me her engagement ring!  It was delightful. :)

 

I never wanted to be one of those obnoxious missionaries who flaunts their foreign language by slipping it into casual conversation all the time, but now I see how much of a legitimate struggle it is!  I am in Portuguese mindset all day long and I find myself struggling to switch back to English.  My journal is a sad mixture of the two languages, and I find myself translating every thought into Portuguese.  The other day I was in the shower, formulating the letter I was going to write her on P-day, and I translated the entire thing into Portuguese before I realized that it was completely unnecessary.  Annoying.

 

So a funny story:  As background information, keep in mind that the Portuguese word for "also" is "tambem", while the Portuguese word for "yesterday" is "ontem".

 

So Sister Keenan and I were in a lesson teaching Rafael about the Book of Mormon.  Sister Keenan was saying that the Bible is true, and that the Book of Mormon is true also.  Guess what came out?  Yep.  "The Bible is true, and the Book of Mormon is true yesterday."   Since our lesson was on the Restoration of the church, saying that the Book of Mormon was true yesterday was kind of a problem.  It's kind of been an inside joke since then.  Hopefully that wasn't one of those stories that is only funny to missionaries in the MTC...it was pretty funny at the time.

 

Anywho, I need to go and do things, but I guess I'll end with my testimony in Portuguese.  It'll be short because typing in Portuguese is harder than speaking it, but my teacher wants us to practice and stuff...

 

Eu sei que o Livro de Mormon e verdadeiro.  Eu sei que Joseph Smith e um profeta de Deus.  Eu sei que Deus e nosso Pai Celestial e que Jesus Cristo e nosso Salvador.  Digo estas coisas em nome de Jesus Cristo, amem.

 

P.S.  Mom, I'm writing you a letter, I promise.  I just knew it was going to probably be a long one, so I should do the emails first.

 

P.P.S. EVERYBODY WRITE ME STUFF!!!!

First Family Letter

Here is a portion of Jennifer's Sister Peart's first letter:

I'm doing well and I really like it here. I know this is where I'm supposed to be. I've never been this busy, or tired, in my life but it's Muito bom! I'm shocked by how much of the language I already know.

I managed to end up in the branch that is: 1) obsessed with extra rules. They have a study schedule for our free get-ready-for-bed hour 2) obsessed with hugs. Obsessed! During my interview the branch presidency member told me I would learn to enjoy hugs. Maybe.

Sister Peart (First names are absolutely forbidden)

Hey!

 

I know I have only been here a few days, but we got a few minutes to email today.  The person who was on this computer before me seems to have changed all the punctuation to foreign stuff, so I probably wont be using much punctuation.  Now that I have an opportunity to write, I really dont know what to say.  I made it alive!  My first day was super overwhelming, but we seem to be settling into some sort of routine, so things are getting less stressful, although I am always tired. 

 

My companion (Sister Keenan) and I had our first discussion with an investigator today, even though it was only our second morning here.  We had to do it 100% in Portuguese, so it was a little rough.  Im really glad that it was just an actor, otherwise we totally would have lost that potential convert.  It was really frustrating because we knew what we wanted to say, but we were having trouble translating it all.  Shockingly, we have not become completely fluent in less than 48 hours.  Still, it was cool how much we WERE able to say.  We probably sounded like we were two years old, but at least there was some sort of conversation flow.  He asked us how long we had been speaking the language (in Portuguese of course, nobody ever speaks in English) and we didnt even know how to say two.  We just held up two fingers and he was like oohhh, dois.  And we were like sim, sim!  And then he was like dois o que... (two what).  And we were like OH, two days!  I think he understood at that point why we sounded like idiots. :)  Anyways, it was quite the learning experience.

 

Ive probably gained at least 5 pounds in the past two days.  You wouldnt think that sitting all day would make you so hungry, but it really does.  I stuff my face every meal and still manage to be hungry by the next one.

 

Im sorry, but I dont know any addresses other than my house and my old apartment, so if anybody wants me to write them, they need to write me first so I can get their address.  Sorry that this email is pretty short and not very full of details, but I only have a couple minutes, and this keyboard is sticky...

 

Sister Peart

She's off! Sister Peart is on her way to the Provo MTC. 

Jennifer and her stake president

Jennifer with her Bishop

Jennifer with her Mom and Dad

Checking in at the airport

Goodbye Sister Peart!