First week in the MTC!

5/30/14 Hello everyone!
My District President is awesome. He let us send an email today as long as we studied extra hard. Which I am! The MTC is great. And I love it. It is absolutely crazy busy, but so spiritual. Everyone is nice and loving. My companion is Hermana Erickson and she’s awesome. I love her to pieces! She’s super pretty & funny & nice & such a loving person. You can tell she has a very strong testimony. She is very much like I am-tall, dark curly hair, walks quickly, talks to people easily. People say we look alike.
There are 4 sisters in my district. The other companionship has Hermanas Doughty and Nielson. All four of us share a room. We lost our only elder because his companion didn’t show up.
My Spanish is coming along, somewhat.  All the things I knew in high school are coming back so I can understand a lot. However, I can’t speak Spanish at all. But, we are working on it! We teach our first pretend investigator today. It is both scary and exciting.

6/1/14 Bless you for the blister Band-aids. I have gotten tons of blisters and mis hermanas (my sisters) have gotten tons too. I was made the Sister District Leader (SDL). One of the requirements is to check the mail twice a day. I feel like this is very distracting because every time I go, all of us stop thinking about the work and start thinking about getting letters. Then, if you don’t get one, you are sad. One of the sisters is from Boston and she is still waiting for a letter. We taught our investigator for the second time and we teach him again on Monday. I’ve learned so much here in the CCM (MTC). The food is good. By the time meals come around, we are starving. The beds are awful, but we sleep well because we are tired.

6/2/14 My mission is great. I love my companions, all of my teachers and my investigator (who will become our teacher on Thursday.) Tomorrow we are taking the train up to the Mexican Consulate. We will be studying the whole way there. We are doing splits, which should be interesting. Pray for all of our memories to improve so we can remember all this Spanish. La Iglesias es verdadera.
P.S. I had a funny moment today because I thought pescado (fish) and pecado (sin) were the same thing.

6/3/14 I’ve had a few adventures here. I am in the top bunk and the ceiling is super low! So, making my bed (or getting in and out of it) is an adventure.
My P-day is on Wednesday.

6/4/14 It’s P-day! Yay! I was the first one up and ready. The homesickness is finally settling in. Thank you for the rolls. It was like holding a piece of my childhood in my hand. It brought me comfort, but also made me cry.
Here is my schedule: Arise, get ready
6:15-7:30 am Service assignment
7:30-8:00 am Preparation time
8:00-8:25 am Breakfast
8:25-11:25 am Personal study, companion study, language study (1 hour each)
11:35-12:25 pm Gym time
12:25-12:55 pm Preparation time
12:55-1:40 pm Lunch
1:40-5:20 pm Class time with Maestro Angel (our teacher)
5:20-6:05 pm Dinner
6:05-9:30 pm Class time with Maestra Hapairi (our teacher)
9:30-10:15 pm Personal time/Companionship prayer
10:15-10:30pm Quiet time/Personal devotional, go to bed
Crazy schedule, huh? I have advice for anyone going on a mission: Have a fast, short and efficient morning routine. Also, it helps to get up the second the alarm goes off. Everyone here speaks Spanish, including the cooks, the cleaners, everyone. Gotta love the total immersion of the west campus. We teach our “investigators” in Spanish, which is … interesting, because we don’t know anything so our lessons are in ”Caveman Speech” (as one of our teachers calls it.)
It’s Fast Sunday. The elders took up all the time for testimonies so I didn’t get to bear mine.
This week I got to go to the Mexican Embassy in Salt Lake City and home was so close, I was dying.

Elder Gregory A. Schwitzer and his wife came and spoke to us. If you can find it online, go watch it. It was so cool! I have been studying el Libro de Mormon en Espanol (the Book of Mormon in Spanish) every day. The names in the Book of Mormon are pronounced so differently in Spanish. Hasta luego. Paz este con nosotros. Love, Hermana Talbot