Well, we are now into our FOURTH and final week at the MTC. We had a different P day because we went to Temple Square today, and only ended up having half of a pday, which will make Papa happy! I feel like I have way more things to tell you than ever before because of how intense and wonderful this week has been, so I will write as much as I can and then send a letter FULL of information home too! I want to warn you that this keyboard is messed up, maybe because we are in the Spanish classroom building, so I am sorry if there are strange marks here!!
I made a list of things that I have to tell you. Priorities. First of all, I have seen Elder Aiono a bunch! He seems like he is doing really great, and he said to say thank you for the cupcakes! The next thing is that I wanted to ask if you would talk to Sister Zitar (sp) about if she would send me some of the details of her lessons with the missionaries. Anything she would like to tell me, anything that she struggled with understanding or that she really loved. I love hearing about real situations because it is kind of hard to imagine real situations being at the MTC haha. I also wanted to tell you about one of my favorite parts at the MTC. Every Tuesday night devotional we sing Called to Serve, which is AMAZING in a room of about 2000 missionaries. Stripling warriors anyone? However, on rare, and special occassions, we get to sing the Army of Helaman song. The best part about it is that instead of singing the words ¨we will be the Lord´s missionaries to bring the world His truth´´, we sing ¨we are NOW the Lord´s missionaries.¨ It is a powerful experience and I love it every time! I have also really loved studying lately in 1 Nephi 8. One thing that stuck out to me was that in vs. 33 it says that the numbers of the people mocking them were ¨great¨ which seems daunting, but in vs. 21, its says that we are NUMBERLESS.  Makes me feel like I can go on in my work!
OK, so a rundown of all the things that have happened. Last Friday we had in field orientation, which was amazing because it really got me excited to leave the MTC and arrive in Nebraska!! We learned so much, but we also had so much fun, which is something that I am seeing as a theme of my mission. We work SO hard and study as diligently as possible, but we definitely have fun while we are doing it. On Sunday we had our normal meetings, but then we got to attend the Departure Devotional with our elders. Over 500 misisonaries left just last week! It was amazing, and once again, it got us very excited to be out in the field, so it was really hard when we had to remember that we still were here for another week. I really do love the MTC, and will be sad to leave, but when you realize that there are REAL people waiting for you, you just want to go. Our elders left us on Tuesday night after some sadness, and we joined our new ¨district¨ of 30 sisters for the next week.
This is the biggest group of Visitor Center sisters that any of our teachers have ever seen. 22 are going to Temple Square, 4 to Mormon Battalion, 2 to DC, and Sister Whitt and I to WQ. This group is INCREDIBLE. We have Sisters from Flordia to California in the US, and from Honduras, Mexico, Brazil, the Philippines, Kazikstan (sp), India, the Dominican Republic, Japan, and many more places that I can not make my brain remember right now. Long day! It is so great to see all of these sisters come from all over the world to serve! Last night, I felt so incredibly lucky to be serving in a VC, because we learned about the online and technology based teaching we will get to do. We teach people who have found the gospel or have any questions about the church through Mormon.org. I LOVE this website. Because of it, online proselyting has just passed Salt Lake as the number 1 baptizing mission in the church! So, until we make Nebraska the number 1, I will have to use chat and phone calls to teach people all over the world. And yes, I mean all over the world, because through chat, the church has now officially been introduced to people and taught in EVERY single country in the entire world. It is amazing. I got to chat yesterday for the first time with a woman named Theresa who decided to get on mormon.org during her lunch break because she had seen the debate and was interested in Romney´s religion. I am so grateful that will be a tool for us in the next month particularly. So chat is exciting. I love it so much! On Wednesday we took a tour of Temple Square, and today, I SERVED THERE! When we got there, the APs said that no matter what our mission call said, today we are called to serve at Temple Square, and it was so much fun. It was really busy with conference being tomorrow, so I got to talk to tons of people! It was wonderful, and again, made me SO excited to go to Nebraska. I only have one more day of classes here at the MTC because class is canceled all day so we can watch conference tomorrow. I cant wait to hear what President Monson and the other wonderful speakers have to say. I feel like I need it so much more than any other time in my life!
So, I told you about our Romanian sister. She got a new sister for a roommate, also going to Romania this week! Sora Rivera (the new one) is from England, and is so nice! So, when she got here, we found out that her district was just going to be her and one elder. Now, this is really strange because sisters and elders are NEVER supposed to be alone together, and it would just happen in that situation, all the time. The night she got here, we were talking about how odd the whole situation was, and just joking, said watch, on top of it all, he won´t even speak English (he is from Italy). Well, sure enough, he showed up to the MTC in the middle of the night, and when we met him, he doesn´t speak a stitch of English!!!!!! We laughed so hard for about an hour. Both of them have really great attitudes, and Sora Rivera said it will just make them want to learn Romanian faster so they can communicate with each other. It is all so strange and funny.
Daddy, it sounds like your Grand Canyon hike was AWESOME! I did not love hearing about how hard it was at the end though! Haha. Hope Powell is fun, and I will talk to you when you´re going to Rocky Point! Mom. I am going to the airport at like 6 in the morning, so we should get there by 715 ish. I would imagine I will call you between 8 and 830 my time? Maybe later since my flight is not until 1015. I bought my calling card! It was really exciting! I got my packages, THANK YOU SO MUCH! I am really grateful. Grandma and Papa, thank you so much for my package! I am so grateful!!!!!!! I hope Kelsey´s wedding was wonderful! I am sure it was. Tell her congratulations for me. Thank you for the work outs, we got them just before they canceled our gym for the rest of our time at the MTC. Sad. I got Susan´s announcement today! It looks great and I am so excited for her and Brian! The BYU game is going on right now. GO COUGS.
I have about a million more things to tell you, so I will write them home in my letter. I love you to the moon and back, and I promise I´m ¨having a good time¨ :) I can´t believe that I leave on TUESDAY MORNING. Send all letters from here on out, unless they are Dear Elders (which I LOVE) to Nebraska, my new home!!!!!!! I will talk to you so soon!!
LOVE YOU SO MUCH,
Sister Farnsworth