February 13, 2012

February 13, 2012

Hola Familia!

I'm so glad I get to email you today!! I feel like its been so long. I miss you guys! Dad thank you SO much for that talk last week, it seriously helped me so much! and Brad... I can't even begin to express to you how much your last email helped me last week. I seriously changed how I look at things on my mission. Thank you from the bottom of my heart! You're the best!! I have so many amazing family members!! Thank you so much for all of the support.

My first week was such a huge adjustment, but this week has been SO much better! I finally know what I'm doing and feel like I'm actually a missionary now! :) We have this thing called the 12 week program that helps SO much. We use it for our companion study. Its so great. It's like a mini MTC experience everyday. Super fun! and I get to see my friends from the MTC a lot which is nice. Also, I saw 4 people I know this week. Ha! One of my EFY girls and Kevin Curry... he used to be in our Granite Bay ward. We took a picture and he told me he would send it to Jeff-- so be on the lookout! :) It was so fun to see so many familiar faces. I'm sure it'll just keep happening. Ha! Then my friend Seth Bott is an organist, and he was practicing yesterday and Sis Wilson and I just happened to come in right when he was playing, and he played Come, Come Ye Saints for me. It was the COOLEST rendition of it I have ever heard! He's trying out to be a guest organist with all of the organists that play for the Mo-tab. Cool huh?! I'll see him around a lot more this week.

It is so cool to meet Sisters that are literally all over the world! I am now friends with a sister named Sister Anwar, from Pakistan, and Sister Wu, from Mongolia, Sister Biras from Kiripati, sisters from Brazil, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tahiti and other islands I've never even heard of before ha.... the list goes on. I love my mission!

So now to missionary work... The work is good! It's starting to come better. Sis Wilson was able to get all of her old referrals/potentials/investigators back, so we have people to teach now which is SO much fun! We are teaching a lady named Esther from Liberia, and Faustina from Ghana. Sweet, right?! Oh family... I have the best mission ever. We literally talk to people from all over the world on the phone. Calling them was initially scary, but I think I'm getting a lot better at it. It's very different talking to real people than fake investigators in the MTC... ha. You definitely get rejected a lot. But the good moments are so amazing that it doesn't even matter. We prayed with Faustina on the phone and it was the COOLEST thing ever. We actually ask them to kneel down and everything... even teach them how to properly pray to their Heavenly Father. So awesome!

So basically, Heavenly Father thinks I can handle all of the anti's that come to t-square... Ha. We gave a tour last week with 2 baptists who just wanted to prove to me that the Gospel isn't true. What a joke. What's funny is that when they try, it just strengthens my testimony of it more, because I know the TRUTH. This guy was so ridiculous. He tried to tell me that we believe in False prophets because Jesus was the last prophet on the earth, and that the Bible warns us of these false prophets. He tried to say a lot of other things too. And the whole time I was thinking, "Yes, but God is unchanging. That's why there's a prophet on the earth, because Heavenly Father still works the same as he did when Adam was on the earth." Of course, if I tried to say this, I'm sure he would try to think of something to say to prove me wrong... Sis Wilson didn't really talk when these people tried to argue with me... She said she's glad to have a companion like me that can handle talking to those people, haha! But what's cool is that during this whole tour, I was totally calm, cool and collect. I knew the reason why I was this way was because we as missionaries are set apart to be representatives of Jesus Christ. We've been given the authority to preach His gospel. We know the truth. I have loved being able to get closer to the Spirit. I've never felt it more in my life than I do now. The spirit kept telling me the whole time they were arguing that if I tried to argue back, it would do no good. It would not help anything. So I just told him that I know that these things are true, that I could tell that they were great people and they desired to do right, and that I respected them. (even though I really didn't.. :) ha) It was a really cool experience actually. I KNOW those people left seeing us "Mormons" in a better light. I know they will always remember the way Sister Wilson and I reacted to their accusations of our church, namely the Book of Mormon.  It is just like Elder Holland says in his talk Safety for the Soul, "For 179 years this book has been examined and attacked, denied and deconstructed, targeted and torn apart like perhaps no other book in modern religious history—perhaps like no other book in any religious history. And still it stands. Failed theories about its origins have been born and parroted and have died—from Ethan Smith to Solomon Spaulding to deranged paranoid to cunning genius. None of these frankly pathetic answers for this book has ever withstood examination because there is no other answer than the one Joseph gave as its young unlearned translator. "

I know now more than EVER that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. There is no other answer. There is no other explanation. No one with so little education could make up something like it. The Book of Mormon IS another testament of Jesus Christ. We gave a tour to an agnostic and he told me that he doesn't like that every church claims to be the one true church (I had said that earlier in the tour.), and I just wanted to shake him and say, "But this IS the only true church!! How can you not see that?!" Don't worry, I refrained from doing that. :) But it made me so sad to think that some people really believe God just left us here. So so sad.

I had an inbound call (someone calling from Mormon.org) and this old southern Baptist named Hector (yes, another Baptist.) called in to ask me some questions. Holy cow. That was an intense phone call. But it was cool to be able to hear someone love the Book of Mormon. The only problem was that this man couldn't make the connection between the Book of Mormon being true and Joseph Smith being a true prophet. It's so hard when I think I explain something so clearly, and yet it doesn't get across. Just need to work harder! :)

Well family, I love you all.   Brad, thank you again for your email last week. Email me your home address so I can send you a letter. :)

  

K that's all. :) Love you guys sooo much! Your prayers seriously help so much, I can feel it!

Love always,

Sister Savage

Letter #5

February 6, 2012

Hi Fam!!

Well, I made it! We got here on Wednesday morning around 8:30. It's been such a crazy week ... I can't even begin to tell you!! And Monday's are my new p-day.

First, my trainer was flying in from out-bound and didn't get in until 10 Wednesday night... so we didn't plan anything, couldn't hardly even talk or get to know one another. And then the next day we only spent a few hours together because she was having lunch with the President and his wife, so I bounced around from companionship to companionship. Needless to say, my first few days here were by far the hardest of any. It was a lot of adjusting, a lot of learning. I'm so thankful for the MTC! Wish I could've stayed there more.. Even though I had a lot of time to prepare there, this is the real deal! It is a completely different ballgame! But, I am doing much, much better, and got my first "guest" referral (someone that's not a member of the church on Temple square) yesterday! All by myself!! It was so awesome! I shared a brief testimony to her about the church and our beliefs, and how much good the church does for others (we were in the Humanitarian section of the North VC.) Anyway, it was so cool. We've been able to get several new referrals from members, which is really common during the winter months. Not many people come around that aren't members. It's a LOT busier during the summer here.

My companion is Sister Wilson. She's from West Virginia, and then my roommates are Sister Lui from Italy (she has the cutest accent ever!!) and Sister Gehrig from Germany. My roommates are SO amazing! I love love love them! There are SO many different nationalities here, its soooo crazy! I've become friends with a sister from Kiripati. I had never even heard of Kiripati before. Haha! I think it's close to Tahiti. NUTS. But so much fun. I love meeting all these people from all over the world.

Despite the hardships and adjustments, there have been SO many different miracles. It's been so cool to see them all, despite how little they might be. I really do love being out here. But I have come to realize that the MTC is the Garden of Eden. Ha! It's been so neat to learn about all of the different stories and history behind the things at Temple Square. A lot of WAY cool stuff happens here.

And it's so nice to have change everyday!! Oh my goodness... If I had to walk around the square all day long, I would get so sick of it! ha! But, we are able to do this thing called motors, which is when we talk on the phone to referrals and chat online with people on mormon.org. So if you get on chat.... you could be talking to me! ;) ha. We always go by our first names, because Sister is a weird title. It helps people feel more comfortable talking to us too. Today I was on the phones for 3 hours talking to members to get more information about the people they referred. What we do then is we call the people, tell them about their friend that referred them and share with them the importance of the gospel to their friend/family and invite them to learn more by having the missionaries come over to their house. We also keep talking to them and teach them over the phone! Cool right?! We even pray with them and everything. Dawn, my contact from yesterday, is really open. We can't call her until she gets back to Wisconsin, but I'm hoping it'll work out... please pray for her! :) We also are teaching our first person, Esther, over the phone on Friday. Guess where she's from? Liberia. HA! So cool right?! This work is amazing! It's still weird to think I'm a missionary, but it sinks in more everyday. :) What's cool about this mission for me is that my feet rarely hurt! I sit down during the day in between times I am roaming the square. Heavenly Father is truly SO mindful of us.

We are literally constantly doing something here! It's so busy. My comp said she's busier there than she was on her outbound in Indiana!

On Friday we did this thing called "exploring" day, where I got to watch all the movies, look at all the exhibits, etc. It was so nice to be able to see everything and get a much better feel for the displays here and how I can use them for guests. I also gave my first tour on Saturday! It was scary, haha and I really didn't know much, but it was fun! I really enjoyed it. We really are missionaries here on the square. When we are giving tours, we give a brief history of what we're showing and then share our testimonies about it.

One cool thing that happened the other day was with a woman on the phone. I was just listening while Sister Platt was talking (she was my companion for half the day Thursday, from England) to a woman from Maryland. She was trying to find a church building to go to because she wanted to see what our church was like. Completely her own curiosity. We then found a local church building for her and gave her the number of the bishop of the ward, and she called him and decided to go to a baptism that Saturday!! Ha! And then she told us she was coming to Utah and wanted to meet with the missionaries for 5 or 6 days....!! Crazy right?! She's definitely one of those Golden investigators. It was so cool to witness that. Some people are literally just waiting for the invitation from us.

So a few things I found out: 1. We can only go to the temple once a transfer. 2. No one can take missionaries out to dinner...not even grandparents. Looks like you guys are going to have to pick me up :) 3. I can only give members of my family a tour if they just happen to be there and I'm available.. it can't be planned ahead. Grandma and Grandpa Orchard had said they wanted me to give them a tour during the summer or something, so they'll have to let me know when they are coming and I can give them my schedule and maybe we can work it out... we'll see. 4. If you ask sisters on the square where a certain sister is, they can't tell you for security reasons. So basically you just have to find them. :)

My apartment is so nice! It's literally a 5 minute walk to Temple Square. SO nice. And I have my washer and dryer in my apartment, lol! We only have one bathroom but we've worked it out between the other sisters when we get ready and stuff. :) It's so nice. We have an underground parking lot that turns into a gym in the morning... haha ... its kind of a funny sight. It's fun to see all the sisters I know when we exercise in the morning. :)

Hey mom, could you send me that recipe book that Grandma Orchard me? That would be so great. I need recipes for dinners. :)

Thank you all SO much for the emails. Tell Grandma Orchard I will try to write her back soon. Everyone is telling me that I just need to get through my first transfer, and I'll be good. Ha! I'm lucky because I'll be here for General Conference in the beginning of my mission. A lot of girls said it's the best thing ever!

Please keep praying for me. I pray for you guys always! Please pray for me to be able to have patience and love for others. I really appreciate it and can feel your prayers.

Love you ALL so much!!!

Sister Savage

Letter #4

Hiya fam!!

Well guess what? Because it's visitor center training this week, we got 2 p-days!! Two!! So great! Ha! I've been looking forward to emailing you for a long time! This week has seriously been AWESOME!

Okay, so Wednesday we started our training. We drove up to Salt Lake at around 8:00. The sisters there gave us a tour, and showed us how it's done! :) It was one of the sweetest experiences of my life. The moment I walked onto the temple grounds (the square) I felt this overwhelming feeling of being home. Just like I did my first time in the temple (and every time, really). It was SO cool! One of the sisters shortly after said, "You guys have been trained to always invite the spirit here, but you don't need to. It's always here." How cool huh??!! Being at the square this time around was completely different than any other time... and I realized for the first time that I'm actually a missionary!! Ha! It took me this long! I know now more than ever though that I am supposed to be here, and that Temple Square truly is where I have been called to serve. One thing that I learned that really changed my view on this mission is that I am NOT a tour guide... I am a missionary. All the sisters did the entire time we were on the tour was testify of truths and Christ. It really strengthened my testimony of my mission and helped me realize that it really is a mission. Everything about this mission is PERFECT for me!

So Wednesday night we were trained on online chat!!! It was so cool!! We'll literally have investigators online that are only our investigators!! Its seriously the coolest thing ever. Someone chats you from mormon.org or a site like it and us sisters on Temple Square (and other visitor's centers) get to teach them about the gospel. It's so awesome!! We also can send them something right from the chat site, like a Book of mormon, and we can actually send the missionaries to their homes! (with their permission, of course. ;)) but it is SO much fun to chat with people! Last night my comp and I chatted with a deaf girl, she said the missionaries came over and taught her and she loved it! She said "Everything happens for a reason" but she doesn't have text so she couldn't contact her missionaries... hopefully it'll all work out! we're sending her a Book of mormon to read and she's super interested :) How cool huh??!! I'm already doing the work and I haven't even left the MTC! And even when we give them to the missionaries in their area, we still get to chat with them and help them through the process of conversion. I LOVE this!!

Also, we have a new district, 23 of us are going to Temple Square, and 3 are going to either D.C. vc or Winter Quarter's in Nebraska. We have girls from Canada, Mexico, Fiji, Brazil, Japan, China, France and Spain!! It's THE coolest thing ever!! The sisters are incredible. I LOVE the foreign sisters!! I got to know most of them pretty well in the last couple of days and I can't even tell you how much I love them!! The foreign sisters have something special about them. I think it's because they sacrifice so much to be here that they truly know why they're here. I already have friends from all over the world and I haven't even gotten to temp square yet! ;)

Sister Maxfield and Andelin are our new teachers. Sis Andelin is fine, but Sis. Maxfield is incredible. and SO funny! She makes class so enjoyable. I'm so happy to have a good teacher again before I leave! We had the coolest day yesterday. She had us each teach each other a one minute lesson (which was SUPER stressful), and then stopped us half way through and said, "Isn't it hard to explain to investigators without bearing your testimony?" Everyone was silent... ha. She had us do it again, and WOW was it powerful. The spirit of the whole room changed. (Throughout this activity sis Maxfield would ask us questions like, "Does God hate gays?" or "Why do people get cancer?" super hard questions) i talkdd to Sis. Gros from France, I got the first questions and she got the next one, and we both just cried. It was SO powerful. It helped me realize that testifying + the spirit= POWER. It was incredible. What a great lesson to learn! It doesn't have to be testimony meeting for me to bear my testimony!!

Family, I love this gospel. It's SO true. It makes more sense to me now than it has ever before. This message applies to EVERYONE, and I hope I can be like Alma when he says, "Yea, and from that time even until now, I have labored without ceasing, that I might bring souls unto repentance; that I might bring them to taste of the exceeding joy of which I did taste; that they might also be born of God, and be filled with the Holy Ghost." (Alma 36:24)

I have a new favorite quote I wanted to share real quick. "You are called upon to declare the words of eternal life with vigor, humility and faith-- bringing out of darkness those that sit in darkness." Joseph Fielding Smith

I love you all!! I know why I'm here. The Lord has humbled me so much, but I know it's so I can be teachable. Even though having a companion can be a struggle sometimes, its SO worth it. :) Love you!!!!

Sister Savage

P.s. This Saturday I go to temp square and actually give a tour to people with a sister that's been on the square for a while... AH!

Letter #3

Hi family!!!

Wow, thank you all SO much for the emails!! I got tons this week, ha! It made me feel so good! I love hearing about how all of you are doing. Dad, I got both of your emails and mom's email. And everyone else’s. Except for Stephen. ;) Sounds like everyone is doing great. I miss you guys and pray for you often! :) I put your names in the prayer roll last week.

Speaking of the temple... I LOVE it!! It is the most amazing place on this earth. As soon as I walk in, the spirit hits me like a brick wall. its incredible! I'm hoping that I'll be able to go every week on my mission... that's my goal right now! We'll see if that happens though! :) I'm so glad that I am developing a testimony of the temple. One of the sisters in our district, Sis Nixon, really doesn't have much of a testimony... she finally figured out this week why she is here on a mission, and I think she's gotten better since then. We're all trying to help her by just being there for her and bearing our testimonies to her. Mostly just by being good examples.

Sis Brickley and I are doing great :) one of the sisters came to us complaining about her companion, and we both talked about it after and were SO grateful that we weren't that way! that we can talk to each other about things that bother us and work things out between us. She's really been a great companion. She's help me lighten up and have fun!

Yesterday was our last day of classes... :( SAD! I nearly cried several times. Brother Pack was a great teacher, but Brother Snyder is truly incredible. I can't even tell you how much he changed my life. I'm a different person because of that man. I owe him a lot! He has made me a better teacher in SO many ways. He taught me how to have PASSION in the gospel, to not be one of those robot-sisters that have no feeling (yes, I've met several here) but to be fun and happy when teaching about the gospel, because that's exactly what it is!! There's a reason why we call Heavenly Father's plan for us the plan of Happiness, because it truly brings that to us.

Brother Snyder had all the Elders in our district go around the room and say something nice about each sister, or something they admire, etc. It was so sweet... nearly every elder there said they appreciated the spirit that I brought into our district/class, and that they could tell that I try my best and that I'm here to work. It was seriously the nicest set of compliments I have ever received! I love my elders!! Brother Snyder also went around the room and said something good about all of us, and told me that I have a gift in teaching, which, according to my blessing I do, but I didn’t think I have it yet.... I always thought I needed to work on it. I think because I am working on it, I'm getting better. EFY helped me out a lot with that too. He also said (and this is where I got tears in my eyes) that he didn't worry about me, that he could tell I was on the direct path to the Celestial Kingdom. I have never in my entire life received a nicer compliment! He made me feel so good and really boosted my confidence. I love that man. I wish everyone could have such an amazing teacher.

I had a really humbling experience this week with teaching. My companion and I didn't realize that we were supposed to teach someone one day (a progressing investigator), so we just kind of walked in by the seat of our pants, didn't really prepare or anything. It was by far the worst lesson we've taught. We walked out and looked at each other and both actually started laughing because it was so bad... haha! but it taught me a super important lesson. (btw, loved what Stephen learned about promptings! thanks for sharing mom!) Not only do we need to have the spirit with us when we teach (or during anything for that matter), but we need to put the WORK into it. Without working out hardest and humbling ourselves, we won't be able to teach. The spirit can't always prompt us with no information to take from! But when we study and ponder and pray and try our hardest to come up with a good lesson plan, THEN the spirit will come, and be able to help us bear testimony/prompt us when we need to change the subject, etc. Such a great thing to learn.

I also had another experience with the last lesson we taught to Bro Snyder, who was "steve." He only gave us 10 min to prepare a 5 min lesson, and only gave us a few things to know about him. What my comp and I had prepared was completely different than what Steve needed... during the beginning of the lesson I had the thought that we should teach about Joseph Smith and the restoration instead of what we had prepared (which was that God was our loving Heavenly Father, that we can communicate to him through prayer, etc). I ignored that prompting because my comp continued talking about what we had prepared... but I realized that if I had acted on that prompting RIGHT AWAY, our lesson would've been SO much better, and would've fit Steve's needs a lot better... I learned the same thing Stevie learned with his ipod. It's often small and not very significant promptings that we ignore, but it can make all the difference! !

Well I'm running short on time.. but Bro Clayton Christensen (former seventy) came and spoke to us on Sunday. Mom, do you remember that email you had me read when we were at Disneyland, about missionary work? Well, Bro Christensen is the man in those stories!!! His dad was the one that was the inactive man's home teacher, and he was the one that assigned "homework" to that other investigator. You should read that story and forward it to the family. But it was SO cool to sit there during the talk about be able to take notes!! I loved that talk but I was sad I couldn't print it off and bring it before I left. Now I don't have to! ;)

Family, I love you guys SO much! Keep reading the scriptures! really study them. I can't even tell you how much it has helped me. I feel so much stronger since I've been here. It's definitely not easy... missionary work is hard! but it's so worth it. I'm so glad I'm here!! :)

Mom thank you SO much for the package!! you are so funny, ha. Thanks Brad for Chantel's address!! Good luck this week! Let me know how it goes! ;)

I love you all so much! Thanks for all the support and prayers. They really help.

Read 2 Nephi 31- it's my new favorite chapter in the BOM :)

LOVE YOU ALL!!!

Sister Savage :)

Letter #2

(Natalie & Sister Chord. Sister Chord was in Natalie's zone, and is going to Mesa, Arizona. She was in the same district as Debbie Pilcher, Justin Doyle's sister-in-law!)

Hey Family! How are you all doing?? Dad, I did get both of your emails, just so you know. :) Thanks so much for them!

Well, I've finished week 2 of the MTC! I can hardly believe it... the days go by slow but the weeks fly by! The MTC this week was unreal. My love for missionary has never, ever been this strong! I want to share with you the experiences I had. Hopefully I'll get through all of them! (we only get 30 min for email).

(Natalie & Sister Diejnste)

So, we've been teaching some "investigators" (none of them real, 2 of them are our teachers). We have progressively been getting better. But my companion and I really hit a stride this week. We had a lesson about Conversion though the Holy Ghost this week, all talking about how we need to use the Holy Ghost in our lessons... in fact, it's THE most important part of teaching! It was hard to remember that as the first week went by, because I was SO overwhelmed with all of the information that was being thrown at me (they refer to it as drinking from a firehose... no exaggeration there!) that I forgot I needed to listen for the spirit's whisperings as I was teaching. So after the lesson, we had to teach our investigator Robbie. He's only looking into religion because he wants to see if it'll make his family happier or not. But he's had a good life, not necessarily hard, until his parents' recent divorce which really shook him up. He's been hard to teach because we've needed to find out why he needs the gospel in his life. We FINALLY got somewhere in the previous lesson, explaining that this gospel is the ONLY way he can be with his family for eternity. That really made him interested, and he even accepted baptism!

So we get into the room Saturday night to teach him, and the first thing he says is that he has news for us... he talked to his dad on the phone about how he was going to be baptized into the church, etc and his dad told him that if he did, he would disown him. Robbie said, "Why would something good cause such a negative thing to happen to me? If I do this, it seems like I'll lose everything. I just can't be baptized." Sis Brickley and I were seriously shocked. We had NO idea what to do. And then sis brickley, having no other family members that are active in the church right now, told him a little about it, but how the gospel changes her and makes her a better person, why she needs it, and that she knows her family will eventually come to know the truth. Then there was a pause. I sat there for what seemed like hours thinking about what I could say that would change his mind. but then I was completely filled with love for Robbie, so much so that I could hardly bear the thought of him not coming to Christ. I've never felt like that for another person before. And then I was completely overwhelmed with the feeling that I needed to bear my testimony of the Savior. So I started talking about him and what he did for us, and how the Savior himself, the one who died so we sinners might live, lost EVERYTHING. I told him that he might lose a lot of friends, maybe even family members, but I knew that this is what the Lord wanted for him, because he wants him back SO badly that he would do all that, just for him! i honestly don't remember all that I said. I literally felt like the spirit was speaking the words, not me. It was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I don't remember another time where I fellt like the spirit was completely taking over, and I was just the mouthpiece. My comp and I were crying our eyes out by the end of it, lol. It was truly amazing.

Another experience we had was with our "less active," Sue. She was baptized in to the church, but because of her hard life she fell away. She talked about how as a teenager she had to work to help provide for her family. I was able to share how I startedd to teach piano when I was 15 years old, and shared when I gave mom some of my money to help buy groceries one summer, and our finanical trials as a family... she totally related to that, it was so cool! And then I was able to tell her that if my family hadn't been active in the church and relied on the Lord to help us through, we would've never learned what we needed to. The spirit was so strong! My companion did an AWESOME job sharing how her dad left her family (Sue's father left her family too) and how she prayed to her Heavenly Father for help and strength, and how she knew He was watching over her. We were able to soften Sue's heart because we actaully listened to the spirit! It was sooo cool.

I have a strong testimony in missionary work. It is SO real! and SO important. I feel like I understand why I'm out here now, because of these experiences. And these aren't even real people!! I'm SO thankful for the gospel in my life. I'm so thankful for the opportunity I have to be here in the MTC, to be learning and growing... even when it hurts a little. ;) My comp has improved a lot at teaching. We had a slight set-back this week, (she's not very confident in her teaching) but we're working on building her up. :) I love my district. We're like a big family now. It's so fun! I'm playing the piano for Sacrament meeting on Sundays which has been fun. We were able to go to the temple again today!! I love the temple. It is sooo peaceful. I always feel like a part of it comes back with me. It's really rejuvenating.

Elder Russell M. Nelson gave the Devotional last week!! It was sooo awesome, all about the gathering of Israel in these latter-days. He showed us tons of scriptures that say latter-days in them and then said, "Ever wondered why we're called the Latter-day saints? Well now you know why." It was so cool! He also showed us some scriptures that prophesy of the BOM in the Bible. Such cool stuff I'm learning here!!

The food's not that great... haha. It's BYU catering. I've eaten at least one salad everyday since I've been here. Sister Nixon's a health nut so it's helped me out! ;) (sis Brickley isn't so much... ha).

Thank you ALL for your emails and letters. I love you all so much and miss you every day! We have in-field trainig on Friday so I'll let you know how that goes!! I'll try and send you pics next week!

Letter #1

Hi Family!!

Well, here's the first of the emails! :) I can't believe still that this is actually happening. I'm actually a missionary in the MTC!! How crazy!

Well, I LOVE the MTC. It has been SO great. It's incredibly hard, but the spirit is so strong here all the day that it completely makes up for it!! I have already learned so much and truly feel like the Lord is blessing me already. Why didn't I make this decision earlier?? ;)

My companion is Sister Brickley. She is from Indiana, and is SUCH an awesome girl! I love her SOOOO much. I was so worried about my companion when I first got here, but she is seriously amazing! She has such a strong desire to do good and work hard. She's been a really good example to me of how I should be and how I should act. She's the only active member in her immediate family. How hard! I can't even imagine not having support out here like I do from you guys.. but Already since she's left her sister and mother have started coming to church. So awesome!! What a rock!

I love that I learn so much about how to teach here. I reread my patriarchal blessing yesterday and was reminded of my gift of teaching. This is definitely the place to develop that gift! I was also reminded that I would be called upon throughout my life to teach others the gospel, and that I would touch the hearts of youth, of children and adults. I never realized that my mission would be the place I would do that! I LOVE it here!!

The schedule was the hardest thing to adjust to for me. it was hard for me to not get any sleep the night before I got here and then have to wake up at 6:30 the next day. But we're so exhausted by the end of the day that i literally hit the sheets and am out cold! We are CONSTANTLY busy here too. It never stops! We're either studying, in class, eating, or sleeping. That's all I do here. But I love it! The gospel is so true!

We're already practicing on investigators, which has been surprisingly easier than I thought it would be. But our teachers act like investigators, and it's really intimidating teaching them.. Me and Sister Brickley feel like they're judging us or something, haha. But it's been really good to practice and it's taught me a lot. Cute Sis Brickley gets SO nervous to teach... I always have to tell her to breath and we always say a prayer before we go in the room. But she's doing so great and I'm so proud of her progress she's made since she's been here. Our roommates (and the girls in our district) is Sister Nixon (who our cousin's the Savages know! She's from Colorado too) and Sister Dieujuste (pronounced dee-eh-juice-t). Sister D. we call her, haha. She's from Haiti but grew up in Florida and has only been a member for a few years. Shes seriously the funniest black girl I have ever met in my life, haha! She makes us laugh constantly. It's so good to have humor in a place where you feel like you need to be seriously all the time!! Laughter is the best medicine! ;)

My district is AWESOME too. We have 6 elders and then its us 4 sisters. And guess where the elders are going on their missions? Richmond, Virgina. Yep. Daily reminder. Ha, what are the odds huh? But they're all such great guys. We sisters seriously love the elders. We're able to keep them in check a bit while they make us laugh! ;) I seriously can't even tell you how blessed I've been to have such great elders and sisters around me all day long. It's truly incredible.

We met our new Mission Pres yesterday! He's the nicest man I think I've ever met in my life, haha! and his wife is adorable. We're all SO excited to get to T-square! We leave Feb 1, so we do stay for 4 weeks. The last week is all visitor center training.

Well, my brain hurts all the time, and I've been tired since January 4th (that is the joke of us sisters) but I am truly loving it. It feels so right to be here serving. It honestly doesn't even feel like a sacrifice. Thank you mom and grandma for the letters. Time is short so I gotta go

Love you ALL!!!

Sister Savage

Flying to the MTC!