Pictures from the MTC

All the sister missionaries going to Germany.

Whitney and her two companions.

Whitney loves to take pictures of herself. Yes, she's legit with her name tag!

Studying very hard!

More from Whit - Week 4

Hallo Family!

Week 4 is just about over (in 2 days officially) which means only 5 more weeks until Deutschland!

Tell Justin that waking up early sucks for me, too. I'm literally studying or teaching all day, and when we have our deutsch grammar classes from 6:30-9:30, it seems like it never ends! That's why they tell you to go to bed right at 10:30 or earlier, because you work all day long! Speaking of which, ever since I've been at the MTC, I've been having weird dreams where I'm supposed to go to these meetings, or get ready for class or something or another and they're so vivid that I get confused and mad because I'm trying to get ready and it's only 1am! Meine gute, I hope that stops soon!

The latest on Sis. Pingree is not all that great. Because they don't want to send her out with something relatively hard to treat (because they still don't really know what it is or how to completely heal it), they sent her home early Saturday morning and it's been hard and weird all at once. But she's going to keep studying deutsch at home w/ RMs and do mock investigator teachings like they do here so that when they finally let her come back (because they will send her back to Germany if she's fine) she'll only be here for 3 weeks or she'll go straight to Germany, so we're hoping she recovers soon! We miss her a lot, but she's promised to keep in touch and keep us up to date on how she's doing.

Now, since another district flew to Germany this morning, Sis. Nelson and I are literally the only sisters in our zone, which means the only two deutsch sisters in all of the MTC! Meine flippin' gute! But we're used to each other, so I really hope we don't drive each other crazy.

And because the other 4 sisters are gone, I've gotten my first "assignment" as a missionary; I'm now a Coordinating Sister, which is basically the RS president of my zone. I know, I know, pretty impressive, but they only had Sis. Nelson and I to choose from! Because of that, she's the senior companion. I basically get to be the bad guy and remind girls to go to bed on time, and when we get new missionaries in 2 weeks, I get to help them survive their first week of MTC life! Coordinating Sisters are great because if you don't have one, you're confused about certain rules, like it's not allowed to wear street clothes in any of the buildings besides the gym, residence halls or if you're doing service--and not everything like that is spelled out in the White Bible, so it's nice to know. I'm going to get the info today on who's coming in next in our group (they only get new deutschers every 6 weeks) so I'm excited to see how many of them are sisters!

This week, we had a fake "transfer" for our investigator, William, since in real life, the teacher portraying him won't be our teacher anymore due to the new school semesters, and yeah, even saying goodbye to fake investigators is haaaard! And especially how he was so receptive and just ate up any BoM chapter we could throw at him to study, and we mainly did because he would ask more complicated questions that we knew the scriptures could plainly state versuses our budding German--especially when they're having us get used to teaching for 20 minutes!

But we have a *new* investigator, Nikolaj and he's just as enjoyable to teach as William. I'm always expecting our investigators to not follow through with their commitments because our oldest investigator, Michael just doesn't do a thing; you can tell he's feeling something, but he just won't pray or even read, so it's frustrating. And I have to remember that someone won't go from being an Atheist to an avid BoM reader in a month, but yeah, he just doesn't throw us a bone, and he's quiet so it's hard to get any responses or feedback from him. Technically in the MTC you can "drop" a fake investigator and the teacher will just be a new identity (which sounds weird as I write this), but we feel like we haven't given him our all or done everything we can just yet, so we won't drop him!

Other fun MTC happenings; Elder Dolben, our British Elder had his birthday on Friday and we celebrated with him, even though he's not much of a celebrator or whatever. He got packages from home and we shared food we got from the Bookstore and had lots of fun and laughed ourselves silly. We didn't have a lot of time, but it was great; he said it was his best birthday ever, and I suppose he means it because if he says anything nice (which isn't often! ahaha) he means it. We basically called it Dolben Day the whole day! Elder Dolben hates the queen (and doesn't like a lot of other things!) so we were hoping to get our other British Elders to sing "God Save the Queen" as a surprise, but those plans fell through. Which is probably okay, but it would've been funny!

Another funny "this is funny if you know german" joke. Elder Harris told us how he tried inviting their investigator to be baptized, y'know using "taufen lassen." But instead of saying "taufen lassen" he said, "laufen getanzt" and the investigator just BUSTED out laughing. Just an FYI to the friends back home, "laufen getanzt" makes no sense, just combining "running" and "dancing." Pretty funny!

Also a fun little side note for mom. I met a new "solo" Sister who's serving in Denmark named Sister Olsson. I knew she was w/ the Danes because their room is by our bathroom and I creep and peek in their room to see if I can understand some of the churchy words på dansk but I met her at a meeting for newly called Coordinating Sisters and got to introduce myself in an uncreeper manner. It just made me laugh because when we went around the room to introduce ourselves and where we were serving, she said "I'm serving in Danmark, Danish speaking, not Dutch speaking!" She's learning already, eh?

I don't have my notes from devotionals, but for Dad, I have a quote that I hear a lot that you've probably heard some sort of version of it: The Lord needs missionaries, not young men and women serving missions." And I feel like that's really important for me, to always keep the right attitude about serving, because thinking about the things that I couldn't bring w/ me or the people I can't see is much much easier than focusing everything on teaching these investigators. Also, I said this last week and my companions have been quoting me to their letters home, so maybe I can pass this along to you guys: "The MTC does weird things to you; it gives you best friends and bowel problems." So yeah, there's a nugget from me! Although seriously, you have to wonder about the MTC food sometimes, although none of us have been sick yet; I'm starting to get a cold but I've got what I need to get rid of it.

I hope you all are having fun w/ your upcoming plans and I was really happy to hear from Jordan and that most of what I said about BYU he's realizing I was right about, and being right doesn't happen too often for me! ;P I hope you find a job soon, mom. With Sis. Pingree and my investigators and watching how the gospel can bring them peace amidst uncertainty and doubts, I know that the Lord will put someone in your path who'll help you find the best option for you!

I haven't really heard from any of my friends this passed week and I know school started today (meine gute, it's like it's another world!) so I know everyone's back to work and business, but I hope they're all doing alright and they'll write me soon. I'm pretty efficient w/ responding quickly to everything I get!

I love you guys and I'm already looking forward to next Monday to hear from you! Gah, I hope you get those photos soon!

Love,
Whitney

Week three from Whitney

Hallo Family!

Week three has been completed! Woot gemacht! This week has been rather interesting, because we're teaching every day auf deutsch and as of this week we have two investigators (played by teachers) for us to teach, so that's been fun. Michael is still requiring patience because I'm not used to people not really "taking my word for it" if you know what I mean. When I promise people (and I mean it) that they can know any sort of truth concerning religion through sincere and heartfelt prayer, I forget sometimes that it sounds much easier for someone like me who has always known God loves us, versuses those who may not even believe in a God. So Geduld! That's where it's at! William, our new investigator is awesome! He actually reads from the book of Mormon and has already started to pray, sort of rekindling old love for God, so he's progressing which makes us happy. He seemed really bitter about the world, but he prayed for a new job (he was a bus driver) and by the next appt. he had an interview, which made him excited for more! So yeah. I thought our teacher said that to be nice to us, but our teachers said that the investigators they portray were people they actually taught, whether they were baptized or not, and whatever the investigators say, they really said to these teachers, so they really try to make it as real as possible!

We also finally got to go to the TRC, which wasn't as scary as everyone makes it out to be! I guess it's because there's a camera and the teacher monitors you, but the teacher that watched us is Michael and so it didn't seem as daunting. Plus we just shared a simple message to a person acting as a member, so there wasn't any weird questions to worry about; it was just like how the missionaries come and visit us--only we get candy instead of a great meal.

I also want to say thanks for passing on the DearElder thing to everyone, I got three of them this week and it made me super happy! I was able to reply to them and they'll hopefully get those soon.

This week has been hard on our Dritt, not because we don't get along, but because Sis. Pingree might potentially go home because of an absiss (sorry dad, spelling!) on her cheek from a wisdom teeth surgery. It keeps coming back and the doctors aren't sure what to do, and if she doesn't get better, they might send her home so it doesn't give her pain on the field. Our little district doesn't want her to go, and SHE definitely doesn't want to go. The MTC doctor said that if she doesn't progress by this week then she might go home, so yesterday our district had a fast for her, which was pretty powerful. Everyone wanted to fast so that...if for some reason she has to go that at least she'll be healed and won't have to worry about it anymore. It's insane that I've known her for 3 weeks and our district has known each other for three weeks and we have such a killer-awesome bond between us. It's incredible.

Something more upbeat this week--they have these extra workout classes for the Sisters, like pilates or yoga or aerobics, and I kid you not, we all volunteered ourselves to try the kickboxing class at 6:00AM!!! So that was an early start to the day for sure, but we all wanted a little extra workout to combat all the...eh..."wonderful" MTC food. So yeah, pretty fun stuff. We're probably going to go on Fridays until we leave!

Another funny thing that might amuse you, especially mom: I guess I still out of random say things out of the blue in a British accent, and Elder Dolben in my district is actually British from Scarborough, or some small town. Well yesterday he was like, "Why do you always says stuff in my accent!?" And I laughed and just said that I do it for fun, 'cause I'm a dweeb at times, but I hardly noticed it at all, but apparantly he though I was doing it to tease him. We ALL tease him, because of all the other ways we call things like "rubbish" and "biscuit" and other nonesense. But I asked him how I was doing on the accent and he was like, "Better than everyone else in the district, but not really!" So apparantly I'm not as good as I thought! He was very quiet when we started out and now he sounds like an old British man, asking us why we say silly things and starts calling us funny names. But it doesn't really have any affect on us because of the accent. He half jokes w/ us all the time w/ that serious European face, meine gute. So yeah, fun times!

German is becoming easier, because we're trying to speak it more often. I sometimes will be explaining something to my investigator and I have this split-second out-of-body type experience where I realize that deutsch is coming out and I hope it makes sense! Usually the personal pronouns like "his, hers" don't match the subject or the word order is NOT in order, but I know what I'm saying and I always ask if they're following! But as my teachers tell us, that we can already talk and give lessons and we're only 1/3 of the way there, so imagine what'll happen when I leave! My Mitarbeiterinen sometimes ask me why I keep saying certain words and I realize that they're actually dansk, so yeah, that I guess is still a bit natural, too! It's just the little words like, "skal" or "igen" that I used to say a lot and now I have to rewire the brain a bit still. I'm still writing some missionary friends in Odense so I get some practice from writing!

As for everything else, you can imagine that it's pretty much rinse and repeat! Work, study, eat, study, study, pray, and it goes on and on, w/ an occasional daily shower here and there! Next week, some more districts are leaving for Deustchland and I'll miss them a lot, especially the sisters because they're so fun and amazing! It was funny after one particularly long day and wanting to just dunk Michael in the baptismal font already (but not really!), we all opened our closets, and the other girls from the zone jumped out and I just about punched one in the face! It was really funny though. They got their flight plans a week before they depart, so I'll be able to tell you the deets about a week before I go, too! Be prepared for an über early call!

And just to mention, I'm not sure if I've already had, but church here is awesome because we get great speakers for RS, like last week we had the General Primary President and yesterday we had Sis. Eubeck from the RS General Board who gave a bold, and awesome talk. Plus all the sisters in the MTC meet together, so that's fun! I actually saw Mary, or Hermana Blackburn, my freshman year roomie this week, she just reported! And another one will be reporting in a few days, spændende! Anyway, our actual Sacrament Mtg is held in auf deutsch, even the talks. We all have to prepare a talk and then after we have Sacrament, the Branch President tells us who'll speak and they just go up and share. I haven't done it yet, but once the others leave, there'll only be two districts, and my Dritt will be the only sisters, and so our chances will increase for sure!

I hope I've said everything needed to be said. I sure love you guys and I hope everything's going grand at home. It's a new week, and I'm sure it'll be an adventure, or as much as an adventure it can be @ the MTC!

LOVE YOU!
Whit

More from Whitney

Hallo Family!

This week went by much faster and much better than my first week; literally everyone I talk to here agrees that the longest week of your life is that first week at the MTC, and look, it's already Pday again! I was super thrilled to get your package! I wasn't even expecting treats, so my companions thank you for that. However, once we're totally done w/ the delicious cookies, I think you'll have to wait a while to send treats; we get so many from my other comps that we'd much rather have a break--especially how the MTC food is really getting to us! Ack! But my favorite part was the little note from Nicholas! Thanks, bud!

I guess you're a missionary mom-friend-thing w/ some of the people in my district now? I thought that was too funny, but I guess it's a fun way to get to know the people that I serve with, although the few that I've heard you might've run into aren't in the district that I spend every waking moment with; we used to but they rearranged our district and divided it into 2 districts, plus some people fast-tracked to the faster 3-week program--but they aren't learning the lessons or teaching methods auf deutsch! It's not really all that worth it unless you're REALLY fluent.

But as far as teaching, it's becoming easier. I wonder why they decided to teach us how to teach during our second week after teaching our "investigator" for a week's time, but it's been really helpful. We felt frustrated because at first we didn't have the vocab to really say what needed to be said, but now we're getting way better. Personally, I just write a layout of a "plan" for our discussion so I can remember certain questions I wanted to ask and we would stay on track and what-not, but I don't have to write out any phrases anymore or 'read from a script' like we call it. We're definitely not pros yet, but it feels good to look someone in the eye and tell them that God loves them and feel like you mean it, rather than reading it from a notebook.

As for our first investigator "Michael" he was really funny; these MTC teachers pretend to be real people that they taught on their mission, so they make it very real for us. He's an atheist but his brother is a member of the church and sort of decided to be interested in our message. He must be very patient because he let us back in to teach him again after the worst lesson I've ever given in my life! We've gotten to a point where he really feels like God could really exist and he's willing to read in the book of Mormon or at least pray for answers. It's amazing that with the gospel, it is really hard to really come to know if something is true because you have to let your guard down and really pray and ask for yourself; I was frustrated during one lesson and I told him that he wouldn't get a testimony no matter how many times we would come and see him; he would have to get on his knees and pray for himself! Mind you, I said that in silly German.

Anyway, this week we're looking forward to having 2 investigators at once; we're still teaching Michael and we'll have a new "mystery" person to teach. Funny story, we've only seen Michael in a teaching setting, even though we know he isn't a real investigator, but we never see him around. Our actual teacher (who's been mainly teaching deutsch) Bro. Ducosta told us that we'd be having more than one teaching in the future because of scheduling. AAAnyway, on the day that we had what we thought would be our last time teaching Michael, we were waiting for our new teacher and it was none other than "Michael"! All we could do was laugh because he's heard so much awful German put into silly lessons that we felt pretty sheepish--especially because Bro. Ducosta knew and didn't warn us! But now he teaches us only auf deutsch and it's VERY helpful. We don't have to respond in deutsch but I do anyway for good practice.

But yeah, I've been learning a lot about my role as a teacher and my purpose here. We have a purpose outlined like the YW theme/motto that we have to memorize by the time we leave and we have to "invite others to Christ" which is the first few words. I see now that as long as I do my best to point people in the right direction, it doesn't matter if they aren't baptized under "my watch." I feel like if I can tell as many people that God loves them and has ways to bless them beyond imagination, I could at least leave people happier than when I first met them, and that's definitely a comfort to me. Also, it's REALLY hard to teach someone that's 100% new to the gospel, so I'm learning to take things slow and build their faith on the barest, raw basics before I can go further. I mean, we spent a week alone on the first lesson in the Preach My Gospel and I feel like we're finally getting somewhere.

It's a good thing Michael is an interesting convert because here, I literally wake up, study, eat, study, eat, GYM, study, study, study, teach, teach, teach and then I go to bed and the next day I do it all over again! By the way, reading the Book of Mormon auf deutsch is SO cool! I like studying the words like the geeky English major that I am and finding connections that I would've looked over while reading them in English. I still use the English ones as reference to make sure I have the right meaning or for words I don't know, but it's a great way to learn important words! I read Alma 32-36 and fell in love with the German translation. I hope you give Sima a copy soon!

Sooo, yeah! I think that's about it; I'm pretty used to the schedule by now, although if someone let me sleep in on Pdays, I wouldn't argue!

Before I sign off, could you make sure this especially makes it on the blog. Apparantly there's this site called DearElder.com that people can use to write me. It's like writing letters and emails put together; they write it like an email, they print it out here and put it in my mailbox so I get it like a "letter" and I get it pretty much ASAP, so even before Pday and I have time during the week to hand-write a response back. I hope people will write me this way because it'll be easier (and cheaper--although I don't know 100% about the whole thing) and I can hear from more people; I've only heard from you, and 2 other people! Anyway, I haven't been able to check it out for myself and I really can't now, so if you could, just look at it and see how people can use it and post it on the blog, that would be FANTASTIC. Oder WUNDEBAR! I've also heard that once I go over to Die Mutterland, they can still use it and it's still faster; they would have to pay a bit I think for mailing and stuff, but it beats having to go out and buy stamps and take it to the post office or whatever. I don't want to sound "desperate" or anything, but I would like to hear from more people, and more often! I don't really have a lot of time to just write everyone first and hope to get something back or something.

That, and for your amusement check out LDS.org-->Service-->Missionary Service-->Dress and Grooming. Especially post this on the blog. I went to a RS class for new sisters about this new site they made (I wish I saw it before I left) that have aaaaawesome pictures of what sister missionaires can wear, hairstyles, make up, shoes, literally everything under the sun. And some of the outfits are really cute! And their jackets are TOTALLY not "dark and conservative." It's just a good way for them to explain what they mean because interpreting the booklet we got is sometimes not enough. It looks really awesome and I wish I used it to get ideas before I left on what to wear! But most of my Mitarbeiterin, Sis. Pingree's cute clothes are from H&M so I think I'll be happy when I finally go and find some stuff. What I mean is that she's got this cute dress that's modest and she's also really tall, so if the skirt of the dress is long enough for her, it should definitely work for me, ja? But I'm just going off into LaLa Land. Just for your fun and amusement! I'll get to look at the site soon enough (since it's LDS.org) and find ideas for boots and what-not. Spændende! I actually wrote a letter på dansk to a dear friend of mine who's serving in Odense right now so I still have my dansk! It's a good way to practice!

I'll try to write you a letter sometime this week because I'm out of time.

Bis später! I love you guys!

Schwester Whitney Olsen

P.S. our drit has our own slogan: Too le-drit to Quit! (a play off of "too legit to quit") Ja? Gut eh? :)

Whitney's first email from the MTC!

Hey hey hey!

 

So guess what? Pday= Monday!

 

I was suuuuper happy to hear from all of you and I'm glad you're all happy and doin' your thing! I wrote you a more detailed and exciting letter and I sent it off today, so whatever I couldn't say in 30min or less will be in that letter!

 

My new address is:

Sister Whitney Olsen

MTC Mailbox #383

GER-BER 1003

2005 N 900 E

Provo, UT 84604-1793

 

Although I got a letter from another sister and she used the other address I already had and it worked! But yeah, that's the address! I also found out that I'll be here for 9 weeks and I fly to Germany on 3 Oct!!!!! Ausgezeichnet! I know using deutsch is cheesy but it seemed to be appropriate. Also, so far I just only need that jewelry thing sent back to me, I think I have everything else!

 

Man, when they say full-time missionary they mean FULL TIME. Every minute is planned, even our free-time is planned to a T so I'm glad I have time to write! Every sentence has an exclaimation point! Yeah, everything is pretty exciting and new. Every day feels like a week and every bad day feels like two! I wrote a lot about my first week here in my last letter, so I'll respond mainly to what you wrote me, and maybe repeat important stuff from my letter.

 

First of all, I'm officially on a new teaching program at the MTC that started literally the day I got here. We have mock investigators in the TRC like always, but they started this new "throwing the newbies into the fire" deal where they sort of dump a bunch of deutsch in our lap so we can bear a testimony and say a prayer, and then on Friday, a few days after I reported, i had to GIVE A FRIGGIN LESSON AUF DEUTSCH!!!! It was really nerve-wracking and we totally bombed. It mainly sucked because it's a teacher pretending to be a real investigator, meaning we had to set up other appointments. They make it feel SO real, it's mind-blowing. ack! But we've already gotten over it, and I'm amazed at how much church words I've picked up. I'm definitely not fast-tracking as they call it here, because they're only here for 3 weeks and they don't get to teach in deutsch until their last week, and I didn't come prepared w/ any church words; plus I feel like I need every week they'll give me to practice speaking and being a confident teacher. It's REALLY hard teaching someone who seriously doesn't believe in God or doesn't believe that God hears prayers. We're going to teach him for the third time in a couple hours and we still haven't moved passed lesson 1 of PMG.

 

So yeah. Lots of stress, but I'm getting a lot done, and meine gute, I'm waking up @ 6:30am everyday w/o fail!

 

My companions. Yup, more than one! I'm in a Dritt, or trio with Schwester Nelson and Pingree. We get a long really well and we're already soooo attached. I grant you, the whole 24-hour dog watch, "never leave your companion" is the hardest thing so far, because we can't even leave to go in another room; we have to always be in sight and sound of each other. Bathroom breaks are the worst, because yeah, we sometimes felt a little sick (not too much) and we'd have to wait even longer. But it's really only week one; time is going really slow for me! There are 7 missionaries in my district, 44 in our zone (all the German speaking peeps) and I heard the other day-- 700 sisters at the MTC---woot!

 

The only discouraging thing is learning how to totally rely on the Spirit when I teach. I sometimes write out what I want to say but it doesn't feel right. I just keep telling myself that it'll come because I've been promised it will. We got to go to the temple today and we get temple walks on Sun. so I've already taken LOOOOTS of pictures! Our Elders are really patient and take pictures for us, but sometimes they're just as bad. We still need to make our way over to the infamous map and get the picture there, too. And at the entrance; it was too hectic and rainy to get one while Aunt Michelle, Grandpa and Shirley dropped me off, so I've got 9 weeks to take care of that!

 

Again, I loved the letter! I really appreciated it and there were things there that I needed to read. I don't have a lot of time to even THINK about what happens outside of the MTC (it feels like the Vatican City or something; a country of its own!) but I miss you all very much. Tell Lauren that I'm thrilled for her and wish I was there to see her in white! Also, parking spots? What parking spots? They have one reserved at the church? Or do you just get lucky everywhere you go?