 |
| Putting out our shoes for Sinterklaas! Siostra Kemp, me, Siostra Lerch, Siostra Barney, Sisotra Dekker |
 |
| Room #245! |
 |
| Sinterklaas delivered! We must have been good! |
 |
| Our cutest new companion...Siostra Gretchen Dekker! I love you Siostra Dekker! |
 |
| Good luck in Croatia Sister Mary Rougeaum! I'm so glad I met you! You are going to kill it there! |
 |
| Good bye and good luck Elders! (L to R) Elder Brown, Elder Sperry, Elder Halverson, Elder Seibach, Elder Renauld Watch out Bulgaria here they come! Thanks for the laughs! |
 |
| Best Zone EVER! I'm so grateful for these people! |
 |
| Note from Quinn & Steph: This is the text sent from the MTC General Manager! What are the perks of matching with Sister Kamp? Chick-Fil-A Peppermint Shakes, a tour of the MTC Caferteria and your family receiving a random text with a picture of girls you crave to hug! Thank you MTC General Manager! |
Cześć Family and Friends!!!!!
This week was super fajny (cool) extra bombovy aplus or in other words FANTASTIC!!!
Last week I mentioned being able to perform in front of the MTC and Branch Presidencies and Friday night we performed! It was so amazing! I absolutely love this time of year, especially the music. Being able to perform Christmas songs was so much fun! I was smiling so big the entire night! I cannot wait for Christmas in the MTC here! It is going to be absolutely incredible!!
Saturday night was Sinterklaas Eve! This is a a Dutch tradition of leaving your shoes out and if you have been good Sinterklaas will leave little treats in your shoes! My family and I have celebrated this for as long as I can remember - its a tradition from my mom’s mission in the Netherlands! This year was my first Sinterklaas away from home! However, all the Polish Sisters and I decided to celebrate it! We all sat down that night and I told them the story of Sinterklaas under all of the Christmas lights hanging in our rooms! We then went and left a pair of shoes outside our door! When we woke up in the morning Sinterklaas had visited! It was so fun to see how excited all the Sisters were! When I told the story the previous night I said how grateful I was for all of them and there is nowhere else I would have rather spent my first Sinterklaas away from home! Seeing their faces made that statement so much more true! It will always be a Sinterklaas I will never forget!
Sister Kamp and I got a new companion this week!!! Sister Dekker!!! Sister Dekker was Sister Yochim's old companion and we found out Sunday she is our new companion!! We were so excited! We love her!!
Sister Kamp and I also received the calling to be the new music coordinators for the zone! We are in charge of choosing hymns to sing in sacrament, teaching people to lead music, and having a musical number ready for every Sunday! I am so excited to have this calling!
We also were able to watch the Christmas devotional put on by the first presidency which was absolutely amazing!
The saddest part of the week was loosing half our zone! All the Croatians, Slovenians, and Bulgarians left on Sunday and Monday! They sang the hymn, Come Come Ye Saints on Sunday in all their different languages! It was incredible to see them up there singing and to picture each of them individually and think of the influence they are going to have on the lives of people they come into contact with! I was so sad to see them all go! Sunday night all the Sisters met in a room and we all had small cups of sparkling cider and toasted to them going away! We said tearful goodbyes! I am so sad to see them go but I am also so proud of all of them! They helped me adjust to missionary life here in the MTC - they were always so kind and supportive! I will be forever grateful for each and every one of them! However, we had four new people come into our zone yesterday - three Sisters and one Elder. We are so excited to have them!
On Monday the craziest thing ever happened! Sister Kamp and I both have striped dresses and mustard cardigans so of course we decided to match! We had people stop us all day and tell us we were matching or give us funny looks! However, the best thing ever happened because we decided to match! We were about to walk out of the cafeteria when the General Manager calls us over! We walk over, a little nervous we had done something wrong. Then he asks, “Did you know that you two are matching?” He then took a picture of all of us and sent it via text to our parents! We were so incredibly happy! Later that night we had.... CHICK-FIL-A!!!! We were like this day cannot get any better, but little did we know it was about to! The General Manager then comes by again and tells all of us Polish Sisters to follow him! We were given a tour of the kitchen and then he pulled out CHICK- FIL- A PEPPERMINT SHAKES!!! Can you say BEST DAY EVER?! He put whip cream and cherries on them and it was awesome! Sister Kamp and I were like, “Why haven't we matched sooner?"
Our investigators have been progressing so well! It was our first time teaching with Sister Dekker this week and it was great! We listen and work with one another so well! Karina is now learning all the commandments and has kept her commitment to come to church with us every week, which is so good! She says she loves the people and the atmosphere there! We also had a major break through with Sławek! He wasn't keeping his commitment to pray and he wouldn't pray in front of us! Finally this past Saturday we had a huge discussion and found out why he really wasn't praying! We then bore testimonies of why prayer was important to us and he finally prayed in front of us! The nest lesson I was a little nervous he would say he hadn't prayed but when we asked if he had prayed he said yes! I wanted to hug him I was so excited! We talked about baptism and he is currently working on making the decision to be baptized!
I have talked in my previous emails about TRC but this week was a different kind of TRC! We actually skyped with someone in Poland and gave them a lesson! We skyped with a women named Ola and she has been a member for a couple of years now! We taught her a lesson on faith and noticing God's hand in her life! She was so happy and so incredibly patient with us! We told her we were coming to Poland in 19 days and she just was so happy! It was an amazing experience and we get to do it again next week! Wahoo! I also realized I don't know Polish...like at all, but that is ok because when I bore my testimony the Spirit was there and she understood everything I was saying! It made me so motivated to continue learning Polish!
The final thing I want to share is a lesson we had with a new investigator Leszek! He is a less active member and a former Branch President! We decided that what he needed was to pray and feel God's love for him! He shared how he didn't feel worthy to pray or to feel God's love! I felt prompted to share with him an experience in my life where I was lost and didn't feel like I was good enough to feel God's love! As I began to speak this incredible feeling of love and peace filled me and the room. I became emotional in front of him! After I finished he had become emotional too and said he felt this dziwne (weird) feeling! We explained that is the Holy Ghost! He then prayed in front of us and thanked us so much for meeting with him! It was one of the most amazing experiences ever!!
Polish is one crazy language but also one incredible language too! We have learned all the tenses now: present, future, past, and conditional! Conditional is a little funky because we basically create new words with the verbs in either third person plural or singular in past tense and by adding "by" conjugated! For example if I wanted to say "we would like", it would be the verb chcieć (to want) and then followed by "by" in the we form! It would look like this: chciałybyśmy! Talk about crazy!! I am loving every second of it though!
I just wanted to end with a little thought! The Church's new campaign for Christmas is, "A Savior is Born!" We did an activity on Sunday where we answered the phrase, "He was born so I can be…”! One of the Elders said ,”He is born so I can be a missionary!"
This is so incredibly true!
I am so grateful he was born and for the opportunity I have to be a missionary at this time and to share my love for Christ! If you haven't watched the video I really recommend it! - Oh and for fun you can put on Polish Subtitles!! Do it!
Love you all so much!!
Kocham Was!!
Siostra DeMordaunt
No comments:
Post a Comment