It's Raining, It's Pouring, and I Wish I Was Snoring...

Hello Everyone!!!!!

So I am just going to apologize in advance for any and all spelling errors. These keybords are weird and my fingers are going to be so huge by the end of this haha Well let me tell you all how excited I was to get all of your emails!! Seriously though, it made my day. Still is making my day actually haha I didn't realize how much I had missed everyone until I started reading emails and remembered there were other people that I knew outside of the MTC. It was a nice surpirse though :) So I am going to try to answer everyone's questions in this email until I figure out a good strategy where I can think about what I can say to each of you without taking all of my hour haha I have felt so disconnected with everything going on outside of this building and I'm with so many foreign speakers that I can't even remember how to word things in English.. so I'm also going to apologize for the really weird sentence structures. This email might end up just being a big apology for my lack of knowing how to type in the english language. Oops... ha

Well speaking of being with all foreign missionaries, I am here at the smallest MTC ever! Like really though.. There are a grand total of... WAIT FOR IT... 35 missionaries here I believe. 10 of them are sister missionaries. But about half of the missionaries here are either going to a foreign speaking language or they already speak a foreign languuage. And hen of the ones speaking english in their missions like half of them are learning english as their second language. So yeah, I'm basically the english master over here. Although after reading this email I might receive a bunch of emails back asking me what I meant when I saidsuch and such haha

But it's awesome!! So I have not one but TWO companions here in the MTC. One of them is Sister Shih and she is from Taiwan and is going to the England Manchester Mission speaking Mandarin (I've already gotten her to teach me some things) And then my other companion is Sister Ryser (roll both the R's) and she is from Switzerland! But both of their English is already superrrrr good. They are the best!

Alright so my favorite people ever here though are all of the German speaking elders. They are so funny!! Most of them speak pretty good english but they just love to laugh and see people laugh and the way they say things... yeah I don't know if I can quite describe it haha next time I'll send some of my favorite funny quotes from them though. I forgot to bring my journal this time so I'll be short on the stories :( I promise I'll get better with the emailing though!

So yes, I HAVE eaten fish and chips! I'm done! My work here is complete. haha but it's really interesting the food they have here. I like it all which is surprising because I'm such a picky eater... but It's pretty much the same types of food we would eat there just the flavors are different. If that makes any sense like at all haha But I drink milk with like every.single.meal. and it's the best thing ever. So food is good! Check!

Classes. Oh boy. Surprisingly I didn't have any bit of jet lag at all. I wasn't even tired! At least not the first few days.. but like the 4th day was the hardest. I think that it was monday? Yeah, Monday. That day was rough. But my teachers are all great. And guess what! They're all from England! Which means, guess what! THAT'S RIGHT. They all have english accents haha but they're aren't even the same. And I've only been here like 6 days and I can tell them all apart. It's kind of like saying that everyone from America sounds the same. Nope not even close. But it's still the most ecxciting thing ever that's for sure.

So like day one of classes they had us up and teaching and all kinds of things. It's been kind of rough because going out with the sister missionaries before I would just bear my testimony and even talking to my friends about my beliefs all seemed pretty basic and easy. But this is like knowing how to draw a circle or a square, knowing how to describe what they look like, and then showing up here and they ask you to draw the Mona Lisa. It's like WHAT IS THIS. Yeah it's definitely hard. Especially when they put you on the spot. But just when I start to get down on myself or lose confidence I remember that my two companions don't even speak english as thei rnative language, so however hard I think this is for me, imagine how they're feeling! And so I just forget myself and go to work.

It really is a marvelous work. It isn't anything I expected but it is so great! It definitely is going to be hard getting used to having to go everywhere with someone and having to compromise on your interests and such. Like for exercise I want to go and play sports, but all of the other girls want to walk around and so we have to stick with each other. It can be difficult but we all have fun with whatever we're doing and really learn to listen to each other and work together.

This is my last weeek at the MTC though. Holy cow I know! I'm learning lots of interesting things about England haha I just wanted to give y'all an update this week and next week I'll have some more interesting stories I promise :) But I also wanted to leave time to email y'all personally! Hopefully this gave you a little idea of my life as a sister missionary in England and keep emailing! It means the world to me to hear from all of you :)

Lots of love,

Sister Reed