The Up and Up (Week 3: MTC)

First off, I had hamburgers three days in a row this week. =happy happy girl.

Second off, I got a little sick this week, because my whole district (aka: the ten people I hang out with [more like study with] all day) were all sick, so in that little tiny classroom, what one person has, the whole persons have. Sometimes that's chocolate chip cookies from home. Sometimes it's a cold. This week it was the latter. But I got over it quickly. Thanks to those three hamburgers and the fact that I've stopped eating crazy food for breakfast and instead found the corner where they keep the English muffins and applesauce, one which reminds me of waking up to the clipclop of horses outside my London flat, and the other of which reminds me of my home where my mother and sister make homemade applesauce and we eat it for breakfast. In short, my health (and my attitude toward the MTC's food) is on the up and up.

Which is good, considering that our teacher told us this week that he believes your attitude towards the MTC food is also the attitude you'll have your whole mission...and your whole LIFE. Those hamburgers came at the right time, because now I'm wide-eyed and happy and grateful for the food instead of sick and whiney, two things I do not want to be for the rest of my life.

Let's talk now about communicating in French. Since my vocabulary is a total of about twenty words (jk, it's 100), the things I say are incredible stripped down, and incredibly simple. Which means that instead of saying flowery things and talking a lot, I have to just really mean what I say and hope my sincerity comes across. When you're teaching about the gospel of Jesus Christ, this can be tricky because you have so much you want to say but can't, and so I just have to hope that the Spirit is conveying all that is in my heart.  And the beautiful thing is that in all those moments of slow speech, in those "empty" spaces that happen when I'm not talking because I don't know the right word, the Holy Ghost is teaching me things--things that sink deep, affirmations of what I believe, affirmations of things I know in my heart but maybe have never given enough silence to to actually let them speak to me.

In other words, my communication, limited though it is, is becoming more sincere, more pure, and more edifying.

One of the things I learned through this slow communication is that the reason I love this Gospel so much, the gospel of Jesus Christ, is that it offers a fresh start every second of your life--that at any moment, you can become a new person, a better person, and happier person. And it's not just the promise of that, but it's coupled with the actual power to bring that change to pass, immediately in your life. And beautifully enough, I'm realizing that that change has less to do with crafting a new you, one different and foreign, and more to do with unburying myself--my native nature and the desires of a spirit long since gone from its heavenly home. I'm finding that my native desires are actually to be good, to do good, to love, to reach outwards and upwards, to commune with God, to obey Him. But that is sometimes so buried in all the habits and ways of thinking and selfishness of 26 years of earth living, that I get discouraged. One beautiful thing about reading the Book of Mormon is that: you learn quickly who you are and what the desires of your heart are. One of the best things to me about being on a mission so far is that for some reason, time slows down a little: I get to look at each moment and decide how to act, instead of moments washing over me before I have the chance to choose, before I have the chance to react well instead of poorly. And so I'm relearning how to be who I want to be.

In other words, I have way more to think about here than I have brain cells for. I find myself constantly filled to overflowing with profound ideas, ones that mean everything to our existence as humans, ones I could think about for days before they really sunk deep deep down. So I'm trying to just soak soak soak.

Finally, a few highlights:

1. My sister who is the bomb sent me curry this week. Best, huh. Except for that the office confiscated the package and apparently disposed of the curry before it got to me (apparently there's a no perishable food package rule.). So in other words, unless you're really crafty, you may abort all plans to send me curry. (Silently sobbing into my cardigan)

2. My companion and I challenge each other to do weird things every day. A few days ago, it was whoever could use the word "tub" the most times in everyday conversation with other people. I won.

3. The highlight of my week (other than getting letters from people--seriously, best moment of every day) is eating an omelet at the cafeteria in the temple every P-day. It's cheesy and hammy and eggy and oh my word I think about it all week. (And yeah, pretty much my daydreams revolve around food. Sorry. But good thing I'm going to France where I can do things like eat crepes and Nutella every second.)

4. Our teacher is teaching us the lyrics to "Champs-Elysees," a classic Paris song. Youtube it, because it's a real delight. And so all week my companion and I have been waltzin around this place singing, "Je me balladais...sur l'avenue..." like real French chanson singers. Woot woot, now all I need is my accordion.

P.S. Don't worry about me getting my Lord of the Rings fill here: It took my district a whole 6 days to decide I was Gandalf...which I quickly corrected (I'm trying to teach these 19 year old boys that making old-person jokes around me is not okay hahahaha) and got them to change it to Arwen. Ka-ching.