Letter #3 - Last from Madrid

PREEVYET!  

Oh my gosh, I wish I could just actually talk to you all!!!  How am I supposed to explain this whole week in one letter?!!  Okay.  I´ll try.  First of all, I hope everyone is doing well!!!!!  I want to hear where people are getting mission calls to!!!  And everything else that´s going on in normal life! Haha. 

Here´s my update.  I´m doing really well, and I´m loving these few weeks here at the MTC. At first it was totally crazy, with the Russian and everything, and I felt like I was drowning a little…I could understand pretty much everything, but I didn´t know how to say churchy words in Russian!  I´ll explain it like this.  It´s kind of like if someone was feeding you bread, and they just kept stuffing bites in before you could actually chew and swallow! Like, the bread just keeps coming and coming, faster and faster, and everyone else is totally managing to eat and enjoy their little bread but the bread is getting all stuck in your throat and you´re about to choke!  Anyway, luckily now I´m catching on.  :)

So, I kind of forgot what I wrote last week, so sorry if any of this is repeat stuff!  Pretty much all day we go to classes, and learn how to teach people.  We practice teaching, and make sure we know what we´re talking about haha.  Our schedule is so strict!  I feel like I´m in the army, or maybe in jail.  A really, really, happy jail! Hahaha it´s great.

On Saturdays we go to the park and find real people to teach, basically anyone who wants to listen, we talk to! In Spanish!! Haha I´m actually surprised how much I can say, good job Mr. O´Donnell!   SHOUT OUT TO SHRINA!  I met a guy who was from the UK who spoke Gidrathi (spelling?)!  I told him ¨Gutch gutch hota hey!¨ Haha.  He shared his chips with me because of it…now that I think of it I probably shouldn´t accept food from strangers, but we were basically already friends.  He told us all about Islam and we told him all about our church.  We talked with lots of other people too, I found a bunch of Americans!  Most people were really nice, and listened to what we had to say.  Of course there were some people who weren´t quite so nice..but the nice people made up for it.  After we walked around the park for a couple hours we all got together and did like a mini concert, the Italians sang, the Russians sang and then we all sang. 

We get to play sports every day for an hour and a half, so the Italians all decided to play soccer one day.  Haha my poor companion didn´t want to play, but I convinced her…she got hit twice, really hard, and has huge black bruises!  Whoops.  I managed to do some damage as well…I kicked one of the Italians in the head.  I honestly don´t even know how my foot got up there.  It was really funny though.  Everyone here is pretty shocked that I actually like running and stuff, and all the elders say they wish I was a guy because I would be a good companion.  Haha.

The food is pretty much as horrible as ever.  But it doesn´t even really matter, and the cooks are so cute and old that I just eat it anyways so they don´t feel bad.  At least I´m not getting fat.

So something funny that happened this week was during one  of our practice lessons—we had this object lesson about trusting God, and it was going to be really cool.  Basically you empty a teabag and stand the paper part up on your hand, and light the top of it on fire.  It burns down, but once it gets close to your hand, it floats up in the air and doesn´t burn you.  My companion was setting it up, and our teachers was pretending to be the person we were teaching.  My companion said, ¨do you trust me?¨and she said, yes, and then she lit it on fire.  Long story short, it didn´t actually work and we ended up just burning her hand.  She was like, ¨tyeplo…zharka….BOLNA!!!¨Hahaha!  I laughed forever but my poor companion was so embarrassed.  She would be mad if she knew I was writing this. 

More shoutouts!  KENT AND JANET RUST! Your picture is up here so I see it every day!  You look cute!  Also, KLEBINGATS!  My companion, Sister Belikova is going to your mission!!!!!!!!  And one of my teachers here is Sister Pliha, and she seriously sings your praises all the time.  :)

Thank you for the package!!  The album is perfect.  Awkward moment—I´ve had two people ask if Dad is my boyfriend, apparently you look very young in that picture of us at the 10k.  Haha. 

Well, I have to go to lunch!  I leave for Russia on Monday!  WOOHOOOOO!!!  I hope you are all doing really well, thanks for reading!  Love you all!!

Love,

Seestra McGhie