Change of Command

Hello everyone! This is Kristin's older, more attractive sister, Jessica. Kristin's a missionary now, which means I have COMPLETE CONTROL OF HER BLOG. Mwahahaha! I could use my newfound powers to post embarrassing stories from Kristin's childhood, or turn this blog to my own evil purposes, but instead I'm just going to post all of the e-mails that Kristin sends to us while she's on her mission. I hope you enjoy them! (P.S. Everyone knows that Kristin's really the more attractive one. :P)

Here goes the first one:

Hallo, family!

This is my first MTC email! It's actually really stressful because I only have 30 min. to write and there's a GIANT COUNTDOWN at the top of the screen hahahaha. So basically you should send letters via Dear Elder.com because that way I can spend my whole 30 min. writing instead of reading. (By the way, thank you for all the Dear Elders mom! I love getting them and hearing from you, because I miss being able to call you!)

So I've said it probably a million times already, but the MTC is AWESOME! I love it here! I love everything about it! (Except perhaps the food, which is like.... cafeteria food and probably sooooo bad for me haha. But even that is awesome because I eat three solid meals a day instead of snacking all the time. Off topic! ;) )

So: cool stories. M. Russel Ballard was here on Tuesday! He gave the devotional and his talk was wonderful! He gave a lot of really good advice about being a missionary. I was inspired. Here is one of my favorite quotes from his talk:

"Our purpose as missionaries is to take people out of the darkness of the world, or the despair of the world, or wherever we find them, and make saints out of them." That's my goal!

German is coming along really well! I'm learning it suprisingly fast, actually. It must be the gift of tongues. The spirit is so strong here that I feel like I'm constantly immersed in it. I love that I have so much time to just study the scriptures.

Another awesome thing about the MTC: the Elders are such gentlemen! I don't think I've had to open a door since I got here. They're always holding doors, and smiling and being so nice. And at dinner they always take our (mine and my companions') trays for us. At breakfast today we started to stand up with our trays and the Elders in our district actually yelled at us, hahaa. It was funny. They were like, "Sisters! Sisters! What are you doing? PUT THEM DOWN." hahaha and they took them for us. It always makes us feel really special. The ratio of Elders to Sisters is ridiculous. Like at least 10:1. The Elders in my district are so wonderful. Hard to believe they're recent high school grads. When I got here I felt so old, but now it's just fun. We're all good buddies already. One fun thing about Elders holding doors is that we're all learning different languages, so I'll say "Danke!" (thank you, in German) and they'll say, "De nada" back (you're welcome, in Spanish). And people are always coming up and contacting us on the sidewalk to practice bearing their testimonies to us in Japanese, and we'll bear ours in German to them (I'm getting really good at bearing my testimony in German, but I still struggle with vocab sometimes because there are things that I want to say that I don't have the vocabulary for.) This really is a wonderful place.

Sorry I'm bouncing all over the place in this letter. Mom, I just wrote you a pretty long one with more details and stuff. Today is P-day, which means I get to wear pants! Wooooo! P-day ends at 6 pm though and then it's back to class! Right now I'm doing laundry. I went to the temple this morning with my companions.

MY COMPANIONS! They are wonderful. I have two companions. We're in a 'drit' (or trio) which is pretty common for sisters, actually. There's another trio of german sisters in our room. (we have six girls to a room, three sets of bunkbeds) We have so much fun. We are always laughing. My companions are Sister Deitrich and Sister Cannon. Mom, Sister Cannon is the girl I was emailing before I left for the MTC, and she's super cool. We have a lot in common and our personalities are so similar that we work really well together. The three of us are all really goal oriented, so we're making lots of goals and staying on track with them, which really helps! Right now we're working on a goal to read the BOM before we leave. I'll send pictures of them when I get a chance.

Okay a few more random things:

- the German hymn book has 'Come thou fount of every blessing' in it! English does not.

- I'll still be here in the MTC for Christmas. I depart for Germany Dec. 27.

I'm running out of time! Aaagh! So much more to say! I'll write letters and write more next week.

I love you!

Mom, I sent this to jess, but I'm not sure I have the right address. Make sure she gets it and let me know if she has troubles putting it on my blog.

Love you!

Bye!

- Sister Jensen