I'm in England!!

Hello, world! I'm in England and can hardly believe it. So much has happened in the last week, I don't even know where to begin.

 

With my family at KCI airport

 

I flew to Atlanta Wednesday afternoon, where I met up with some other missionaries. (We're easy to spot.) We then flew overnight to Manchester, where Brother Miller (MTC administrative guy) organized us and our many suitcases onto a bus to the MTC.

 

 

Yes, I'm in England!  At the Manchester airport.

There was a great moment when we first arrived at the MTC -- the 5 other German-speaking Sister missionaries and I got our packets with planners, paperwork, our tags (!!!) etc. in them, but we pulled out our handbooks and found to our dismay that it was completely in German. Just as we revealed our horror, a member of the MTC presidency (who I now know is President Durkins) walked by and with a smile and laugh said "You're here with us for six weeks, aren't you." Haha. So we are.

 

The six German-speaking missionaries:  Sister Fenton (UT), Sister Bushman (KS),
Sister Cook (UT), Sister Wilkes (UT), Sister Smith (CA), & Sister Angeloudis (Australia)

There are about 50 missionaries in our MTC. It's tiny! But I love it. I'm in the Alma Distrikt, one of the two German speaking districts here. My district has 4 Elders and 4 Sisters, while the other district has 2 Sisters and 6 Elders. There's also three English speaking districts that are leaving next Tuesday and an ESL district with Sisters from China, Guatemala, Italy, and Brazil! Other countries represented here are Denmark, South Africa, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada! My companion is Sister Fenton! It's so crazy; we met up before the mission and are companions! So we're together 24/7, which has been weird to get used to, but she's super cute and keeps me from getting to stressed out, so we get along super well.

 

Sister Fenton and Sister Bushman

Funny story from this week. So we showed up Thursday, (by the end of that day I had been up for 32 hours solid since I didn't sleep on the plane) and mainly did orientation-y stuff. Friday we started our actual classes; our teacher just came in and started talking in German. Just like that. We found out that our following night (Saturday) we were going to teach a half hour lesson completely in German. We didn't think he was serious, but he was!!! So we planned to teach "Moritz" (one of our MTC teachers living out their acting dreams) about God being our Heavenly Father, and gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon. Long story short, he tried to pay us for it, and through all of out "Nein, nein, danke"-ing, he was still giving us pounds. In desperation, we said it was a gift. He started freaking out, we had no idea what was going on!

 

If you're ever in Germany, you can give them a geschenk, or present. But never give them a gift. That means poison. We told him the Book of Mormon was poison. Hahahaha. Yikes. Won't make that mistake again!

 

Q:  What do you do after studying German all day long?
A:  Jump in the air in the hallway with the Austrian flag!

I love being a missionary. I get excited putting on my tag every day. I love being here in England where the juice is boxed (what's up with that?) and some people speak with accents so thick I can't decipher what they're saying, but I'm counting down the days until I can board the plane for Munich and share what makes me most happy with my brothers and sisters in Austria and Germany!

 

I love having my tag.

 

On the grounds of the Preston England MTC

 

At the Preston England temple

I love you all so so so much! Bit Mittwoch!  (Until Wednesday!)

 

Sister Bushman

 

(BTW, I would love it if you sent me a letter! I'd be happy to send you one right back. We have hardly any time on the computer but lots of time to write! Also, if you go to www.dearelder.com you can send me a letter for free! Just go to "pouch" and click on "England MTC" and they'll print it out to me for free within a week. Or something like that, Much love!)