Tuesday is a Special Day!

Holy Cow! It's been a month already! It's so exciting to think that I only have less than two weeks left in the United States but at the same time it is absolutely terrifying.

So, this week I figured I would tell you about the usual day in the MTC because not a lot of exciting things happened this week and I know Mom loves all the details so here ya go!

Every morning I am blessed to wake up and see all the love my awesome family and friends have for me! I love looking at all these pictures and cards!

Even the creepy cow card from Uncle Daren! It wakes me right up every morning! ha ha ha

So we like to brag about our Elders in our district a lot because of how sweet they are! They always take our trays after every meal!

And of course everyday we try and get Elder Teh to try something else from America that he's never heard of before. This week was his birthday and Les Soeurs bought him a goody bag of candy with Atomic Cinnamon Fire Balls in it for our "Dictator" haha we all thought it was so funny and so did he until he tried one! Those things are hot!!

We have 3 block schedules of classes - one after breakfast, lunch, and dinner for three hours. Yeah, that is 9 hours in the classroom. But it's a lot of fun! We have a box on our floor though and that's the only place where we're "allowed to speak English when our teacher is teaching". There is a lot of Franglish that happens but our French is really improving because of it!

We have AWESOME teachers that both come for one of the block periods. Soeur Chard and Frere Kellett. We absolutely love them! They both served their missions in Paris and tell us all kinds of great stories that get us so excited to go!

One of the only downfalls of this big influx of sister missionaries is that the buildings weren't really made for 40% of the MTC to be sisters so there is only 1 toilet for every 2 zones! My poor companions have to wait on me a lot!

And the three of us wait to use the bathroom a lot!

Ha ha - we keep ourselves entertained while we are waiting though...

Our district really is so awesome. We have so much fun together everyday! This week since it was Valentine's Day we all dressed up in Valentine's colors!

There's also A LOT of joking that goes on too. Thanks mom for sending my glasses in a package that I opened in front of everyone! Everyone was freaking out about my "coke bottle glasses" and trying them on. It was pretty funny. I guess I am pretty blind!

Then we usually have gym at night (or some days we have it in the morning) It's nice to be able to just run a mile or two on the track and then go play some volleyball!

On Sundays we have our treasured walks! We love them :)!! This week we decided to take a lot of jumping pictures ha ha I don't even know why but it was fun! Elder Nez was showing off his Missionary Power or something in this picture!

And us Soeurs were showing off how angelic we are! :)

This is Brother Burnah from our Branch Presidency - he's awesome! He is the only one who speaks French so he LOVES his calling and he loves to help us with our French!

And this is Soeur Anzi - one of the Soeurs from France!

We have become great friends - even though we hardly understand each other we have so much fun and lots of laughs! Every Sunday we have to prepare a talk for church because our Branch President calls on two random speakers for Sacrament Meeting and so this week I brought her my talk to ask her to proof read it - ha ha ha she scratched out about 89% of it and rewrote all my wrong words! She's so funny and it's really helping my French getting to know the missionaries from France and talk to them. I love it!

And this is my room - 

We only get about 8.5  hours in here everyday but it's okay - I don't really care for bunk beds anyways!!

So, this week was Valentine's Day - thanks SO SO SO much for everyone that sent me something!! I got 5 packages and 3 letters! I felt so loved <3 I always do because I have amazing friends and family, but it really was a great day! I walked in to my night block class after picking up all my stuff after dinner and all of the Elders were like "woah, Sister Ridd, I didn't even know you knew that many people!" Ha ha then I bragged for a while about how awesome my family is! It's crazy here on Valentines Day in the mail room. It seriously looked like how the post office looks on Christmas eve on The Grinch - it was so funny!

This week was a HUGE milestone I felt like because on Wednesday, we had probably the worst lesson we've ever taught with our ami de l'eglise (investigator) because our companionship was so not in sync. We talked to Frere Kellett about it and he gave us the challenge to teach without any script or written parts - to just plan before we come in and bring our scriptures and testimony from then on. I had a little panic attack because that seemed impossible! But we accepted his challenge and then he said a prayer with us that was one of the most sincere spiritual prayers I've ever heard and after that we weren't afraid and have been teaching without scripts and everything ever since! It's amazing and the spirit is so much stronger when we do that now! I love it!

Oh, funny story about Frere Kellett really quick - he is one of amis de l'eglise and he is a really stubborn one who didn't want to be baptized and we just kept questioning him about it and he finally says (in English) "I'm tired of you harassing me all the time because I have not been baptizeddd" (from Nacho Libre) hahaha we just starting cracking up!! It was so funny.

Okay another funny thing that happened this week - a girl from Australia in our zone got me to try Vegemite. Don't EVER try it. It's disgusting. She had about half our zone throwing up haha.

This Sunday was so amazing I have to tell you all about it. We had Sister Oscarson, the YW General President, come and speak to us for Relief Society. She was so amazing. She talked all about missionary work and the spirit was so strong. Something she said that really stuck out to me was from Jacob 5 how the Lord labors WITH us in the vineyard (or the mission field) I loved that !! It brings me so much comfort and confidence when you think of the Savior as your 3rd mission companion.

And then that night - ELDER JEFFREY R HOLLAND CAME!!! It was such a special experience. He came because his son, Matt Holland, the President of UVU was coming to speak to us and it was Sister Holland's birthday. Wow! I thought the MTC had such a powerful spirit already but when an apostle comes it's like a whole other level! It was amazing! Elder Holland just introduced his son before he spoke but he did tell us "Don't worry about seeking the right person to marry when you get home from your mission, BE the right person and everything else will fall in to place." That is all he said directly to us, but I thought it was so cool for him to say that! The program that Matt Holland gave was so powerful. A choir came from UVU and they performed throughout the whole program about Joseph Smith that he gave. It was so powerful and he taught with such force that I believe ANYONE who went to that would walk away with a greater testimony of Joseph smith. He said "our entire case as missionaries rests on the fact that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God so don't EVER miss a chance to bear testimony of that!" After the program the whole MTC choir along with the UVU choir sang the Mack Wilberg arrangement of Praise to the Man. It was unlike any experience I have ever had. I felt like I was truly standing there singing my testimony about Joseph Smith along with hundreds of other missionaries. It was so cool!!

Then last night I said goodbye to Sister Stephanie Efnor before she left to go to Salt Lake! I am so glad that I got to be in the MTC with her. It was like having a real sister in here with me. I love her so much and I know she is going to be such an amazing missionary :)

Well, I love you all!! Thank you for all of your love and support! You are all so amazing! The Church is true!

Love, 

Soeur Ridd

Pday number 3! Halfway Thru the MTC!

Wow! I'm half way done with my MTC experience! The thought is both exciting and totally terrifying at the same time! I feel like I have learned SO much and I can do the basics like bear my testimony, say prayers, teach simple lessons and I have almost the whole first vision account memorized in French but then I talk to the Elders and Soeurs from France in our zone and I'm like "that was not what they've been teaching me!" ha ha But I really can't wait to get in to the field and start serving the Lord!!

Well, this week wasn't too exciting. I did meet Elder Reis from the District videos! I felt like I was meeting a famous person! I was pretty excited!

That was actually on my last Pday after I was done emailing you. It also snowed like all that day so we decided to have fun in the snow and build little missionary snowmen!

So the choir director here is absolutely amazing. I LOVE singing on Tuesday and Sunday nights at the devotionals and at choir practice! The spirit is SO strong. I am so excited for this Sunday too because we get the wonderful opportunity to sing Mack Wilberg's version of Praise to the Man for the devotional that Elder Holland's son is going to speak at! He is doing some sort of presentation! It's going to be so amazing, I can't wait!!

Haha ok, so everyone in my district makes fun of me because I don't eat the combo meals here (here's an idea of what most of them are like: mystery meat with some frozen veggies and mashed potatoes and pudding) so I usually just get a salad or a wrap or make my own meal! But I decided to get my first combo meal and seriously everyone in our zone was like applauding when I sat down. It was so funny. You have to get creative here with the food that's for sure. You just eat like the same things every day for three meals a day. Yesterday I had cereal for every meal. It was great. But the greatest thing that happened at a meal this last week was they had worms in a cup (gummy worms in chocolate pudding with crushed cookies) and I pretty much jumped out of my seat when I saw them bring them out! It made me so happy and reminded me so much of being a kid!

So almost everyday I've been playing volleyball at gym time! It's been great because I haven't really played since high school so it's been fun getting back in to it! We made a team that pretty much dominates haha we're not supposed to "be competitive" but we cream everyone! It's so much fun. Everyone calls me coach because I'm the only girl and I help them out. Here are two of my main volleyball bros:

So there has been A LOT of snow on the ground lately and people in my district always threaten to throw some at me but I always warned them not to or they would regret it haha so I was safe until Tuesday night after gym and then I was ambushed. All of the Elders in our zone just started wailing them at me and I just took it until one hit me right in the face. It seriously felt like a rock so I threw down my coat and said "THAT'S IT!!" and they all ran away. It took them a couple of days to look me in the face because it left a little bruise on my cheek and I think I freaked them out. Haha I'm gonna miss the MTC...

So I have 3 great language stories this week. One day this week our teacher thought it would be a good idea for us to practice street contacting so she got the French missionaries to act like they were just walking down the street and we were supposed to stop them and do a little lesson on the Book of Mormon. It was pretty dang funny because they just laughed at like everything we tried to say but it was such a great learning experience. Then another day we were told 5 minutes beforehand that we had to teach members that volunteered to come in once a week for us to teach them. It pretty much freaked us out and we went in know all we would really be able to do was bear our testimonies. It was hard because we didn't have anything planned but I just bore my simple testimony to them the best I could and it was such an amazing experience for me. It was the first time that I felt the spirit while I was speaking French. I started to cry and I think the members really felt the spirit! Then yesterday we were teaching one of our investigators and I just felt the prompting and told a personal experience and just started crying again because I felt the spirit so strongly while I was teaching in French! I have such a strong testimony about the gift of tongues and I KNOW that the Lord will bless us when we are preaching his gospel and give us the words we need to say in the hour that we need them. Something that we found out that helps us with our French accents is putting our pens on our mouths like we have a French mustache. (this really is a good technique - we did this when I was learning French. It holds your mouth in a good position to get the right sounds out!)

So Sunday night I saw Steph (Sister Efnor) again!! We had to take another picture because even though we live in the same building and are here ALL DAY EVERYDAY we never see each other so that made me really happy to see her again:)

We took our Sunday walk to the temple and even though it was freezing, look how beautiful it was!!

At the Sunday night devotional, Stephen B. Allen spoke to us again. He is the managing director of the missionary department. He helped produce all of the old Church Homefront commercials so we got to watch a lot of them! It was so great and brought back lots of memories:). One of my favorite ones said "When everything says you can't, believe in the part of you that says you can." It really is hard work on our missions and Satan works SO hard on the missionaries because he know of the happiness that the everlasting gospel can bring to Heavenly Father's children and he wants to stop it with everything he can do! It's really easy to get down on our self and get discouraged and at times I have felt that, but I know with all of my heart that the Lord loves us all and blessed us more than we can comprehend and sometimes see. The Lord will do everything he can for us to bring truth and happiness to everyone around us and He is always there telling us we can do it. He has faith in us, so we just need to have faith in ourselves.

Another one I liked a lot said "The people in your heart can't hear what's in it. If you love them, tell them. Everyday." That is such a great reminder to us! It's sometimes easy to take for granted the love that our family and friends have for us, but we really have to remember to share our love for them and make sure they know how much they mean to us!

Thank you everyone for  your love and support and all of  your prayers. It makes the work so much easier to do here when I know that I have such great people supporting me! I love you all so much and I hope you have a great week!

Love,

Soeur Ridd

Week Two!

Bonjour!

I can't believe another week has gone by! It's crazy! So, I thought this 6 weeks in the MTC would be hard to write about because it would be all the same kind of thing every week but nope! There is always something happening here at the MTC!

So, Wednesday, a new flood of missionaries came in so we are no longer the bébés! But it was a rough day teaching so our companionship put our "dork dots" back on again so that we could hear "welcome to the MTC sisters!!" all day again. It was pretty great!:)

Our zone got a new district with all native French speakers! Three sisters and an Elder are from France and then there is an Elder from New Caledonia. We all thought we were doing so much better at our French and the Lord sends us these native speakers to quickly humble us! Ha ha it is hard for us to understand each other, but we are already all so close!! Probably 98% of the time we don't understand what the other is saying but we still laugh and have so much fun with these three beautiful sisters.

But let me tell you - everything that they say about French men is true! Elder Pochine from France is the biggest flirt and it's hilarious! Everyone in our zone just laughs because we'll hear from far away: "SISTER REEED!!"  and then he'll just come running up and wink and walk with us. He's a hoot. It was funny - the first day that they got here he comes straight up to me and says, "you look like Lana Del Ray" so now I have a nickname! It's pretty great.

It's such a special experience having them all here though. They are really helping us experience French and they love to sing! So, every morning we go in and sing a few hymns with them in French. Even though I don't understand every word I'm singing - I can't help but be filled with the spirit.

So, our "investigator" Quentin committed to baptism!! Even though it was role play and we found out afterwards that he is our new teacher, it made us SO excited. I'm pretty sure I said something like this last week but - the gift of tongues is real. I have a HUGE testimony of it. Two weeks ago I knew about five words in French and now I'm teaching lessons! On Friday we taught another investigator, Silian, and I understood about 85% of what she was saying and was able to naturally respond to her! It's amazing what we can do when we rely on the strength of the Lord!

This week has been fantastic because I got a letter from a great friend who I miss dearly and two beautiful drawings from two of my favorite cousins! Thank you so much Sydnee and Whitnee! Also, I got a lovely package from Auntie Alayna and I swear she was inspired because earlier that day I had been saying how I already miss Mexican food and she sent me chips and queso!! Thanks so much! :) oh and some peppermint patties which I let the French try - hahaha they spit them out and started gagging... I know now that they don't like peppermint.. ha ha!! And thanks so so so much Uncle Bart and Aunt Brynn for the package you sent me and mes collegue missionaires! We are all blowing you kisses and sending hugs!!

This week we cleaned bathrooms, which is always fun!

And we made a snowman that we named Olaf who melted and froze flat... we were sad!

And I saw three great great friends! I knew Steph was coming on Wednesday so I told my whole zone to look out for a tall beautiful Samoan with perfectly curly hair. I was so sad when we didn't see her but then on Friday when we were getting back from cleaning the bathrooms, I open the door to our residence hall and she was just standing there!! I totally screamed and tackled her! It just made me so happy!! :)

Then I saw my great friend Kellie who is usually on West Campus but came for a class on Saturday. She left for Mexico yesterday. I know she is going to do so great!

And I saw the sweetest girl every from my BYU YSA ward on our Sunday walk to the temple!

There are just so many missionaries here - it makes me so happy to see my friends! It's also the last week for a district in our zone so here some pictures of all the Soeurs and our district and zone at the temple!

Okay, so I have to introduce you to Elder Teh. He's in our district and is from Malaysia. He doesn't try to be funny half of the time, but he is seriously the funniest guy ever. He speaks very broken English and hardly shows any emotions so he has a very dry sense of humor. After dinner one day we went to go get him and his compnaion Elder Wallace from a piano room where they were playing and we look through the window and see this:

So we walk in laughing saying he looks like a dictator or something making his companion play for him and we all just leave laughing but he turns and looks out the window again and says "the world is a beautiful place... (turns around with a dead serious face) and I, Teh, must destroy it" and walks out of the room. We lost it. So our district made a salute for him...

Almost every day he says something SO dang funny. I'll only share one more because I know you guys don't think its as funny as we do haha but I guess they don't really have static cling in Malaysia because of how humid it is and so Elder Wallace said they were getting their clothes out of the dryer and a sock stuck to his bare leg and he just screamed "WHAT IS THIS?!" and Elder Wallace tries to explain to him what static is and he was seriously so freaked out and scared that when he got the sock off of him that it would take all of the hair with it... ha ha. But, yeah, he's so hilarious that we have a book of everything funny he says. I'm so blessed to have such a wonderful district! It's only been like two weeks but we're already like best friends - I love it!

In my personal study, I was reading 1 Nephi 13:37. I love it because of the blessings it promises when we do the Lord's work. Also during our Sunday night devotional one of the speakers said, "As soon as you think you can do it by yourself, the Lord will let you." It was just a great reminder of how much we need the Lord in our lives and how we need to trust in him in everything we do. 

Merci for all of the love and support you all have shown me! I love you all and hope you have a great week! :)

Au revoir!

Love, Soeur Ridd

Courtney's mom here! You can email her at:

courtney.ridd@myldsmail.net

Also there is a service (dearelder.com) that you can write a letter and they will deliver it to the MTC the same day. You first have to choose her mission (Provo MTC - free) and then her unit is 115, her mission code is FRA-PAR and her MTC departure date is MAR 04. She would love to hear from you!

If you are interested in sending her something - her address is 

Soeur Courtney Dale Ridd 
MAR04 FRA-PAR
2009 N 900 E Unit 115 
Provo UT 84602