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