Hello Family,
Wow, what an incredible week! As I said in my snail mail letter, the minute we got to class all we heard was Ukrainian, and that hasn't changed. I'm so grateful for the gift of tongues. I know now that it's not just about being able to speak perfectly after you pray for that gift, but I also know that there is no way I'd be able to speak as well as I do if I didn't have the gift of tongues. We're already praying, bearing our testimonies, and teaching lessons in Ukrainian! Crazy I know. Maybe when I figure out the keyboard in Ukrainian I'll write something to you.
So Sundays at the MTC, they are fantastic! Like everyday, we start out with personal study, then at 9:30 the sisters get together for Music and the Spoken Word. At 10:00, Relief Society starts, all of the sisters in the MTC meet for Relief Society and it's more like a devotional, someone usually from the General Relief Society Board comes to speak. This week it was Sister Barton, and she talked about overcoming adversity. Next is district meeting, where we meet with our district (our class) and have a Sunday school block, one of us teaches. This week it's Elder Cazanave, he's from California. He and Elder Call are companions which I think is really funny and a huge coincidence. Then it's lunch, then we have Sacrament Meeting. Our zone is our branch, and we have a branch presidency that live outside the gates (in Babylon). We have four districts (classes) in our zone. Every week we're given the Sacrament talk topic before and asked to prepare a talk, they pick us randomly to give them in church. For the first 3 weeks we're allowed to do it in English but beyond that we have to give our talks in Ukrainian. After sacrament is the temple walk with our zone. Then choir practice. Sister Thomas was right the MTC choir is awesome, the directors are fantastic and offer awesome insights to the hymns we sing. We sang "Be Still My Soul" in this week's Tuesday devotional. Sunday night it was fireside, no Zach. It wasn't an apostle, it was the administrative director of the MTC, he talked about tithing and why it is so important to teach the concept to investigators well.
This Tuesday devotional was Elder Tad Callister, you may remember he gave that awesome conference talk about the Book of Mormon? He gave an astounding talk on the Apostacy last night that blew my mind.
There are two Ukrainian (6 missionaries in our class, and 8 in the other), and two Russian speaking districts, they're going all over Russia, Ukraine, and even Romania. However there are two Russian speaking elders going to Kiev who will be going with us, they came in last week too. And at least one sister going to Kiev speaking Russian but she's six weeks ahead of us. They rotate our zone every 6 weeks so we won't see any new Russian/Ukrainians for another six weeks. Although there is another zone of Russian speakers on our floor.
New missionaries come in today, it's weird to see them and know that that was me one week ago. Today we went to the temple. We have the opportunity every p-day to go. The Provo temple is HUGE!!! It's also absolutely gorgeous. I've run into a couple of friends here. I finally saw Elder Ethan Jackson on Monday, he looks so good and speaks Spanish, crazy!! I hope everything at home and with all my friends is going awesome, it would be nice to have some updates. You can email me or use DearElder.com!
Mom, I'm planning on writing a letter today too, so I'll give more details. And keep going, you can do it! I can't believe you actually went to IHOP after all that! (I'm going to write Grandma too!)
Love you!!!!
Sister Daniel
PS. I didn't hear from John this week, were you really that excited to see me go?
PPS. Mom I don't need my temple clothes it's free for missionaries at the Provo temple to borrow clothes and the same in Kyiv. So I'm going to be sending you my temple bag and clothes soon.
PPPS. Please send a package, I don't care what it is as long as it has some form of chocolate.
PPPPS. I'll send pictures next week.
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