Mississippi Jackson: Greetings, humans!

HELLO! WOW! I have an hour to type this out, and I just have so much to say!

Let me just start off by saying that the Missionary Training Center has been mindblowingly amazing since Day 1. Since being here, I've heard so. many. languages. Which include: French, Portuguese, Spanish, Tagalog, Mandarin, Korean, and a bunch of other languages I have no idea how to recognize?!?!! I hardly had time to adjust to all of these new things happening at once. The MTC's methods are similar to that of throwing a frog into a pot of boiling water...but I won't die. Promise. ;) Upon arrival at the MTC, I received my name tag, which is the moment that stuck out more to me than anything else on the first day. Actually seeing "Sister Rose" just above my Savior's name has been the moment that I've clutched to since coming here.

Usually here at the MTC, every missionary has a companion who must be with them 24/7. And I literally mean 24/7. Upon arrival, I met Sister Maughan (pronounced "mon." It's great if you use a Jamaican accent), who was serving in the same mission as me, and was assigned to be my companion!! What are the odds?!?!! Sister Maughan is from Cache Valley, Utah, which is just by Logan, Utah. She's 5'10" and three quarters, a little quiet, but so very sweet and funny and VERY good at finding scripture references!

I then met my next companion -- that's right! I'M PART OF A TRIO! Her name is Sister Elliott. She is such a sweetie, and SO FUNNY! She's from Washington -- and not the burning part, she always adds. She has such an amazing testimony of the gospel and it's beautiful to hear when we're teaching as three.

We are the only sisters in our district, which is fine when you have such amazing Elders like we do! They're all such children since they're all 18 :'D. In our district (I'll send photos!), we have Elder Ravsten and Elder Ray, Elder Cunningham and Elder Reams (these four are serving in the Salt Lake City-South mission and COULDN'T BE MORE EXCITED ABOUT IT), and then we have Elder Webster and Elder Clark, who are both going to be serving in the Mississippi Jackson mission with we three sisters. We leave for Mississippi on September 7th (AH!) at 3:30AM!

I could tell you about all of the amazing Elders and Sisters up here, but there are just so many. We've met so many amazingly, spiritually strong individuals who love the Savior and His gospel as much as we do, and I couldn't be happier here (although I think I'll be happier when I'm in the south....).

On our third day, they immediately threw us into teaching by having our teachers pretend to be investigators that they actually taught on their missions. Brother Ahlstrom was playing Ivan, who was showing some interest in the gospel, but wasn't entirely sure if God existed. We only got two lessons in before Brother Ahlstrom had to LEAVE! BECAUSE CLASSES STARTED AT BYU! UGH! RUDE! So now we're teaching our NEW teacher, who is playing a girl from her mission she served a year ago. This girl's name is Mina, and so far she seems very, very sweet, and I cannot wait to bring her unto Christ.

On our sixth day here, the MTC throws us into the TRC (Teaching Resource Center), where we learn how to teach real investigators. Well, some of them are real, and others are sometimes members who are pretending to be investigators. We don't know which is which so we go in believing they all have no idea what we're about and begin teaching according to their needs.

There is one investigator we taught yesterday, actually, who helped me truly understand the meaning of my purpose as a missionary.They challenged us to memorize it, so: "Our purpose as missionaries is to bring others unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end."

The woman we taught's name is Inna (ee-nah). She's from the Ukraine and is about our age and was adopted by an LDS family five years ago. We figured she wanted to learn more about the church, but as we got to talking, we discovered she had absolutely no interest in the LDS Church and simply wanted to know more about Jesus Christ and God. Which is exactly what we, as missionaries, are supposed to do.

Converting doesn't matter, my friends. Baptisms are not the goal. Baptisms are a small step in being completely converted unto the Lord. The first thing we must have is the want to know our Heavenly Father and our Savior, and then build our faith in them. I know that these are the first steps to feeling the purest, most unconditional love you will ever feel in your entire life. I have felt it, and I know my companions and hundreds of other missionaries have felt it, too. We are not here to covert you to the Church; we are here to convert you unto the Lord.

I hope everything is going well back home! Everything is going pretty well here at the MTC. I want to be in Mississippi more than ANYTHING! But, I will be patient.

I don't know when my next P-Day will be since we're technically leaving on our P-Day in Mississippi, so please be patient and I'll send you as many updates as I can!

Stay tuned for photos!

I love you all! Godspeed!

Sister Rose