Ninajua Mungu anatupenda

Bonjour!  Je part dans une semaine!  Seven days from now I will be arriving in Canada, I can't believe it.  I could not be more excited to begin doing my part in the Lord's work there.

Nina furaha sana sana sana!  Elder Zocca has been teaching me Swahili this week whenever we have a few free minutes and that's just my favorite (hence my subject line).  I love language so much.  I think about Chase a lot when I get so excited about language and its cultural implications (also because Swahili is very different from French but it's similar to Arabic).  I can bear my testimony in Swahili and say who I am and what my purpose is, along with making some VERY basic conversation.  Turns out that, yes, "Jambo" means "Hi", but "Jamba" means "Fart"....so let's think about that in terms of Jamba Juice.  I've been laughing about it for days.  So that's a fun side project. 

I've had a bit of an epiphany since being here concerning the differences between love and trust. Everyone in this world deserves my love, that is part of striving to be like Christ.  No one has to "earn" my love.  However, it is not commanded that I trust others with myself.  I trust God wholeheartedly and beyond that, I choose whom to trust based off righteous judgement.  Makes me think of 2 Nephi 4:34 (and the JST of Matt 7:1).  Fouts and I talked about this a lot and realized that if I have the spirit with me, the Lord will aid me in guiding me away from people who would do me harm--this is not because he does not love them, or because he loves me more than them, it is because he does not trust them with me.  Therefore, it follows that it would not make sense for me to trust just anyone with myself.  I don't know if this makes sense to anyone else, but it's been a big deal to me.  I think it is liberating to think of loving everyone as different from trusting everyone.  It frees me to love unconditionally the way the Savior does.

Epiphany number two is shorter.  We had a man come in and ask our district how the MTC could be less stressful without losing its effectiveness and we talked to him for a while about which things stress us out most and honestly it was really helpful just talking about it and realizing that we really have mostly the same concerns (no alone time, language difficulty, feeling less spiritual than everyone else, the food gives you diarrhea, etc.) and then when he was leaving he said something that I just loved-- "Putting unrealistic expectations on yourself is a form of arrogance" - Cecil Clark.  I don't think he was trying to blow minds but if he was, he succeeded.  And I'm pretty sure I've even heard similar things before, but it's never seemed as applicable as it does now.  It's like every Taylor Swift song, you don't really love it until it applies to your life and then suddenly it's your favorite song and you realize that Taylor Swift is the smartest human ever. :)

I've talked a little bit about my teachers and how much I love them (they're really the best), but I also wanted to tell y'all about Sister Waldron.  She isn't actually my teacher, but she helps out in our class a lot.  She reminds me so much of my sisters, it is such a tender mercy.  She is a living angel in my life.  

I know that one reason people don't come on missions is because they tell themselves "a mission just isn't for me".  I'm trying to think of how to say this the way I want it to come out...I believe that missions are truly not right for some people.  If you talk to your bishop and he says, yeah, you should probably stay home, then you should probably do that.  However, I also think that every single person in this world has reason to think "a mission just isn't for me."  Everything about this is against the natural man, having those thoughts just makes you a person.  Being here requires you to trust the Lord more than yourself, and that's so much of what makes it amazing.  A mission isn't for anyone--without the Lord.  With Him by your side, all things are possible and being on a mission is such an incredible blessing.  I am so happy, it's crazy. 

In my letter to the branch president this week, I included a story I also want to share here:  Before I left, everyone kept asking me if I was excited and telling me they were so excited for me, and that's normal and I appreciated it.  However, it was kind of stressing me out.  About a week before I left, I was in church and a little girl named Paige to whom I feel very close approached me and asked me if I was scared.  I started crying a little bit (very natural for me) and she hugged me and I said "Yeah, I'm really scared."  Reflecting on that experience now, it's interesting the way my perspective has changed.  I am still scared to go to Canada because this work is so important and I feel that responsibility, but I am so much more scared of not going.  I don't know if that makes sense.  I am scared of not being where I am now, I know this is exactly where I need to be and this is what I need to be doing.  I am scared of not being in Canada in a week and a half-- it is finally real to me and I could not be more excited.  There is nowhere else I would rather be.

Last Tuesday, Marcus B Nash of the seventy gave the devotional and a motif of his talk was "Don't hold anything back from the Lord."  I've thought about that a lot.  I think there is divinity in being called somewhere far from where I live.  I know I will face rejection every day, but I need not fear because I am doing the Lord's work--and because I'll most likely never see those people again!  It's awesome!  I have no reason to hold anything back.  I know that everyone on Earth now chose God's plan, once.  I will give everything I have to give them the opportunity to choose it again.

To anyone reading this of a different faith:  If you have any desire at all to know more about God's loving plan for you, contact the missionaries. In Carlsbad, their number is 760-613-9148. My focus is on the people in Montréal, but there are missionaries near you who would love nothing more than to teach you what we know.  This gospel makes me happy every day, and God wants so much for you to have that same happiness.

I am so so so happy, and I love you all so much!  Please keep writing me, and if you've been thinking about writing me but haven't yet, do it now! dearelder.com

The church is true, God loves us more than we can comprehend. Souvenez-vous qui vous êtes.
 ---

Soeur Lonas

"I'm sorry we're embarrassing, but would you like a donut?"

That's my impression of Canada based on what the Canadians here say about it.  And maybe that makes it sound like I don't like Canada but I actually already really love it!  And I haven't even gotten there yet.  I'll be flying out two weeks from today.

So, that's crazy, I've been here for almost a month and I only have two weeks left.  The MTC is really amazing, I'm so happy I get to be here for as long as I do.  I am learning so much all the time and I am so happy.  There are things about myself that I didn't even realized were crooked until the MTC started straightening them out.  I am so grateful to be here.  I feel like everyone should spend a good six weeks in the MTC just to prepare for life.

This email might be kind of short because I forgot my journal where I write down stuff I want to write home about (oops) but that'll probably just mean next week's letter is both longer and more meaningful.  Like, I know I had spiritual epiphany things I wanted to share with y'all this week but can't remember what they were at the moment.  So next week's letter will be AWESOME, and I think this one will be good, too, it'll just be a little more scattered.

The gospel is really, really cool.  And really, really true.  I think a lot of the time we know that and feel good about knowing it but forget that knowing it requires us to do something about it.  This gospel is a gospel of love and peace and joy and it's also a gospel of work.  Even if you only have a particle of faith, it is required that you exercise that faith.  And then it grows.  And soon you have all this faith and you don't even know what to do with it so I'll tell you what to do with it: ACT on it.  SHARE it.  I promise you that you will feel so much joy when you do.

I love all my companions, I love that because of weird district things I have three of them hahaha.  Soeur Fouts and I have so much in common and she says things every day that I know I need to hear, it is absolutely by design that everything worked out the way it did.  It's going to be really hard leaving without her.  She is a blessing in my life in so many ways.  New York is very lucky to be getting her.  There's a really cute picture of us that I'll try and send next week but I don't remember who's camera it's on.  Just know for now: we're adorable.

Cruz and Torres and I started teaching a real investigator this week (like a real live unbaptized person) and that's way cool and way scary.  Oh, and we're teaching him in English, which it turns out is wayyyyy harder than teaching in French.  No language barrier excuses anymore.  His name is Johnathon and we've only taught him once but it was an amazing experience talking to him about faith (another set of missionaries taught him the restoration and the plan of salvation before they left the MTC, but he's way confused about a lot of it) and sharing personal experiences with him about times when our faith has been tested or we've felt the spirit or both.  There are many things that were wonderful about that hour, but one of the many was how much closer it brought me and my companions.  We don't usually get to tell personal experiences in that much detail just because it takes too long to try and get the words out in French.  It was really good.

There are going to be a ton of apostles here this week because a ton of new mission presidents are being trained here right now.  We're excited about it.  They're making a really big deal about always being on your best behavior because you never know when the prophet might be watching you.  It's good times, the devotional tonight promises to be a good one.

OH! Happy Father's Day to my wonderful father and to my three brothers!  You are all fantastic dads, keep up the good work, your children love you and so do I!  You are an example to me all the time of the kind of father I want to have for my children one day!

Also I saw Hannah and Abby at the temple grounds on Sunday, which was super weird but also really good!  I was so happy I got to see them!  And I found out Brendan Anderson is serving in my home ward, which just makes me so happy!  The ward is lucky to have him.  AND Norris comes into the MTC tomorrow!! So, good BYU times all around!

Speaking of people coming into the MTC, ONE MORE WEEK, EMMA!  I was so nervous and now I don't even remember why.  The MTC is just so good.

And this still stands: if you're reading this, I want you to write me. 

Souvenez-vous qui vous êtes!  That's basically my motto all the time, now.  

I love you all so much!

Soeur Lonas

...it was like not wanting to hang up the phone.

Bonjour!  Can we talk about the fact that today marks the halfway point of the MTC for me?! That's crazy.  I'm caught between feeling like I am nowhere near adequate enough to teach anyone anything, and feeling so stoked to get to Canada and share the gospel.  I am learning so much every day, and with every new thing I learn I realize a little more fully how far I have to go.

We got our two new districts this week, they're way cool!  My new companion is the best and it turns out our information on her was a little off--her name is Sister FOUTS, and she's going to New York, speaking Haitian-Creole.  So that's awesome.  She's the only sister in her district, which is why we're companions, but because we don't speak the same language I still go to class and teach with Soeurs Torres and Cruz.  It's awesome because I'm never with a companion long enough to get really sick of them!  But yeah, Fouts is the cutest and she looks like the princess from Brave, and she's super smart and we've found out a ton of stuff we have in common.

Um, besides that the most exciting thing that happened this week was when Cruz got up on the top bunk of an unused bed in our room and then screamed "WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?!" when she looked into the vent-- There was a rotting orange with a face drawn onto it with a mustache and a sombrero.  We have no idea how long it's been in there but based on how it looks, we're guessing at least a few months.  We named it Petri.  Turns out that when people said there were weird things hidden around the MTC, they weren't kidding.  

Oh, Linda K Burton gave our devotional last Tuesday! That was way legit. She talked about being a disciple of Christ, it opened my eyes up to so many new ways in which I can be a representative of Christ every day in my behavior--not just because my nametag says I am.  And then Richard L. Heaton gave the Sunday devotional, my favorite thing he said was "We can fake out others; we might even be able to fake out ourselves.  But we cannot fake out God." and when he said that there will be many who turn away from our message, but that our words and efforts are NEVER wasted.

And I don't think I've said anything thus far about our teachers but we have the most amazing teachers ever.  I can't believe I haven't mentioned them yet, we spend all day every day with them haha.  Soeur Hafen et Frère Davis.  I love them both to death.  They both served their missions in France and have such amazingly strong testimonies of the gospel and of missionary work.

This week Frère Davis had us each go into a little room by ourselves to pray alone for as long as half an hour.  It was weird being in a room by myself--I felt uncomfortable being without my companions.  However, during that time I gained my testimony of praying out loud.  I prayed and cried and afterwards Cruz and Torres came into the room with me and we talked about it and cried together.  God and I had some stuff we really had to figure out.  In my journal I wrote, while I was still in the room by myself: "At this moment I have a greater testimony of prayer than ever before in my life.  I don't know how I've been teaching it, before feeling this way."  I didn't want to end my prayer, it was like not wanting to hang up the phone.  I am forever learning more about who I really am. 

Also, scriptures are the coolest ever.  I've had so many experiences this week when my prayers were answered in the scriptures, or when I was able to help someone else find answers to their prayers in the scriptures.  The Book of Mormon and the Bible just make me really happy.  Read the scriptures all the time.  I think a lot about when Chase told me "If you ever don't want to read the scriptures, read them until you want to read them."  and I think I understand it now :)  It's great advice.

I love you all dearly!  Keep writing me, I love hearing about anything and everything!  

Bisous,

Soeur Lonas

Week 2 for "the white girl" ... with pictures!

Bonjour, tout le monde! 

Less than a month now until Canada! Quick update on that new sister coming in--she didn't.  I'm way bummed about it.  She was delayed until July, so we won't meet her at all.  But the girl who was going to become her companion this week, who is coming in tomorrow, is now going to be MY companion for the rest of my time in the MTC (probably).  Her name is Sister Foust, she's from here in Utah, she's going to Haiti and learning Haitian so it sounds like she and I won't be able to speak French to each other.  She's moving into the room with me and my current two companions, so I think the four of us will just end up spending most of our time all together. I'm excited for her to get here!  Maybe my district won't make fun of my "whiteness" so much! Doubt it, though.  It happens.

The other district in our zone left yesterday, we're really sad about that (this is looking like it was just a bad week but I promise I'll get to good things!).  It's crazy how much we love and already miss them, we were only together for a week and a half.  But those Elders will all do amazing things in France!

French is amazing, we're all learning so fast.  I cannot imagine a more beautiful language in which to share this Gospel.  My new absolute favorite hymn is one you can only find in the French hymnbook, called "Souviens-toi".  It is so incredibly beautiful.  Please find yourself a French-speaker and a French hymnbook and have them translate it for you.  Or I guess it's probably also on the internet.  But it's more meaningful if you have someone actually explain to you rather than getting an exact translation.  Either way!  Beautiful hymn!  It made me cry a ton. 

And tomorrow we're getting two new districts in our zone, 14 new missionaries! We're going to be the one's who know what we're doing.  Haha.  That's including 5 new sisters, one of whom is Sister Faust.  We're finally going to be able to do something as sister training leaders!

L. Tom Perry's funeral was so sad, it hit me much harder here than it would have if I had been at home.  He was truly an amazing man and an amazing apostle.  Hearing stories about him and reading about his life increased my testimony of prophets, priests, and revelators so much.  

My companions and I have started hard core working out, I'm so sore.  I'm gaining weight as I can actually see my arm muscles getting bigger.  It's kind of creepy.  We just figured that since we have time set aside every day to exercise, might as well make the most of it.  They are very impressed with the endurance of the white girl.  

D. Todd Christopherson came and gave our devotional last Tuesday evening, it was amazing! He said so many things that were inspiring and helpful and, if it's even on the internet, I encourage all prospective missionaries to read/watch it.  He discussed many of the questions he is frequently asked by missionaries. My favorite thing he said was in answer to the question "What should I do when I'm working really hard and not having the success I feel I deserve?  What about when I get discouraged?"  And he said that the answer is absolutely not to quit.  Quitting will never make you feel better when you are doing a hard thing, especially missionary work.  And if you aren't going to quit, then give it 100%.

We had our last lesson with Christophe this week!  We had a really wonderful moment with him when Cruz was explaining the Plan of Salvation and got emotional and then we all cried and invited him to be baptized and he said "Absolutement!" and then after that last lesson he came into our class with his "MTC teacher" tag on, his real name is Brother Sybrowsky.  I'm going to have trust issues for a while.  Nonetheless, we learned so much from teaching him.  I don't know if I'll ever have a lesson again where I don't think back on what I learned in our lessons with Christophe.  Also, he does speak English.  I always ask him not to, though, it's too weird.

I have a testimony of the power of feelings.  The Holy Ghost has the power to influence our moods and our feelings, which is part of what makes Him so powerful.  He is an incredibly strong ally to have, and I don't think I could do this without Him, when there are so many different stresses on my body and on my mind.  Every day I feel calm and confident that I can face the new challenges before me, and I know that is the strength of the Spirit helping me do this important work.  I know that without Him I would be too anxious to cope.

I believe that when God told us the Plan of Salvation, we rejoiced because we would have the opportunity to obtain bodies and return to live with our families and heavenly parents in the celestial kingdom.  I believe that I was particularly joyful because He told me I would have the Gospel in this life.  However, some of my friends came away from that meeting crying because they would not have the Gospel when they came down to Earth.  I promised them, then, that I would be a missionary to them and invite them to come unto Christ.  They are waiting for me to find them.  And that is why I'm here.  

I love the people of Canada so much.  I cannot wait to serve them.  I am relearning the love I had for my fellow man in the premortal life, as part of remembering my divine identity.

Je vous aime! 

Souvenez-vous qui vous êtes!

Avec d'amour,

Soeur Lonas

FIRST LETTER!

BONJOUR!

The MTC seems to always be such a blur, all week long I've been thinking "I need to remember to write that in my email home" and I'm sure I'll still forget stuff.  If anyone does have any actual questions about the MTC (like friends who are going to be coming here soon....cough cough Emma and Steven) just shoot me an email.  We have a good amount of email time, my zone leaders are pretty relaxed about it.  

I'm in what we've decided to call a tripanionship, so I have two companions, Soeur Cruz and Soeur Torres.  Both of them are gorgeous and fun and impress me every day with their testimonies of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  They both speak Spanish as their first language, and were called to Montreal Spanish speaking, but are learning French because it's the main language there.  They often "accidentally slip into" Spanish.  I'm relatively sure they're talking about me when this happens.  Haha jk.  But not really, I do think it's a possibility.  It's all good though, I think they like me and I sure love them!  They're reading over my shoulder and laughing right now.  Laughing without denying it.  

We're the only sisters in our district, there are two companionships of Elders as well, so we have a little district of seven.  I LOVE my district!  The Elders are so fun and everyone comes from totally different backgrounds, which is awesome.  Elder Zocca is from Tasmania and speaks Swahili.  Our district really does already have such a tight bond and it's only been a week; I can't fathom how much I'll love them.

.And this is my whole zone...it's small :) (there are some people in the back not in our zone....it's just the twelve of us who(m?) are closest to each other)

(Bummer.. the picture didn't come through!)

Our zone is just made up of two districts and we're still the only sisters, the other district only has five.  (Abby, there's Elder Connell!  How funny is it that we're in the same zone?! And when it's such a small zone!)  Everyone in my district except Elder Zocca is going to Montreal, he's going to DC, and everyone in the other district is going to France.  We have a super chill zone.

My companions and I have been teaching the discussions in French to our investigator, Christophe (The MTC hires people to be our investigators.  Some of them are actual investigators, some are members, some are nonmembers not investigating the church.  We dont know which of those Christophe actually is, but we're pretty sure he really doesn't speak English). This really is an incredible experience.  The spirit is always so strong, and it makes me so excited to serve and teach in French and in such a beautiful country.  We asked him during our last lesson (yesterday) if at the end of the lessons, if he knew our teachings to be true, if he would be baptized and he said yes.  I might have cried.  I definitely cried.  This gospel truly brings me so much joy and nothing makes me happier than the opportunity to share that joy with other people.

My companions and I are all sister training leaders just because there are no other sisters, so before church on Sunday we went to Branch Council.  During that meeting, the Presidency told us we're getting a new sister! Just one (today, actually) and because she's coming in by herself, I'll be taken out of my tripanionship to be her companion until our one other sister comes in the week after that, and then they'll be companions because they're actually learning Creole instead of French, and they're both going to Haiti.  So today's new sister will only be here for two weeks, which means she definitely knows French already.  She's from the Ivory Coast.  So the question is whether or not she speaks English.... I really hope she doesn't.  That would be awesome, and so good for my French.  I'll let y'all know next week, but I'll know in about two hours.

So then after that meeting, a member of the branch presidency asked to meet with just me and in that meeting, I was asked to accept the calling of Branch Music Chair.  So that's been fun!  I have my little french hymn book and i conduct the music and choose all my favorite hymns and I still have to organize some kind of music number for this next Sunday.  And I'm also teaching a lesson (in French) on Sunday on Priesthood ordinances.  Man, this whole thing is awesome. 

I know so much more French, it's amazing.  I'm comfortable praying in French in public, and speaking in French all the time, and when actual French people talk to me I don't catch everything they say, but I get enough to carry on a solid conversation.  It's so cool.  It's actually really hard writing in English right now, I haven't produced this much English at one time for what seems like forever.  I even write in my journal in French just because it's good practice and it's easier than going back and forth between languages.  

I am growing spiritually in a way I didn't expect.  As we learn from Elder Bednar, a testimony is what you know to be true, and a conversion is being true to what you know.  I have a strong testimony of this gospel, and am working now on being converted unto the Lord.  Being here is really hard for so many reasons, and if I didn't know the truth of this gospel, this would be shaping up to be the worst week of my life.  However, because of the faith I have in Jesus Christ, this is absolutely the most wonderful week of my life. At some point I think you have to decide if you're all in or all out, and while I think I will be sleep deprived for about a year,  I'd rather be in.  It's good to be in.   I know missions aren't right for everyone, and everyone has different things to accomplish, but I know for myself that this is the best thing I could be doing right now.  

I really do love you all!  I want to hear from anyone and everyone, if you're reading this then I want to hear from you.  dearelder.com is the best thing ever, or email, or letters, whatever works for you :) 

Bisous,

Soeur Lonas

P.S.  family members: give the little ones squeezes and kisses for me, tell them their Aunt Rebecca loves and misses them so much and that I think about them every day.