April 30, 2009

hello my dear family!!!!
Thank you all so much for the letters, they have been great. I got the written one, the dear elder letters, and mom's e-mail :) thanks everyone! It sounds like things are doing good at home, I didn't think it was possible but I love you all even more now that I am out here! :) I mailed letters to you all and I hope they find you well :)
Things are going great for me, time is so weird here at the MTC! Each day seems so long, but the weeks absolutely fly by, i can't believe it is thursday again! I think it is a blessing, we have a lot to learn each day so they seem long, but the weeks fly by so we don't get discouraged, its great! :) I don't feel like a new missionary anymore which is exciting, the 3 sisters me and my comp were with left for Indonesia on Monday and last night the three new Indonesian sisters came :) I helped show them around with the zone leaders and the MTC really is kinda feeling like home (it better, i will be here a while ;)
The new sisters are nice and I love my companion sister Soli! She loves to play volleyball and softball too so we have fun at gym (which is absolutely glorious, getting to run around for an hour is amazing! especially now that we can go outside!) The elders in my district are doing good too, we know each other well by now and have fun, they work had and offer comic relief ;)
The Mongolian is coming, it is a crazy language Sister Marta (mongolian) has been teaching us a ton and as one of my teachers put it, she blows our faces off with words. Haha its like trying to take a drink from a fire hydrant but we are getting some of it! Funny language mix ups keep happening and I am sure they are just getting started, one of the elders accidentally introduced himself as the savior and it was really funny. It is cool hearing so many languages around campus, and my elders wanted to sound cool and fluent in mongolian so started saying random words, names of letters, and conjugations to each other when walking. They act like they are having an intense discussion but really they are saying "soft sign! hard sign! past tense conjugation, present progressive, mine, yours, sister, and future tense!" it is really funny, especially sense everyone is really impressed with their "good" mogolian ;) We are teaching the first lesson for 30 minutes tomorrow in mongolian! ah! It will be interesting, we translated all of our own sentences this week and I am spending the rest of the day trying to memorize it and I will let you know how it goes ;) Its funny, by tomorrow we are supposed to teach someone to pray, and we can't even pray very well yet! We don't know how it will happen, but we know it will happen and we will somehow learn this language ;)
The spirit at the MTC is so strong, there is a peace and happiness that comes from just being here and being a part of this work :) We got to go to the RC yesterday (call center) and answer phone calls for an hour and it was so fun!! It is so exciting to be talking to real people about the message that we have, and it is even more exciting when they want a Book of Mormon and the missionaries to come! I got to talk to several nice people and a family yesterday :) God Lives and He Loves!!! Everyone deserves to know that and if my mission is going to be as fun as that hour talking to people on the phone, these next 18 months are going to be amazing :) Jake you would be proud of me for this, a man called yesterday because he couldn't get his DVD of the Lamb of God to work, he had just bought a new TV and everything but couldn't figure out the remote so he called us, it was so funny, as you know I am totally technology illiterate and I can't even turn on our TV at home, but somehow we talked through it and I helped this nice man get his remote to work ;) he was really excited when it started, but put it on pause and let me talk about the rest of the message we have. Um, I can't think of any other stories, but all in all things are going good, we are studying A TON, and I am happy :) we have so incredibly far to go, but I try to look at where we have come instead of where we have to go when thinking about the language and it helps :) If the Lord wants us to be able to speak mongolian, we will speak mongolian! I don't know how it will happen,but it will :) I love you all soooooo much and thanks again for your prayers, love, and support. You are in my prayers and I think of you often!
love sister mansfield ;)

p.s. the dear elder letters are working great, i don't get much time on the computer so it is nice when you send them through dear elder so i have more time to read them :) i love the hand written ones too! and tell donielle wolf thanks for her letter! she makes me laugh and is so great :)

pps ; alyssa i hope you made it to romania okay!! thanks for your letter and I hope you are well! good luck!

take care everyone! God lives and he loves :)