HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!/Szczęśliwego Nowego Roku!! (Happy New Year!!) (1/3/19)

Cześć!!

Wow... 7 weeks! CRAZY! So that's pretty neat... (name that video) Yup, you got it right!

First off, I want to wish my wonderful, beautiful, extremely talented, faithful, loving, selfless, magnificent mother a very happy birthday!! TODAY!! Happy Birthday Mom!! I love you!!

Alright, so on Friday, we had our first Skype TRC!! This is the same thing that we've been doing on Wednesday nights here at the MTC with the in person TRC's. Except!! We actually get to Skype and teach someone in Poland!! And we teach in Polish of course... AND they ACTUALLY understand us!! It's a miracle!! It was a lot of fun and I'm excited to do another one tomorrow morning! We've already had some super cool teaching experiences just here in the MTC. So it gets me really excited for actually teaching in Poland. As we've been preparing our lessons for these Skype TRC's, we have no idea who we're going to be teaching or what has been going on in there life. And yet, we always feel directed to a specific topic that we should teach on. There have already been experiences we've had where the lesson we've taught is exactly what that person needed, or it directly applied to them and their situation, or it was an answer to their prayer. We are already seeing miracles right here in the MTC!! I love to see how the Lord's hand is truly guiding His work.

On Friday night, we had a family home evening with our district and some of the rest of our zone. (Mainly the new Finnish District) We watched the 3 part video series of Sister Reyna I. Aburto. She basically tells her life story and it's insane. She's had so many crazy things happen in her life and she has still managed to remain hopeful and steadfast in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It was amazing to see the many little things in her life that led to her eventually joining the Church. It just made me think of how this could happen on my mission. I could be teaching someone who has been through crazy things in life and everything has led them to the time when they would finally hear about and be prepared to receive the gospel. I'm so lucky to be a part of that final phase! And to help bring hope to people that might otherwise remain hopeless.

Our Sunday devotional was incredible!! We had Brother and Sister Jerry and Kim Coslett come and speak to us. They were just "ordinary" people; not a general authority or anything, but their stories were far from ordinary! Sister Coslett grew up in an extremely abusive home. Brother Coslett's father left them when he was just 6 months old and when he was 12, he was abandoned by his mother and he had been on his own ever since. Both of them ended up meeting missionaries and joining the church. It was just incredible to hear about their terrible situations turning into beautiful lives full of hope!! I loved hearing all these examples this weekend of how the gospel has changed people's lives for the better. And I know this goes for everyone. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a message of peace and hope. Because of Christ and what He has done for us, we CAN have peace and hope in this life and forever! Again, I am so excited and blessed to have the opportunity to share this glorious message as a missionary of Jesus Christ!

One more quick thing about Sunday, the Coslett's brought a special guest for a musical number. They brought in Daniel Beck (a musical performer in Utah) AND Kenneth Cope!!! For those who don't know, Kenneth Cope is a very prominent LDS musician/composer/song writer (LDS=member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). They performed "When You Believe" from the Prince of Egypt and it was beautiful. Also, Kenneth Cope has been writing a musical about the life of Jesus Christ. So far, I believe he has only released Act 1 of the music, but it is AMAZING!! It's called "Son of Man" and you all should go listen to it!!

On Monday, 2 of the Sisters in our district got packages with a ton of Icebreaker mints!!! So we now have millions of mints..... There's SO MANY and we've started to calculate how many we need to eat each day to finish by the time we leave.... don't worry Mom. They're sugar free, so I won't get cavities. ;) Haha, but really, I don't think we'll actually finish them. We'll just have them in our suitcases and when it goes through security the TSA people will just be like, "Uhhhhhh....." It'll be great. XD

Our stack will continue to rise until the day we leave the MTC.

Um... Monday was also New Year's Eve, but we still went to bed at 10:30pm like all good and obedient missionaries do. :) But.. yeah! We had about.. a 10 minute celebration after our class at like 9:00pm. We just did a few confetti poppers and were super obnoxious with party horn/noisemaker things. It was a blast! OH! And we even gave the Elders New Year's kisses!! HERSHEY'S CHOCOLATE KISSES, THAT IS!!! Please don't freak out.. it's a JOKE!! :)

New Year's Eve!
L-R: Sis. Lueck, Sis. Carroll, Sis. Emett, Sis. Webber

New Year's Eve Celebrations!
L-R Sis. Eberting, Sis. Emett, Sis. Berrett, Sis. Carroll, Elder Cheal, Elder Olschewski

On Wednesday, we had more missionaries arriving at the MTC!! It's always exciting for us here, but we know that it's a sad day for many Moms. But it's okay! It is ALL worth it!! :)

Quick story: One morning, we were waiting in line for breakfast and these 2 Elders in front of us started talking to us. Which was fine and fun and all, and we just thought it would be one of those one-time conversations like we have all the time here because there are SO MANY people here. But NO!! Ever since that day, (about a month ago?) we see them EVERY day, probably 7-10 times a day. And I'm not exaggerating AT ALL! It's insane and basically impossible that this happens, but it does.. so I guess it's not impossible... anyway, I'm rambling now. But yes, we see them all the time and we call them "The Chatty Elders" because they were so chatty that first day, haha. Anyway, back to Wednesday. It’s weird because the MTC is so big and has so many people here, but you see the people you know ALL the time. No idea how or why it works out like that, but it does! And I ran into "the chatty elder" Olson and he happened to be a Host Missionary for Tristan Phillips!! 

Elder Olson (aka Chatty Elder), Elder Tristan Phillips, and me!!

                               

Actually, seeing Tristan was super lucky. I was on my way to class and there’s 2 ways we can walk. We happened to be walking the not so regular route yesterday and I ran into Tristan right after he had gone through Building T3 (the parking garage is right under that building) and he had just done all his check in stuff. So it was maybe 7 minutes from when he had been dropped off at the MTC. Which is crazy fast to run into someone you know! And I saw Maya Bolander!! 

I didn’t see her until night time during our evening class. She walked past our outside window. We were in the middle of class, but our teacher told me I could go and see her really fast. I think she saw how excited we were to see each other. :) So, I was able to run outside and give her a huge hug!! It was nice to be able to give someone from home a hug and I haven't been able to do that yet because everyone else from home has been an Elder, haha! So yeah, Wednesday was a super fun day.

The Hard Boiled Egg Story: This morning the MTC food just got worse. We got a sack breakfast (we just got breakfast "to go" so we could eat in our room instead of putting on dresses to go eat in the cafeteria.) Anyway, I got a hard-boiled egg. At least, I THOUGHT it was a hard-boiled egg. Normally, every other week I've done this, the egg has been hard-boiled!! But today, I cracked it open to peel off the shell and a bunch of liquid came pouring out. I thought, "Okay, that's not right..." and I went to the trash can to keep peeling. Lo, and behold... the egg was NOT hard-boiled, not even soft-boiled. And as the yolk fell into the trash can, that's when I knew. Indeed... it was a raw egg. The end, of my pleasant breakfast tale... :) XD Fun times in the life of a missionary.

Love you all! This church is true! Now go share the Light of Christ with someone who needs it today! :)

Siostra Shaylin Carroll

New Year's Eve: I melted Hershey kisses in a mug in the microwave and "smuggled in" a fork and bananas from the cafeteria. I still wanted to do my family's tradition of New Year's Eve chocolate fondue!! And that was the closest I could get.

We have now been here for all the holidays ever... (the paper hanging in the blinds looked like the Polish flag. It was supposed to be a joke, but we all love it so it stays there now.)

Polish and Icelandic Elders with more New Year's party supplies.