Vestel, Abigail T

Hello All! I am happy to say that I am doing well at the MTC! I am starting to love the language and am trying to open up to my companion more. We had several interesting things happen this week so I'll try to keep the email short (no promises). For the past week, we have had an annoying cricket noise in our room. We checked the vents, we checked in the closets and under the bed. And then Sister Kayner checked her luggage in a last-ditch attempt to find the cricket, and voila, Douglas the cricket was found. It was a little prank toy that was set up by her family. They hid it in the lining of her suitcase, so we finally found Douglas. Last week we found out that we cannot share or post photos of us with missionary tags or refer to ourselves as missionaries to anyone in Mongolia. If we do, then we could get deported, and our district would get in trouble for going against Mongolian law. Yay. I also cannot wear my tag unless it is at home or during a zone conference. But it's okay...

Hello! I made it to Utah with no plane crashes, tears of frustration, or falling down escalators. So all in all, pretty good! It is so fun to meet my district in person and without cameras. Everyone is super nice! I always leave class smiling. It's very strange to hear some of the lore these elders drop. One moment you are sitting and listening to a sister talk about how scary clowns are, and another elder tells us he once had a gun pulled on him by a clown. They may look all put together, but the elders had some really wild lives before they were set apart to be missionaries. The schedule here is pretty tight, so we don't have much time to explore the grounds, which is probably for the best since the elders (and Sister Taylor) are prone to jumping fences... Anyways, I am really happy with all the teachers and how spiritual this week has been! I am learning so much about the gospel and how to better serve the people in Mongolia. It's definitely a morale boost to know that t...

Hello Everyone!  Vestel  эгч here! It's kind of weird addressing so many people in an email. I'd prefer to see your faces, but I'll take what I can get. This week was Home MTC, and even though I am super grateful to start my mission at home and with my family, I don't get many chances to hang out, talk, or even see my family. These three-hour Zoom sessions are chock-full of language learning and spiritually refining lessons. They are awesome but exhausting. On a more exciting note, I'm convinced my district is made up of the most amazing people ever! The sisters in my ward are some of the strongest and funniest people I have ever met. I know that my MTC experience is going to go by a lot faster and a lot smoother just because of them! My Mongolian is coming along nicely. I can now read and conjugate verbs into the past tense, which now that I'm typing it out seems like a small thing, but I had to de-Frenchify my accent, which would make me sound Russian instead ...