July 28, 2011

Here is Brittany's e-mail home from today. She sounds like she is doing REALLY well and loving her mission so far. She only has a couple more weeks in the MTC. Hopefully before she leaves she'll send us some pics of her companion and MTC experience. Enjoy! ~


Hi!

I hope you are all doing well! Thank you so much for all the emails, dear elders, letters, scribbles, everything. I love that I still feel very connected. Anyways, thank you for all the love! Especially thank you for all of your encouragement and advice and everything this past week. My district thinks I'm the most popular person in the world, but it's really just that I have a very, very supportive family. Mom, my entire district looks forward to seeing me receive your "diary entries" each night. Haha, but really, I love having mail to look forward to each day, it makes all the difference.

I now realize that I probably sounded really stressed out in my last email, which was true. But I'll have you know that I'm doing 100% better. Hermana Lamb and I are doing great. Last Thursday night, we had a good ol' "companionship inventory", and talked out a lot of things. That night was my hardest night in the mission thus far, but things are so much better now. Hermana Lamb has really made an effort to make a lot of improvements, and I've been trying to do the same. I've noticed a huge change in her, probably in me, and in our companionship. Now, we're doing really great, and tension is gone. So, moral of the story: Communication, Forgiveness, and a Willingness to Change can make any relationship work!

So, I think the only question I got from you all is via Stewart Barcenas, wondering if I've gained weight. Hahahhaa. I'm happy to report that I have not noticed a weight gain, I'm stickin to my garden salads and elliptical trainer during gym time. Eric, I loved that you talked about the OJ in the MTC...several of the members of my district have fallen victim to it, while others claim that it makes no difference. I prefer to stay out of that argument.

So, one thing that I'm still lovin about the MTC is how much studying we get to do. There's always more to be studying. I really feel like I've gotten to be very diligent in my studying, and I have a real desire to learn more and more. Most of the people in my district are leaving next week, so some people are getting a little MTC trunky, but I'm trying to stay focused. This past week I've been focusing my study (in addition to PMG) on the books of Enos, Ether, and JSH. I love the book of Enos! He does such a great job of describing the Atonement.

The highlight of the MTC is all the great firesides and devotionals. Our fireside on Sunday night was one of my favorites. The speaker is the president of the missionary department, and he focused his entire talk on showing mormon ads! He used teh different catch phrases to teach us important lessons as missionaries. I loved it. My faves: "It's not who you aren't, it's who you are." and "When everything says you can't, believe in the part of you that says you can". He told us that that part of us is the godlike part, that is the Spirit. He focused a lot of being who we are, and using our mission to become the person we never in our wildest dreams imagined we could become. He encouraged us to ask God who He wants us to be, and what our full potential is. He also talked about Cultures, and how we all have been born in different cultures, and now we need to try to adjust to the MTC and mission culture. SO that was awesome. Then Tuesday we had a devotional, and the speaker really described the mission experience well...the most wonderful awful experience you'll ever have. He talked about the sanctification process, and gave us a list of like 20 different synonyms for "sanctified". He talked about the gift of the holy ghost, and how we all have it, but we have to work hard to RECEIVE it. Also, from these devo's and firesides, I have a newfound love for the song "Come Come Ye Saints". I love the line that says "WHy should we think to earn a great reward, if we now shun the fight?" It really applies to missionary work. Currently my fellow district members are taking pictures of me stressing out over this email, I'm flipping over my notes and trying to find out what I want to tell you. Hahaha. So after the devotional on Tuesday night, we had our district review, which was also awesome. Hermana Lamb bore her testimony really strongly about how she believes her grandpa will rejoin the church while she's on her mission. We talked about it for a while afterwards, and I'm just amazed at her faith. She has so much faith, and so much confidence in the Spirit and the impressions she receives from Heavenly Father. It's really cool, something I hope to learn from her.

In other news...I dropped my roommate's camera off my bunkbed the other night, and she opened up the back of the camera to try to fix it, and proceeded to get electrocuted, twice, by her camera. Hahaha. I felt really bad, but it was pretty funny.

Also, the world continues to be extremely small, and I still feel very connected to LC/BYU. I still haven't seen Rudy, BUT I have seen Carolyn Meza (twice!), and Jenni Stott and her boys (I was surprised sbhe remembered me). Also, this afternoon I was getting some immunization stuff done, and the lady goes "Sister Fors, is Dennis your father?" And i said "Yes, who are you?" And she said "You look just like him, I'm Susan Merrill." Dean Merrills sister! So we chatted for a bit, she says hello. I also got the opportunity to host the new sister missionaries on Wednesday. That was really fun, I got to help 3 sisters get settled in. After hosting my first one, I returned to the station and I saw JAMIE MORGAN walk up! So we both freaked out, and then I got to host her. So I helped her move in and get her books and stuff, and she's in the room right around the corner from me, so we'll be seeing eachother a lot. So all of those, plus lots of people from BYU, help make me feel right at home.

Also, yesterday I got a package from Brent Peterson! Him and Noralyn sent me a fresh apple pie from dear elder! That was SO nice of them, I sent them a thank you note but tell them thanks again.

Mom and Dad, I have a friend, Hermana Olivo, heading to the LA Visitor's Center. She's from the DR and NYC, so look out for her, she's awesome.

Today my district and I went to the temple for the first time. It was great! I loved going to a different temple, the Provo temple is really pretty.

So yeah, things are going great. Thank you so much for everything. I'm learning so much, my spiritual thought for you would be to learn more about who God wants you to be, and learn more about how you can receive the power you need from Him. That's something I'm working hard to learn how to do...if we do our part, we'll be able to do what it takes to make it happen. I love you guys, I'm sorry these are always so incredibly scattered...just know that I'm happy and healthy and loving the mish.

Love,
Hermana Fors!

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Brittany's email from this past Thursday, July 21, 2011, is pasted below. One quick update: Brittany's MTC mailbox number has changed. The correct one is now:

Sister Brittany Elizabeth Fors
MTC Mailbox # 360
AZ-MESA 0920
2005 N 900 E
Provo, UT 84604-1793

Hi!

Here I am! Before I start, thank you for the letters and the dear elders and the emails and everything! So much!

Ok...so...this week. Well I'm definitely experiencing more of the up's and down's, I now have come to see why the MTC is known for being such a rollercoaster. I've definitely had some hard moments this past week, but some really rewarding ones as well. I think the defining lesson of my MTC experience (at least thus far) has been my relationship with my companion, and the lessons that she has taught me. My comp and I are pretty opposite in a lot of ways, which makes for some hard moments. So the key has been for us to learn how to have a great relationship that is based on something deeper than just similar pasttimes. Up until Sunday, I felt like we were really united, and I was feeling great about it. Then on Monday, stress started hitting, and that led us to having to put more effort into our relationship to make sure things are going well. I've realized that, at least for me and my personality, few things affect my attitude towards this mission experience as much as my relationship with my companion does. When things are going well, I'm feeling great. And when they're more stressful, I've realized I need to fix that ASAP so that I can have the right spirit with me.

The source of most of my struggles this week has been learning how to teach with the Spirit. I have to learn how to have faith in Christ, rather than just having faith in myself or in my talents. My comp is really really good at teaching with the Spirit. We're really different in that she likes to do as little lesson outlining as possible, and then she just wings it by the Spirit. At the beginning of this week, that totally stressed me out, because I felt like my Spanish wasn't good enough to "wing it" in that language yet. So we were stressing out, because I think we both have really high expectations for the quality of our lessons, and we just weren't in sync. But we've talked about it, and basically what it comes down to is I gotta just get better at striking the right balance in terms of preparing for lessons, and I'm working hard to just increase my faith and receptiveness to the Spirit, because that's what's going to make the difference. Any and all suggestions are welcome hahaha.

But Hermana Lamb has been a huge help, and really patient. I think we both realize that we're really different, but we both also realize that your comp relationship is key, so we're putting in a lot of effort to making sure we're unified in the Gospel. Seriously, it shows me the importance of just serving other people, complimenting other people, and praying with them to get a solid relationship. Even though I'm the "senior comp", I feel like in this past week she's been serving me a lot more. This has taught me a lot about charity...because I've thought about how charity is love not based on human relationships or friendships, but its based on the pure love, and gospel, of Jesus Christ. And it takes a lot of effort, but developing charity for someone is totally possible.

Other than Hermana Lamb, two other things have helped me a lot: STUDY and EXERCISE. Seriously, Darron, you mentioned how important exercise is, and I completely agree. I've never relied on exercise so much in my life hahahaha. Maybe I have a testimony of it now? Bahaha. And STUDY...well let's just say that Preach My Gospel is, to use the preferred missionary adjective, "Awesome!". It is such an inspired book. Hma Lamb and I have been studying Christlike Attributes this week, and seriously every time I study a different one, I'm like "THIS is the one that I need to develop to help me out! No THIS one is!" They're all so necessary for us to be happy and true disciples.

Ok so some highlights of the week. On Monday, we got a new elder in our district, which rendered our district pics at the temple the day before utterly useless. He's really cool, Elder Aldas, from Chicago and going to Chihuahua. The boys in my district in a lot of ways remind me of the boys from Tujunga...they didn't always consider going on a mish, but they made the decision and now they're going to be the best missionaries ever. So that day (Monday) another elder in my district got sent to the ER for some crazy food poisoning thing contracted from none other than the MTC CAFETERIA! Can't be trusted, I tell ya. So that was pretty sobering, but then he was basically good as new the next day. So Tuesday night we had a devotional, which was great. The emeritus seventy that spoke also SANG...and he sang "Donde Hay Amor, Tambien Hay Dios" and I LOVED IT. He also talked about our dear friend Parley P. a lot! But the song just taught me that it's only love that will make our message a reality, and will pierce the hearts of the people we're teaching. Love is the universal message, and without it we can't have Dios, we can't have the Spirit. So after the devotional, we came back and had a "district review", and our branch president was there with us. We went around bearing our testimonies, and then I was the third one to go, and next thing I know I'm all emotional, claro que si. So I bore my testimony of just love, and how it's so crucial, and how it's only through the Spirit that we can ever know anything of a certainty. The Spirit is the only testimony we can't deny. And I also mentioned Brother Gusman and how he called missionaries "angeles terrenales", and I testified of how I know we'll be angeles. So we were all emotional from there on out, including our branch president, and afterwards he spoke. And he told us that our district review was one of the most powerful ones he's ever been to in his 2+ years of service at the MTC. In our like 15-20 minutes of testimonies, he had written 3+ pages of notes. So that was pretty cool. We also had another member of our branch presidency come and speak to us on Sunday, and he talked about how there was a really good spirit in our district. He also spoke about how it was no coincidence that all of us are "bilingual", and how we were meant to have that gift. So that was pretty cool. Our district is really solid, the guys in our district are so great, and I love my fellow sis mish's.

Random things from this week: Hermana Jessica Garcia from the Tujunga ward was in my branch for the first week! She just left the MTC, but she's the one who ended up having to give her talk on Sunday :) So ya, that was great to see her, and she talked about how much she loves/respects you, mom and dad.

Also, according to an announcement over the intercom, there is an elder "Justin Beaver" in the MTC, and he was suppsed to report to the front desk. Especially over a raspy intercom, sounds strikingly similar to another Justin that I know of.

Gym time is really fun. One day, we played a great ab workout game of "Platano, superman!" Where you're laying down and make the shape of a banana, then flip over and make the shape of superman. We were all on the hill with our district leader yelling "PLATANO! SUPERMAN!" It was really funny.

There are a lot of hilarious moments here in the MTC. We laugh so much here, and it's normally during moments when we're not supposed to be laughing, specifically during prayers and/or hymns. You gotta do something I guess!

Anyways, I know this email is super duper jumbled with my thoughts, but just know that I love you all. I'm learning a lot about myself and how to become a better person, which will hopefully in turn help me to serve more people. While it's really hard at times, this is the experience that I asked for, and I'm really grateful for it. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers, I love you all so much!

Love, Hermana Fors

She's Alive!

Brittany sent her first email from the MTC today!! For those who don't know, Brittany is only allowed to e-mail her family one time a week, so we will post her emails on this blog for everyone to read how she is doing! She is allowed to receive and send snail mail for anyone not in her immediate family, so please send letters! :) Here is the first email for everyone to read:

Hola!

I'M ALIVE! And doing well. They let us have our first pday (preparation day) today (Saturday), and then from now on we will have them on Thursdays. So, I guess I'll just go ahead and tell you about my life for these last few days.

So on Wednesday you dropped me off, tear tear, and then I had a little "host sister" that showed me around. She took me to my room and got me situated, then took me to my class, where I met my companera and my district. Mi companera se llama Hermana Lamb. She is from Panama City, Panama! And I'm already finding myself using way too much Spanglish, if you can't already tell. So her parents are American, but she was born and raised in Panama, then came here for school. So she speaks both English and Spanish perfectly. We work really well together. The more we get to know eachother, the better I feel about our companionship. She's really hardworking and obedient, and she always has good ideas that she shares. I think it's good for me to have a native companion, I learn more about how the culture works, and I get to live with someone who speaks way too fast. She's really good, like I said, as each day goes by, we get better and better at working together. I think it'll be great. Also, she's serving in the Mesa visitor's center as well, so we'll be seeing a lot of eachother during these next 18 months.

The rest of my district is really great. We actually have more sisters than elders! Theres me and Hermana Lamb, then another companionship. In that companionship, one is from the DR, learning English, and the other one is from Georgia, learned Espanol in college like me, and they're both going to NYC North Spanish Speaking! They're both really sweet. Then we have a trio of elders. One is from Orlando and going to LA spanish speaking! The other is from New Mexico and is going to Quito. And the last is from Maryland and is going to Tijuana. They're all at least partially Latino, and have one or both parents who speak Spanish. They're really fun, we already get along great. I like my district already, and I know the closer we get, it'll get even better.

I've only met one of my teachers, his name is Hermano Arnold. I thought Ashley's husband, Stephen, was going to be my teacher, but they split up the district at the last minute, and I got the other teacher. Hermano Arnold is really good, and we'll have a sister teacher as well starting next week.

Que mas...Well one great thing is that I've seen LOTS of people here that I know! That always makes it great. I've seen Natalie Stevenson, Michael Slawson, Trisha Zemp, Caitlin Jolley, Andrew Bentz, Rebecca Carper, Jeralee Johnson, and others. That makes it really fun.

My Spanish has already improved a lot. I'm getting a lot faster at reading it, and my speaking is improving too. I'm still hoping to improve my understanding of native speakers more. But I figured that after 4 weeks, I'll hopefully have improved a lot more. I'm sooo lucky that I am serving in a language that I already know a bit. It would be so incredibly hard if I were here learning Russian or Korean. I got it pretty good.

So...let's talk about what I'm learning. Can you tell I'm a little scatterbrained? And I only have 13 minutes and 52 seconds more to write to you! AHHH! So the first night here was great. They had three older men come in who acted as investigators, and they would do a little role-play discussion, and then they would ask questions that us new missionaries would field. So these actors acted out parts of a diplomat from Haiti, a Japanese Buddhist living in Ogden, and a Catholic Italian who lost his wife. And they had the legit accents, so it made it very believable :) But it was so cool, as the night went on, you could just tell that the love that all of us missionaries had for them just grew and grew. Seriously, the last investigator was the Italian who lost his wife, and me and my companion were both just like "WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!!!" and different missionaries from the audience were testifying about how they had come to know that our families are eternal. It was really cool.

So, other than that, we mostly just do a lot of class and a lot of personal study. We have around 2-4 hours of personal study each day. Then we have 1 hour of companionship study that is during classtime. Then we have class for about 5-6 hours a day. During this time we're doing a lot of reading, a lot more of roleplaying. The roleplaying and practicing contacting/teaching is my favorite part, which makes me think that I will love my mission even more when I get out there. During my personal study, I read the missionary manual, and then I've been studying the first lesson, charity, and some other subjects. By orders of my branch president, I've also been memorizing 3 Nephi 15:3, the first vision, D&C 4, and our purpose. Todos en ingles y espanol tambien! We also all need to have a 5 minute talk prepared on a certain subject (tambien en espanol) for our branch meeting on sunday, and then 2 of us are picked to give our talk. This week's topic is the Atonement (no big deal, right?), so I've been studying that as well. Basically everyone I've talked to says that it gets "soooo much better" after the first Sunday, so I'm curious to see how tomorrow is :)

I'm working on being more bold. Example: Today Hermana Lamb and I taught our teacher a bit of the first lesson. And for various reasons, I like basically threw out the idea of baptism, on the first lesson, which is something I never would have done before hahahaha. My teacher was kind of like "Wellll I don't want to take it too fast" haha but it turned out fine. It was funny. I don't know what else to say...I know you always love to hear what I think about the food, and let me just tell you that it is NOT the same as the Cannon Center! The Cannon was way better :) Hahaha but the food is still totally good. Que mas...I'm finding myself whistling hymns a lot. Seriously...I've gotten to that point. Hahaha, WHAT IS BECOMING OF ME!?!?! Just kidding.

I think that's about all. I'm doing really well. Thank you for all of your prayers! Write me so I can hear how you're doing! Hope you're all doing great, thanks for everything. I'm really quite surprised at how perfectly content I've been here...maybe that means I just need to stretch myself more. But I think I'm making good progress, I'm learning lots and lots about missionary work, which I love. Thanks for everything! Te quiero!

Love,
Hermana Fors

And She's Off!

Hermana Fors left on Wednesday, July 13, to Provo, Utah, where she will stay at the Missionary Training Center (MTC) for 4 weeks, learning Spanish and teaching skills. Reports from those onsite at the 'goodbye' say she didn't shed any tears and kept a smile on her face the whole time. Unlike her dad, who described the goodbye as "open heart surgery" :( We will all miss her but are so excited for her!

She would LOVE to receive any letters from her friends and family! Please write to her! The address until mid-August is:

Sister Brittany Elizabeth Fors
MTC Mailbox # 108
AZ-MESA 0920
2005 N 900 E
Provo, UT 84604-1793

And for some pics of the stylish sister and her final adieu, or 'adios':

Uncle Spencer and Aunt Debbie

Trisha Honey, good family friend

The four cutest friends ever. Brittany has known Chantal, Chelsea and Sadie her whole life.

And last, but not least:

Dad & Mom

The goodbye at the MTC was fast and efficient, no time for long hugs and sobbing tears, which is probably for the best. Mom & Dad pulled the car up to the front of the MTC, two friendly boy missionaries greeted them and took Brittany's suitcases and then there was only enough time to snap a photo of her getting escorted inside.

She looks ready, doesn't she?!

Going to the Los Angeles Temple

Before leaving on the mission, Brittany went to the Los Angeles LDS Temple with her family.

How cute is she?!

Just Mesa-in' Around!

[On a scale of 1 to Tillamook, how cheesy is that title?]

Oh hey!

In case you missed the memo, I'm starting this blog in an effort to keep you posted on my whereabouts these next 18 months. About where will I be, you ask? Well let's break it down...

Who? Me, Brittany Elizabeth Fors.

What? A mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

When? July 13, 2011-December 2012

Where? Mesa, Arizona, in the Mesa LDS Temple Visitors Center, speaking español.

Why? There are many reasons, but when you boil it all down, my motivation is this: The best way to make others happy is to share with them what makes you happy, true? True. And nothing makes me happier, nor brings more peace to my life, than learning about and living the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So my hope is that my serving a mission will make others happy, will make my Heavenly Father happy, and will continue to make me happy...it's a win-win-win.

While I'm gone, stay tuned for weekly roundups (posted here, via my family), all about how I'm navigating through the likes of the MTC, 120 degree weather, and orthopedic shoes. I already know it's gonna be real, real great.

I LOVE YOU ALL!