Sister Crane's first week in the MTC

Hi all!

The MTC is AMAZING! seriously! I love it. Don't get me wrong it's hard and each day I wake up and say to myself, "I want to be here, and I want to work hard." but it is wonderful! My companion is Sister Hudson! A blessing straight from God. She's from London, England (so pretty much awesome) and she graduated from a Drama school doing Stage Managing. So we hit it off from the start. She is so funny and gets my humour completely. She makes fun of me for saying awesome all the time and I make fun of her for saying things like "ground breaking" who says that? haha but she is so fun. She is more laid back than me and I am you know, very down to the rules, so we help balance eachother out. I love my district. These Elders are hillarious. I got a calling. Ya besides the one I already have to be a full time missionary. I am the coordinating sister. I work with the Zone Leaders and I welcome in new sisters and I help keep the residence halls organized. So far I've been to 3 meetings for it and boy oh boy do I feel humbled. Teachers are amazing. Brother Adams is phanominal. He gets into the doctrine really deeply. He says we have to understand complexity before we can teach with simplicity. I feel like I'm in a BYU religion class when he teaches and he oddly reminds me of Jeff in a lot of ways. Which I like because it feels like home away from home.

Food isn't so bad, I didn't have an appetite for the first couple of days, but once you start working you want to eat. Traci I haven't gotten a hot pocket from the vending machines yet but I suppose there's still time. :) We went to the temple today. Amazing! Seriously I walk outside and forget that I'm a missionary sometimes. I have to keep pinching myself. I wish I could explain it. I feel so blessed and so at peace and I love this place. I'm so excited to teach and to open my mouth and talk to everyone I meet. We had our first "investigator" where we practice. Her name is Janice and she's the sweetest old lady. And we did awesome. For the first time I felt like I can do this! It's so hard not to think of home though. I've seen Taylor Willardson and Clark Petersen, they both work here and I know them from home and school and I've seen a few other friends. I love it, but it's hard not to think about home the rest of the day after seeing someone I know. The devotionals are amazing. Gene R. Cook came and I almost died from excitement. OH I wish I could write everything I was feeling so you could know how happy I am but maybe by the judge of all my exclamation points you'll get it. :)

The work is hard. And it's hard to stay focused and work the best I can. I struggle with feeling like I'm using every minute I can to be the best I can, but I know it will come with practice. I'll send pictures by mail, I can't figure out how to do it on these comps yet. Thank you for your prayers and thank you for being so supportive. I'm glad I don't have to keep a secret anymore about the talent show video for the reunion. I hope you liked it. I totally tried explaining some of it to my comp. she didn't get it. haha. I wish I had more time to write. All I can say is, the Lord loves us. He loves His children so much. More than we know. He wants ALL of them to return to him and I need to do all I can to make that possible. The gospel is true! Joseph Smith was a prophet and Thomas S. Monson is the prophet today! I love you all! Keep writting it gives me such inspiration and helps me keep going each day. Know that I'm safe, you are in my prayers, and that I am where I am supposed to be!

Love,
Sister Crane