7.24.2012

Why hello familamily....

What is going on?! I have loved getting all your letters and dear elders and emails! It makes my day everytime and I am sure that is how it will be for the rest of my mission as well. Well I just got out of a 9 hour medical training...yes on P-day of all days (8-5). I am SO tired. We had a couple 5 minute breaks and 40 minutes for lunch and the rest was in a chair lecturing from a powerpoint with a manual in front of us with 105 pages of front and back slides. The doctor that trained us was Dr. Wooley that is the doctor over all of the MTC's world wide. Him and his assistant seemed to get off track alot, and tell dry jokes i.e. "Shakespeare wrote about Tuberculosis in his Hamlet play when he said "TB or not TB... that is congestion" So it was a little bit of a long day, but they had lots of intersting information. There were 2 other sisters going to be nurses in Guatalmala and the other El Salvador mission (San Salvador) and then 4 doctors with their wives going to various places. So trying to bridge the gap between what docs vs. nurses need to know was difficult sometimes but I think I got some solid information. They gave us a "retail 150 dollars" (or so they say) medical kit. Who knows if I will be able to fit that in my bag....leaning towards probably not but I guess we will see. I wish I could write more but they give you no time seriously!

Anyway so I fly out to the Guat MTC on Tuesday at 8:30 from SLC. My companion Dansie and I are getting a little nervous. Crazy that it's in a week. Just barely when I opened my email I had an email from the mission president's wife saying how excited they were for me to come and how they were waiting for me. That was way sweet, got me excited again. So much happens during the week that it is literally impossible to tell you everything I want to but I will try to tell you a few things that happened this week that I thought were special.....So my comp and I are still teaching our (fake) progressing investagitor Mari and we had a lesson last week that I probably felt the spirit the strongest of any of our lessons so far. We were teaching her how to pray and why prayer is important in our broken Spanish but I could just feel the spirit so strong that I knew this was what she needed even if she couldn't understand anything we said, she could at least feel it. So she taped a video for our district as an investagor (shes actually one of our 4 teachers) and in the video she was talking to all 10 of us, generally, but one part stood out to me and I wrote it down- she said "Even though I couldn't understand a lot of what some of your were saying, I could feel how what you were trying to teach me, meant the world to you and it made me want to feel so strongly about something like you did so thats why I keep inviting you back." A couple days later I was meeting with her individually for a teacher student planning session or something that she does with everyone and I told her about how strongly I had felt the spirit that very last time we had taught her, and she said "I want to read you something I wrote in my journal" and then she proceded to say the exact thing that I had heard from the video and wrote down. The spirit it seriously amazing and works in SO many different ways.

One last quote Jeffrey R. Holland "Your first convert will always be yourself." Remember this, it doesn't just apply to missionaries but everyone....you can't bring others to the gospel if you aren't there yourself. I loved that, I hope you do too.

Love you all and am so grateful for everything you do for me......all the support and love is felt here is the Provo CCM. Can't wait to hear from everyone!

xoxo- Lyndee

7.17.2012

Fam....
So this is timing me and I have to be quick because I only have 30 minutes! So I don't even know if I am sending it to the right email addressed because I realized I don't have yours and you don't have mine...so hopefully this gets to someone! This week has been hmm....hard. All your Dear Elders have seriously been amazing. At almost every mail time I have something and the Elders think I have someone writing me because I always get something but I just said I have an awesome family which is true! I wrote home my first day but who knows if it got there. My companion is Hermana Dansie from Victor, ID and she is pretty sweet. We get along and have some good laughs everyday. There are two other sisters in our room that are in our district Hermana Ward and Hermana Sanchez. The first day we got here the teachers started speaking Spanish to us and then told us we were going to be teaching our first (fake) investgator on Friday. The teaching was..hmm...horrible. Kid you not we sat in silence for 5 minutes at a time just looking down and at our books and back at each other while the investigator would either say something in Spanish that we didn't understand or sit there and not say anything. So that was pretty sweet. The other thing is almost everyone in my district (10 of us- 4 sisters and 6 elders) speak some Spanish from high school or college except for me. Most can at least understand but I can't even do that. I can pick out a word here and there but seriously during our daily 3 hour class where our teacher, Brother Stoddard, teaches all in Spanish I maybe get 5% ish out of the class. All of church is in Spanish too so I don't catch things like "we are having a ward fast for an elder that is going in for an MRI on monday." I guess it's more than when I started but it's SO hard not to get frustrated when everyone around you is speaking it. There are so many things I want to say and express to our investagtor but I can't because of the language barrier so we rely a lot on the spirit to be able to tell her the things we can't and hope the little things we try to teach are testifying to her. It's hard, probably one of the hardest things I've done, but gotta keep on keeping on, ya know?

So I found out a couple days ago I will be heading to Guat MTC on just my passport I don't even need my visa! I leave on the 31st of this month. So about 2 more weeks-ish. My companion and I went to the Provo Police station today to get a clearence letter and said that was the last thing they needed so hopefully I will be heading out then. They also gave me my release date Jan 11th, 2014......exactly a year a half. Idk why they do that but whatevs. ha Hm what else the food? Not so great, it's okay but my companion and I get a wrap almost every lunch. Mom you would love those. I always think of tons of stuff I want to say during the week and now I can't remember a lot of it. Thanks again fam for all the support you're all so great. Regardless of how hard it is, I know it's the Lords work. He needs my help and knows I can do this, and that helps my confidence when I get down and discouraged. I pray for you guys everyday Love and miss you all! xoxo -Hermana Ahrendsen

See ya in 1.5 Lynd!

Hey everyone! Katie BFF here... :) Sister Lyndee Ahrendsen reports to the MTC tomorrow! We thought the easiest way for everyone to keep up on Lyndee's mission would be through this blog.. so I will post her letters and pics when she sends them. We're so proud of our favorite missionary.. Love you Lyndor! :)