First full email from the MTC

Heath bars, dork dots, and your new southern friend

Hello everybody! I can't believe I've been in the MTC a week it has flown by but I have loved every second if it. When I got here they handed me all sorts of stuff including my name tag which I took a picture of because it made me so happy, and then I went and met my district. Most of them are from the south and have southern accents and I'm now talking in one out of habit, I even think in a southern accent. I didn't even notice until one of the elders pointed it out to me haha. We had big orange dots on our name tags the first day (dork dots as they call them) and turns out it's a big thing in the MTC to yell "Welcome to the MTC!!!" So we were being shouted at from the very first day, ah mission life.

Our zone here is great but not as great as my district we have gotten so close the last week it breaks my heart to know we probably won't see each other again....the elders are the best, but we unfortunately don't spend as much time with them. We went on a temple walk to the Provo temple on Sunday and had the best time, and today we get to actually go do an endowment session, I can't wait.

The other day my companion, Sister Heath, flushed the toilet and it didn't stop flushing for 10 minutes and I don't know why but I was laughing so hard, we all laugh really hard in class too and I love it, I'm so happy here. my companion is great but we have very different teaching styles. I always thought that a mission was for personal scripture study and improving ourselves in the gospel but they teach you to focus on finding scriptures that can help your investigators, there's not much time for anything but thinking of others :) We are teaching three people right now, and even though some of them are actors there's a very good possibility that two of them are real investigators so we do our very best. I LOVE talking about the plan of salvation, and I had an in depth lesson with two of my elders, Elder Ridgewell and Elder Hatch, as practice and they said I did a phenomenal job and answered some of there real questions. It was a good break for me to talk in depth about the gospel rather than talk about the basics which is what we have to do for our investigators, but It's good for me to go back and talk about the basics again, I'm not too bad teaching it!

I miss wearing baseball caps almost everyday but there is nothing I would want more than to be right where I am right now. It also helps that the Lord has reassured me again and again that this is the right place for me right now :) I'll send pictures when I'm out in the mission field, the computers here don't allow it and sorry for the long email but the first week is pretty busy ;) I miss y'all and I love letters and emails so be sure to write me and let me know how life is :) 

I don't want to sound like I don't love you guys because I think of you everyday, but I haven't gotten homesick once and I think it's because like you said we were all wayyyy nervous and the Lord has told me this is where I need to be, he doesn't want me anywhere else. The other night I woke up leaning against the corner of my bed upright 4 or 5 times because I dream all night every night that I'm falling asleep in class, the night and the day sort of mesh at this point ;) 

We sang called to serve when we first got here and MAN it was powerful. I don't usually get moved by music but I did then. Sacrament meeting here as also SO spiritual, I LITERALLY felt the spirit HIT me. I was thinking in my head holy cow I can't handle that sort of emotional spirituality all at once haha. Also we pray so much. Like I love praying but we pray SO much hahaha. The teaching method has been hard for me because they tell you that anything you teach has to lead back to them feeling the spirit and for somebody like me that has a hard time doing that, I would rather tell them about the three witnesses and Joseph Smiths evidence he was a prophet etc. it's hard but I'm learning humility by restarting with things I've been taught my whole life. Gym time is sacred and we all live for it some days, we even wear our name tags to gym which I love because my name tag is so fun to see with my name on it and all. 

I love y'all and can't wait to hear from You again <3 I also love getting letters in the mail

Love,

Sister Bowen