Hello family!!
Someone once told me that at the MTC, the days feel like weeks and the weeks feel like days. SO TRUE. The days are ridiculously long and it doesn't help that we spend more than half of that day in a classroom that was once a Raintree apartment bedroom (Eldon, it's room 349 if you remember where that is!). But this week has been flying by! I can't believe it's already Thursday.
I love the West Campus. Things are super chill here. We stay in WyView apartments. There are only four of us in one apartment! So it isn't cramped at all. My companion is Ode Holdaway. She's from Chandler, Arizona. I actually met her a couple of months ago because we were both going to school at BYU. She studied English there. The other two sisters are Oed Farnsworth and Jarvis. Ode Farnsworth is from Provo and Ode Jarvis is from Ohio. We all get along really well. There are only two elders that are going to Estonia with us! Vanem Peterson and Vanem Rumbaugh. We love them. It took us all a while to get to know everybody because we're all quiet, but we're building a lot of district unity and we all like each other and have fun together.
I don't know too much Estonian yet... we're part of a pilot program thing. Instead of diving into the language and teaching a lesson in Estonian the second day we're there, we're focusing much more on teaching skills... which means teaching in English. We've been teaching an "investigator" for the past week now. Tomorrow is our last day with him before we start teaching in Estonian! I'm really grateful for the time we've had to focus on teaching by itself without the stress of trying to say something the right way with all the correct grammar and stuff. But we did have our first contacting experience in Estonian, role-playing with our teacher, Ode Christopher. It went like this... "Hi... how are you? Ok. Cool. We're missionaries. We believe in [shared testimony]. Do you pray? [Handed her a Book of Mormon] Mormoni Raamat... [point at it] you pray? Bye!" Yeah. It's coming.
We say all of our prayers in Estonian now. I love it. We have this sweet little blue grammar book that makes soooo much sense. We're all kind of in love with it. The food here isn't all that great. Breakfast: muffin and orange juice. Lunch: Salad (alternating between two different kinds). Dinner: some type of meat with rice that isn't all of the way cooked. Every day. It's grrrreeeaaatt. For gym time, there isn't a lot of things available either. There's basketball, volleyball, and foursquare. So guess what we do? Foursquare. My foursquare bouncing-balls-
For P-day today, we got to go to the temple! It's the last time we'll get to go before it closes for six weeks. We're all hoping we'll be able to go before we head out! We went with our zone. In our zone, there are the Finnish, Hungarians, and Albanians. The Albanians are coming here next week! We're excited to meet them. Oh, and I saw Bro. Merrill, an old professor of mine, at the temple! Afterward, Ode Holdaway and I went to the main campus to go to the bookstore. It was weird. First, we noticed how friendly everyone is at the west campus. At west campus, we all smile and say hi in our languages and stuff. At main campus, we'd say hi, in English, and they'd just look at us. Weird. I'll stick with west campus. We went to the bookstore. I bought an Estonian hymnbook. There are only about fifty songs in there. And I saw Dennis Lindberg from the BYU bookstore!
Not sure what else to say... things are good. Oh, the broadcast on Sunday was great! I saw Sis. Turner! Mama, if you want to know more, ask Sarah. The story is included in her e-mail. On Tuesday, we had a devotional. The speaker was Janice Kapp Perry. I had always pictured as some serious, stiff old lady. Oh no. She is so quirky and funny. Her husband was there too and goodness, the two of them put together was so great.
I have learned a ton since I've been here! It's crazy to think that it's only been a little over a week. I'm a much better teacher and my love and knowledge for the gospel has grown so much. I love you all! Write me! Letters are seriously the best things ever.
Love,
Ode Chestnut
P.s. Sorry, no photos yet! I couldn't figure things out on this laptop... hopefully next week!
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