Wednesday, August 21, 2013


KAMUSTA! (That means hello in Tagalog.)
It's so nice to email!! It feels soo good! YAYA!!

Well I made it to the MTC! I never thought I would since this whole thing feels so unreal all the time. There's a lot to say but since I only have an hour, I'll keep it short.. ish.
First off... The MTC is so hard. It's so much harder than I expected. My first day was super overwhelming, and I had really tired eyes from crying so much! At the end of the day I was definitely ready to go to bed. My first day consisted of meeting my companion, wandering trying to find everything, laguage class, and everyone constantly saying "Welcome to the MTC!". It was really stressful the first day of class because I was about 2 hours late to class that started for the earlier arriving missionaries at about 12:30. My kasama had already been there for 2 hours, and when I got there, they had already started language instruction. STRESSFUL.. For real. I have never felt so overwhelmed in my whole life. I honestly had no idea what was going on. Our teacher, Sister Scott was speaking Tagalog the entire class. All I could think about was "what the heck am I doing here?" and "did I really just say goodbye to my pamilya for 18 months?" After a long day of language class, we were able to have some time to get settled in our rooms. Our room has six beds and two little desks... My companion Sister Burt was kind enough to let me have the bottom bunk.. She is in real good shape and walks so fast. I honestly am sweating everytime we walk anywhere. Maybe I will tell her to slow down. HAHA! Sister Burt is 20 years old from Maryland, she has traveled a lot to places like Germany, New Zealand, and even lived there away from her family for a few months! She is soooo incredibly sweet to me. We balance each other really well. 
The food is pretty good, but a lot of it has Gluten in it so it's hard to pick things that don't but, I honestly feel like we eat so soon! The time between meals is so short and I feel like we are either in class or in the cafeteria haha. Mostly the cafeteria. My apartment is nice, I've seen SOOO many high school friends which is kind of nice since I don't know anyone. Our district is super tiny, there are only like 16 of us. We met our Branch Pres on thursday night and had a little zone conference together. Pres Anderson is SOOOO STRICT!!! Holy cow as soon as we sat down for zone conference, He was already telling us that we needed to shape up and look more like missionaries, especially the elders!! Haha it was kind of funny and stressful at the same time because we all shared about ourselves and our testimony but as soon as the first elder stood up to share, Pres Anderson said, "Elder Creager, button your two top buttons. Tell us one eternal truth and that's all we need to hear from your testimony." HAHA AWKO TACO.... Everyone literally sat stiff as a board with wide eyes the entire time. There aren't very many sisters going to San Pablo, in fact, all six of us girls that are staying together in one room are going to San Pablo. It's nice because we are getting really close and feel like a family. I will include some pictures of us together so everyone can see our beautiful faces :)

Sleeping has been difficult since it takes me so long to fall asleep since I think about home, and feelings of discouragement start to hit me. Honestly, I am not going to lie..... I feel super discouraged, and even weighed down. This language is hard, and on top of that I feel the need to not only become a good missionary but a good missionary in the language of Tagalog. It's hard to satisfy and build up both parts because there's so much language I don't know... It's easy to want to give up and there have been days this week that I honestly have looked out the window of my classroom and thought to myself what I would rather be doing or what I think other people I care about are doing.... But then I will have little experiences that make me feel better. I feel like my prayers aren't really being answered, but I will keep trying and keep praying my little heart out and although my first few days here have been extremely discouraging and hard, I believe that God knows me. I believe that I can tell Him how I'm feeling, and He will help me. It's hard not to think about what I could be doing or what others are doing since we literally are fenced off from the rest of the world, but I know I will eventually get used to it. It's a very hard transition though, and I literally at times feel the tears well up in my throat and eyes. But, since the day I have been with mi kasama Sister Burt, she has been so awesome at talking to me and being positive and hard working. I love her so much!!!! We honestly are so similar and balance each other's strengths and weaknesses.
SO. Here's some spiritual stuff. Here at the MTC they have investigators that help you practice teaching lessons. SO for our lesson our investigator is named Ramir Accordo. He told about himself in a little video for us to watch so we can start teaching him. He is struggling with his family, his wife is inactive but he believes in God. He doesn't want to be Mormon, but he wants to listen to the missionaries... BAPTISM IN PROGRESS I TELL YOU. Seriously, this guy will get baptized after my and Sister Burt are done teaching him!!! We know it. Anywayssss so we had to plan our first lesson and teach it in TAGALOG. NO INGLES PEOPLE. I seriously almost peed my pants when Sister Scott told us that.. We had literally only been in the MTC for like 24 hours and we already had to teach a lesson in Tagalog. UGHUGHUGHGUH!!!
Sister Burt and I sat down during personal and companionship study and we literally planned the entire lesson together in all Tagalog. It was DANG hard let me tell you!! But, our first lesson our hearts wanted soooo badly to reach out to him, and for him to feel the spirit and teach what he needed. We prayed like 3 times that day that our lesson would help Ramir, and he was constantly on our mind. We started planning our lesson, and we decided to go ahead and teach about how to pray to Heavenly Father and how he can help us through our trials. We got through planning the entire lesson and felt sooo excited to teach him! Our lesson was soo planned out and put together and we felt like he would feel the spirit. We got to our lesson and we were so nervous but we could tell that he was attentive and listening to us. Then I started teaching him how to pray and I didn't know how to ask him to pray so I just looked at Sister Burt and said "Alrighty then.... I'll say the closing prayer." HAHA AWKWARD... Seriously I had to say the whole thing in English because I didn't know how to pray in Tagalog... haha oh geez... We will try better with our next lesson.
As I said, this week has been really incredibly hard for me... but today we were planning our 2nd lesson and we decided that we were just feeling frustrated and Sister Burt had the thought to walk around the MTC for a bit while we waited to do laundry and email our pamilya's. So we walked around for an hour and just talked about our mission decisions and how we decided to go.. Anyway, Sister burt asked me about mine, and as soon as I started talking about my experience I felt the spirit in my heart and the tears welled up inside me. I don't know why that happened, but I definitely felt the spirit in our conversation. It lifted my spirits a little bit and I felt a little better. I may not feel ok yet, and I may not know the language, but my faith is being tried and I need to just take it one day at a time. I'm tired, scared, and overwhelmed and discouraged, but I know that God knows us. He knows exactly what we are going through. I take comfort in knowing that I can pray and tell him EVERYTHING. I challenge you all anyone and everyone to do just that. You may not know everything, you may feel more discouraged than you ever have in your entire life. But pray to God. Tell him everything. Be honest and accept what you're going through, because He knows. He loves us soooo much more than we could ever imagine.
I love you guys. I love the spirit I have felt here. I may not have it all figured out, but hopefully with time I can start feeling like a missionary.
Until next Saturday,
Paalam!! :)
xoxo, Sister Seastrand

1 comment:

  1. YAY! I have been checking every day for a new post. =) You guys are so clever to do this. Thank you for sharing with us.

    She's being too hard on herself. She's doing great. I can't believe they taught in Tagalog their first day. Talk about hastening the work!

    I thought her comment about not feeling like her prayers are being answered was interesting. I felt that way MANY times on my mission. I think I wanted Him to just take away my discouragement or make me instantly fluent or whisper which street we should proselyte on...or...so many different wishes. =)

    It's part of the experience, though. He is listening and He is strengthening her. She will become a little more "missionary" each day. She may not even see it in herself or realize it, but when she comes home, she will know it. I'm so excited for her.

    Are they REALLY teaching investigators in their practice? Our "investigators" were members who volunteered to let us practice on them. We did some chat and phone conversations with people who requested to speak to missionaries about church literature or movies, but...WOW, WOW, WOW! To actually TEACH an investigator. That's so neat.

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