20 May 2013

My trainer is Soeur Vidal she is Mexican from Quebec so she speaks fluent spanish and French and her english is really good but she definitely speaks like it is not her first language. I feel really blessed because she is the only native french speaker training this transfer. But I feel like it is hard to communicate with her.

Both Lyon and Montpeiler except Lyon has lots of trees and Montpellier has lots of palm trees. Go figure--I go halfway around the world and come to a place with the same climate as home!

My first day in our town we went to a relief society activity and I had no idea what anyone was saying. Oh and in case you were wondering, I got kissed a lot by the sisters. Its called "bees". They dont actually kiss just kinda touch cheeks anyways it seems that they normally do it three times.

Yesterday church was pretty good I didn't understand everything but I knew what was going on so it was a lot better than Saturday.

Also I have given into the powers of nutella. Had someone told me a long time ago that it tasted like ferro roche than i would have been eating it forever ago!

We have a couple of appointments today--one in english. Halleujah! And one in spanish. So I'll get to pick up some spanish as well as try to learn french. I think including this appointment today we have 3 spanish investigators.

One of our investigators is getting baptised this week. His name is Laury. I have had nothing to do with his conversion in case you were wondering.

Check this out my aparment is super old so the key to the front door is (no joke) a skeleton key!!! sweet, huh? I'll send you pictures soonish.

I've developed a montra in order for me to cope with being in France the are slight varriations depending on the day but it goes like this:

I am in Montpellier, France. I am on a mission. It will be awesome. 

17 May 2013 {Transfer 1: Montpellier, France}

This email was just recieved from Soeur Young's mission home.

Dear Missionary Family,

Here is a picture of  your daughter extraordinaire with her new companion.    Aren't they wonderful?

Sister Young’s trainer is Sister Vidal.

      Thank you,
      Sister Jeppson

First companion: Soeur Vidal

First Area: Montpellier, France. Its the blue dot almost on the coast

And I looked up her address on Google Street View.  Maybe its because I am a sheltered American girl, but its so adorable!

-Shayna

Safe Arrival in Lyon, France

This is an email recieved from Soeur Young's mission home.

Dear Parents,

We are happy to let you know your daughter arrived safely in Lyon.  She was met at the airport by President and Sister Roney.  After arriving at the Mission she had lunch, had her picture taken, took care of paperwork, and had an individual interview with President Roney.  Tonight she will have dinner with President and Sister Roney as well as the other missionaries that arrived today.  She will stay at a hotel in Lyon tonight.  Thursday she will meet her new companion who will be her Trainer. Then she will have training with President Roney and the Assistants to the President.  After the short training she will leave with her companion to go to her first area.  We will send you her address and companion's name sometime Friday.

Please see today's photo in the attachments.

Thank you for sending us such a fine young woman.

Sister Jeppson,
Mission Secretary

Soeur Young with Pres. and Sister Roney

The group.  You can't even tell they've been traveling for 24+ hours

-Shayna

France Bound

Soeur Young left the MTC early this morning headed to Chicago, then London, then LYON FRANCE!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update: We got to chat with Soeur Young this afternoon during her layover in Chicago! She sounds great! She mentioned a few stories I thought you'd appreciate!

-She said she met a sister from one of the Spanish branches in the Palmdale Stake that is headed to Portugal. She couldn't remember her name though. Small world!

-She warned that she's struggling with "Franglish" so speaking and writing may be messy in the future.

-As her group was leaving for the airport, the elders in her district who will be at the MTC for a few more weeks stood on the curb and waved to them as the bus drove out of site. The funny part was that the bus sat in the parking space for at least 15 minutes before they actually left, so these elders were propping their arms up on each other's shoulders waving until the bus was gone. It was really cool!

-One of the elders in her district is afraid of "girl hair", so Soeur Young started laying her hair on his shoes waiting for him to notice. At first, he thought it was Soeur Young's companion, Soeur Green, doing it, so he left her a pile of chest hair on her desk in the classroom. He soon realized it was Soeur Young's prank, so he filled her pens with his hair. She knew he was looking for a reaction and didn't give him one when she noticed the pens. And thus ended the hair war.

She appreciates the letters, prayers, and support.  Keep them coming!!!

6 May 2013

I was able to be a Host on Wednesday and help the incoming missionaries. That is pretty much the funnest thing I have done here! And I get to do it again this Wednesday. I make sure to stop by and talk to Sister Daniels every Wednesday too. She is funny. I didn't expect to see anyone I knew this last Wednesday but I saw a bunch of people (mostly people who look familiar but I wasn't quite sure who they were). One person I saw was my friend Keri Ralls(she was on my trip to the east coast a couple summers ago). She told me that she was reading my blog before she came and it made her excited to come to the MTC. That's pretty cool. I'm glad that people are reading it and getting something out of it.

So this week I discovered the "Narnia" holes in my dorm room.. My room is super lame and only has one decent ones. Our closets and fairly new so they don't have any where to hide stuff. I was able to explore thanks to my handy dandy multi tool. I only found 3 things: a weird picture of an elder flexing and two notes one note is dated 2000 and is signed Elder Young I thought that was pretty funny that I found that one.

I told all the sisters I hosted about Narnia holes and one of them told me that she explored hers and found some unwrapped jolly ranchers...gross. I have plans for what I will leave behind for the next adventurous soul.

Funny story. so one elder in the other French zone is the nephew of my stake president at school. President Cramer had told me about him. So I talked to this Elder a couple weeks ago about how I knew his uncle and stuff. Apparently he got my name mixed up and for the last 5 weeks has been calling me Sister Smith. I didn't really realize this until last week so on Wednesday I was finally able to correct him I think I embarrassed him a little...opps. Now he calls me sister smith everyone in a while just for fun....i think.

Oh yeah I got my travel plans this week. we leave the MTC at 730am fly from SLC to Chicago, Chicago to London, and London to Lyon. get to Lyon at 11am on Tuesday. There are about 30 missionaries going to Lyon and more than that going to Paris. Those going to Paris have a direct flight from SLC to Paris their flight leaves at 4pm and they land about the same time as we do. how weird is that?

-Shayna

5 May 2013

Here are some random stories that I wanted to send the family before I forgot.

I was the first person in my district to get to the MTC.  My teacher had me show everyone what to do once they got to the classroom.  I am so grateful I was able to understand all the French he was saying because I think I would have had some kind of panic attack otherwise.  I felt kind of weird on the shuttle ride to the MTC.  I was in a van full of other missionaries.  At one point, the driver asked where everyone was going.  I said mine last because I was sitting in the backseat with all of the luggage.  As soon as I said "France", everyone in the van (except the driver of course) gasped and turned to stare at me for a minute.  Kind of odd.

The first week was pretty rocky.  We didn't have a lot of class or much instruction at all about what to do or study so we studied a lot on our own. Our teacher didn't tell us what we were going to teach an investigator in French on that first Friday.  It was our zone leaders that told us so we scrambled to put something semi-coherent together without having any idea what we were doing. Yeah, that was not fun.  Then there was conference.  So our first weekend in the MTC, we spent a lot of it in the gym taking notes.  Those chairs are horribly uncomfortable for when you have to sit in the longer than an hour!

Three of the five sisters in my district have/had boyfriends right before they left.  All I can say is that it's not pleasant sometimes.  This is may be the one and only time I will say this, but I am fairly glad I didn't have much of a dating life before I came out.   

My friend Javin gave the opening prayer at devotional the other day, where Elder David E. Evans from the Missionary Department spoke.  That's way more intimidating than me giving a talk on my first Sunday! 

-Shayna

One More Week for MTC Letters!

This is Shayna, Kylee's sister. I've been busy, and constantly thinking I need to put a new post up this week, but my free time keeps running away from me. While I'm trying to catch said free time, I just wanted to remind everyone that Kylee is anxiously awaiting letters. You can get a letter to her by going to DearElder.com, putting in her MTC address, and type up that letter. If you submit it by noon Monday-Friday, she'll get it the same day. She only has one more full week at the MTC and letters won't be so cheap, easy, and quick to get to her, so take advantage of DearElder.com while you can!!

Here's her MTC address in case you forgot:
Sister Kylee Young
MTC Mailbox # 292
FRA-LYON 0514
2005 N 900 E
Provo, UT 84604-1793

And her expected departure date from the MTC is May 13, 2013.

She would love to hear from all of you!!

And expect to see more MTC stories in the next couple of days!