Week #1: The England MTC

Hi!!!!!

First of all, THANK YOU SO MUCH for all your wonderful emails! Mom, I love the whole every day kind of thing! If that gets too hard and it's too busy, that's totally fine, I'd love to get long emails too, but it was great to just have emails of whenever you were thinking about me and to have lots to open! And Dad, the advice you shared was beautiful, I loved what you said about the MTC! And thank you for telling me about (my cousin) Taylor! I've been thinking about him and praying for him all week, I'm so excited for him!!!!

So I figured I'd start out by answering Mom's questions! I love it here! England is BEAUTIFUL and the accents are awesome and I LOVE the rain! We don't go outside much, but they're actually a lot more relaxed about that than the Provo MTC is! Oh! Zach/the Brousseau's! I met Sister Bradley on the first day and actually sat next to her on the plane ride to Manchester! She's super nice! 

So I had the opportunity of being in a trio! My two companions were Sister Mejean and Sister Zimmerman! Sister Mejean is from Lyon, France and I really love her a lot! I got to practice some French with her and my accent has improved like a zillion times because I spent 24/7 with her! Oh, and I even started to memorize the first vision in French, but I need the rest! Dad, could you send those scriptures to me? But anyways, she is so so sweet and full of the Spirit! Also, I don't know if this is French, but she has so so many facial expressions, it was really easy to get a good reaction from her! But! She's going to the Pheonix, Arizona mission! And she's had Visa problems, so she'll actually be serving in the Paris mission until her Visa comes! So she left yesterday and I am so sad..... It seems so crazy to me that she has already left and I hadn't even really told all of you about her! She'll be a lifelong friend though, I know I was supposed to meet her! And Sister Zimmerman! She's from Roy, Utah and she's really nice! She took debate in high school, so she's very eloquent. And she has a powerful testimony! It's just the two of us now, so it's kinda weird to wander around wondering where my other companion is!

My district is AWESOME! We have two elders from Utah, one from Germany, one from Columbia, one from Spain, and one from India! And my teachers have been from Spain, Germany, and Ireland! So I am surrounded by all different kinds of accents and personalities! It's so fun to learn about their cultures and I just really love all of them! There are some people with British accents here, but they're mostly just from all over! There are definitely tons of Utah missionaries though, so I'm not that unique.

I have mostly everything I need! I forgot socks, so I'll have to buy some of those, but other than that, I'm getting by! I actually got a couple of new name tags already!! They took care of the misspelled ones right away! But I'm keeping one of them because I just think it's funny!

My MTC president is President Preston, which is funny because this is the Preston MTC! He and his wife are very very British and they used to be the mission president for the Manchester mission! Super cool spiritual people, I love them! Oh! And Shaquille Walker, the track star from BYU (https://www.mormon.org/me/c58k) got to come and speak with us with his wife! They served in the Preston's mission, so that was super cool!

So one crazy thing, everyone loves football (soccer) here!  So I've been playing with the elders and my companion and I have a huge bruise on my thigh from blocking a ball! But I have the two Spanish elders in my district and Elder Calle came and told me that I was the best defender out of everyone that was playing, so that made me feel really good! :)

I have four people in my room now, we used to have five! The other companionship are the sister training leaders, so that's super fun!

Spiritual experiences! So we got to watch Elder Holland give a devotional and my favorite thing that he said was that if we're teaching by the Spirit, then Heavenly Father, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost will testify of YOU as a missionary! I think that's so amazing! Mostly I've learned that I am truly a representative of Jesus Christ and I have a responsibility to teach people in the way that the Savior would teach them. Oh! And we had our first little "baptism!" Our investigator decided to be baptized, so that was really special! It was my MTC teacher, but I can promise that the Spirit in the lessons you teach at the MTC is very real!

We haven't been able to go to the temple because it's closed until next week, but it's beautiful! We've walked around the grounds. And! Elder Chilpagiri in my district from India will be going through for his first time with us, I'm so excited!!

My favorite part about the MTC is the Spirit that's here! I've had some hard days, but the teachers are amazing, they're so in tune! So it's really cool to see how they answer my prayers and how the Spirit can testify to me so much while we're here! I love it here so much!

I love you and miss you all!

-Sister Brousseau

Oh, and this is the address for sending packages while I'm in the field!

51 Spylaw Road
Edinburgh
Scotland EH10 5BP
United Kingdom