June 16, 2016

Hej! 

This is my second to last p-day in the MTC! If my visa comes (which it should!) then I will be off to Denmark early early early on the morning of the 27th, one week from Monday! WOW! Time flies when you spend all day studying. 

Thanks to everyone who sent Dear Elders to my friends (and to me). They are much appreciated. 

HAPPY FATHERS DAY to everyone - especially to my awesome Pablo. I don't know where I would be without him. Everyone make sure that you give your dads a lot of love every day, and maybe a little extra this weekend! 

So todays funny stories has a special guest... we call it rabies. 

Story time! About a week and a half ago, we came home to a few frantic girls from our floor panicking because there were a couple bats in their room when they got home. They called people to come and take them out, and everything was fine. Then, on Sunday morning at about 5:30 am, disaster struck. We hear  screaming start and then it slowly went away. Then we heard a couple male workers come up and they stay for a while and then they left. On their way out, I heard one of them say to another "yeah, we'll get them tested and have the whole thing sorted out in a couple days..." Fast forward 2 days. I get home and I decide that I am going to do some investigating about the 'bat girls' as we affectionately call them. Turns out that on Sunday morning, more bats had flown into their room. They'd been coming from the vents. The bats tested positive for rabies.... and then they tested the girls. Now, these girls were scheduled to leave on Tuesday or Wednesday to go to their assigned missions. When they were tested for rabies, they tested positive. THEY GOT RABIES FROM BATS and have to stay here for 2 EXTRA weeks because they have rabies. Now if that isn't the worst luck you've ever heard, I don't know what is. If something like that happened to me, I quite literally would do nothing but laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation. Bats flew into their residence at the MTC by crawling through the air vents and gave them rabies. What a world. 

Also, most of you know how much I HATE spiders. Well, today, I came running into the computer lab, excited to hear from all my favorite people. No sooner had I ran through the door than a ONE INCH SPIDER DROPS FROM THE CEILING INTO THE AIR RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY FACE. ITS LEGS WERE FLAILING AND HE WAS TRYING TO GET ME. naturally, I did what anyone would do; i started yelling and flailing like a crazy person. I am now known to the computer lab as the flailing blue dress girl. The terror was real and my heart is still pounding. Even being a missionary can't protect me from spiders. bleeeeeeh. 

This week, Søster Petersen and I got to Skype with a young member in Odense, Denmark! her name was Isabella and we had a lovely conversation with her. It will be quite interesting to see how well I can follow conversations when I get to Denmark... We understood her fairly well, but she also was talking slowly so we could follow her thoughts. I am just so excited to get to Denmark!!!!

I would like everyone to know that I found proof that my dog, Lewis, is not stupid. All these years, I've been telling people that he is trying to communicate with us, we simply weren't intelligent enough to figure it out. I was talking about my food to my companion a while back, and we had to look up the word for beef. Turns out one of the words is bøf, which is pronounced exactly the way that Lewis does his grumble bark. All these years, people though Lewis was stupid, but really he just speaks Danish! He has just been sitting there saying "bøf, bøf, bøf" waiting for one of us English speakers to catch on!  All he wants is some beef! 

The other night at devotional, the choir had the incredible chance to sing "Praise to the Man". The version that we sang is the version that was written for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Imagine the way that it sounds when they sing it.... and then imagine it being sung by 600 missionaries. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOW. Elder Holland has promised that if we ever need the spirit to come to a meeting or a lesson to simply tell the Joseph Smith story, and it will come. However, when you have hundreds and hundreds of missionaries singing about the Prophet Joseph Smith, the Spirit doesn't just come rolling in, it bursts into the room and fills every crevice of your being. I have only felt the Spirit that strongly 2 other times. It completely opened my heart for the devotional that followed. Ulisses Soares of the Presidency of the Seventy spoke. He talked a lot about having a change of heart, and how that change of heart is essential for us as missionaries. If your heart hasn't been changed by Christ, if your heart is hardened and unwilling to listen, then how can we be filled with the love of Christ that is essential for missionary work? It just got my mind racing and inspired me to ask God to always be working with me and to show me ways that I can change my heart. I challenge all of you to do the same, and if you do, then you will find more joy, more peace, and more satisfaction in the life you live. I love all of you! Please please write, I love hearing from all of you. If you don't know where to write, just ask my incredible mother or father! I hope you all have an incredible week! Tak for jeres kærlighed! Jeg elser jer! 

Love, Søster Sarah Ludlow

 MTC Shenanigans