Brooke's First Letter!!!

Wow! I can't believe it's been only a week since I've been here. I feel like it's been forever. So... where do I start? There is so much to tell. So I am in the advanced spanish class, which means that I am one of the few people in my group that are not native speakers and we only have 2 more weeks in the Provo MTC! So I came and they assigned me to a threesome with two other sisters. One, Hermana Ruiz is from Mexico City but she has lived the last 8 years in Houston, TX. She is awesome! She is fun and knows so much about the gospel, and speaks perfect spanish which helps of course. My other companion is named Hermana Rocha (pronounced Roja but the j is pronounced like a spanish j) She is from Greece! Her father is from Bolivia so she is fluent in spanish, greek and speaks pretty good english. She is really quiet and really shy but so nice. She apologizes about everything and asks permission for everything and she has only been to the US once before so a lot of things are unfamiliar for her. But she has such a strong testimony. Well on friday another sister joined our district, Sister Meagan Ricks (Liz Calder, she says hi and we talk about you all the time). She had surgery on her gall bladder and her district left while she was in the hospital so she joined ours and will be here for another two weeks. Well she became companions with Hermana Ruiz and so now its just me and Hermana Rocha. I'm not going to lie, that was hard for me because I love Hermana Ruiz a lot and she was the powerhouse of our companionship. She knew everything. Then here's me who can't speak the language and Hermana Rocha who is so timid. Saturday was especially hard because we practiced Lesson one for the first time, teaching this threesome of elders in another district. One of the elders kept asking all these really ridiculously hard questions to try and trip us up, so much that our teacher made us stop and called him out on it. I was so overwhelmed, forgetting everything I wanted to say and not being able to speak very well but there was Hermana Rocha, who just explained everything so simply and perfect. She was just amazing! I was so grateful for her. I am learning so much from her. She is from Greece, where the church is really small. I mean tiny. There are only 4 branches there and her's is the largest on a good day about 10-15 people will come. The other branches get about 3-5 people. Can you imagine? I am so grateful to have grown up in a place where the church is strong. I am learning so much from her example and I am excited as we get better at teaching.

Our district is so great. We have three other native elders who are in a threesome and then two elders who just learned spanish on their own like me.

I love the MTC! The spirit is so strong here. I've been here less than a week and I have already heard some of the most amazing firesides, church meetings and talks that I have heard. We study all day and there is not enough time for anything. I barely have time to write in my journal at night. I am learning so much about my purpose as a missionary that we are responsible to bringing people to Christ, and helping them establish a personal relationship with him. Its especially hard for us that are leaving in two weeks because we have to learn and practice teaching the first three discussions in the next two weeks and we don't even get to study or practice the fourth and fifth! I am really nervous to go out into the field so if you guys wouldn't mind keeping me in your prayers I would really appreciate it. I need all the help I can get in learning these lessons and then actually being able to say what I want to say in spanish.

Sorry, have to go running out of time.
Love you,
Sister Barker