3-29-13 Emails from Reinna

(I've copied and pasted bits and pieces of Reinna's email conversation with us Friday here)

So next week I will see where I will be reassigned. (Reinna thinks it will be somewhere in Utah, but won't know until next week. She said she will be able to call to let us know exactly where she'll be going.)  So last week when I got done emailing I looked out the window and it was snowing! Yeah I went from getting a tan line to freezing! I didn't wear my coat that morning which was also a bummer because as it turns out my companion was sick so we had to drop her off at the clinic and then we went to the temple and when we came back we had to then walk to the pharmacy. She is still sick and has an infection. I feel really bad for her because she is in pain, but on Monday she is going to Payson to get some x-rays. But because she is sick we have had two or three different field trips to the real world! one time we even heard the radio! Crazy! I am sick also though. Wednesday night I had a fever so i didn't sleep at all! but I took a nap later that day and then Thursday I slept in and I felt better, but my whole body is really achy and my glands are swollen, when the Tylenol wears off I just wanna curl up in a ball and sleep but alas you can't do that here :(. I was supposed to go to the clinic today but I feel like it really isn't that big of a deal, people get sick and in time they heal...my companions don't completely agree, but whatever. Oh! so I have been working so hard to serve my companions and love them as much as possible and well it is really working. We are getting along really well and I have learned to speak with the spirit instead of verbally beating them, not that I ever did that, but I was really tempted at times. Okay I see an email so I will finish in a sec :) Love you all!

So we have devotionals on Tuesday and Sunday. Tuesdays is always someone from the Seventy, but this Sunday we have an apostle coming! We don't know who but my companion and I are going to be waiting eagerly for hours outside the building :) Oh but last Tuesday I was  an usher and that was fun, I have the best no nonsense face ever so people just do what I say :) haha just kidding...kinda. All in all I am getting the hang of mtc life just in time to leave and that is okay with me. I am so ready to teach real people and I am so excited to walk around all day! I asked one of my teachers for advice on sleep and he told me to go to bed and when I wasn't sleeping, focus on the work. He also had my read D&C 84:33. I was sleeping better until I got sick and now the medicine puts me to sleep :) But I am so thankful for my awesome teachers here! They are both really nice and you can tell they care. My companions like the one but not the other because he is really blunt, which is funny because that's the reason I like him! He says it how it is and my companions are too sensitive to see that that is just how he talks. I feel like he gives me solid advice and his plainness is refreshing because I feel like some people ruin things by making them sound too fancy. 

Next week is spring break?! That's crazy! Time is really flying, I feel like I just got here and then in the mornings I feel like I was born here.

Oh well I should wrap it up time is nearly gone, But I love you soooooo much! I  am really glad we could chat and I am excited to talk next week. OH! I spoke in church on Sunday! they randomly pick people and most people just get up and read a paper but i think that is boring so i didn't write a paper, i literally just gave a talk in Spanish! it was so cool! I was feeling really awesome afterwards :) Well I have to go but I love you! I hope you have a great spring break and I will call you probably Friday next week :) Nos vemos

Hermana Quick

Typical Day at the MTC

I had Reinna send me a copy of their daily schedule. Instead of inputting every single day, I'm posting what each Wednesday looks like for her and her District (group).

Other days are very similar, but gym time and LAB time seem to rotate and they throw some service time in there on Thursdays, which is when they help clean their building and bathrooms. Looks VERY busy and INTENSE…but in a good way:)

6:30 – 7:00 Arise and Prepare

7:00 – 7:30 Breakfast

7:30 – 10:30 Training Resource Center and Classroom Instruction

10:30 – 11:30 Personal Study Time

11:30 – 12:15 Lunch

12:25 – 1:15 Gym Time

1:15 – 1:45 Shower and Prep for Next Activity

1:55 – 2:55 Computer Lab

3:00 – 3:30 Additional Study Time

3:30 – 4:30 Language Study (Classroom)

4:30 – 5:15 Dinner

5:15 – 6:00 Additional Study Time

6:00 – 6:30 Daily Planning Session

6:30 – 9:30 Classroom Instruction

9:30 – 10:15 Personal Time and Companionship prayer

10:15 – 10:30 Quiet time

10:30 Sleep

Email Home 3-22-13

So I would normally try to respond to emails individually but I don't have the time! I'm so sorry! I feel so blessed though to have everyone's support! Every night I think my Heavenly Father for all of the wonderful people who grace my life. I nearly cry every time reading letters from my amazing family! You all are the perfect family for me and without you I wouldn't be able to do this. Mom, Dad I love you both so much!  You were such great examples and I don't know if you totally realize how much you have helped me obtain my own testimony. You are the reason I started believing in God and I miss you all a lot! It is so hard not being able to talk to you and that goes for Austianna and Connelly too. I am so glad my companions are frantically typing because I am really fighting back tears. I just love you so much and I hope you know my favorite lesson to teach is the plan of salvation. It is the most comforting thing for me, because I want to be with you all for all eternity and I am going to live my life right so I can do that. Thank you so much for the package! I loved it! Getting a package really does feel like Christmas came early. Also Austianna, I wanted Cheezeits because it is one of my companions favorite things in the world and I know she has her struggles too....(edited out minor personal rantings)

So I have two new room mates...they are both super cool but they like to wake up at 6;15! I mean what is wrong with waiting 15 more minutes! Oh well I am learning to live without sleep, it is hard though because i nearly pass out in personal study almost every day. but after 11 I usually wake up. Oh speaking of passing out. I have been running everyday since i wrote my first email about getting fat. But the other day I was doing sprints with two other sisters and I literally thought I was gonna pass out! Like I couldn't get any air! I am really blaming the altitude because I was super light headed and woozy and yeah i was a little worried that I was gonna drop like a rock and it took my the whole day to recover...it wasn't fun.

Oh so another funny story about my floor in the apartment building. We have the bathroom above us, leak water into our bathroom. It was sketchy because it wasn't like there was a legit hole that water was pouring through but there was a ton of water pour out of the ceiling. It made me laugh. And most sisters didn't get to shower that night haha!  Oh so the other day I heard the MTC is 42% sisters but then at devotional they said it was 50% so either way there are a lot of sister missionaries going out. Oh and I don't think I will make it to Argentina for a while. The consulate hasn't come in a while so most missionaries are being called to Utah to wait for an appointment and then they have to wait some more for their visa to go through. So I am hoping I can meet with the consulate so then I can leave Utah but there are literally hundreds waiting for an appointment. I am kinda excited to serve somewhere else as well because then I can say I served state side and aboard. Oh if you get a moment you should watch Joesph Smith and the Restoration. I watched after devo last Sunday and it was so good! Like it made me realize my trials are so small.

Oh so my district sang in sacrament meeting last Sunday so that was really cool. I felt the spirit so strongly even though I have no idea if we even sounded good. We also have a new elder in our district because his Spanish was too good for a beginning class. Yeah I think heavenly father saw that we were getting along really well so he wanted to toss a wrench into the engine to see if we can handle it and at first it was hard! like this elder is kinda a rebel and tries to bend rules, thankfully he is starting to calm down a little, but every now and then I wanna put my referee face on and tell him off...or just punch him... Thank goodness for the Atonement!

(slight edit out as nobody really needs to hear EVERYTHING she writes!) So I have a minute to finish! I love you all so much! I am so thankful for this opportunity here at the MTC because I feel like it is the perfect opportunity for me to be converted myself. Oh my companions wanna move. Love you! I think of you all the time, well when I can and especially when I am teaching.

Hermana Quick

3-14-13 Email Home

So I just lost 5 minutes of email time because I was reading something! dang! and it really isn't that fair because the timer starts before you even get completely logged on... oh well! so it is week two and things are going really well! I mean if you asked me 4 days ago I would have told you it wasn't going as well, but that was just because we had a suuuper tough investigator (pretend role player one of course) and I couldn't remember any Spanish, but after a good devotional by Brother Johnson of the seventy and his wife, I got my head where it needs to be again. The Spanish has been coming slower that a crippled slug, but I know if I keep working hard I will get it...eventually. I saw Perrin Romney the other day. Oh, and my first day here I met Hermana Lake(distant cousin). Those are the only two people I know. Well before I came in that is. Oh, we had a huge wave of missionaries come in Wednesday! We had just said goodbye to our past roommates Monday and now we have two new hermanas in our room. They seem pretty cool but they aren't in our ward or anything so we see them before we go to bed and that's it.

The weather has been super nice! I even got a small little tan line yesterday from studying outside. So Hermana Crawley, one of my companions, hates the sun! She burns really bad and she is always warm, so she was complaining the whole time about being hot and the sun was touching her and the birds were singing. Yeah it was hilarious and we totally made fun of her and her little spot of shade that she was clinging to. She still got sun burned! haha! She is headed to Buenos Aires north, but she has la tierra del fuego in her mission so she got the best mission for her because it is super cold.

Oh so I have never sat so much in my life! I love to do my personal study for an hour and my language study for another hour. Love it! We then have another hour of language study on the computer and that is fine for like the first half hour and then the computer tries to lull me to sleep. and well I will take a picture of my schedule so you can see because it is packed! We don't have much down time, but that's okay. I wish I had more time to study my Book of Mormon. Lately I have been presented with a dilemma. My hands are going numb from typing...like they are tingling and everything!

So life here is good. I mean, I have my struggles especially in lessons because my companions kinda take over and i don't wanna be rude and jump in even though i might have the spirit telling me to address something...idk its tough, but I know it is only my second week so everything will work out in time...i hope. I love you all and I hope i left you enough time for maybe a quick response! Love You!  Hermana Quick :)

3-8-14 Letter to Dad

Thank you so much for writing me:) It makes me happy to get a letter from you! So dad it is so hard for me to believe that I will get better at Spanish...Like there are so many things to learn and remember...and I feel like here I can I can only apply so much, will it get better in Argentina? (Dad has assured it will of course. Dad was clueless for the first several months of his mission learning Spanish)

You were right about having a good district. It makes things way better. Hey, thank you so much for letting me know from a young age that you had a testimony and that missions are important. I came to the MTC to become a better person and to grow personally, but in a talk by President Bednar, he said that the only way to find yourself is through service to others. He said if you are getting frustrated and sad, i's only because you are letting the natural man take over. Jesus Christ was constantly worried about others, but never himself. I am trying to become more like hiim, but my natural-woman is so selfish at times:) (It's tough to think that Reinna can improve in her ability to think of others more, but it's sweet that she wants to keep working hard to help others...just dad's two cents worth)

Well, my P-Day is almost over. I am about to go to lunch and after that we have personal study and then are going to the temple! Yay! Then tonight we have class again for 3 hours! Ugh! All of our studying is done in our classroom and I am getting very tired of sitting in there...and sitting in general.

(She ends her letter by saying some very sweet things to her papa, so I'll leave those comments out. She seems to be doing really well. She obviously does a LOT of studying, which does require a lot of sitting....oh the fun! Her time is going to go fast in the MTC though with an April 8th departure date. It will be interesting if she gets her Visa in time for that. Hopefully! Thanks for following her blog!)

3-8-13 First P-Day

Hey there! It is my Pday finally and I have a half hour to email you. ... So life here at the MTC has been good, I have two companions. Which I now understand why people say that is so tough because although I love them both it is sooo hard to teach! Like we have agreed that only two of us can bare our testimony at the end of our lessons, because three people is too many! We just finished teaching our first investigator. His name was Pablo and I wanted to get him baptised so bad! But alas, he is now our new teacher ;) I am not sure what all to tell you...On tuesday my companions and I sang in the choir for devotional and that was really fun. It was a fantastic devotional oh and Sunday was amazing! The temple president from the Provo temple came and spoke and it was so spiritual that I could have cried! Afterwards we watched a video by President Bednar and that was so insightful! He talked about casting off the natural man and developing the character of Christ...It is definitely a work in progress for me:)

So every day we get like 45 minutes for gym time. I have decided that before I leave the MTC I will be a pro! At first it was super boring but one of the sisters in my district made a rule that if the ball went flying off the court we had to do two push ups...I was soooo sore the next day! Oh my district consists of 7 hermanas and 4 elders. They are all super cool and the more I get to know them the more I love them! They are all really down to earth and we are getting to that point where we talk way too much because my personal study time keeps being shorter and shorter. So I know why missionaries get fat when they come to the MTC. It is because we eat breakfast at 7, lunch at 11:30, and dinner at 4! Who eats dinner at 4! And we sit in the same classroom all day studying and learning like we don't need three square meals a day! I did run a mile the other day to try to counter act the food, but it is ten laps for a mile...it is really hard to motivate myself to run ten laps for only a mile! But I have decided next week will be my awesome week. I have already set goals for my spanish study and now for my gym time and well english study i haven't quite developed yet, but i'm getting there.

So the other day our whole floor flooded! It was the first night that I really got any really sleep, but then at 5am people started blowdrying their hair, well I thought that was happening and I thought the other hermanas were losing there minds! But it turns out every other room except for 6-8 of them had inches of water in them. Apparently someone left a sink on somewhere.

Oh and so I heard yesterday that the last two hundred people who tried to get there visas for argentina. Only 3 of them got it right away. Everyone else had to serve somewhere else as they waited for their visa. Some people are really upset about that but I figure there are people everywhere who need the gospel and the Lord needs me to go find them so I'm excited to go somewhere else too.

So my first day I get to class right away and it is only in Spanish! We are the first intermediate class our ward has ever had so we actually already speak as well as the people who are leaving this week...But seriously I wonder if it is even possible to master the language. Right now it seems super complicated and impossible, but it will be different when I am actually immersed in Spanish. Oh my teacher served a mission in Spain so he lisps! It is super funny and I am getting used to it now, but I was really distracted at first. Yesterday I had 6 hours of classroom time and it was all in spanish and I understood everything that was going on, but it's hard to make gramatically correct sentences in my head.

So I am running out of email time, but I will write you all! :) I wanna hear all about your lives and in turn I will tell you all about mine...on fridays. I am going to the temple in a few hours and I am soooo excited! I need that spiritual awesomeness right now! I love you all and I hope to hear from you soon!

Hermana Reinna Quick

Hermana Quick in the Newspaper 3-7-13

March 2, 2013

Dear Family,

So I am not allowed to write until P-Day, but we don't have one this week so I am writing you now during laundry time, and I kept forgetting to buy stamps:( Sorry! So you were right about mail! It is such a happy feeling when you get something! Oh and my P-Day will be Fridays here at the MTC.

I taught my first lesson yesterday. It was difficult because not only was it in Spanish, but our alarm didn't go off in the morning so we woke up at 7, which is when breakfast starts. So we didn't get food and I forgot! IT was my other roommates P-Day so they woke up at 4:50AM! So naturally they woke us all up because it's hard to be quiet in our tiny room. Oh! Our room is made for 4 sisters, but we have 6! So we have to share drawers and closets.

My district is really cool. It consists of 7 girls hermanas and 4 elders. It was originally 5 to 4, but we got two new sisters yesterday. So we are not allowed to say guys or girls or dude. We are either hermanas, sisters or Elders. And we are not allowed to give the elders high fives, which is so hard because we were playing basketball and I went up to one of the elders and said "nice shot". I was about to give him a high five, but we both stalled out in midair...It's hard to remember.

So far the MTC hasn't been that bad at all. I thought it would be really hard and it is at times, but then I remind myself that I should get frustrated. The Lord only expects me to do what I can and he will take care of the rest. I tell myself that literally all the time. So time...is so weird! I feel like I have been here forever, but at the same time I feel brand new...It's hard to explain.

Oh so we work out everyday which nice, but then we only have a half hour to shower and become presentable again, which is harder than you might think. So I know why missionaries get fat here. We eat at 7, 11:30, and 4! Who eats dinner at 4! Like you never feel hungry at 4 because you just ate 4 hours previously and all you did was sit in a classroom for that 4 hours!

I love you all so much! I will put these letters in the mail today, but I will try to be obedient and not write until Friday...if I can. I hope everything is going well:)

Love,
Reinna

February 27, 2013

Here is the letter Reinna sent to our family on her first day in the MTC. She's doing great! I have to retype it as she can't email until her first P-Day this Friday, March 8th.

Querida familia,

So I have 2 companions. Hermana Dean is from Utah and Hermana Crawley is from Arizona. I remember her name because she told me it's like Creepy Crawley. They are both really cool. My first class, like after a girl...excuse me...a Sister, show me around, was completely in Spanish. Our teacher served in Spain and he has a weird lisp that I seriously want to laugh at, but instead I get distracted by my mental judgements. I am hindered by my judgmental mind...sad day! But everyone in my group is as good as me or better in Spanish, like we are pretty even, which is cool. My companions are really good at practicing Spanish adn they have been helping me learn tons of new vocab. Oh, so far my departure date is April 8th! All of my companions are headed to Argentina. Hermana Crawley is headed to Buenos Aires North and Hermana Dean is going to Rosario. We have another trio staying with us and they are pretty cool, but so far I have only seen them twice. Well I don't know when I can send this letter, but I will try to get that done as soon as possible. I love you guys so much!

Reinna Quick

Marsallai thoughts March 3, 2013

3-3-13
This is my first post, how cool is this!
We haven’t heard from Reinna yet, a letter should be arriving any time now....needless to say, we are very anxious to see how she is doing...

I think I’m the only Mormon mom that didn’t know about that cool site "Dear Elder" where you can send letters and care packages to the MTC, and the missionary will get your letter, all typed up, on the same day!

Reinna's sister has been writing to her everyday, along with her dad. And today, I sent my first letter...YA! Now she knows her mom hasn’t forgotten about her, right?

Being first time missionary parents, we are looking up cool sites with ideas on fun things to send, poems, & do's and don’ts of sending packages...that reminds me I need to go and find some "mother Mary” stickers to put on the outside of her packages. Word on the street is…if you add the stickers, her packages won’t be messed with… crazy huh?

Well, I’m off… goodnight Hermana Quick

Marsallai