Hello!!!

Hey! It's P-day again! Thank you so much for all of your letters/emails! Thank you Lisa for the adorable package with the tangelos with faces on them. Hehehe! that made me crack up so much :) ooh and also thank you for the banana bread and treats and everything! I feel spoiled! This week I also got a letter from Alex, the Balinskis, Allen, Grandma and Grandpa Chipman, and Elyse! (Thank you so much!!) Getting letters really does brighten up my whole day. Well, let me tell you something: P-days at the MTC are definitely NOT a day of rest :) in fact, they can be quite stressful trying to get everything done, but oh well, that's okay! I hope I can get to writing all the letters I would like to--if not, know that they will soon be coming.

This week was great! I love Tagalog. Everytime we speak it, it makes me giggle because it's such a fun language! Want to learn a sentence? Bababa ba? That means "are you getting down?" Isn't that awesome? Hehe! "Mag-CR" is how they say "go to the bathroom" - CR is short for "comfort room." We are supposed to be SYLing (Speak your language) as much as possible in and out of class. We are learning how to conjugate verbs now, which involves a lot of repeating of the root--which is part of the reason it's so fun! I love my companions! Sister Young has been sick with the cold this week but she has a good attitude. Sister Parks found out this week that her sweetheart on a mission has to come home for colon surgery (apparently it's pretty serious), so that has been really hard on her and we are praying for her. Hopefully he'll be able to go back to the mission field in a couple of months.

I have really enjoyed a lot of the meetings and firesides this week. In one meeting, the speaker talked about our purpose as missionaries. We are not here to simply help people live better lives. You don't have to be set apart to do that. Anyone can do that. We are not here simply to help others come unto Christ either --Our purpose is to invite others to come unto Christ by helping them recieve the restored gospel through faith, repentance, baptism, recieiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. Our ulimate focus should be to help our brothers and sisters make sacred covenants through baptism. I love this gospel! One thing he pointed out was that the scriptures do NOT say "The field is brown and all ready to plant seeds." It says, "The field is white and all ready to harvest!" Everywhere we go, there are people who are ready and prepared to recieve the restored gospel. We can plant seeds in people's hearts too, but that is not our main purpose. Anyways, that just made me excited. I'm so grateful to have this experience of serving a mission. I know that there isn't anything else in this world that can bring people more happiness than by living the gospel. This week my teachers have had us practice teaching the first lesson A LOT. The more I teach, the more comforable it gets. Yay!

Okay so I only have 7 minutes but I'll try to give you an idea of my schedule since you've been asking for it. It changes everyday, but a typical day is like this: 5:45 get up, 6:00 exercise class (sisters only). 7:00 breakfast, 7:30 personal study, 8:30 Companionship study, 9:30 Wika study (language), 10:30 MDT (missionary directed time) where we can study whatever we feel we need to, 11:30 lunch, 12:15 Class (learning the language), 4:30 Dinner, 5:15 -9:00 Class (part language, part doctrine), 9-9:25 daily planning and then go back to your apartment and get ready for the next day. 10:30 lights out!!

Well, my time is up! I love you and miss you. I hope you are having a great day today. Thanks for the emails! Also please continue to send most of the letters in dearelder because I can only be logged on for 30 minutes, including reading emails.

Take care! Love, Rebecca
P.S. Thank you for sending me a copy of Alex's email!