Wow!! It seems kind impossible, but I've been here for more than 5 weeks now, and I leave to go to France on Monday!! It kind of hit me this morning that I'm actually going to be in France in just a couple days!!! I'm super nervous in terms of people being patient with me learning the language, but I'm really excited to be really immersed in the language and to hear people speaking French all day!! It's going to be exhausting, but it's absolutely going to be worth it. We got really lucky in terms of our flight plans- we only have to take one flight that goes directly from Salt Lake City to Charles de Gaulle. I'm hoping to study and sleep a lot on the plane so I can hit the ground running when I get there. Wish me luck-- here we go!!
Even though we're leaving soon, there's still a ton going on here at the MTC!! Everyone in our district has become super close friends, and we love messing around and coming up with funny stuff to do. Sr. Neistadt has a bouncy ball that we had been playing with for a while, so on Tuesday we used it to play baseball in the hallway ;)
We also took this super adorable picture at the temple last week. I'm going to miss them all so much!
We had such a busy week this week!! On Wednesday we got to host the new missionaries coming in to the MTC. We were in charge of getting them checked in, getting their supplies, and finding their residences and classrooms. I got to host 3 new sister missionaries and find out all about them. The crazy thing was that the first sister I hosted was Sister Dunn, whom I had actually met before!! She worked in Professor O'Neil's lab, so I talked to her for about 10 minutes in March when Dad came out to give his lecture!! It was kinda crazy to make that connection. I loved the opportunity to host, even though it was nearly 100 degrees out!! We had only about 500 new missionaries coming in this week. I say only because we're apparently getting 800 next week! I'm glad I'm going to miss that disaster!! The cafeteria is so crazy at mealtimes already. Luckily the new MTC buildings are coming along pretty quickly.
We had In-Field Orientation all day yesterday. It was kind of crazy because there were so many people there and so much material to get through, but they split it up a lot with break-out sessions so it didn't get too boring. I definitely learned a lot more about how to work with the local members and get to know them so that they want to participate in lessons and invite their friends to have lessons with the missionaries. It was really cool to have that experience and vision of what the mission field is actually going to be like.
We also got a new teacher this week!! Super randomly too, because it's our last week here, but we Soeur Waldron so much already!! She's super funny and loves all our little quirks and jokes, but she's also a really amazing teacher. She has a very clear accent that's easy to understand. We've been doing a lot of grammar the last couple classes with her and she's very good at explaining why you do certain things and coming up with good ways for us to practice. I've learned so much with her! She also taught us some funny French expressions:
Pète un coup- fart a little (Calm down)
Je pète le feu- I am farting fire (I'm super excited)
Pète ça à moi- fart that to me (Pass that to me)
Pète un coup- fart a little (Calm down)
Je pète le feu- I am farting fire (I'm super excited)
Pète ça à moi- fart that to me (Pass that to me)
So, a little immature, but still pretty funny 
I'll finish with some spiritual things from this week. Sr. Neistadt and I had the opportunity to teach Relief Society this week. It was so nice because we got to teach in English! Pretty different from most of our teaching opportunities here. For part of the lesson, we shared this metaphor that I really love. There's this form of Japanese art called kintsukuroi, which means "to repair with gold".
The whole idea of this art form is that rather than trying to repair the piece with glue and making it look like it was never broken, you repair the piece with gold or silver laquer. The purpose of this is to understand that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken. I think this is kind of like how the Atonement works in our lives. Rather than trying to hide or cover up our flaws or mistakes, the Atonement fills in our cracks and makes us stronger and more beautiful than before. We also shared Ether 12:27 "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them." I love that scripture. I definitely have a lot of weaknesses that I can improve, and knowing that this gospel can help me to become better every day brings me so much joy. We had some really awesome comments from the other sisters, and the Spirit was definitely there during our lesson.
Okay, one last fun thing! Sunday was Pioneer Day, which is apparently a really big thing in Utah. To celebrate, we had the Nashville Tribute Band come perform for Sunday devotional! It was so cool. They sounded amazing, and invited the Spirit so quickly even though they were singing mostly upbeat songs. The choir got to sing with them for a couple of the songs, which was wicked cool. There are so many missionaries here now that they filled 2/3 of the auditorium with the choir, and they have to put about 200-300 missionaries in an overflow room because the auditorium is filled to capacity. I managed to get in the second row for the performance, so I snuck a photo. It was so awesome!!
Anyway, I love hearing from everyone! Thanks so much for your emails and letters. Getting mail is the best! I love you all, and I'm excited to send pictures of France!! À bientôt!
Sœur Rogers
Soeur Rogers, Sister Packard and Elder Xu--all together again.
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