A MTC Thanksgiving

We got to sleep in till 7.  Hallelujah!  An extra 30 min.  Already the day was starting off great.  All of West Campus (hereafter referred to as WC) was bused over to Main Campus (MC) where we would spend all of the day.

At 9:30 am the festivities began and we were treated to a devotional by Elder Nelson of the Twelve.  What did he speak on?  You guessed it; a clever combination of gratitude and missionary work.  We then had some free time to roam about.  A group from our zone decided to enjoy the absolutely phenomenal weather and take a walk to the Temple.  at this point I would like to once again say how much I love our zone.  Everyone has awesome personalities, are goofballs like me, and are happy all the time (go figure, we're missionaries).  We have fun whenever we are together and sing all the time.

Anyways, once we got back from the temple it was lunch time, a.k.a. our Thanksgiving feast.  And when I say feast I mean a slightly more upscale version of cafeteria turkey and mashed potatoes served on plastic trays in a room overflowing with missionaries causing you to scoot up uncomfortably close to la mesa in order to make room for the never ending flow of people making their way through the maze of tables.  It was wonderful.  actually, I enjoyed quite a bit since our table was swapping awkward dating stories.  A form of currency I happen to be rich in.

After lunch we had some free time to write in our journals before heading off to some more meetings.  One of which being the Thanksgiving program.  Probably the cheesiest performance I have ever seen in my life.  a handful of missionaries were pulled from the crowed and reenacted the first Thanksgiving with a script I'm quite certain was taken out of a 1st grad teacher's lesson plan.  It was fun nonetheless and we just laughed at how ridiculous it was before settling down for the more serious portion of the program.

Now time for a shout out to my mom (who also spent Thanksgiving in the MTC during her mission) because before we went to participate in the service project we went back to our designated room to eat the sack dinners we had made.  20-something years have passed and the MTC still does Thanksgiving the same way.

Our service project was working with "Feed the Children" making meals for children in need to take home from school.  Wearing a bright read hair-net I don't think I've ever felt more attractive in my life.  For over and hour we filled bag after bag with lintel soup mix and I couldn't help but think of my own siblings who despise lintel soup.  They better be grateful they don't have to eat it for every meal.

To end the day we all gathered into the devotional room and watched Ephraim's Rescue.  A muy bueno film.  If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend doing so.  Especially if you liked 17 Miracles.   The best part is that when two of the main characters leaned in for a kiss, all the missionaries went crazy.  The elder next to me cried out that he was going to have nightmares that night from watching it. #missionprobs

So even though the movie ended at 9:45pm, we were supposed to be in our residents at 9:30, and the walk from MC to WC was 20-25min.  Us poor little spanish speaking missionaries weren't offered a bus ride home.  Fine.  We'll just burn off all that cafeteria food from all our walking.  Guess who's going to gain weight in the MTC.... not WC!

All in all, Thanksgiving was great.  Definitely better then two years ago when half my family was sick and we ate more microwaveable dinners then shown in Better of Dead (a must see 80's film).  Not too shabby in comparison.

I'd like to send a shout out to all those who have been so good as to email me.  I love reading anything and everything you have to say, but I'm never given enough time to respond to everybody.  So if you've sent me an email and haven't received a response back, lo siento!  I still love you and will do my best to respond the next week.  The Lord doesn't offer much time for emails... it's understandable.  Anyways, here's a random picture of us on P-Day!

Hermana Lance with her District Hermanas.