Sydney's first letter

Howdy Howdy Everyone, I have been so excited to write this letter all week. I am absolutely positively loving being a missionary. The first day after you dropped me off until this very second I have not had one second of free time. But that has been awesome because I have not cried once. yep, you better believe it. Not even once!! I just love it so much. It is amazing how much the Lord has blessed me with peace. I have felt so calm and I know this is where I am supposed to be. My companion is Sister Olson she is amazing. We complete each other perfectly and I know that she was meant to be my companion. She sincerely loves everyone and is willing to do anything for anyone. My district consists of six sisters and six Elders. I have only been here for a week but I have grown to sincerely love them all. Elder Prince is from Canada so hence the Eh! haha that is our district thing. Everyone else is from Utah pretty much. One girl sister Conova is 19 like me and I feel like me and her are the strongest, everyone is strong but we have always had to help the sisters with there "Mental Breakdowns" yet some how as the youngest we are able to stay so strong and be an example. I have never felt so loved in my entire life. Every day all the Sisters and Elders tell me how much they love me. And the Sisters always ask me for hugs because they say mine are the best. I am so grateful for the life that I have. So many of the people I have gotten to know have had such hard trials in there life and I am just over here like, Hello why am I so lucky!? I seriously feel so blessed. Everyone in our district is sick except me and elder Hurt He is barely 18. I just thought that was cool. Anyways, I am the germ freak because I refuse to get sick. So every time we walk into class I also spray everybody's hands and if they cough, they get double sprayed. so far my method is working also maybe my positive attitude of not wanting to get sick. We have had a lot of good devotionals. On Sunday the general primary president came to talk to us in relief society, She said that elder missionaries are great but sisters are SHIZZAMM!! and also I know that I cannot fail. We have already began teaching. We taught a lady for the first time yesterday her name is Michelle. She said that we were probably wasting our time at the begining of the meeting and that she did not believe in Christ or the Bible or anything. We started with a prayer and I asked her to read Jonh 3:16 which was crazy because before we went into the lesson I said I need to have a scripture ready just in case. That is the one I felt impressed to pick and it turned out that was the one she needed to hear. By the end of the lesson she was just soaking up everything we had to say she told us she would read the Book of Mormon and pray to know if it is true. That was so cool. We felt the sprit so strongly in that lesson and I can't wait to teach her again tomorrow. It is experiences like this that make me so excited to go into the field, but I love the MTC I wouldn't mind staying here forever. Today we got to go to the temple as a district, it was so amazing. Some of the sisters have been having a really hard time, so the elders volunteered to give them a blessing. It was so amazing to see their testimonies and feel their spirit. I really love all of them. I will send you a picture next time I just forgot my camera. Last night we had a devotional by David F. Evans. He talked about faith and the angels all around us. I felt my grandma right there with her arms around me telling me how proud of me she was and what a good example I am setting. It was a really spiritual experince. I have taken this step off the cliff into the darkness and into the unknown because I know I ABSOLUTELY know that there will be light at the end of the tunnel. I can do hard things. I have gotten to know my Father in Heaven so much better. I have never prayed this much in my entire life. I pray at least 50 times a day. But I can always feel the spirit whispering to me. I want everyone to go on missions so they can know how amazing it is. There was no need to be scared. The Lord is helping me so much. The days seriously feel like weeks. It feels like I have been in the MTC for  three months. We just learn so much in one day that it doesn't seem like it has only been a day. I know that I have already made friendships that will last forever. A lot of these Elders and Sisters that I am with I feel like I have know them for a long time, like we have been best friends forever. It is so cool. I have been trying so hard to forget myself and to focus on serving others and that has really helped me not get homesick. I just want you to know that I am doing amazing. I am loving every minute of this experience. My advice that I have learned is it is not how much you read but how much you learn. If you read one verse of scripture but talk about it for ten minutes in means so much more than reading five chapters and getting nothing out of it. I love the scrpitures I love this Gospel so much and I love all of you and miss you I hope you have a great week.  Love you all, Sister Robinson

Another week down. What a crazy week it has been. I had the most amazing experience, we do this thing it is called TRC we get to teach people who volunteer to come and let us teach them.  Most of them are members and some are not, but they don't tell us. So me and Sister Olson went to teach and this girl came out of the room she said that she went to BYU and met a friend who is not a member and she finally convinced her to come here and listen to us. The spirit testified to me that this was a real investigator and she really needed to hear our message. Her name was Katy, we testified that god loved her so much I honsetly don't remember everything I said because it wasn't me teaching it was the Spirit, In the middle I asked her if she would pray, she had never prayed before I explained how and felt prompted to ask her to pray right then. She didn't really want to at first but as me and Sister Olson talked to her about how important it was she said okay I want to. We knelt down and she began praying. She asked God if what we were teaching was true and before she finished she started bawling. The Spirit testified to her and she told us she felt it. Sister Olson and I felt it too we were crying and I just felt a little glimpse of how much Heavenly Father loves Katy. That was the most amazing experience. This week has been hard because my companion and Sister Conova's companion have been sick ALL week. I feel so bad for them. It has been a struggle working with someone else who is not your companion, but Heavenly Father is blessing me every day with strength. Monday night there was only five of us out of the twelve left in class. I am so happy I have been able to stay healthy and not get homesick. One day I was having an expecially hard time and everyone around me could tell. I would randomly open my scriptures and find random drawings from the elders and notes of encouragment. We do this for everyone, always trying to encourage each other and we are truly becoming a family, I am going to be so sad to leave them in a week. Also I always look forward to my letters from all of you they make me so happy. Special thanks to you dad for sending me a letter EVERY day. That is pretty cool. and it is always something that I needed to hear right then.  One of the girls that I went through the temple with, she is actually in my zone. She is awesome. We have gotten to spend a lot of time together. It is such a small world that we would be together. I really wanted to send picture this week but I will have to wait until I get into the field because I can't do it on this computer. I am loving life. the MTC is amazing and I am making so many friends. I love feeling the sprit every day. My teachers are great, Sister De Arton and Brother Burdette. Every time they come to class I swear they are inspired and always teach exactly what I wanted to hear and needed to hear. Another cool thing was when Brother Burdette was teaching us about how to teach with the spirit and we were doing a role play As I was teaching my pretend in investigator he told us to pause and not say another thing until we felt an inspired question then we could talk. I waited and then it came into my head and I knew what to say and the whole atmosphere of the lesson changed completely. What an awesome experience. I have also learned how to teach people not lessons and you really feel love for them even when you just barely meet them. Today at the Temple I was talking to a lady who used to live in West Virginia she said that the people are very closed and in order for them to open up to you you have to show them that you really love them. I would of been worried about that before but now I know that I will be able to feel that love and teach them the gospel. We do role plays a lot which I always thought were pointless because it was just pretend but our teachers would always say if you take role play seriously you will be surprised how much it will help. So I was really nervous about teaching this kid Steven because he would not open up to me and so beforehand I role played with a Sister and when I got into the lesson Steven said the EXACT same things!! It was so crazy. I am getting used to being a missionary. Even in my head I call myself Sister Robinson. haha! I am so lucky to have this amazing oppurtunity and I am so glad that I am here right now. There is no where else I would rather be. I love you all so much. I hope you have a great week. I don't know when my next P-day will be but you will hear from me eventually so don't worry! love, Sister Robinson