Lindsey Got Her VISA!

Well hello again family!

I got your package in the mail and it was just what I needed. Thank you so much! (P.S. loving the Reese's, probably too much). Thanks for the letters mom and Parker! It was so good to hear from you both. Parker, I am so excited for you to get ready and come out! Every time I learn something more about the characteristics of a good missionary, I realize that you fit them perfectly. And you know, I want to make a guess right now. I bet you are going to get sent to either Canada or an island like Samoa. Sorry...inspiration just came to me.

 It's been another great week here at the MTC. Me and my companions have got along great! And guess what?! I have my travel plans! They are sending us on travel VISAs which I believe last 6 months and we should have legit VISAs by then. 1 of the elders and all of the other sisters in my district will be on the same first few flights (that's right first FEW flights) and then one of my companions and I will stick together the whole time. I am SO glad for that! You should have seen us when we saw that we got travel plans and found out that we were all going to Argentina. We were all whooping and hollering, skipping, jumping, and running around the sidewalks all over campus. We have been anxiously waiting for so long (some of the missionaries had even fasted for VISAs) that we freaked out! It was so great :). We are excited! So here it is-- I leave Wednesday the 23rd and my first flight is at 12:30 p.m. (but of course I leave the MTC at like 7:30 AM) and then I get to call home. Yay for phone calls home from the airport! From 7:30 to 12:30ish I will be in the Salt Lake airport and should be able to call home. After that, I will have a layover in Dallas from 4:30 to 7:30 when I should be able to call home also. Then I land in Buenos Aires and that is all the travel info I know. But I do know that it is around another 1080 miles to my mission from there and I don't know how I am getting there! (Sketchy!) I guess I will find out soon enough.

To be honest, I was super nervous about leaving the MTC earlier this week. I just kept saying, both to myself and out loud, I can't do this. This is going to be way hard. I am won't be able to speak Spanish, teach lessons, or understand anyone. I will probably get lost a bunch of times. I might die (hehe alright, a little dramatic) but after some prayer, and inspired messages from my teachers I am not all that worried. I am in the Lord's hands and I can do it with His help! Just because I can't do something yet doesn't mean I won't be able to do it in the future if I work hard and rely on the Lord.-- Ether 12:27.

One more thing-- still not sleeping! Yikes. I guess I just don't have enough time to talk to myself in the day here so I have to do it at night when I lie in bed and then I won't let myself fall asleep. But it's all right, I think my self-conversation time decreases every night as my tiredness increases.

I hate to say it, but right now I am grateful that I have almost always deprived myself of sleep by not going to bed early enough because I am really not all that tired here like I know a lot of the others in my district are. Or, at least, I am used to feeling tired. So, no worries, I feel just fine! And the sleep is slowly coming easier.

 Ok now that I got that out of the way, guess what else? Elder Oaks came and spoke to us this week. It was really fun to have what felt like a mini general conference here at the MTC. I sang in the choir and we sang "Praise to the Man" and it was super powerful. I loved it! I really like a few things that he said this week, including, "Whom the Lord calls, He qualifies." As you can tell, that was very applicable to my current situation and it provided me with comfort. A few other little one- liners from his talk include-- "No good deed goes unpunished," talking about the difficulties of missionary work and "In ways not yet revealed, our actions in the pre-mortal world affect us now." I thought that was pretty cool too.

 I forgot to bring my scriptures to the email room to share anything from them but the scriptures just keep speaking to me. I love it! There were a few verses from Alma where it talks about the armies of Helaman that really hit me this week. When talking about the armies it says something like, "They had never fought before, but they did not fear death. But they thought more upon the liberties of their Fathers..." I never realized before how applicable that verse was to missionary work. There is so much we can fear, but we can't dwell on that. Rather we need to focus on those that we are serving, like the armies did with their fathers whose places they took in battle, and serve with love. I need to remember that I am not here for me but here for the people of Argentina. That should be my focus always and I am working toward that.

I love you all very much and wish you a wonderful week!

Hermana Kuhn

(P.S.- Attached are my companions and I emailing. Haha, like my selfie shot? Oh you know what, I will also include an awesome selfie shot I got of us leaving the apartment this week just because it is that great :)

 

Other pictures-- our dear Elder Jo has never vacuumed before so of course we made him vacuum our classroom. haha, and he broke it! So funny. Our zone leader/ ex-district leader Elder Scruggs also busted his umbrella so we got a shot.