Bonjour tout le monde!

Golly this has been a wonderful week! I don't even know why exactly it is! Although certain things have helped. I have received numerous letters and I'll try to write back to you as soon as possible! Something I have just found out is that mail from the US to Canada is really rather ridiculous. It can take up to two months to receive mail, however the mail from Canada to the US is really rather quick. So by next week send me emails and I will probably respond via letters.

I received the wonderful care package last week!! Thank you Putnam family! The box was filled with every kind of diabetes that I love! Even some that I didn't know I loved!! I'll be sure to share with my lovely companions! Sorry I don't have many pictures of them, the MTC computers are not a friend to my camera. Good thing this is my last time using them!!!

I GOT MY TRAVEL PLANS!!!! Phew glad I got that out. I've been holding in that excitement for two whole paragraphs! I'll be waking up in time to run to the MTC travel office at 3:30, be on my way to the Salt Lake City Airport by 4 hopefully. Then catching a DELTA flight that takes off at 7:45 flying to Detroit, So if anyone wants to let me borrow their phone so that I could call my family at 5:30 in the morning Utah time that would be pretty fantastic. If not I'll just get a call card from the MTC Bookstore here. Anyways I fly Salt Lake to Detroit then am met with a 30 minute "lay over" which will be more accurately described as "quick sprint to the finish." Then from Detroit to MONTREAL!!!!!!! By next Wednesday I will be assigned an area and a trainer where I will either be speaking French or English, depending on the area. It looks like it is going to be a long flight, but the more I think of it I'm pretty sure it is the last time I get to nap all day for an entire seventeen more months. In other words I'm pretty excited...if you can't tell.

Something we were just informed is... 1. Our mission is only a vehicle mission and holds the most revenue in vehicles out of any other mission. This is because not only is it absolutely freezing and snowy for ten to eleven months out of a year but it is also one of the largest missions. My mission literally has the north pole in its boundaries. Granted I'll be mainly in the South as only Elders serve with the Eskimos. Which is a bummer because I was really banking on converting a polar bear. But hey I'll still get up to eight feet of snow at times, no matter where I go. 2. My mission will be one of the many missions switching to digital. In other words I'M GETTING AN IPAD! That I will get to keep after my 18 months of service! Go Canada!!

I have gotten to see SOOO MANYY people here at the MTC this week! I run into one of my best friends from the Hill Camorah Pageant, Elder Steiner, every meal time! I get to see Sister Tori Boucher pretty much daily! And Elder Justin Iund is going to Vanuatu, French Speaking! It was quite a suprise to go and grab a drink of water on the floor all French speakers are on and see a familiar face! We are not in the same zone, but hey! A friend from home is always fun to see!

I'm going to keep this email short this week but not because I don't not love you guys. I thank you so much for the support I have had these past six weeks. It may be a while till I email again because my P-day (day I get to write emails and letters) will switch to Mondays once I am in the field. I love you all! A la Prochain!

Soeur Cummings

Le Fête dans le français

This week has been full of wonderful stories! I'm still doing the same actions day in and day out, but I have been noticing things more frequently. I know that this is evidence that I am growing closer to God and closer to my purpose. I have also started to notice things that I would not have had the chance to find out about myself if I had not served a mission. One thing that is very clear is that I absolutely love being a sister training leader. Want to know what my assignment is? I'll tell you anyway. The evening they introduced the assignments to my district, the elders being the zone leaders and the sisters being the sister training leaders, they started listing all the responsibilities for the Zone leaders. The list was a full ten minutes long! No joke! After the branch president finished with the now wide eyed elders he turns to us and says, "Sisters, be sympathetic and be an example."...Okay! I can do that!! We still notice if certain things are happening such as not getting to bed on time or not staying as a companionship, we just inform the Elders and they enforce it. Then we hug them. Parce que nous sommes sympathetic. (Got to love the random things that happen when you are learning a language, I didn't mean to write in French it just happened) Having this assignment has made me realize just how wonderful sharing love with others is. In other words I love sharing Charity. I want to become more charitable because I know I really can be. While in the temple I said a small prayer. Asking that I may receive guidance as to how I can grow in charity, how can an imperfect human possibly share God's perfect love? Hours after saying that prayer I taught a wonderful investigator named George. The MTC has volunteers called gold-taggers, they wear a gold tag and new missionaries can come up and practice having a real investigator. these gold taggers are generally newly baptized members who are reverting back to who they were before the gospel. Although some are non-members. George is an elderly man who loves volunteering at local elementary schools teaching children art. Not too long ago he lost his leg up to the knee, due to illness. He is an answer to my prayer. This man has such a beautiful way of sharing the Love of God, he now calls it "doing backflips" due to a story Sister Jeter told. Where ever he goes he touches peoples lives, because not only has his leg been gone for a couple years, but he is walking. And boy does he walk. He shared with us how painful it was to walk with a prosthetic and the very next minute was talking about how so many others have it worse than he. What an amazing example of charity.

We got two sisters from New Caledonia who really only speak French come into our zone. As sister training leaders we got to escort them around the rest of the day, which surprised my companions and I at how much French we actually knew. These sisters are the epitome of a party. They walk up to every other Polynesian person on this campus, being sure to ask where they are from, where they are going etc. Sister Bluker can speak a lot of English actually, but her companion has not been blessed in that way yet. Which makes the moments when she bares her testimony, which happens very often, much more meaningful, she uses the words that she knows to say what she knows is true. When we say "your awesome Sister Selui!" she responds with "we are all awesome! Because we are all children of God. And he loves us."

One last thing before I close, a sister serving in Tahiti has a wonderful phrase that she says very frequently this phrase is "the church is true!" She uses it when she gets really happy "Ah! We are having ice cream tonight! The church is true!" or when she is even feeling sad "I don't have any letters today. The church is true." What a wonderful optimistic expression. A good day becomes better because not only is it good but you have a perfect knowledge that the church is true. A bad day becomes better because sure things may not be going very well but at least the church is true.

So in closing, strive to see the truth in your lives, I'm loving the experience I get to have while on a mission. Just to think I have seventeen more months of this makes me giddy beyond compare. I love you all! Don't forget to write me =D

Je vous aime

Soeur Cummings

Red Marker - White Floor

Time is passing way too fast here. According to my amazing cousins Sister Britney Slade, it will continue to do so. Not sure how I feel about that. Already I'm dreading the day that I have to take off my missionary name tag, there will be many tears shed then. Anyways the MTC is great! The only beef I have besides it being short is the fact that my body has readily dispensed pounds of food via horrific gas and bowel movement... Don't worry though I'm not going to die of overpooping. Sister Jeter's brother has saved us after he sent literally fifteen pounds of fruit snacks to her. We now eat like Kings! Or toddlers depending on your definitions of the two.

We have just received twenty new missionaries in our zone this past Wednesday, eight of which are sisters. We may or may not have used our assignment as Sister Training Leaders as a way to convert them all to playing soccer at gym time... but hey the white handbook (book with all of the rules) encourages us to take exercising seriously. And lets be honest. Volleyball in the sand is fun but not the kind of workout we as sisters in the MTC need. We play soccer every day of the week that we have gym time, and apparently I'm pretty good. I dribble the right direction and even score sometimes! If anybody would like to inform me as to what a hat trick is apparently I'm pretty good at that too... Either way I think I am working out far more than I did at home! Granted I was semi comatose for about a month #rollerbladingaccident.

Sister Jeter, Sister Hill and I have decided that this seasons new "hashtag" is "parce que" which literally means because in French. You will often hear us say "Parce que Utah" or "Parce que missionaries," we're pretty creative with our Franglais. Elder Sorenson in our Zone has an amazing ability at franglais, he will often approach you and ask something along the lines of "How the ça va are ya?!" which translates to how are you. French is going very well for me, being a sister training leader makes it so everyone thinks that you actually know something, so I am often asked questions about French that I actually have to go out of my way to learn. So ya, I'm getting loads of practice.

In the way of seeing people, boy do I have a story. For one thing I saw Micah Putnam in the Cafeteria on Saturday! We didn't get to eat together parce que I had to PVL (Parler votre langue or speak your language) at lunch so I had to sit with French speakers, it was great seeing him though! Also I had just finished showering and was going down the hall to the water fountain in my residents when I turn the corner and meet a familiar face! Emily Teuscher is living on the same floor as me! She and I were good friends when I was taking piano lessons with her mother for I believe 2nd grade to 4th grade. I could be wrong though. We talked about Normal, Illinois and how our families were doing. It made me realize how much I miss Illinois! Don't get me wrong I miss New Jersey but sort of only because my family is there... Illinois is where my memories are.

Now is the time for my heroic story. *clears throat* Once upon a time my district and I were asked to clean the temple. My companions and I were assigned to clean the chandeliers in some of the rooms. Which is a very painstakingly long process of taking out these crystals one by one, washing them, and then replacing them. The Provo temple was closed these past two weeks for maintenance and resurfacing purposes, one of the projects that had been done was replacing the majority of carpeting in some of the rooms. Our room just happened to be one of the rooms that had gotten the carpeting replaced. After taking out all of the crystals in the big chandelier we were marking the dead light bulbs with, of course, a giant bright red marker in a completely white room. A sister was marking one of the light bulbs and suddenly the marker fell out of her hands! It sailed down towards the recently replaced pure white carpet and almost would have made it. Except somehow I was able to catch the marker before it hit the floor, I guess all those years of color guard certainly are helping out. So yes people I'm a hero, there isn't even a mark to show it! ;D

This past week our district also got to help out with moving in the senior companions. They are just the cutest people on the campus! Which may or may not have anything to do with the fact that they get to hold hands with each other all around campus, I may or may not be jealous of that little fact (granted who would I hold hands with.) I have learned so much from their example too. They frequently come up to talk to us about how our studies are going, and are so warm and inviting I can feel the charity radiating off of them. It is a beautiful thing. And it makes me realize just how much I want to grow my charity so I can help others feel how I feel around those wonderful elders and sisters.

That pretty much is all that I can say has happened this week, I love you all! For those who have written me I'm writing you back in letter form. That means you too mother ;D I'll talk to you next week!

Soeur Cummings

Us bonding over popcorn.

Laughing together.

At the Provo Temple

Independence Day at the MTC

Hello world! Greetings from this wonderful country known as the Missionary Training Center! Seriously though sometimes this place feels like it is a whole different world, you only see people in a certain culture and the time moves so strangely. Sister Hill has put it very well, "The days feel like weeks, but the weeks feel like days." There have been many a moment when we turn to each other and ask "remember a couple of days ago when sister Jeter got 13 letters" and it had just happened that morning. Speaking of Letters. I love you guys but I only have one hour to email, only one day out of the week, however I can receive and respond to letters every day of the week during my hour of free time before I head to bed. Please either snail mail me or Dear Elder me. Not only does it make things more efficient but then I get to feel that lovely feeling of being loved when a letter comes my way.

As many know it was Fourth of July this past Friday. We were dismissed from classes around three hours early and shepherded into the auditorium for a devotional, (I think this was just a tactic for us Elders and Sisters not to hear Carrie Underwood perform at the Stadium of Fire 400 metres away from the MTC.) It was the most lovely devotional I have ever experienced. The speaker spoke on how being a hero is not something just found through firefighting or police work. In fact we can all be heroes, the greatest hero was Jesus Christ, he suffered our sins for us in the garden of Gethsemane so that we could return to our Heavenly Father and still have our agency, or our ability to choose. After this beautiful talk we were surprised with a viewing of the amazing movie "17 Miracles" which is a beautiful story of LDS Pioneers trekking across the West to Utah. We were then conveinently let out after "Sister Underwood" had finished singing (President Nally, the MTC President, actually said this at the pulpit and you wouldn't believe how many Elders gasped with happiness at the idea that she had perhaps gotten baptised, but twas not so.) They gave us this beautiful thing called a Magnum ice cream bar and told us that we could watch the fireworks. So those of you in the Provo, Utah area. We were totes watching the same fireworks. I have never been more proud of my heritage than at that point in my life.

I have gotten to see Elder Garrett Hawkins, who got here last Wednesday, we share the same meal times and P-days and Gym time so I literally see him everywhere. And I have also been blessed on seeing Elder Taylor Graves every time the West campus MTC dwellers join us main campus dwellers. We enjoy giving each other high fives and see the other elder's and sister's reactions, little known fact, sisters and elders can't high five or fist bump. I know. Its sad. I've seen Micah a couple of times mostly though its out the window and I see him accidently trip over his feet as he walks to his car. For some reason he has yet to smuggle me in some pizza, I think he should work on that ;D

French sayings of the week. #lalutteestvrai (hashtage the struggle is real), "tous le temps chaque jours" (all day every day) and "comment osez-vous" (how dare you). The language is going very well. I have been able to carry on conversations at a quick pace, as well have been able to get off book for lessons (meaning I don't read the script I've written before hand and just teach with the spirit.) Sister Hill, Sister Jeter and I have taught six lessons. Five of which were to our investigator Em, who turned out to be our second French teacher. We sort of knew it would happen, but at the same time it was very very strange to see Frere Laguan in a suit and tie speaking English occasionally. My teachers are great as I said Frere Laguan is one of them, he is the most sassy French speaker I believe I have ever met. He also has one of the best testimonies I have ever heard, or at least from the parts I could translate to English. The teachers here are suppose to speak French the entire time, so then we can have a full immersion experience. Considering we are in our class rooms 11 hours of the day, compared to our 9 hours in our residents halls, this seems to be working quite well. I believe the class room my cousin Brandon Slade was in is in fact in our Zone, we have Haitian Creole speaking missionaries as well as Tahitian missionaries on our floor (the poor Tahitian missionaries have to learn 5 weeks of French and then 6 weeks of Tahitian. a.k.a 11 weeks in the MTC.)

I have only been here two weeks, which is really rather strange to think of that but its true. Sister Hill, Sister Jeter and I have been given the assignment of Sister Training Leaders. Our sister training leaders just left yesterday to serve in Lyon France. And we are in the quiet before the storm. Tomorrow the two French zones receive 47 new French missionaries, next week 6 international missionaries come in who only speak French (which should make interviewing interesting...) But hey this will be fun!

Looks like that is all the time that I have for today, seriously people write me letters. I never thought I'd say this but goodness. Email is a hassle.

Until next week!

Souer Cummings

L'etoile de la ceil (The Ceiling Stars)

Guys its official. I'm a missionary. Come give me a handshake. Coming into the MTC was uneventful thank goodness, not including a rather treacherous sprint in a skirt in the O'hare airport that should have really been recognized for "most graceful run for your life while your plane has just landed and your connecting plane has two minutes left of boarding." On the plane I sat next to a guy from Ottawa which is in my mission! He filled me in on everything I needed to know about the area. AKA Hockey. Oh he also told me the fifty dollar bills in Canada actually smell like maple syrup. Which makes me really excited because that means that not only is Canadian money really bright like monopoly money but its like a scratch and sniff! CANADA IS AN AMUSEMENT PARK! At least in advertising ;D

Thank you all those family and friends who came to see me off, I love you guys! After I was dropped off at the curb and I had gotten my name tag, a Sister Smith (who is from, you guessed it, an hour outside Montreal) helped me take my gear up to my room. I was of course the first one into the apartment and as well as first into the classroom. Oh the classroom... I walked in and my teacher was speaking French...someone once decribed the first day, maybe even the first week, as trying to drink out of a firehose. You try to get as much water as you can into your mouth, but only end up hurting your face really badly. This is very very accurate, the teachers here are supposed to be speaking French 24/7 which is good because I am picking up the language quite well, or more likely remembering it well. It is only the sixth day and I have already taught three lessons in French, can say a prayer in French and have learned many useful phrases such as "Je peux pas meme" (I just can't even) "Je conduis la bus de la lutte" (I drive the struggle bus) and a particularly interesting Quebecois phrase "Bien oui en dont" pronounced as "ben way un dawn" which means You have got to be kidding me. THAT'S CRAZY! And yet at the same time I feel like I have been prepared for this moment my entire life.

I am in a Trio with Sister Hill and Sister Jeter. Sister Hill is from Las Vegas and has the most beautiful long hair you can think of, and she is so talented she can do fancy braids with it, without a mirror. Elle est un boss. Sister Jeter is from Texas although she doesn't sound like it, she also has this insane ability to just throw anything at the garbage can and it will go in. Which is ironic because her last name in French means "to throw away in the trash." Elle est un boss aussi. Our first night we were all so tired and our brains were in a condition that we have become to understand as "French Fried." We all got ready for bed, read our scriptures, wrote in our journals and then turned off the lights. It was only then that we saw the most beautiful thing we have seen yet. Some Sisters before us had put dozens and dozens of glow in the dark stars on the ceiling of our room. This is a little known fact but at the MTC you don't get to see the night sky. The buildings are too close together with covered walkways that blot out the sky, missionaries are also not allowed to be outside before it gets really dark. But every night since the first all three of us walk into the room do our nightly routine, and then turn off the lights and sigh. Sleeping under the stars has become a way to de-stress, a way to unwind, and a way to recognize just how close we are to God. He has left little miracles like this that have kept me up and running. Miracles such as seeing a friend everyday, we don't talk much but just being able to see them calms me down so that I can focus during the eleven hours of studying and classes I have daily.

Currently it feels like I am too busy to even worry about being homesick. I miss you guys don't worry. But as my cousin put it "I hope I miss you." There are moments when it hits me, moments of "Oh my goodness I am a missionary" or "Oh my goodness I only get to wear pants one day a week" or even "Oh my goodness I can't high five guys for an entire 18 months." Strangely enough those moments are when I feel most homesick. This is only remedied by receiving letters and even just sleeping under the stars. I love it here and I can't wait until I am out in the field. But for now I'm content with sleeping under the stars for five more weeks.

Sincerely,

Sister Cummings