Week #2

We got Lots of pics this week. I'll just post a few. My practical daughter answers questions. Guess I better start asking spiritual ones.  :)

Alright so you have a lot of questions and they are all really random but I will do my best to answer them all.

1. The MTC was a lot better this week. We are actually learning about gospel stuff during class now and not just a bunch of hard Thai words. So that was a huge improvement from last week. I was really concerned about the lack of church doctrine we were learning.

2. Am I eating.... Well define eating. The food here really is not good. And then you end up eating a salad or something that doesn't have much to it. But when I do eat it is usually bread or french fry based so I will probably end up gaining weight somehow. Elder marks put on 20 lbs here!

3. My snacks aren't gone. They don't let you eat in the classroom where you spend your whole day and the only time you are actually in the sleeping room you are waking up or going to sleep. So it is hard to eat snacks. You just go hungry between meals. Ha ha

4. You asked what a typical day was like. Well...

6:30 wake up

7:00 breakfast

7:30 gym

8:30 get out of sweaty gym clothes and put on skirts

9:00 class time

12:00 lunch

!2:40 class

3:40 additional study

4:30 dinner

5:15 personal study

6:15 companionship study

7:15 language study

8:15 additional study

9:00 daily planning

9:30 personal time (we can go back to the rooms)

10:15 quiet time

10:30 bed time

5. Pday is Monday and we try to just roll out of bed and get to the temple as quickly as possible. Then we come back and print off emails. Then we do laundry and continue writing emails. Then we go to the bookstore and eat lunch and just kinda try to get everything done that we need to. 

6. The MTC doesn't seem crowded but we all have different gym and meal times. The only time you see nearly everyone is Sunday and Tuesday devotionals.

7. I'm not exactly sick of my clothes. I have a couple outfits I like more than my boring ones so I wish I got more cute outfits. ha ha But I am sick of getting dressed every single day. I just want to wear pajamas for a bit. And the reason my hair is curly often is because all I have to do is sleep with it in that headband and then pull the headband out in the morning so my hair literally gets done in 5 seconds. Ha ha

8. I haven't heard anything about my visa stuff. I'll probably hear about it when they give us our flight plans like a week before we fly out.

9. Did you get the picture of my shot? I have to get another one of those toward the later end of my MTC stay. Apparently the two I got before coming weren't even mandatory. :(

10. The sisters shoes are actually pretty different. Nearly all of us have at least one pair of crocks though. We did good with my shoes, they are all super comfortable. :)

I love that you think me getting two bagels is so smart. Ha ha. You would think Sister Zoller was a genious because one day she had the brilliant idea to recommend I get 3. Thats why we were called to learn Thai, because we are smart enough to get more than one bagel. Ha ha

For the Tuesday devotional Elder Quinton L. Cook came and spoke. It was all about missionary work and kind of our image... He said right at the beginning he felt the spirit prompting him to say certain things. At one point in the middle of his talk kind of off topic he said something that nearly our whole district needed to hear and was struggling with. It was pretty great. He also made us all write down we are not the marketing arm for the church. Ha ha I thought that was pretty funny. We are supposed to be ward and branch builders.

So funny story of the week... You get absolutely no privacy here. I had just come into the room from a shower and was about to get dressed. I stood in the corner behind a open closet door and dropped my towel when the entire zone of girls walked in for zone prayer! It couldn't have been worse timing. Ha ha it was pretty funny and a bit awkward...

I can't believe I am the one on the mission and dad already has a full family of baptisms more than me! Not fair. But that is so awesome! Good for them! (In Kevin's travels to Kenya, he had his driver take him to church. He asked his driver if he wanted to stay, which he did. Long story short, his whole family is getting baptized in a week or so!)

The weirdest thing about the MTC is when you realize you are going to go 9 weeks without riding in a moving vehicle of any kind. That is the longest I will have gone for like my whole life! Ha ha

Thanks for the sports updates by the way. Elder Curtis says to keep them coming! Also they don't inform us about anything going on with Thailand whether with the church or political so those updates are also much appreciated. Thanks for the package and the dear Elders. You should get Dietrich to write me... I kinda miss that kid.  And thanks for the letter Grandma! Its nice to hear from everyone. :) Really dear Elder is amazing. Ha ha

They don't check the packages here so honestly if you could smuggle me fruit or some form of healthy food and snacks... Cashews would be really good.

Now about your friends son going to cambodia. They are in our zone here. Thai and cambodian is kinda similar but they don't have tones so they are super lucky! They do provide sheets here and a blanket. There are pillows but I have been using my own. They also provide blankets but I haven't used that either because I have my own and Sister Herrmann freezes at night. (By the way, she is cousins with the Wistisons. Found that out last night.) So really if he doesn't need to bring anything for the field he doesn't need anything here. But I personally like having my own stuff. 

As sisters we get 8 dollars a week on our ID cards for the bookstore and food and stuff. The Elders get $6. We can go to the gym and take naps and I don't know there isn't much time to actually do stuff on Pday. And the bathrooms are kinda like the towers at USU. There are just a bunch and you gotta wait your turn. Ha ha 

Its not easy to upload picture because my cord doesnt work. You have to buy this thing for the memory card to use at the mtc. I am just going to borrow Sister Browns. My favorite word in Thai is missionary. This is the closest I can spell it with the alphabet. Pusansadsana  Poo (ichi, ni,) san, sod(like grass) saw (like your cutting down a tree) na like a song na na na. Phusansadsana. Yeah. Its cool.

Well I love you all! 

-Sister Nethercott

You might want to reorganize this email so that it actually makes sense...

Lotsa books with Sister Brown

Can't have too many pics of the map! 

classroom

dinnertime!

Sister Zoller, Sister Nethercott, Elder Curtis & ??

Sister Nethercott hates HATES shots!!!

with Elder Marks (friend from HS) and his comp

Sisters Nethercott, Hermann, Zoller, Brown

Laundry time with Sister Brown

Don't exactly know what Sister Hermann is doing! :)

The Thai Elders 

First letter!

Got our first letter from Sister Nethercott today! We were worried her letters were only going to be a couple sentences but I asked her a bunch of questions and she did well!

Sawatdiikha! Hey everyone, Its my first P-day here at the MTC. Its been pretty great so far. Its a really really tight schedule. I feel like they ask you to do so many things with so little time to do them. 

1. I've learned quite a bit of Thai I guess. Its really hard to learn with so little study time to learn it. Spanish and Japanese came so easy because I had grown up hearing them but I never heard Thai. So its coming but not exactly easily. The grammar and sentence structure is easy for me to understand but the actually vocabulary is hard to remember with such little time to study it.

2. My comp is Sister Emily Brown from Oregon! She is awesome. We get along really well and are on the same page about things and look at things differently so it makes a good companionship. I share a room with Sister Herrmann and Sister Zoller. We also get along really well so its pretty great. 

3. There are 14 of us in our district. 8 sisters and 6 Elders. So far we are all enjoying each other so lets hope that can last for 9 weeks!

4. We didn't stay up late talking but it did take us all a while to fall asleep. I feel like I am all adjusting though. And to avoid staying up late talking we've come up with taking turns sharing about a topic. So far we've made it through all the sisters in my rooms families.

5. The food is pretty gross. And the ice cream is only here twice a week for one meal. And its not that great of ice cream. There are often wraps which aren't great but edible. And there are always fudge bars or ice cream sandwiches. We eat dinner at 4:30 which is super early! So we get sac breakfast and I make sure to get 2 bagels so I can eat one before bed.

6. (I asked her about her friend Elder Marks who we saw when we dropped her off)  I did talk to Elder Marks more. We have the same meal and gym time. All the Elders and Sisters in my zone sit together though so I don't really see him during meals. The first gym day we played basketball togetherish and he has definitely been here for 7+ weeks. He was a lot better than I remember him being Jr year in PE.

7. I saw Madi Holt and I see Annika Fraga but haven't talked to her cuz I dont know her well. And I met Riley Adams from Alta who is in my same grade... Its funny I had to get ready for Thailand to meet her.

8. I haven't come across anything I have forgot but I would like a thumbdrive. I think that'll be good for the pictures. 

So the bunk beds are the same Dad. But I do think they have new mattresses. They are super squeeky. If I just move my arm it wakes up like the whole room. Im on the top bunk. And we do have a mini fridge but only because my khuu is awesome. She went to BYU so she knows everyone that works here. Her home teachers job is to move stuff. I guess there was an extra minifridge or something so like the third day we walked in our room and there was just this fridge in the corner with a note on it saying here Sister Brown we are awesome cuz we gave you this, Obviously thats not exactly what the note said but thats what I took out of it.

So the first day here we just dropped our stuff off at the room and went straight to class. I have so many book! There are like 5 dictionaries. Two preach my gospels in roman and thai. And just books! So we got to class and it was all in Thai. I didn't understand a thing but learned how to great people, ask how they are and where they are from. Then the next day we learned how to bare our testimonies. And then we had to go teach the next day that we learned how to pray! Yeah teaching when you don't know Thai is a little interesting... We just said what we knew how to say and then left before he could say anything back we couldn't understand. Don't worry he isn't a real investigator. He is our other teacher that we haven't met as our teacher yet. But the next day we went in with questions and invited him to pray and go to church. Yeah we had to make up where and when because we don't know. So that was kinda funny. I just drew him a picture and said 9 o'clock at the church across the street from the MTC. I thought that was good enough. 

So we wake up at 6:30 and grab sac breakfast. Then we go to gym and have like two seconds to get ready and go to class. Then we learn until lunch. After lunch is supposed to be more class time but that is when we teach our investigator Txg. After that is dinner (snack time). Then its personal study, companion study, and language study, additional study and bed time. So it sounds like there is a ton of study time. But we sleep on the 4th floor of 17M and learn on the 5th floor of 18M so I feel like going up and down the stairs takes the entire time. Team Thai Thighs. Its just preparing us for all that biking that will be coming up. But it makes me feel like I should be allowed to sleep through gym time. But its kinda nice because we can leave the gate and go to the field. Freedom! ha ha 

For sacrament meeting they ask us all to write a five minute talk on a topic so of course the topic was faith. Then they pick about 3 random people and have them come speak. After sacrament our district went to our classroom (where you spend like the entire day, even for personal study) and we shared the talks that we were going to give if we were called. Remember faith is the most important principle of this gospel. Always work and continue to build your faith. Its really the best thing you can be doing to improve your strength in this gospel.

Love you all!

Sitdaa Nethercott

P.S. I can't write you like any Thai because it is all romanized and would not come across right at all.

My companion, Sister Brown 

The cafeteria

LARGE stack of books

with Sister Brown- going to Thailand!

My roomies

The sisters in my group

Sister Alley, me, Sister Brown

Sister Brown & I at the temple

My MTC group

We dropped Brecklyn off at the MTC today. It was a bittersweet moment. We ate at CPK on the way there- her last BBQ chicken salad. She warned us if anyone was going to cry, they had to stay home. Mom held it together just for her. She was so excited to go! She's going to be great!!!

 Mary Ruth, whom Brecklyn hasn't seen for 2 years, flew in this morning and got to spend a couple hours together before she was dropped off.
I wonder how much taller Grayden will be in 18 months?

Last pic in front of the MTC

One of Brecklyn's friends, Elder Marks, was directing traffic and our car just happened to stop where he was. We heard a "Brecklyn. . . Sister Nethercott???" and turned around and he was there. A tender mercy.

It's getting real! Brecklyn is getting all packed up and gets set apart tonight at 7:30pm to be a missionary. Tomorrow's the big day!

We took some time away from packing to go to the Mount Timponogos temple. This is already the 12th temple she has attended!