Hello from NICE!

France is just about everything I expected. :) Just a warning, the keyboard is slightly different so I might make weird little mistakes :)

So much to write! This last week has been quite the adventure! Let me start with this. My address in Nice! You have to address it exactly this way, NOT with my name, or it won't get to me.

Les Missionnaires

143 Bd de Cessole

06000 Nice

France

Our plane ride was insane! We had so many missionaries on the same flight that we were backed up all three legs of our flight. Some luggage didn't make it out of SLC but luckily only one of mine got left in London. So we spent 3 days in Lyon around the mission office getting legal things done and also interviews. They fed us all this really delicious stuff (yes the bread really is as good as they say) and then Thursday came! It was like opening a mission call, but we were receiving our assignments and trainers. Really cool!

So yeah, I'm in Nice! It is on the southern coast and Monaco is in our area. The grand prix is coming up and we will be around that day. Cool :) Nice is pretty much paradise! If you Google Nice I am almost positive that those pictures will be accurate :) We came here by train from Lyon and it was really beautiful!

Our apartment is quaint and very... French. My companion is Soeur Hoar and she is 100% from England! She hasn't been out long but she is great at French so I really admire her :) We live with two other sisters and one of them is also new so we knew each other at the MTC! There are also two other sets of elders here and a senior couple... but we'll get to that in a bit!

Our first night here we went to a baptism. Neat! The ward here is amazing! They are so kind and patient and they love the missionaries! There really was no better place to be trained :) New missionaries here are called blues. I am a blue :) Wonderful. That basically means I cannot talk to anyone because I would never understand what they say back #blueprobs

Here are some fun things about France: padiddle is universal and I play often here (I'll still be a professional in 18 months). There are pretty much no driving rules. Drive wherever park wherever. As long as the crazy buses fit, do what you want. Same for pedestrian traffic. Bread smells are everywhere so you are always hungry. Always.

The bishop in our ward is amazing. There were only a few missionaries here before but they added four more. After all the new missionaries stood and bore testimony in French (yes, I did this and it was awesome!) the bishop basically stood and said this (in French): "The Lord has sent us 10 missionaries. We are being prepared... and we are ready." Whoa! So cool. He really asked everyone to step up and be missionaries so, we will have a lot of work to do! Our companionship is new in Nice so we barely have any people to teach. But this mission was blessed and promised that there would be miracles, and I have seen it already :) We have one awesome amie on date for baptism on June 15! Exciting! Her dad is a Michigan fan and he said I couldn't come in! Hah! What are the odds of finding that here in France.

I don't have a lot of time left but I hope you are all doing well! France is really awesome and it is treating me well :) Keep in touch. The church is true! Love you all.

Soeur Loder

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MTC Home Stretch!

So many mission calls! When I heard about all of them I think I almost passed out. Brazil and London!? Don't mission calls just rock your socks? They rock mine.

 

Anyway.

 

WE HAVE OUR TRAVEL ITINERARY!

 

Some other French sisters had their plans when we passed them and we sprinted to the mailbox and THERE THEY WERE! So we are leaving the MTC at 7:30 next Monday morning. Our flight is at 11:15 from Salt Lake and we'll go to Chicago, then to London and then LYON! It'll be a long flight but I'm still excited. We're flying British Airways which obviously I know nothing about but a lot of people are pretty jealous. Our elders are going to Paris and they have a direct flight SLC to Paris a few hours after us and they're flying Delta. Our travel group is 27 people, and that is final destination Lyon... we met some Russian sisters who are going all the way to London with us before parting ways and their group is 40? Basically our plane will only be missionaries.

 

This week is really fun. I decided to be a total creep and found out when the Finnish TRC was so I could say hello to Brennan's dad. Sure enough, there he was! We got to talk for a little while but it really was the highlight of my week. Not just saying that, either :) Then every floor in our building has a sharing shelf (for food) and giveaway boxes (for everything else). One day we just went raiding and found all these clothes and restocked our treat supply for the district. I remember walking off one of the floors with all this stuff and saying, "Is this what it's like to be a Gadianton robber? I think I like it." :) Our district also made a goal of singing more. I think we achieved it! We taught a few people how to do the cup game (yes, like in Pitch Perfect) and we sang Called to Serve in French while doing it. Additional study time, what?

 

So this week we got to know our new teachers. The first is Sœur Worsham who is very kind but I don't think she... gets us. Haha, she is new and we are her first district so we are trying to figure out what we can do to make sure she loves us the most. Then, Frère Magré! Oh he is just the best. So he is legitimately French. Like, grew up in France before moving to the United States. I mean, his name is Raphaël Magré. Anyway, he served in Canada so basically his French is legit and I feel that even after a week my French has improved drastically just from listening to him speak. Plus he loves us. In a meeting S. Worsham said she told everyone that we think we're the best district (because we don't have any drama or trouble) and Frère Magré says, "Because they are!" That's when we knew that he loved us. I love our teachers even though I do miss the others. They're obviously just trying to get us used to constant change. It's working.

 

This week pretty much 2/3 of our zone left to the field (Africa and Canada) so for a few days we were lonely but then we got new missionaries! It was so much fun. They are all so different and I think they'll end up being pretty cool too :) I don't think any of them are going to France, maybe Madagascar and some more Canada? But a lot of them already speak pretty well. But they all had a hard time teaching the first time and I just wanted to hug them, stroke their hair and say, "Now, now, it gets better, fear not." Haha, because I wish someone had done that for me after our first lesson. We had a French fast and testimony meeting and I was so impressed because the two older districts were like, "Okay, they won't want to say much so we all have to be ready to go up," but I think most of the people that got up were the new ones! They're so brave. I would not have gotten up my first Sunday to speak in French. This week our disctict was selected to host the new missionaries. So we get to pick up the new arrivals and help them get their books and find their way around. I. Am. So. Excited.

 

Yesterday we had mission conference, which was just a two hour long MTC-wide meeting. At the end the president of the MTC decided to call on two random missionaries to bear testimony. Pressure! Well, the two people he selected were surprised and it turns out both of them had lost their father to a heart attack within the last few months and bore a strong testimony of families. I was completely blown away. The work is so real! How inspired was President Nally to call those two people that he didn't know. The elder he called he said, "I don't even know your name, but you're sitting behind these three sisters, will you come up?" It was a really cool meeting.

 

Since the weather might actually be breaking, I'm happy. Warm weather! My district has gone outside for gym time and played four square for probably almost a week. It's intense. It's hilarious. It's majestic. I'll really miss my district when we all leave. I knew this would happen! I knew I'd love my district and that when our time was up we would all have to leave and my heart would get ripped out. Yeah, it's going to happen. But we have one more week together and we're going to live it up! Mostly by speaking only in French. Not an English fast, but a French feast. French. All day every day. Toujour, chaque jour. It's going to be really hard. Bring it on.

 

Anyway, thanks to everyone for letters! I'm excited to write you all back. Thank you to Lisa for telling me about Rolex :) Some poor elder made the mistake of asking me how three-day eventing works. Yeah, he got pictures and diagrams and everything. Oh, and last night Chad Lewis spoke at our Sunday night devotional. Obviously I don't know anything about him but maybe you football likers will. He's a cool cat and he told some really cool stories, so I liked it.

 

Thanks to everyone for everything! Remember that this is my last week here so send me mail while you still can :) Take advantage of that DearElder business while it's still free! They don't print them on the weekend so use it before Friday and I'll love you forever and always. Have a super great week. The Church is true and the book is blue!

 

Sœur Loder

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MTC Week #4

WEEK FOUR? I know. I wake up every day thinking, "What happened?" I even try to write in my journal every night and I can't even remember anything we did. I guess that makes journal time easier :)

 

So first off, the MTC revamped their entire schedule system so we got a whole new layout for our last two weeks. Our P-day switched to Monday... which so far has NOT turned out okay! We got up at 4:30 am and ran to do laundry because usually it is really crowded already... but there were maybe 10 people there and most of them were our district. Then we walked up to the temple, which was good but we were starving because we hadn't had breakfast yet. So we decide to just have temple breakfast (which is only the greatest breakfast that ever existed) but guess what? The temple cafeteria is closed on Monday. NOOO. So we went to the bookstore and had lunchables for breakfast? Not my first choice but we had a personal study picnic outside since the weather is so beautiful!

 

Saturday morning I wrote the date on something and realized it was ROLEX CROSS COUNTRY DAY :( I was hoping that I'd just be so caught up in everything that I wouldn't realize it was Rolex weekend which was true until it just clicked in my brain. I've been to Rolex for 10 years... I can't believe it! But if there's anything I would want to miss Rolex for, it would be a mission. PS anyone who went to Rolex, feel free to tell me everything about it. Okay thanks :)

 

So because  the schedule is changed, we are getting two new teachers. Huge bummer! One left for Texas and Sœur Scott is still working, but they decided to give us a new teacher anyway. Who is in charge of this nonsense!? It's really thrown our teaching off because we have had so many temporary teachers so we teach each of them as an investigator maybe twice? So basically we are professionals at teaching the Restoration but that's all... hopefully we can get some good teaching in before we head off to France.

 

Which by the way is TWO WEEKS from today. I can't even believe that.

 

This week Sœur Scott had us play a game where we have to draw a random word from a box and start talking to her as if she is a stranger on the street... using that word. It's called contacting. Anyway, everybody else had pretty okay words. Like sun or bike... but I draw my word and it's SOUP. So she's this old lady eating soup on a bus and she looks at me and says (in French by the way), "I like eating soup on the bus. Do you want some?" Yeah it was pretty hard because let's be honest, that's more funny than anything. But not as funny as E. Miser's word: Fishing. Which is pêchez. Coincidentally, "sin" is péche and they are pronounced the same way. So he tried to say, Where do you fish? It came out a little wrong. The best part... after E. Miser asks our teacher where she sins and we laugh she goes quiet and says, "C'est confidentiel!" It is confidential! Haaa. The best.

 

For Sunday, Sœur Richardson and I got to teach a lesson to our district on the Plan of Salvation. We did some discussion at first but then we decided to do a teaching experience where they would be teaching me, not as Sœur Loder but as Carson! I asked which two missionaries wanted to teach me and nobody volunteered and I was confused until later when someone said they were afraid to volunteer because I was staring them down really intensely. I don't mean to do that. Ha. Anyway, Sœur Anderson and E. Haskell got to teach me the second discussion and it was SO GOOD. Probably because it was in english and not French. :) I love playing investigator with my district... one, because I'm really good at it (obviously) and two, my district has a lot of really really good teachers. I just love them all.

 

Sœur Scott had my companion and I do sort of an impromptu lesson the other day and we were pretty worried because her character as an amie is kind of sassy! Haha, so we were nervous about teaching her. There weren't any teaching rooms open so we taught our lesson walking around the building. Our amie, Charité, was absolutely fascinated by the Book of Mormon and said to us, "My head thinks this is incredible, but my heart thinks it might be true" so we were like, YES! We went upstairs, found a room and prayed with her. Now, we know this is our teacher but after the prayer she tears up and we sit in a wonderful quiet for a few minutes when we bear testimony. Followed by an invitation to be baptized, which was accepted. It was probably the most incredible thing ever! I just love being a missionary.

 

Sunday was really nice. I just have the hardest time at Sacrament meeting because of the surprise talks! Our district made it through another reaping (get it?) so we were happy. Haha, so wonderful. We'll see what happens on our last Sunday.

 

Anyway, by request of Manoel, I'll keep this e-mail short. :) Okay, mostly kidding. This week was just fairly typical. Which is totally okay! But also not good for those who like writing extremely descriptive e-mails.

 

L'église de Jésus-Christ est VRAI! Son évangile est parfait, toutefois nous ne sommes pas parfaits. Grâce à Christ et son Expiation nous pouvons retourner à notre Père Céleste. L'œuvre missionaire est véritable et je l'aime.

 

Bon chance, mes amis!

 

Sœur Loder

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Pictures!

They completely changed the MTC schedule, so our P-day is Monday now. Crazy crazy.

Zuster Wood is leaving me today :( I miss her already.

Happy Monday!

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MTC Week #3

Bonjour!

 

It's insane how fast time goes here. I feel like I have been here only a few days except now I magically know how to teach in French. Yesterday was our halfway mark, can you believe that? In just three weeks we will be flying to FRANCE! Our layovers are in Chicago and London, then we go to Lyon. How neat!

 

So this last week was pretty cool. Tuesday night we were singing in choir rehearsal and we're watching the people set up for devotional and they're setting up the fancy invisible teleprompters and we were like, they don't just set those up for anyone. But they keep the speakers a secret until the actual devotional. So there we are, singing prelude music before the devo and in walks... Richard G. Scott! AN APOSTLE. It was really cool and he spoke about prayer and how amazing and personal it is. Then he gave those learning a language a blessing that we might be able to study and learn well. It was a really good night.

 

One of our teachers, Sœur Scott, couldn't come in last Wednesday so we had a subsitute! She's a cute girl who is in training to be a teacher. We didn't have a real plan, so she decided to teach us how to do porte-à-porte, which is knocking on doors. Haha, oh it was hilarious! She would go wait in a room and we would have to knock and give our message and hopefully make an appointment! Sœur Richardson and I did well but she slammed the doors on a few of the elders. We got to do it a few different times and it was a neat thing. Maybe I'll be better when I don't know who is behind the door :) Sadly, our teachers will be leaving us because the BYU semester changes and Utah passed a law about full-time workers gettting benefits. So the MTC has deemed "full time" as 29 hours so they don't have to give benefits. Everything is all mixed up! Frère Glenn is leaving us to go to Texas and work this summer so really, we're just kind of sad about all of that.

 

We also did our first TRC this week, and it was coooooool. We taught a two different people a message about prayer and faith (they're BYU students and members, so it was less pressure) and got to answer questions. We shared the story in the Book of Mormon about the brother of Jared and how he asks the Lord to touch the stones to light the vessel and how he has such sweet faith! They were able to ask us questions and we could actually answer, in French. So overall it was a good experience.

 

Frère Glenn has been playing an ami (investigator, don't forget) named Chris, who is someone he actually knew from his mission in Montreal. So we go in pretty blindly and start teaching him and it was really just the sweetest thing. He was receptive and asked questions. So the next time we taught we were pretty excited. His character has a daughter, but he is divorced so he never sees her and it absolutely broke my heart. In the lesson we taught "Chris" how to pray, then knelt and asked him to pray, and even though I KNOW it is my teacher... the prayer was so innocent that when we walked out the door I cried. MISSIONARY WORK IS THE BEST. We taught Chris for the third and last time and he had some really good questions. His father passed away and really wants to know where he is. He is what we call "golden." :) The Gospel of Jesus Christ is for everyone.

 

Let me tell you about Sacrament meetings here. Every week a topic is assigned and each missionary in the branch is supposed to write a three minute talk in French. On Sunday we come in, opening hymn, announcements, Sacrament and then the conducting person stands and announces two missionaries that will be speaking. Surprise! This Sunday I watched as the bishop announced the two people... everyone sat back in their chairs in relief. Haha, it's so scary! It's only a three minute talk, but it is a complete surprise and also in French. It's all preparatory for the actual field, but my heart stops every time he says "sister."

 

Oh, Hancocks! So the other day we were walking back to our classroom and I happen to hear someone talking to an elder and out of the corner of my eye recognize... Dallas Beck! Hahaha, it was so funny because he barely remembers me even though I stayed at his house. He went to look at my nametag and I covered it up really fast! I told him I stayed at his house a while back and he obviously didn't believe me and asked where he was from so I said, "Council Bluffs, Iowa" and he was like, "Oh, shoot, you do know me!" So we played a little game until he figured out who I am and how I know him. Now I see him pretty much every day. Fun!

 

For everyone, get on Mormon Messages and watch the video called "Men's Hearts Shall Fail Them." I just LOVE it! And I encourage you to watch it too because it really is touching and rings true in today's world. Mormon messages are our favorite! They are the perfect thing to wake us up during study time :)

 

Well, guess what. I love the MTC still! It really is amazing and the weather has become extremely beautiful, so I love being outside. :) Tons of flowers and everyone is in a good mood. Allyson and Laura, I can't wait for you to be here! I hope you just fall in love with this place too :)

 

Je sais que Jésus-Christ vie. Il a mort pour nos péchés. Joseph Smith est un prophète est il a retablié l'église de Jésus-Christ sur la terre. Notre Père Céleste nous aime beaucoup beaucoup beaucoup.

 

Have an amazing week! Je vous aime beaucoup (x3) :)

 

Sœur Loder

 

 

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Picture!

Sorry I only took like, three pictures this week. But here's the best one. This is Elder Miser and he likes to meditate but he fell asleep this time :) E-mail to come later!

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MTC Week #2

So there is this Spongebob episode where they turn the Krusty Krab into a five star restaurant and Squidward tells Spongebob to forget everything, "...everything except fine dining, and breathing." Well that is about how I feel here. Forget everything except missionary work... and breathing. Of course missionary work means French, purpose, first vision, names of a thousand people, points to begin teaching, etc etc etc. But other than that, yes I have forgotten almost everything. I can barely remember simple phrases in Italian and I'm lost for song lyrics I used to know. Thankfully my well of Spongebob quotes is still full because there are a lot of people in my district that love Spongebob. :)

 

So anyway, so much to talk about! Last Tuesday, we went to San Francisco to get our French visas. There were 8 soeurs and 1 elder, who is going to Lyon but speaking Mandarin. His mom is French so he is already fluent, now he is learning Mandarin. Respect. Anyway, we were on a bus by 5:30 am and flew to California! It was super beautiful there and we basically landed 20 feet from the bay. The consulate visit took about 20 minutes for all of us. Funny part, the guy that was doing the paperwork was really sassy. But the best part, he was a little French man with a thick French accent. So I go up and first thing he says (forget not, in an accent), "Carson, zat is a boys name, no?" and all my missionary friends laughed and I said, "Oui, it is..." and he said, "Okay I'll think of a joke for your last name while I do this... hmm. I don't know. Can you speak LOU DAH?" Yes, that happened. My district got a kick out of it and now they call me Soeur LOU DAH all the time. I really don't mind, it makes me feel loved. They also say I have really intense eyes and now call them "tiger eyes." It's a thing now.

 

JED SEWELL! I was walking to lunch and then happened to see someone that looks like you walking down the path with a host elder so I went and said hello :) Turns out he is in my class building and we have p-day together so basically I see him everywhere and we're friends now. It's fun calling someone Elder Sewell again :)

 

So now to move towards what we've been doing. So I told you about our amie Alyse... and apparently it is a big secret that she was our teacher but I always knew! But after four lessons, everybody is preparing to teach Alyse when she walks in wearing a skirt and a nametag that reads "Sister Scott" and talks to us in perfect English. I was unphased, but you should have seen the reaction. Elder Tai FREAKED OUT! Haha, he was 100% convinced that she was really an amie from France and he was so panicked to hear her speak perfect English. I think some people in my district felt really betrayed but I was amused :) Later at dinner Elder Tai turned to me (he's Japanese so imagine that accent) and says, "Today our investigator came in as our teacher and then my companion is in California, am I dreaming? Soeur Loder, is it really you?" and I said oui just to realize that I had Elder Sikich's nametag on... poor Elder Tai. He had a rough a day :)

 

We have had a lot of fun teaching. The Spirit really helps and honestly, I have said so many things in French that I never even considered saying and it turned out to be the perfect thing. If you're willing to listen to the Spirit, you will be guided! We're now teaching Sister Scott as Charite and Brother Glenn as Chris. Two amis, yay! It has been amazing to plan for lessons and really try to figure out how to help these people. They are both roleplaying a person they taught on their mission so it's a sweet experience. So many scriptures and pieces that I can use to teach have come to me right when I need them, so I really enjoy teaching :) Charite is harder because she is really, really religious and told us in our last lesson that she thinks she is a prophet, and everybody is a prophet. We've had an interesting time planning for our next lesson! Also, White Collar helped me in our lesson. Soeur Richardson was struggling to say, "The authority was lost" because she didn't know the word for lost. As I was thinking I remembered, "She changed her last name to perdu. Do you know what that means in French? Lost." So I shouted PERDU and it was a really good moment. The lesson was saved :) PS I might have spelled that wrong #dontjudge

 

Seriously thank you for all the letters and packages! I always share my food with my district because there is so much... and I definitely don't need all of it :) I've had fun getting mail, though. Soeur Richardson and I always get the most mail so everyone gets jealous. Haha, it is pretty fun! Dear Elders are amazing so if you're reading this, I exhort you to write me. I'll write back. I promise. Letters are the most fun thing ever. And if you are ever thinking, "I want to send Carson something, but what should I send?" Stickers. Always stickers. Spongebob stickers. Glitter stickers. SCRATCH AND SNIFF STICKERS. All kinds of stickers. Because there are a million and one things to put stickers on :) Cookies are good too. Or just letters. I'll take what I can get ;)

 

Let's see. Our district has a lot of really funny quotes, but my favorite one recently came from my teacher, Frere Glenn. "I kept like, four mission journals. Hashtag diligence." I say "hashtag convert problems" all the time so basically it made my entire week. Elder Tai is actually a convert of about seven years so we're in the same boat with things like primary songs, which they sing a LOT of here. It's a little bit sad, but I'm learning slowly. Slowly but surely. #convertproblems :)

 

There is seriously no place like the MTC. The Spirit can be felt 100% of the time and it is hard to be sad when that is the case! Seeing so many smiling faces (even though they are also tired faces) with nametags and carrying scriptures around. It does NOT get any better. All the soeurs in my district are spiritual giants and the elders work so hard. We have people from ages 18-22 at all different levels of French so we all help each other in every possible way. We're already like a sweet little family. Every night after planning and before going back to residence, we have "bedtime stories" and E. Sikich and E. Connelly (who knew each other pre-mission) tell super funny stories from a camp they worked at. I cry because I'm laughing so hard almost every night. Our phrase is, "Je vous aime beaucoup beaucoup beaucoup!" I just am not in any hurry to leave them behind. :)

 

Our schedule is pretty fun. MOST days it is like this. Wake up at 5:45 (so we have enough time to shower without lines), get to class by 7 am. Study. Breakfast at 7:30. Class/teaching Frere Glenn at 8 am until 11 am. Personal study until 12:15 when we eat lunch! Then language study from 1 pm to 2 pm, when we go to gym time until about 3:30. Then we have TALL (technology assisted language learning, my least favorite part of the day because I get so sleepy), then more study until dinner at 5:15 until 6. Then class/teaching with Sister Scott until 9 pm when we plan and then go back to go to bed. My roommates are all super obedient. We're usually in bed and asleep by 10:15 even though we have until 10:30... too tired.

 

Sister Young, thank you for the DearElder. I miss you a lot, but I use your scripture mastery stuff ALL THE TIME. Not even kidding. The songs get stuck in my head constantly, which is good and bad ;)

 

Basically, I love it here. L'église de Jésus-Christ est vrai. Il vie. Dieu est notre Père Celeste et Il nous aime BEAUCOUP.

 

The French keyboard isn't insane, it's just annoying. Google it sometime.

 

Je vous aime beaucoup beaucoup beaucoup! :)

Soeur Loder

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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