Εβδομάδα 8: Who is Harry Potter?

2 months later & the MTC is still my home! This week is a bit of a novel but we got lots of pics at least!

Update on Pritam, or the park bench guy from week 6: I wanted to follow up on our invitation to him to read the Book of Mormon, so I emailed him this week! I invited him to watch conference and shared a few scriptures and bits of my testimony I felt like he needed to hear.

Part of his response: "the book is by my bed, I read it when I'm feeling down and it gives me that strength back to carry on. I love it, thank you again for the book. I'm definitely gonna have a great Sunday now. Thanks to you and the beautiful verse you read out for me from the book of Mormon. I love it very much."

Like I said before, he is GOLDEN! It made me so happy to know that he is accepting our invitation and can see how the Book of Mormon can be a source of strength for him.

TUESDAY 4.2.19

A group of us went to Chorley today! The markets are so fun, Sister Owens was so excited to get strawberries, blueberries, and an avocado haha. We got lunch at a yummy fish and chips place, walked around for a little bit after, then resumed life at the MTC. But it was so nice to get out!

WEDNESDAY 4.3.19

Greek grammar is not fun. There’s so many different forms of a single verb that you have to change roots, switch tones, and add endings to to get the verb in the right form for whatever your trying to say. That sentence was probably confusing, but so is Greek grammar, so you get the point (;

THURSDAY 4.4.19

Never thought not reading Harry Potter would have ever worked against me, until today. We played a Greek guessing game where our teacher put sticky notes with names on everyone's foreheads. I was really confused because I had no clue what the names were, then everyone said "you've never watched or read Harry Potter?!" I told em I didn't haha and that I grew up on barbie and Disney movies, so they switched out my name and gave me a Disney princess instead so I'd have a chance of guessing it lol (; heads up game in Greek basically.

We got to talk to another member from Greece via Facebook video! Her name is Ειρήνη, and she’s preparing to serve a mission! She was so fun to talk to. She loved correcting our Greek and was laughing either with us or at us the entire time haha, either way it was a fun experience.

FRIDAY 4.5.19

Teaching lessons in Greek have been going really well lately. The lessons are only suppose to be 20 mins so our Πρεσβύτεροι have time to teach too, but we’ve been going 30-35 mins sometimes, so whoops… sorry elders. When we came out of our morning lesson, Sis Edwards said "how were you able to say all that" and I literally told her if there was anytime we witnessed the gift of tongues it was in that lesson because I literally had no idea how I said and communicated in that room way the I did other than it had to be the gift of tongues. Even our teacher acknowledge it along with our companionship unity, so that was way cool.

We went on a church history tour. It was pretty fun, hence all the pics and videos attached to this email haha. We got to walk and see where actually apostles and prophets have been and even saw the apartment where President Hinckley wrote his well known letter telling his dad he was wasting his time and money, then where his dad wrote him back and said "forget yourself and get to work". But yeah, it was fun to explore Preston, and it was just a bonus the scenery was gorgeous!

SATURDAY/ SUNDAY 4.6.19

General Conference! Oh man, so many good messages from this. I hope you all took the chance to watch it! we got to stay up until 11:30 so we could watch the live broadcasts, that’s halfway breaking the rules right? (; and yay!! Another temple close to home! The Lord is definitely hastening His work and He needs us more than ever!

MONDAY 4.7.19

Sister Zhang and I got to be companions today! She's from China and speaks Mandarin and can only say a few phrases in English. Despite the language barrier between us, we owned China town in Manchester!! Holy smokes it was SO GREAT!! Everyone could tell I was a mixie so that was really funny, definitely a conversation starter. And it just so happened that the 2 men we gave our Book of Mormons to had the last names of Chan and Zhang! No way that's a coincidence. It was so cool to recognize the Chan character he wrote for his contact info and then point out that that was my family name too! I felt so at home with all the Chinese people and we were at the same corner the entire 2 hours! I was saying 你好(ni hao) to everyone haha, and could not stop smiling! One man was talking to Sister Zhang, and I couldn't contribute much since my mandarin skills were non-existent, but was able to follow along their conversation and help her find the scriptures he needed to read! It was so perfect! There was even a few times where I got to share Grandpa Chan's conversion story and relate it to what we were doing now, and tell them that missionaries like us, met with my grandpa after he left China, and because of that, and the blessings our family has been blessed with since then, I am able to be doing that same work. All the old people reminded me so much of Grandma and Grandpa Chan... their mannerisms, their laughs, it was just so familiar to me, and maybe that's part of the reason it was so easy to talk with them, even if they knew little english! The Spirit was strong and that's what mattered!

I love you guys and appreciate all the emails and support!

Love,

Αδελφή Gale

PICS:

1. The squad (; Sis DeMille, Sis Owens, Eld Rogers, and I have all become such good friends! NZ trip 2021 is in the plans with our favorite New Zealander tour guide of course

2. not your classic England telephone booth pic right? Our faces say it all haha

3. Church history tour's gorgeous views!

4. Daily district pic on Wednesday (:

5. Back seat chillin'

6. Can't get away from tri-town wind

7. Church tourin

8. All the heart eyes for this pretty park

9. Temple walk between GC sessions w MTC fam

10. quick vlog for the mems

11. You can tell who loves lang study (;

12. Greek guess who game

13. Super old church building that's still in use!