Jordan's profile picture

Jordan's profile picture
Sister Frost

Monday, December 30, 2013

Week 2!

Below is the email we received from Jordan:

"Bonjour!

Christmas here was phenomenal! We had Elder Bednar come and speak to us! It was so awesome, he handed out 200 cell phones (no, we couldn't call home on them) and gave us a number we could use to text questions to the iPad he had with him on the stand. He spent an hour and a half answering our questions, with help from his wife. Sister Bednar is awesome :) The rest of Christmas was great as well. We had a talent show, and ate kettle corn while we watched The Mormon Tabernacle Choir's Christmas concert from 2012.

We've had a fun week in our District. We're all pretty close already. We had a substitute teacher all week named Frère Nash. He's awesome. He keeps referring to us as "the funny district" because of the things we say to each other and because we can't even sing one hymn together in French without cracking up because it's just so bad. We call ourselves the Graveyard Choir.

Yesterday, we spent probably a half hour trying to determine Elder Woodbury's "type". I think he was a little bit embarrassed. Okay, more than a little bit.

Soeur Archambault and I had two "investigators" that we were teaching last week. One in French, the other in English. On our last lesson with the French one, he committed to baptism, so that was an awesome success! We tease our elders because we got a commitment first. We also had our English investigator ask us this ridiculous question that we didn't know the answer to, so we spent the entire next day finding her the answer. We asked the class next door, their teacher, and Frère Nash, who finally gave us the perfect answer. Then, she didn't show up to our appointment. Talk about disappointing. But the French "investigator", Steven, turned out to be our new teacher, Frère LaGuan, who's a really cool guy. So now we have two teachers!

We're all excited for our New Year's Eve party tomorrow night that our district is going to throw together. It'll be awesome! Love you all!

-Soeur Frost"

Here are a few pictures Jordan shared with us.

The Christmas tree they made for their room

Jordan's District outside the Provo Temple (A District is the group you train with)

Jordan and her companion

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Week 1!

Below is the email we received outlining the adventures of her first week.

Week one! Allons-y!

Bonjour!

This week pretty much rocked. I love being here, and my district is the bomb.com (and since my district loves puns, we decided we're actually the BoM.com- get it?) and there's only four of us, including me! Soeur Archambault (my comp) is awesome. She's Canadian, and so we talk about the differences between here and Canada all the time. She pronounces her long A's differently, so 'bag' sounds kind of like 'beyg' and it's fantastic. Elder Woodbury is super dorky and we tease him because he has a song reference for EVERYTHING. But really. Everything. Elder Broadbent is really funny. He likes to make dorky faces and he can be pretty sarcastic and always tells these outlandish stories. The four of us are together more than 10 hours a day, so we're getting to know each other pretty well, and everyone else in our branch knows us as "that one district" because we only have four and each of us is going to different missions! Elder Broadbent is going to West Indies, Elder Woodbury to Canada, Soeur Archambault to St George Utah (yes, French speaking! She'll be in the visitor's center) and then me :) We want to take a picture by the big map so we can show where we're all going.

We had a goal setting meeting yesterday, and we set a few goals:
1) Focus. We all like each other, so we get off-topic really easily
2) Memorize the First Vision in French by January 5th
3) We have to give one compliment every time we insult each other. We all tease each other a lot, so we decided that would be a funny one. So basically, every time we tease Soeur Archambault about her accent, we then tell her her hair looks nice today or something of that nature.

We took several pictures, but I forgot to bring my camera when I went to do laundry (that's where I am now) and so we're going to save some email time and send them in a little while.

French is coming along really well. After I got here, they tested my french and wanted to move me to a three-week English program, but I don't think that's going to happen anymore. Probably just because it had already been two days and I would have been pretty behind. Everyone in our district has studied French before, so we're actually a week ahead of where we should be because we don't have to take nearly as long to learn things, since this is mostly review for us.

There's a sister across the hall from us who has a master's in violin! Plus, her comp plays piano really well. I checked out a violin from the MTC, and the three of us are performing prelude music for our branch's sacrament meeting this Sunday, and we're going to be working on a piece to audition to give a performance in a bigger meeting. I'm super excited. We're doing a really pretty arrangement of Silent Night. Our branch is made up of half of the French-speaking missions, so it's a pretty small group. It's going to be totally awesome.

One last thing. I got like 2 letters and 4 packages today.... You all rock ;) although the rest of my district definitely teased me about it as we carried them across campus all the way back to our rooms! On that note, you all should write them a letter! They're awesome people, and we have the same mailing address, just change the name and take away the FEB09 VAN-PV under the name. Elder Woodbury hasn't received anything yet, and Soeur Archambault doesn't expect to get anything because of how long it takes to mail things from Canada.

Also, if you are able to access it (I'm not sure, since it was a talk originally given in the MTC a few years back), look at Elder Bednar's talk entitled "Character of Christ". It seriously is life-changing!

I love you all so much! Keep being awesome!

Soeur Frost

Just like that, she is officially a missionary.

It's been a week since Jordan left Kansas City and reported to the Missionary Training Center (MTC). I apologize in the delay in writing this post; however, I'm still picking up the pieces of my heart.  Jordan has never been one to set small goals; she dreams BIG.  Huge audacious goals. Like the time she wanted to complete a half marathon, or when she asked me to train her for her first sprint triathlon.  Like I said, BIG goals and dreams.

I would be lying if I said that I was on board with the idea of her becoming a missionary when she first told us.  I was worried about her scholarships, her education and most selfishly, us not being with her for 18 months.  It took a while, but I finally was on board with her dream of a mission.  And here we are; 1 week down and 77 weeks to go.

Which brings me to the drop off at the airport.  It was H-A-R-D.  I told myself I wouldn't cry, and I did SO well...until the final hug.  Here are some snapshots of the good-byes.

 In true Jordan fashion, she tries to lick me.

 
The relationship of these two is one that parents pray for. Makes my heart happy.

 Our girl

 selfie time!

 I was on the verge of tears, so she said, "Squirrel time!"

 Jordan and Tyler with their mom

 Jordan with Tyler

with Tyler and Nathan

...and just like that, she's gone.

Thankfully, Rich was able to fly out to Utah with Jordan.  They flew out a day early and they were able to visit In-N-Out for some delicious burgers. (YUMMY!)  They were also able to visit Temple Square all lit up for Christmas.
unedited/unfiltered photo of Rich and Jordan at Temple Square

The final hug.

With that final hug, she is officially a missionary, Sister Jordan Frost.  Return with honor, we'll see you in 18 months.