Week 4 - Bonjour! - Lessons, Language Learning Mess-ups, and Elder (Walter) Bonhomme de Neige

Hello!

So this has been a really awesome week! Soeur Archambault and I have been teaching a lot of really great lessons, so we're liking that. We had both of our investigators (read: teachers) commit to baptism this week and actually gave a mock church tour. The tour was a little rough in French, as we're lacking in conversational vocab, but it went really well overall.

While the two of us were teaching the other day, the Elders snuck out and built a snowman right outside the classroom window, so when we came back there was a snowman staring at us through the window. It was a major source of fun for a few days as we kept modifying him. At night, you could only see him if all the lights in the classroom were turned off, and we managed to really scare Frère Nash with that by having him stare out the window and turning off the lights. He said it looked like a monster with giant bug eyes because we gave him glasses and he was snowed on so much that he didn't exactly look like a snowman as much as a snow blob. Eventually he melted, and now he's a chunk of ice outside our classroom. I thought Elder Broadbent might cry when he saw the snowman, named Elder Bonhomme de Neige (bonhomme de neige means snowman) dying.

So as we learn French, there are bound to be a few incredibly embarrassing things said, right? Well this was an interesting week for that. First, Saint Esprit means Holy Spirit, and sang means blood. The difference between those two is not exactly huge in pronunciation, and so Elder Broadbent found out this week he's been praying for the "blood Spirit" instead of the "Holy Spirit" for around three weeks now. The other really funny one was when Soeur Archambault tried to tell me to "Frappez la porte!" (knock on the door) and she said "Frappez la morte!" (hit the dead.) Our teacher even came out of the room to laugh about it when he heard that, and I'm not sure we're ever going to let her forget it.

So that's about it here! Oh, and we're pretty sure we're having another member of the 12 come and speak with us tonight, so that's awesome!! Love you all!!!!

-Soeur Frost

Week 3 "A partay! And some other things as well, I suppose"

Below is the latest email from Jordan we received yesterday.

So this was another great week here! We very much appreciated the party gear - we took lots of pictures that I'll have to send to you a little later. What started out as our small district eating junk food and drinking sparkling grape fruit turned into the district of 6 elders two doors down hearing us and stealing the noisemakers.... So it was a success? We had a lot of fun! I've got pictures of our teachers in funny hats, plus all of my district and most of the other district who joined us.

The next evening, the other district had stolen one of the funny tiara things (dubbed "party crowns" because that makes it more manly when you're wearing a sparkly pink/purple/gold hat) and were forcing Frère Laguan to wear it. At the point I caught on, I was asking a question while sitting in my rolly desk, and all six elders were about ten feet away from us, with me in between them, staring at him and slowly advancing in a pack, because he had taken off the hat. It was terrifying, and I wasn't even the one they were after! He quickly answered my question, and then whispers to roll my desk into the middle of the hallway, successfully blocking almost the whole hallway. He then took off in a dead sprint, quickly followed by all the elders, two of whom vaulted my desk. I'm told they chased him to the parking lot, then stood at a distance and watched him get into his car. Never a dull moment!

Last night, Soeur Archambault got a Dear Jane letter... from her FHE brothers from school. They wrote a letter as a group acting like they were breaking up with her for a girl "who doesn't object to a $5 engagement ring from Walmart". It was so funny! Also, she says it's not cold in Kansas City, because where she's from they don't cancel school unless it's colder than -45 degrees Fahrenheit. ...I could never live in Canada.

We got new teachers this week! We've only had one class with them, but they're pretty cool. 

Yesterday morning, Soeur Archambault and I both went to take showers in the morning and successfully locked ourselves out of the room. We had to borrow a key card from another sister to get access to the other floors to look for someone with a master key. Finally, we got back into our room, but forgot to bring the key card to access the floors, so we ended up stuck out in the stairwell. All in all, it was a great big fail in true "us" fashion. We were 20 minutes late to class. Luckily, so was our teacher! 

Well, I think that's all I've got for you. Love you all!!

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

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.

Jordan reading her mission call

In case you didn't catch it, she has been called to the Vanuatu Port Vila Mission, also serving in the New Caledonia Mission Region.  This is a group of islands in the South Pacific, between Samoa and Australia.  The language she will speak is FRENCH!!  She is stoked, as are we.  She reports to the Provo MTC on December 18, 2013.