But I'M HERE! You already know this by now, but I am serving in Geneva in the SPANISH ward. Bah! We were driving home from the airport and President Murdock was like "Sister Bentley, we are going to use you in a special way...I saw that one year of Spanish on your mission application..." I told him I don't remember anything and apparently he told my trainer that I was petrified to speak Spanish haha. I'm really not scared though...actually, I'm so so excited to be able to learn French and Spanish at the same time. There are so many different nationalities and cultures here, so the more languages you know, the better. So dad, you might have to help me brush up on Spanish a little bit! I really don't remember much. I can actually understand more than I thought I would when I'm listening to it, but I can not say much more than "me llamo Hermana Bentley y no hablo espanol." One cool thing though, is that I ordered a Spanish name tag, so I can be a Soeur or an Hermana...whatever I feel like each day!
So I've already met some amazing people. I'm working with Sister Metro, from Massachussetts. She is wonderful. She is so helpful and we get along great. And she's all about exercising in the morning. We get 30 minutes to exercise, so we go jogging every other day and on the other days we do this navy seal workout that makes me so sore. But it's good, because I'm eating a lot of chocolate. It's so so delicous. Oh my goodness. Speaking of such, keep your eye out for something in the mail from me. I'm sending it today, and I'm not sure how long it takes to get home, but hopefully it will be there by dad's birthday.
OH speaking of dad's birthday, guess what...we have a baptism happening on the 16th! The first day I was here, we had a lesson with this woman named Paola. She is from Guatemala but speaks English really well, so I actually was able to participate in teaching her... but we set a baptismal date for her! Apparently she's known for awhile that she wants to, so she finally said yes this time. AH it was a great start to being a missionary. I seriously love this. I love getting to meet people and hear their stories and really try to see them as children of God...because He loves every single one of them! We have a goal of 5 baptisms in October, and there are a few other amis (that's what we call investigators... or investigadoras) who could potentially make that incredible decision.
We've done a bit of contacting and porting (door-to-door). I was terrified of it, not going to lie. But, one of my goals is to not be shy and just do whatever the Spirit tells me to do. I have told myself many times already to Just do it, Allison. And can I just tell you, I love it. I can't say much, and I can't understand a lot either, but when I can't Soeur Metro steps in and it's fine. But I love just bearing my testimony, and when people are even a little interested, it's SO rewarding! I just want to get really good at it so I don't necessarily have to rely on my companion all the time.
We only are allowed an hour on emails, and this is taking me so long because of the stupid keeyboard. So I promise I will get better and faster so you can have longer emails in the future. But thank you so much for your emails! It was so exciting to have a full inbox this morning. Tuesdays are our p-days, FYI.
Ok I have time for a few more things I think. So I think I ruined the ipod speakers. I don't know how to use that dumb converter! I'm too afraid to plug my hairstuff into it, and our apartment has a hairdryer and a straightener with Swiss plugs, so I will just use those while I'm here. And I'll use Soeur Metro's converter for my other stuff. But I think I'm going to just buy the most inexpensive speakers I can find because I want to listen to my music!
Let me tell you about our cozy little apartment. It's pretty close to downtown Geneva, in a little building on Rue de la Prairie. It's a studio, so it's definitely hardly more than one room. Our beds, closet, desks, table, dressers are all in the main room. There's a little kitchen and a little bathroom. But it's not too bad at all. It's pretty quiet and the beds are way more comfortable than the MTC, so I'm happy. And we're not there a ton, so it's totally fine.
Here is my address, by the way. You can either send mail to this or to the mission home. We live close to the mission home and we see the missionaries from there really often, so I would be able to get mail from there quite often.
Les Missionnaires
Soeur Allison Bentley
17 Rue de la Prairie
CH-1202 Genève
Switzerland
Make sure you put Les Missionnaires on the first line because our apartments don't have numbers, just our names. Weird, no?
I've had two "manger-vous" this week. It's what we call a lunch or dinner appointment. They were both with members and they were both so nice! My favorite so far is Soeur Lehmann. She is a widow who is originally from Germany, but she's lived here for a lot of years. I guess she feeds us every Monday, so that is awesome. But I actually understood most of the conversation that happened! I talked a little bit... not much, but some. I think that will just get better as time goes on, right? But we had some kind of wheat patty something with spinach and tomato sauce...it was really good actually. And we had grape juice, which isn\t as sweet as in the US, but I liked it better. And then she made tiramsu for dessert....so so GOOD! I will have to get the recipe from her and send it to you because it was seriously amazing. I want to collect recipes from herem because the food is seriously so good.
Ok I am almost out of time, but let me tell you something great real quick. I just figured out how to change the keyboard to English, so next time, I will be able to write faster and MORE. I love you all so much and it was so wonderful to talk to you on the phone. I love being a missionary, seriously. I love Geneva and I already love the people here!
I LOVE YOU
Allie
P.S. Conference was amazing, right? I loved President Eyring's talk. I'll write a letter and talk more about it because there was some really good stuff in there. Have an amazing week! Adios! Oh, here are some pictures for you! I\ve only taken one since I've been here...bah! It is up in Bernex, outside of town, by where Soeur Lehmann lives. But it is my favorite part of town... super Switzerlandy. More next week, promise!
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