December 6

December 6,

Hello everyone!

 I thought we wouldn't be able to write until Monday, but turns out our P day is today. I forgot to bring my camera to upload a picture of my nametag for you, so I'll send a separate email later. 

     So, news. I'm a "solo sister", which means I'm the only new sister missionary learning Bulgarian, so I'm the only girl in my classes. There is one other girl here learning Bulgarian, but she leaves in a few weeks and is more advanced than me. She's actually going to Bulgaria. It's also nice because I don't always have to be with my companion. I always have to be with at least two elders though. It would be crazy trying to find my companion, Sister Lefler, for every meal and stuff, so I can just go with the guys from my class. She's learning Croatian.  Let me just tell you about all the girls in my district now since I'll probably mention them from time to time. So, there's my companion, Sister Lefler from St. George going to Slovenia (we think) learning Croatian. Sister Mahe is from Australia and she's the other Bulgarian one. Sister Zander is from Germany, she's going to Croatia. Sister Stratton is from Salt Lake and she's going to Poland. We're all solo sisters. I'm the only one at the MTC going to Macedonia. Apparently me and my in-field companion will be the first companionship of sisters in Macedonia. She left the MTC a few weeks ago and is serving in Serbia until I come, apparently. All these girls who were at the MTC before me say she was really cool. They say she was pretty nervous about opening the country for sisters, though, and I must say I feel much the same. A few people have come up to me and asked me if I'm the one going to Macedonia. No pressure.

     The other day we started learning the Bulgarian alphabet, and by that I mean I opened my textbook and started teaching it to myself. It's surprisingly unstructured here. The teacher gets the discussion going and answers any questions we have, but it's mostly up to us what we learn. So now I can read my nametag out loud correctly if I go really, really slowly. Also, instead of teaching us first how to say stuff like, "hello", "how are you?" "what's your name?" months, days of the week, colors, numbers, normal beginning language class stuff, we've started out with how to say "question?" and "I don't understand", and words like "God", "Jesus", "church", and how to bear our testimonies. A Bulgarian "investigator" is going to come in tomorrow and so yesterday we were preparing a lesson for him. Each companionship worked together, but since I'm a solo I'm on my own. It took, not exaggerating, three hours to write a one paragraph lesson (because it has to be in Bulgarian) and I'm not even done yet. My brain hurt so bad yesterday. And in addition we all have to prepare a 3-5 minute talk for Sunday in Bulgarian and two of us will be called at random to speak each week. We are asked to keep our talks even if we don't end up speaking though, so we'll have eight prepared talks by the time we get to the mission field.

   Sad news: I won't be able to call you on Christmas since I'll still be in the MTC. I know, I know. :(

The food here isn't high-quality but it's not bad and at least there's lots of variety. It would be hard to go hungry here. We each get $8 to spend each week but I don't know what it's intended for since everything except laundry detergent is free. Maybe study materials. Maybe it's for if you have a craving for more non-high-quality food and it isn't mealtime. We all get a free haircut at some point, too, so I'll go right before I leave. 

     Everybody here is super nice and asks me about five thousand times a day if I'm ok since they know I'm new. I am ok. Some people are struggling more with homesickness than I am, even ones who are from nearby. 

   Some weird rules: no hands in your pockets, no using the word "guys", just "elders" and "sisters". 

Love and miss you,

Sister Riddle