This is Jane's first letter from the MTC! Enjoy!
People I love! I don't know why, but trying to figure out all this email stuff has been so crazy. It has eaten up lots of my time! Oh well, I'm a lot faster at typing than letter writing so hopefully I can get everything out. (Please excuse spelling errors.) :) So today is P-day and I am so happy to be able to write because I have so much to tell! First of all, happy birthday mommy! I thought about you yesterday and sang happy birthday in my head. I'm glad you like the presents I gave you before I left. Haha did you go and make the exchanges? Anyway, you are wonderful and I hope you had the best day. Also, thank you so much to everyone who has sent me dear elders. They make my day! Haha and everyone in my district gets jealous when I get a bunch from home and then from my wonderful roommates. The love and support I feel from everyone means so much. So how is home? William- how's school and the musical? Don't forget, we're all in this together. Hahaha oh the jokes. I do miss everyone but I am so happy to be here! OK, there is so much to say and so little time to say it. Sorry if things seem a little disorganized, I need to try and outline this better next week. So like I said, I LOVE THE MTC. Really, really, everything is so great. It's definitely an emotional roller coaster, but for the most part I love every minute of it. I have never been so busy in my entire life. And it is definitely the most challenging thing mentaly I've ever done. So I'll try and run through everything. My companion is Zuster Pierson. She's from West Jordan, Utah and she's great! I totally lucked out. She's super quiet though which is funny since I am so loud. We work well together though. She is always telling me how happy she is to have me as a companion because I help bring her out of her shell. I'm happy she is mine because she is a wonderful example and a hard worker. We live with two other sisters going to the Netherlands as well. They are six weeks ahead of us though, so their Dutch is really good! They're a big help though and we have a great time laughing in our room. Their names are Sister Garvin and Rebber. I love all of the sisters here! The rooms remind me of the freshman dorms only we are told to act with "quiet dignity" hahaha. There is always a good spirit around and sisters are so open to helping each other with everything. There are two Dutch districts and we are all going to the same mission. Together we make up our zone and then our branch includes the Norwegian, Swedish, and Icelandic missionaries. There aren't many sisters but the ones that are here are great. I love my district! Besides my companion and I we have ten other elders- Elders Lutkin (from Scotland), Hawkley, Wilken, Frahm, Baddoni, Norton (District leader), Leash, and Seaman. Love, love, love these elders. They are all such hard workers and our district has already gotten really close. Zuster Pierson and I like to say we think of them as our lost boys and we are Wendy haha. Sometimes they definitely act 19 though. Like when we are trying to decide on our word of the day and they like to look up words like "self-suicide squad." They are always being told how lucky they are to have sisters though so they respect us. They'll stand up when we enter a room, take our trays at lunch, all that stuff. It's very nice haha sometimes I feel bad! Anyways, funny fact, especially for mom, but one of the Dutch elders in the other district is Elder Osmond....yep, Donny Osmonds kid! Hahaha he looks EXACTLY like his dad and he can sing really well. I like to sing Mulan to him or parts from Joseph and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat. Hahaha it's great. Wow, time is going by fast! OK the language- Dutch is hard!!! But I love it and I'm actually learning it. I think my english is getting worse actually. I don't know who came up with the Dutch language but they must have been on drugs or something because there are so many crazy words. "Tjonge Jonge" and "Jammer" are my two favorites. They mean "oh my goodness" or "shoot dang!" as elder seaman puts it and "Bother!" The gutteral actually isn't too bad. We now say all our prayers in Dutch, bear testimony in Dutch and are learning the first lesson. I want to try and give a quick run down of each day. So Wednesday was day one and it was very overwhelming. I felt like there was so much to remember and rules and just all this stuff. Yet I still felt the spirit. Everyone here is SO happy! I honestly don't remember too much about Wednesday, it was such a blur. Thursday we had a lot of class and they taught us how to pray and bear testimony. I saw Daniel in gym which was way cool. Friday we had our service at 6:30 in the morning and we went and cleaned stairwells in one of the buildings. I was tiring but we had a lot of fun doing it. Friday we had our large group meeting for new missionaries and I got to say the prayer! Our district likes to try and sit in the front row and every meeting and try and get one of us to say the prayer. So far we have always succeeded, it's really fun. Our district loves to sing in Dutch, which always makes me laugh because sometimes we aren't very good. There are a lot of Dutch hymns that we don't have though that I like. They are peppy and fun to sing. Actually, they kind of sound like drinking songs...who knows. Saturday we started working in the TAAL lab (taal means language in Dutch) and that's a ton of fun. We get to look up words and phrases and play games to learn. The elders love looking up food words haha so we can say things like "my pie is goed" (funny story, but I think you had to be there). Sunday was amazing! All the sisters meet for Relief society together and then after we had another new sisters meeting and which my collega (companion) got to say the prayers. Random side note-learning Dutch has made me realize a lot of funny things that were said in the best two years. Haha I can't wait to come home and watch it again. Sacrament meeting here is way different. We meet with the rest of the branch and we don't know who is giving talks until we get there. Everyone is supposed to write a talk on a given topic and then they surprise us and tell us who is speaking! It's crazy but good because it gives us lots of talks. We went to the temple and took pictures after church which was great. Oh and our district joined the choir so we go and do that. Monday we had our first teaching experience. The first part was in Dutch, poor man, and then the first lesson in English. OK, I'm about out of time and I have so much more to say. Jammer! Know that I love you all and I'm doing fine. There are definitely moments of discouragement but my testimony is growing more than it ever has before and I know this is what the Lord needs of me. We're on our way to the temple after this and I'm excited to be in the Lord's house. The church is true! I love you all. Read Alma 31, I love it. Sorry this email is so random. Tot ziens. Zuster Holbein. :)
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