Audrey's a real live missionary now!

Hello to Audrey's friends and family! This is Amy, Audrey's sister, and I'll be the one managing this blog while Audrey is on her mission (I'm managing her facebook too!). We dropped Audrey off at the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo, Utah, on Wednesday, May 23rd, which is where she'll be until August 6th when she leaves for Hong Kong. We took some photos before we dropped her off, so here they are!

The two Sister Heatons (though only one is a missionary).

Dad and Audrey

Audrey and Grandma Heaton

Audrey on the temple grounds just minutes before entering the MTC! (The temple is out of sight.)

Audrey sent her first email to the family on Monday. While she's in the MTC, Monday will be her p-day (preparation day), the day of the week when missionaries do laundry, go grocery shopping (though not while in the MTC), run errands, and write to their friends and family. I promise I'll be better in the future at getting her emails posted more promptly. Don't forget that you can write her and she can write you too, just through the regular mail (or dearelder.com while she's in the MTC). Also, I'm thinking of creating a missionary dictionary with all of the unique missionary vocabulary that may be confusing to someone who's unfamiliar with an LDS mission, so with that said, if you want anything defined then say so on this blog or on facebook and I'll make sure it's included in the dictionary. Without further ado, here is Audrey's first letter!

Hi family!

Today, Monday, is my P-day. I only have 30 minutes on email allowed, so this letter may end abruptly.

Hopefully you got the letter they had me mail home on Friday, but who knows. If so, you've heard a tiny bit about Sister Lin, my companion from China, and my district of 4 elders and 2 sisters. Sister Lin is cute but kind of quiet, which is sometimes a bit difficult for me. The only thing that frustrates me a little so far is that she's just kind of slow to do things, so we end up being late to things a lot. We made a goal this week to be better at planning and being on time though, so hopefully that'll go better... But really, she's pretty great, and has been helping me with my Cantonese pronunciation, and is quite accommodating and puts up with my weirdness.

There's a lot higher elder to sister ratio than I anticipated, since I know so many girls that are going on missions. There are only 6 sisters in our branch of 45 or so, so we're all roommates. It's been interesting/fun/silly spending most of my time with 19-year old boys. But I do love the elders in my district--they're pretty great. And the elders in general here are really good about taking care of the sisters--if only they did that in normal life!

There's one other Cantonese district who have been here 6 weeks, so there's only 11 total missionaries here who are learning Cantonese, so I've gotten to know all of them on some level already. The zone leaders in our branch are really great and are in the other Cantonese district--they've been so helpful with showing us the ropes and everything. I got called yesterday as our branch's coordinating sister, which is basically like the zone leader for the sisters since elders and sisters aren't supposed to counsel together. We only have 6 sisters in our branch, and the other four leave next Tuesday for Temple Square. They have intense visitor's center training this week, which is why they had to release the old one. So despite the fact that I barely know what I'm doing, I'm now supposed to help everyone else know what they're doing. Luckily no new sisters come in until at least next week. As coordinating sister I have to help with the first night here and a training thing thursday night for new districts. I also go to branch council and things like that.

My schedule is packed pretty tight-- we're in class a lot of the day learning Cantonese. We've taught an "investigator" (a member volunteer who's from Hong Kong) twice, and the first time went decently well and the second time went even better--she could understand almost everything we said! We've learned how to pray and bear our testimonies and invite people to do things like come to church and promise blessings if they do. We can also say things like hi, how are you, where are you from, etc. I've been impressed at how much we've been able to learn after only being here 4ish days. My teacher asked me if I had learned Mandarin, because apparently my pronunciation is really good! I told him my dad speaks Mandarin, so I'm familiar with how it sounds, so you can take credit for that one dad! The first two days seemed like the longest days of my life here, but the days have begun to pass faster, which is good. But it feels like I've been here way longer than half a week.

Love you all! Have a great week!

Sister Heaton