The First Week!

Hello All!

The first week is done and it has been one crazy long week. After the first two days at the MTC (missionary training center) you feel like you've been here months and start to forget of what life was like before this, haha. My companion here is Sister Taylor (ironic, I know). I love her to death, and we have sooooo much in common it is insane. Like from bringing the same pair of shoes, to attending BYU, common interests, and a love for the Lizzie McGuire movie, because duh, Roma! We are the only ones in our zone going to Rome, Italy, plus two other Elders. Mostly everyone is going to Milan, and there are four who are going to Romania, Moldova. Our roommates are headed to Romania, they are such sweet girls! And then there are only 3 other sisters in our zone, they are from the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Germany and are headed to Milan for their missions. They are pretty impressive because  for them, Italian will be their third or fourth language.

The MTC is fun because you meet people from all over the world, learning a whole lot of languages, and I love it because we are all here for the same purpose. There are over SEVEN THOUSAND missionaries in training here at the MTC right now. YAH. 7000. Crazy?! And we are all doing this because the gospel of Jesus Christ has touched our lives. It brings us true joy, we know it, and we want all of God's children the receive these blessings that they have a right to.

So in our zone there are 27 people, I was hoping there would be more sisters but there are only 7 of us, but they are all so wonderful. There are 8 people in our district, and your district is pretty much the group of people you spend 10 hours a day in a classroom with. The Elders in our district, are pretty good, and I'm pretty impressed with how focused they manage to be though they do have their moments, haha.

The language is coming along, I understand most of what is said and I can respond pretty well. Your teachers only speak Italian to you, the first day, but she throws in a lot of english words now to help us out. I feel pretty lucky to have taken two semesters, because language is definitely not been an overwhelming point of the MTC.

Yesterday was quite the adventure! Eleven of us had to go to Salt Lake City and sign some paper work for our visas. They pretty much just dropped us off at the front runner (which for my california fam, is like bart but waaayyyy cleaner because it's Utah). We got to talk to a lot of people along the way, I'm glad my companion had to sign paperwork also or I would have been a lone sister! We got whistled at, at cursed at, and a crazy man preached to us for about an hour while we waited for the train to go back. We also talked to a woman from Mongolia who knew about 3 English words, we gave her a heart shaped sticky note with our names attached to a pass-a-long card, she was mormon, but it still made her really happy. I was pretty stressed about not having class time, so my companion and I also worked on our lesson and got back just in time to teach Fabio! It was perfect. But we were gone for about 8 hours, which was longer than I had expected.

My branch president served his mission in Italy, and his wife is from Rome, and she is kind of fabulous.

I am learning so much here! The spirit is so strong and it is so weird how HAPPY i feel. It's hard to go to sleep at night because all I can think about is how hard things are, how tired I am, but how WONDERFUL life is.

I love you all, have a wonderful week! We have very little time to write so I apologizze if evrything sounds scatter brained in this email!

Sister Holiday and Sister Taylor

Train stop selfie :)

Our classroom

P-day

Why am I a Mormon?

This past week I was working on making a mormon.org profile because that is one of the things I need to do before I leave for my mission. When I opened it I realized I had started working on it a couple years ago when I was 16, and I was reading some of the answers I had put for the questions they asked. One of the questions is,

Why am I a Mormon?

It's a pretty good question. It's certainly not the popular thing to do. People think a lot of weird things about Mormons and that there's a lot that we "can't" do. I definitely wasn't going to church in high school because it was what my parents wanted me to do. I love them, but I guess part of being a teenager is having the desire to do the exact opposite of what your parents are doing. Living the gospel of Christ was something I had to decide for myself or else I was not going to do it.

I had many experiences growing up that helped me gain a testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For most of them I feel I was too young to really understand, but there was a part of my soul that could recognize the truth.

When I started high school, I struggled and I felt very alone for a long time. I was really unhappy. I felt lost and like my soul had no worth. Honestly, I hated myself and when I was in a good mood, there was still a pit of unhappiness in me. I had already read the Book of Mormon, I knew it was true. And when I felt like no one could understand what I was feeling, there was a part of me that knew that Christ still could. I decided one day during my freshman year that I was going to change, I hadn't been making the best decisions, but I knew that if I kept down a bad path I would never find the happiness that I sought.

I prayed my heart out. It didn't all change at once, but eventually one day, I could feel the pit lifted from me. The pit of unhappiness was gone. I finally understood that yes, I am a daughter of a King. God is my Heavenly Father. Jesus Christ came and suffered for my sins so that I could be made whole again. And no matter who we are or what we've done, we can be made whole again. Yes, not everyday is sunshine and lollipops, but I'm grateful for the hard days too. Because if we didn't know sadness, we couldn't understand the joy.

"For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things." (2 Ne 2:11)

I believe the Book of Mormon to be true.

I am grateful for the support from my family, and their own humble testimonies, but I have come to know through prayer and study for myself, that this church is true.


There is so much that I've learned in my life, and I wish I could share it all! I am so excited to serve a mission. Sure, Italy sounds like a cool place, but I'm not doing this mission thing so I can vacation and get away from the world for 18 months. I'm doing this because the gospel is true and I want to help others find this out for themselves, remember the divinity of their souls, and help them find their ways back to their Father in Heaven.

(Quote from President Boyd K. Packer)