Halfway through the MTC!

Claire is halfway through the MTC! We are so proud of her! A few weeks till Argentina is lucky enough to have her :) 


HELLOOO ROHM, PRESCOTT, NIELSEN, BARLOW, WILSON family! ps email to dad and ashley and marie 
AND TO MYNEWEST ONE YEAR OLD NIECE!!! 

well week 3 at the MTC, i cannot believe how fast time is going! In about 2 1/2 weeks ill be in arrrrrgentina! If I get my visa. Some elders next to us were supposed to go to mexico and just got reassigned to texas! So only time can tell. Lou thank you so much for the package! Getting mail is the best :) And Laura thank you for the package! Y'all are the best. So some fun things here this week, I got called to be the sister training leader, other wise known as the coordinating sister, other wise known as the girl who greets all the new girls in our zone, gives them a tour of the whole place, and takes care of any problems they have. Also I get to go to a lot of meetings :) haha. So apparently someone around here thinks im responsible, strange haha. No but im excited for the opportunity! 
Other exciting things since last thursday:

FRIDAY: We got to do what is called TRC. That is where members of the church come in as volunteers and we just get to teach a lesson to them in spanish and practice our conversational skills, so that is pretty fun! They are always super nice and we taught 2 19 year old girls and a boyfriend/girlfriend couple that both served spanish missions so they had some good advice for us which is always much appreciated. Oh wow i guess we get to do that again tomorrow, the week went by so fast! Also on FRiday Elder Couch said to our teacher Hermano Harris, "sweet tie. you should come by my place later and we can swap." and the teacher just goes, "umm that sounds super sketch." hahha the teachers here are the best! 

SATURDAY: or what i would call the lonegst day of my life. we had class for 6 hours straight!!! It was a crazy day but i definitely learned a lot. Later that night we met this sister in our residence hall and she told us her brother is serving in africa in the jungle. But the craziest part is that they have the only concrete house in the jungle, everyone else lives in huts, and at night they have to be in before dark because the tigers and lions come out at night!!! I WOULD DIE. Literally and beause of fear. so thank heavens i am not going to africa! 

SUNDAY: Our first "normal" sunday here because of easter and general conference. What a great day! First we had relief society and the funniest lady came and spoke to us!!  Her name was mary edmunds and she has served 5 MISSIONS. talk about dedication! She was one of the first sister missionaries to serve in the phillipines! SHe held up her journal that was 776 pages and she startwed to get all teaery and she said, "i wanted to go home from the MTC so bad, but i am so glad i stuck it out. because if i hadn't i would not have experienced any of these things that have changed my life." Anyway, she changed my life and she was like a comedian. she's like "girls do not touch the elders! but keep track of the ones you want to touch you!" hahahhaha we were dying. and then we got to go on a temple walk which was nice and we took some cheesy photos which ill send over. then that night we had the coolest fireside, it was Greg Droubay-who is the head of technology for the church. HE spoke to us about how the Lord is hastening his work right now, especially since the MTC is 44% sisters right now!! so crazy. and he told us about the coolest im a mormon advertising they are doing in london right now. basically the church bought ads on 1/4 of the busses in london and they have ads going all through the tube stations and up the escalators--holly look out for them!! and it is HUGE there. so that is super exciting!! and mostly he told us something about our mission that was profound: this isn't about you. this is about the lord's work.    which was really important to hear!

MONDAY-THURSDAY:
So that's all kind of a blur of classes and cafeteria...and basketball...and...oh ya it snowed here!! Utah is a frigid place. haha today when we walked to the temple i thought my face would freeze off. oh tuesday night, mom you're gonna loooove this! We walk into the devotional and are looking for seats for all 9 of us and we can't find any, and this usher grabs us and goes "oh dont worry ill take care of ya." seats us in the middle of the senior missionaries (in the soft seats-oh yeah!) and we were 12 rows back! and the speaker was.....ELder Richard G. Scott! (for those who are like who is that? haha he is basically one of the 12 men that helps run the church) so it was amazing to hear from him!! his talk was incredible and i wrote down like 4 pages of notes. His main message was about communicating with god and how important it is. and he told all us sister missionaries that our choice to be missionaries will bless us eternally. So we coined the phrase (inspired after YOLO) Y.O.SO. you only serve once! haha. lame but true. they seriously treat us so well here with the best speakers!! it is just awesome. 

Also on tuesday we were at pe, im one of those girls now who plays four square. yikes haha. but it is intense let me tell ya! and ELder Laulu Pututau (a samoan) HIT ME SQUARE in the forehead with the ball and i fell to the ground. hahah it was so embarassing and i was kinda dizzy for a few minutes but i was fine. Other than that no casualties or sicknesses yet! Except the food here...hurts everyones stomachs. TMI. sorry. haha but it's true. 

OH AND THE BEST NEWS! yesterday we were teaching our fake investigator and he committed to be baptized! we were stoked. and itsnoteven real!! haha were like yeahh were doing something right!! haha so yes the 3 weeks here have been successful. and the time is seriously going fast. but i feel like everyone at home must have changed so much since ive been gone?? are you all still the same? hahha i feel like a new person though! i have learned so much here and learned a lot about myself. it really is a cool time in life :) i am grateful for this opportunity. oh and plus im like a fluent spanish speaker now ;) hardly. 

k look out for letters this week cuz ive sent afew! sorry i cant get to all of you--we do not get that much time to write! mom hows that robe coming along...haha i always forget my towel and i am stranded in the shower....awkward. 
how is everyone's week? and whata re the weekend plans? i am so excited for you to get to arizona mom! you are gonna love it. let me know how that all goes. okay well gotta run, im gonna attach some pictures now and switch my laundry! 

NOS VEMOS! Espero que tendramos una semana increible a ustedes!! 
SE AMO MUCHO!!
-hermana rohm

Week Two

Hi Everyone! Here is Claire's email from last week. We will hear from her again tomorrow. She is doing great and we keep joking that she is basically on a spiritual vacation eating good food, doing kickboxing classes and being cool. We love her and miss her and are so proud of here! Here is the update: 

Hola hola familia y amigas!

Como estan ustedes? I miss all of you & am so thankful for all of the dear elders/letters. it is so great to hear from everyone! i feel like ive been gone a long time...but then sometimes not a long time. time here really doesn't make any sense haha.Mi semana era muy fabulosa y mucho trabajo. Aprendemos mucho espanol y ensenamos sobre ocho lecciones solamente en espanol. 
Am I scaring you all yet with my vast knowledge of spanish?? haha oh my district leader literally just handed me your letter anne! thanks! and tell t-niels i really appreciate all of the jokes. tell him he is all right too, he'll know what i mean. haha.

So what has happened since last thursday......I'm just going to do it chronologically since there is so much in my brain right now!!

FRIDAY:
WE got up at 6am and did kickboxing which was great. there was only like 7 of us but we rocked it. how fun to be a workout instructor here! and then for our real gym time after that we did some abs  and laid on the yoga mats....lol. WE also got our spanish scriptures engraved with our names, Hermana Claire Rohm, so that was really cool! I feel pretty official now. And we set individual language goals, my goal is to learn 10 new phrases a day and try to use them....so far so good! And mostly we just had a lot of class that day and taught our investigators. we got ours to agree to watch general conference which was quite the feat to do in spanish. The investigators aren't real but they NEVER BREAK character! If we say one word in english they're like "no comprendo." Sneaky sneaky.

SATURDAY & SUNDAY: GENERAL CONFERENCE! I think the only place better to watch general conference than the conference center is at the mtc. we all watched it in the big multi-purpose room with huge screens. All of the talks were amazing! I especially loved thomas monson's about obedience and the matches. He is so great at telling stories. I wish i had my other journal with me right now to write down all of my favorite things...i wrote like 8 pages of them. I also really loved Elaine S. Dalton's talk and I am so sad she is released!! Oh on Saturday night we got to watch the young women's broadcast (anne did you watch with your YW?) That was soooo incredible! President Uchtdorf's talk about everyone's different journeys in life was so great. I especially liked that he threw a lord of the rings reference into it. If you have time you should all go watch it on lds.org. you will love it! In conclusion, conference was the coolest weekend here and i learned so much! Oh also on Sunday night the BYU vocal point acapella group came and performed for us!!! Pretty much the best thing i've ever seen. They sang I need thee every hour in acapella, loved it. I have most of their songs on itunes so when i heard they were performing i was stoked!! all  the members of the group served missions so they shared stories and testimonies in between each song which was cool. They were on the tv show "the sing-off" in 2011. And on sunday nights here we get to watch a movie, well a church film. So we watched 'legacy" about the pioneers. You know you're in the MTC when everyone is cheering after an on screen kiss. so funny. 

MONDAY-THURSDAY:
It snowed monday and has been raining the rest of the days!
I hate to generalize all those days but they are honestly all a blur in my head now. We spent a lot of time in class and learned a ton! We also got 2 new fake investigators so we are busy teaching them! They are actually our teachers pretending to be investogators, but they are the best actors, you forget they are your teachers. Our two roomates who were going to las vegas left on monday :( the southern one and the hawaiian one. which was sad but we got two new roomates yesterday who will be going on their missions to north carolina! they seem really nice, and they seem weirded out by us because we were pretty crazy last night haha. 
Some days here are really hard and you honestly wonder "how on earth am i going to be able to teach people in spanish??" and you are so tired because we get up so early and do not stop all day. plus my class is on the 5th floor....lots of stairs! but at the end of the day you feel good about all of it and you realize how important each day is here. or as an elder in my district would say, "at the end of the day, it's just the end of the day." haha. 

well that's all i have time for today, ill try and send a few pics! sounds like you are making an embarssing display of me on facebook ;) haha it's okay. im just so excited to be here and to be improving myself! and someone asked me what day i leave for argentina and the answer is may 6th! well if my visa comes in time. yesterday we met with the argentina consolate to sign a few boxes...which took 3 1/2 hours haha not sure why but anyway hopefully my visa comes in time. if not ill temporarily be assigned to somewhere in the states. that is happening to lots of missionaries because there are too many visas to get!! we will see. 
anyway love you all and miss you!! hope you have a wonderful weekend :)

xoxo,
hermana rohm 
ps im going to get my typhoid shot right now. yayyyyy

Hi Everyone! This is Anne, I will be blogging it up on Claire's blog with her updates. She is doing amazing in the MTC and loving it there. Her P Day is Thursday so that is when we will hear from her and I will post her emails as we receive them. She loves you all and misses you... We all know she loves people that read her blog ;) Enjoy!

Thursday, April 4 2013

HOLA FAMILIA Y AMIGAS Y LOVED ONES....!

It is finally P-DAY! I know that you all were muy confused about when my p-day was and now if you are reading this you know that it is thursdays, from now until may 6th. May 6th will be my last day in the MTC before argentina so about 5 weeks to go here! Right now I am in the laundry room, well room is an understatement it's like a tiny factory of washing machines and dryers and computers so we all sit here and write while we wait for our laundry to be done. also we have a bookstore here and we get $8 woohoo every wednesday to spend  in there.  

Okay so what's new here.....well everything. haha. My companion is Hermana Ashby and she is from the classic, Boise, Idaho, of course. She is super nice, she is 20 years old and she plays the viola. She is super obedient...which is good but sometimes i just tell her to relax haha. Okay so pretty much all day I am in a classroom and the people in my classroom are called my district.  And I am with them ALLLL day so it's a good thing I like them haha. we are together from basically 8am and eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. and are in the classroom until 9:30 at night. also during gym time we all play basketball together-- thats right, im a baller now. hahaha not really. But they really are fun people. 3 of us girls are going to buenos aires west, 8 of them are going to Antifugasta, Chile and the one lone ranger is going to Colombia. But we are all learning spanish. There's 4 girls, me, Hermana Ashby, Hermana Miller, and Hermana Rindlisbacher. We are all in the same dorm together too. WE are bff's. haha we laugh all day and have a great time. they are so funny and cool. The elders in our district are elder bandy, elder adams, elder ashby (found out he was cousins with my companion the day they came into the mtc) elder james, elder Laula Pautautu (wrong spelling haha) and elder couch. elder couch is the funniest one in here and he keeps us laughing all day. he's sitting next to me and just told me the coolest sounding accent is american sign language.....lol.

oh man there are so many weird things going on in this place. i saw a girl running through the bathroom holding a yellow cellophane gift screaming "SISTER RIDGEMOND!!! SISTER RIDGEMOND!!" haha mormons. also in my room there are two other sisters that are random and they are serving in las vegas so they leave monday already. hilarious girls! one girl is from Paris, KENTUCKY. and she has the best accent and the best stories about her past boyfriends. love the girls bonding time at night. okay so the food here is out of control. every meal there is like 509375902375 options and most of it is pretty good. and me and the mtc are meant to be because the chocolate milk here is THE BEST. oh and the ice cream. they have ice cream wednesdays and sundays. and then there's like a sweet station of wraps and packaged salads that are really good. because i definitely don't wanna roll out of here.

today we got to go to the provo temple which was awesome. and we ate breakfast there and it was the best belgian waffle ever. okay enough about the food. let's talk about Easter in here. oh myyyyyyy! i really think if they want anyone to get baptized they should just send them to the MTC for one or 2 days and badda bing badda boom they will want to be baptized. So Easter morning we had sacrament with EVERYONE in the MTC. They passed sacrament to 3,000 missionaries, which they said is the most ever. Pretty awesome. WE got to here from Bishop Causse who is in the presiding bishopric and he is french. and that talk was amazing. then we had testimony meeting with our zone. our zone is all the districts on our floor that are learning spanish pretty much. so it's 4 districts. and we all have church together usually on sundays. we had a testimony meeting and i bore my testimony solamente en espanol :) i know i dont know where it came from either haha. but it's so easy to learn with the spirit exploding out the walls of this place! and then we ate steak for dinner and then we had a fireside. Guess who was the speaker....sheri dew!! Love her so much. she gave the best talk ever and we all were sitting there with our mouths open like in awe of her. oh oh before she spoke the MTC president's wife played the piano in a really cool fanfare and we all sang called to serve and stood up right at the end and it was really powerful and awesome. 

well i dont have too much time left but i will try to respond to all your letters :) thank you so much for all the love!! i get the most letters of anyone in my district and they all make fun of me haha. okay well mostly we just study study eat eat and pray that we can remember spanish when we teach the "fake investigators" only in spanish. but i can have a conversation with him in spanish! sweeeeeeet YO. 

love you all so much! and if i had to say who i miss the most of all......it would be ...just kidding :) i miss all of you! but mostly ella haha. give her a big kiss for me! until next thursday! i am alive and well.

xoxo
hermana rohm aka Claire-bear AKA c$ aka all of your favorites :)

Sister Missionary Questionnaire

Here is a Sister Missionary Questionnaire I found via my girl JaLynn (link for her blog on the sidebar--she will be serving in new york come may!) So here's my stab at it!

Did the age change affect you? If yes, how long did it take you to decide to go? 

Not really. I had been thinking about going since february 2012 when I was 20 and decided in about June that it was definitely something I wanted to do. At this point I could just barely submit my papers because I was halfway to 21. Once I had finally gotten on the horse it was October and I submitted my papers. Then, they announced the age change. At this point my faith in my decision was strengthened even more. And now I am stoked that there are so many girls serving and we are in such a cool time! This is the time for sister missionaries and it is amazing :)

Did you always want to serve a mission? Why/why not?

Never ever! My whole life i thought that only girls who couldn't get married went on missions. But then i took my ignorant head out of the couds haha and realized that only awesome girls serve missions! but seriously i had some amazing examples of sister missionaries that gave me incredible advice and got me to where i am today. which is 12 days from entering the mtc!

Where did you want to be called? Why?

I really and truly wanted to be called to australia! maybe because of the accent or maybe i just really like shrimp and kangaroos? haha no i just think it seems awesome! and i also really wanted to be called to somewhere in europe, like london, just because i like to say cheers ;)

Was your call surprising? How do you feel about it?

My call was shocking yet not shocking at the same time because once i read it I was like YES. that is it!! i had a really strong feeling id be going somewhere spanish speaking just because of all the years of highschool spanish i have had. however, i think every mission call is surprising because you could be going ANYWHERE. and now that everyone's telling me that blond hair blue eyed girls is the norm there, ill fit right in :) (minus the fact that i will have the biggest white girl spanish accent ever!) but  hopefully that will fade, and i am incredibly excited!

Share an interesting missionary experience or story.

one time i was getting my car washed and at the end of the car wash you know how there's always a guy who hand dries your car with a towel? so i was sitting there waiting and the guy drying my car started talking to me, turns out we were the same age (20). and so we had a good convo and when i handed him his tip i also handed him a pass-a-long card! he was like "oh you forgot this" to which i replied, "oh no, that's for you. call the number on the back you wont be sorry!" 

I never figured out if anything came from it, but who knows :)

Why are you serving?

I am serving because this gospel gives me more happiness, peace, clarity, and joy than anything else in the world! And mostly I just can't be selfish and keep it all to myself :) i have to share it! I want everyone to know about Jesus and Heavenly Father and feel of the incredible love he has for them. I want people to find that joy and know that they are a blessed daughter or son of Heavenly Father. And if I can bring a smile, a testimony, or a new beginning to just one person-it is worth it!

Any advice for future sisters or girls still deciding?

POWER OF PRAYER! The choice to serve a mission is completely 100% your own. If it feels like something you should do, well my feeling is, you didn't have that feeling for no reason at all. You should definitely pray about it. And once you do you may not have a firework answer, or a giant clarity of YES or NO. But, I am pretty confident that you will get the right idea :) For me, once I had prayed about it I had people coming out of the woodworks that i barely knew saying "hey have you ever thought about serving a mission?" or "gosh you'd be a great missionary." and this was BEFORE the age change so i knew it was no coincidence haha. and then to top it all of EVERY SINGLE lesson we had in relief society was on missionary work. At that point I was like okay okay ill do it! And I couldn't be happier about that decision :) 

Although there are many many trials and hardships that come after you decide to serve a mission, and will try and keep you from serving, you have to remember why you are :) and just stay strong. you will not regret it. 

Any other thoughts?

12 days. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! bring it on.

And I'm off!

in 13 days....

so this is my mission blog :) yay! 

I will have one of my sisters keep this up for me while I'm off in Buenos Aires teaching the wonderful people about this incredible gospel! I will be gone for a period of 18 months and you may email me 

and/or write letters, if you so please (addresses found on the side bar). i would love it if you did!

thanks for stopping by and joining in on my journey with me!

xoxo