July 15th Letter

Achilles Tendon, French, and STL!

Bonjour!!

Alright. I have so many things to tell you about this week! So here we go! P.S I hope you enjoyed my subject line. I'm trying to make it more interesting!

This won't be chronological. Sorry. I'll start out with highlights of the week!!

Yesterday was probably the greatest day I've had on my mission yet. I just absolutely love Sundays in the MTC and yesterday was especially amazing.

First off, I spoke in Sacrament meeting! Most of you probably don't know how this works, but we don't know we are speaking until they announce the program for that day. But it's not as stressful as it probably sounds because we all prepare a talk ahead of time just in case we get called. I had a big feeling I was going to be called, since I'm like the only one with a background in French. And sure enough, me and Elder Muller were the speakers for the day! The only two in our zone who knew French before our missions.

And it was great! It was a pretty short talk, but I felt like I was really able to convey everything I wanted to in French! It was so much fun. You all know how much I love speaking anyway. So it was great.

The French is definitely coming along. It is such a struggle and so frustrating everyday, but I get better and better everyday as I work as hard as I can! Actually,one of the highlights of my week is one day before Frere Blosil was leaving class he said "Soeur Magleby, can I talk to you out in the hall?" And not like I had done anything wrong but I was still scared at what he was going to say...haha. But he is the best and he just wanted to talk to me to tell me how grateful he is to have me in class, and he is grateful for how much I am helping everyone with their French, and especially for how much I am helping Soeur Bragg. It was a great motivation! It was great to see that he really does appreciate how hard I am trying to get the language.

Back to yesterday. Relief society was AMAZING yesterday. I just love Relief Society so SO much! All of the sisters meet together, and it is so powerful. There is seriously nothing like all standing up and singing "Sisters in Zion" together. I get emotional everytime. Yesterday we had Carole Mikita come talk to us! She is an anchorwomen on KSL news. And her talk was amazing. So emotional. But in all the right ways. Yesterday was just kind of a super emotional day for me, but never tears of sadness. I was just so overcome with how happy I am. She talked about her conversion story. And it was so touching. I hear so many all of the time, but it truly is so amazing. Her whole family of 6 ended up getting sealed in the temple because of two elders who decided to knock on the door of a house at the end of a dead end street. There is so much power in that. I was just overwhelmed with the feeling of just how blessed I am to be a part of this work. It is such a beautiful thing. I just hope that I can work hard enough to be the kind of missionary that can touch someone's heart. I already love the people of France so much, and I just can't explain how excited I am to go and serve them.

And THEN, the next great thing about my day yesterday! Soeur Bragg and I got called to be Sister Training Leaders! I'm sure many of you don't understand it, but it's pretty much the same thing as a Zone Leader, just with the sisters. Pretty much we are just in charge of all the newbie missionaries that will becoming next week. It is our job to show them around and to help them figure stuff out here. I'm really excited! I'm excited that Soeur Bragg and I got called together, because that usually doesn't happen and they usually call one sister, but it will be super nice because we won't have to be apart! So that was pretty exciting. It will be a little bit of work but I'm excited to serve all the new sisters that will be coming!

Ugh side note--the space bar on my computer sucks. Sorry if some of my words aren't separated. (EDITOR'S NOTE:  I fixed them and added spaces)

And then for the last amazing thing yesterday, it has to do, once again, with the Atonement. In our district meeting yesterday we had one of the coolest talks that I have ever had about The Atonement. Our branch president brought up a lot of things I had never really thought about before. It made me understand the Atonement EVEN MORE than I already did. It is crazy how we seriously spend our entire lives learning about the Gospel, and still we can never learn enough.

We also talked about the scriptures in Matthew 25:35-40. It was SO COOL. Those scriptures have never hit me so much before. I encourage you all to read them! It just really hit me how I am LITERALLY serving my Savior as I serve the people of France. It's never hit me in such a way before. It's hard to explain over email. But it was just a really cool experience. And then last night after our devotional we watched The Testament. Aw man. I was bawling. Haha I told you it was an emotional day for me. Just watching the scene of the Savior performing the Atonement and being crucified. I can't even explain to you the Spirit I felt at that moment. Never in my ENTIRE life have I ever felt so strongly about that moment before. I mean, I've seen that scene of the Savior being crucified so many times in my life. But never like that. I had never felt so strongly that the Savior did that for ME. He literally chose to do that for ME. I hope that you all truly understand that. It was His choice whether or not to go through with the Atonement. But he chose to do it. He chose to do that for YOU. He literally knows absolutely everything that you have ever felt. He knows every pain, every sadness, every sickness. I just got so overwhelmed last night that I couldn't even control my emotions of how grateful I am for His sacrifice. I challenge you to really ponder that this week, and take some time to study the life of the Savior. And to truly understand how much He loves you.

So yeah. AMAZING day yesterday. I haven't ever felt the Spirit so strong before. It was absolutely amazing.

Okay, I bet you are curious about the achilles tendon part in my subject. Well. We all knew my feet were going to be a struggle,didn't we?

So it happened last Tuesday night as we were walking to the devotional at the Marriot Center. I had been getting blisters on my feet, but not so bad that I was dying, I just put on Band-Aids and I felt fine. But there is this one pair of shoes... (for mom-the brown and black ones. Like the only cute ones I have!) And I'm pretty positive that is what did it, but I'm not even 100% sure. ANYWAY, we walked to the devotional. And my feet hurt, but I was fine. It just felt like a blister in the back of my foot. But then it happened like all at once, walking back from the devotional. All of a sudden I was in so much pain that I literally couldn't walk. I seriously wanted Soeur Bragg to carry me back to the MTC. It took everything not to just start crying in the middle of a crowd of missionaries. But, I made it back to the classroom. So then I sat down to look at my foot and wonder why in THE WORLD my blister was hurting so insanely bad, and it wasn't a blister. I look at my foot and on the back of my heel was literally something the size of a golf ball. Haha I said to Sister Bragg "My foot is swollen to the size of a baseball!" And she looked at it and said, okay maybe not a baseball, but that is definitely golf ball size!! It looks so weird. I haven't seen anything like it. But I thought maybe it would be gone in the morning, haha I don't know, so I just went to sleep that night. But then I woke up that morning and I swear it looked even more swollen. So we decided to go to the health clinic. So I got into the health clinic to have the doctor look at it, and it was funny he just kept saying over and over again "Hmm, I think we need to send you to the podiatrist." So I'm not 100% sure he knew EXACTLY what he was talking about, but he told me that apparently at like the bottom of our achilles tendon that is a sac type thing, and that mine is inflamed for some reason. Probably from rubbing against my shoes. But he really wants to get me into the podiatrist. So, I made another appointment for this Wednesday and he told me to take 3 ibuprofen every 6 hours to get the swelling down. And to avoid the shoes that I think did it. And the ibuprofen I think did help with swelling, because it looks a lot better. But it still hurts. Like honestly the only way I can describe it is it looks like I have a third bunion on the back of my heel. It even feels like a bone. It sucks because I haven't been running because I don't want to make it worse. But not running sucks. But it just feels really strained when I run. So yeah, I really have no idea what is going on. But I have another appointment on Wednesday because he wanted to see if the ibuprofen would fix it, but it hasn't, so I bet they will be shipping me out somewhere to go see a podiatrist because the one here won't be back until after I leave.

Yeah sooo I hate my feet. BUT don't stress too bad about it. I'll be okay. I don't think it is a huge deal, it was just a really weird thing. But I just wish I knew what shoes exactly did it because I'm really not sure, I just guessed. But don't stress too much about it. Just please pray for my feet!

So, those are pretty much the big events of my week! Teaching is going great with our two investigators Anouk and Johnston. I love teaching so much. It's funny because before every time I teach I always get super nervous, but as soon as we start teaching I just never want to stop! And honestly...I would be WAY more stressed out if I had to teach in English. I can't even describe it, but I am already in the position where I can easier teach people about the gospel in French than in English.

Soeur Bragg and I are just working really hard and having so much fun! We also had TRC's this week which were WAY FUN (real members who volunteer to just let us teach them, not as a fake investigator though) and they were all super nice and encouraging and said our French is great!

I'm so exhausted beyond belief but couldn't be happier.

The letters mean so much. Please continue to send them!! I love reading them before I go to bed.

I love you all and pray for you. I am beyond grateful for your support.

I love you!!!!!

-Soeur Magleby

P.S they served Salmon and quinoa this week and I almost passed out I was so happy. Another highlight of the week ;)