I'm a missionary!!!  I am so happy to be a missionary!!!   This is one of the happiest times of my life!  I have only been here two days, but I love it so much.  What a blessing that I decided to serve, and that I had so much support from everyone I love.  I am here experiencing all this joy because of you!!  YOU DA BEST!!!!

So I was excited to go in, but pretty sad before I got here...missing the fam and friends and what not....

Tuesday I flew in and stayed with my roomies who are THE BEST!!!  I love them so much and we had so much fun on our last night all together in that house!!  What a blessing to have gotten the opportunity to become so close with them!  They make me better and definitely helped me get here!  (Shoutout to Shelbus, Anna Banana, and Emily the Strange! Love you guys!!)

Then on Wednesday Erinn (I mean Sister Tolman) picked me up and I spent the morning with her family.  What wonderful people!!  They were so sweet and fun and PERFECT to be my sudo-family for the day.  We took pictures (which they will forward to me and I to you) and then we were in! 

They are so efficient here at the MTC!  The drop off was quick like a band-aid!  I'm so glad we said goodbye before so that I could just feel good and go.  I had been sad before, but AS SOON as I got out of the car, I COULD NOT stop smiling!  I was so so so happy, and just beaming ear to ear as I checked in and went to class.  Oh and guess what!  Sister Tolman and I are in the same room :)

So recap: first day was SO awesome!  Felt the Spirit so strongly, particularly when all the missionaries sing "We are as the Army of Heleman. We have been taught in our youth, and we ARE NOW the Lord's missionaries to bring the world His truth."  ******GOOSEBUMPS*******  What an amazing thing it is to be a missionary of God.  I am surrounded by all of these incredible young people and I get to be counted as one of them.  I am just so BLESSED!!!

Second day at the MTC was just as good as the first!  Class is great, they speak in German really fast, but everyone else is about where I am with German so we are all in the same boat.  Which makes it fun :)  MY DISTRICT IS SOOOO COOL!  It is all 5 of us advanced German kids, 4 sisters and one solo Elder.  Elder Peterson is such a sweetheart and a good sport about all of the jokes made about him being alone with sisters.  And the other 3 girls (Sister Tolman, Sister Henry, and Sister Rimmasch) are so dang awesome.  I love them so much.  We are the only girls in our room and we are all so similar its hilarious.  Goofy and nerdy (they all love LOTR and Doctor Who which makes me feel right at home) and so German.  Very very German.  We have a blast together haha, but we are definitely the district that studies really hard and follows all the rules and shuts the door when people are being loud...cause we are tyring to study.......sooooo German.  Haha its great though and we have SO much fun together.  They really are all amazing kids, and I am SO lucky that I get to be with them and learn from them.

More exciting news from yesterday: Sister Tolman and I taught our first lesson all in GERMAN!!!!!  WOOOOOOHHH!!!!  Be excited.  It was hard.  But it went pretty well and I think eventually I might even be able to do it with more than just basic terms.  It was great.  I also volunteered and was a German investigator for my teacher in front of the class.I took great-grandma's name.  Talk about nervwracking though, spending 20 minutes in front of the class pretending to be Emma Schreiner all in German.  She accepted the Gospel very quickly 1) because she's grandma and 2) because I said "I do believe in Joseph Smith" instead of "I could believe in Joseph Smith."  Really really great experience though.

And MORE exciting news: soo after all of our meeting and classes and studies and what not, we had a branch meeting.  Branch President Marion was pretty scary at first, but you warm up to him :) We recieved lots of instruction and some new assignments....and guess what.........SISTER TOLMAN AND I ARE COMPANIONS!!!!!  YAYYYYY!  We are excited out of our minds to get to be together!  Oh and we have also been assigned as Sister Training Leaders for our Zone!  Cool right?!  We are both so excited to serve the wonderful sisters in our zone, and to learn from their rocksolid testimonies.  We are in the international branch so we have 2 Koreans, 1 Vietnamese, 1 Spanish, 1 Philipine, 2 Brazilians, and then the 5 German.  And our Zone Leaders are hilarious.  Love them.  And shocker, Elder Peterson was assigned DL ;)

So I think are just about caught up now!  Life as a missionary is awesome.  I love it so much and I am SO glad that I decided to go.  Best decision of my life.  I miss you all like crazy, really, but I am happy to be here.  Life as a missionary is crazy.  We get like zerooo time to ourselves because we are constantly trying to learn how to serve others the best way we possibly can.  The few minutes here and there we do get to ourselves fly by in like a second.  I can see now why it is so hard for missionaries to find time to write or do much of anything.  There are just not enough hours in the day to get everything that we need to do done, let alone anything that we want to do.  It is so great though.  I love it so much.  I am so so so happy.  What an wonderful opportunity I have to fully dedicate the next 18 months of my life to living as the disciples and doing my best to follow Christ and bring others with me.  I am so blessed.  

I love you all.  I love my district and my zone.  I love my companion.  I love this gospel.  I love my Savior.  I love being a missionary!!  God bless!

Love, Sister Stringham

P.S. I get to be on the computers for an hour once a week.  My Pday is Friday so that is when I will be able to read your emails and write my own.  I can get snail mail whenever.  I love all letters so however you want to write me is fine by me!  Í'm just so grateful to have such amazing people in my life!

OH AND I GOT MY TRAVEL PLANS ALREADY!!!!

           

I leave on the 23rd at like 7:00 from the MTC with an 11:00 flight.  We fly into Amsterdam with a two hour delay, and then straight into Berlin.  We are all so excited and ready to get out into the field!