May 14th

Welp, it´s officially my last day in the MTC!!! O my goodness I am so pumped. Sister LaRue and I took Sister Bonner to the travel office at 3am this morning and saying goodbye was hard, but were all just pretty excited. I got to say bye to Elder Rodee too, we both agreed a handshake really just doesn´t cut it on goodbye sometimes. I got a picture with him that I´m sending you guys this week. Sister LaRue and I are definitely at the so excited we could die state. This week there were some freak out moments where we felt unprepared, but now we´re feeling awesome. Today will mostly be spent doing laundry, writing, packing, and cleaning. You know how much I love packing notworthit. (ps the hashtag button on this keyboard doesn´t work! Tragedy!) Dad- I am so sad to hear that the cars are officially gone. We had such memories working on those together, I will always cherish them. I´m sorry that our plaque made your super cool coldplay tickets anti-climactic. I am very jealous you guys are going to the show. Celebrate in my honor since it´s near my birthday! Also, I´m sorry I haven´t gotten my Mother´s day card to you yet, it is on the way this week. It was a pretty great week here though, lots of learning and goodbyes, totally crazy that we are finally at the end of our time here. I have such a hard time with goodbyes, but we´re all just so excited. So we leave the MTC at 8am tomorrow and so I should be calling around 10:30 Texas time! I am son excited to talk to you guys. I will probably be calling Mom´s phone so just be aware. So, some spiritual things from this week. We had a devotional on Tuesday and D. Todd Christofferson came with his wife! It was SO AWESOME. Like amazing. Sister Christofferson talked a lot about charity and love, it was beautiful. Elder Christofferson talked with us about the Doctrine of Christ and how it is a manifestation of divine love. We spent a lot of time in the scriptures (2 Nephi 31:5-21, 3 Nephi 11:31-41, and 3 Nephi 27:13-20). We broke down the role of the Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ, and Heavenly Father in the Doctrine of Christ, it was so so cool. The last thing he talked about was how the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve have called missionaries to help in spreading the gospel message and that we share their commission. How cool is that?! He talked about how we stand shoulder to shoulder together as companions under Christ. It was powerful. Well I´m out of time, I love you all so much and I am SO EXCITED to talk to you tomorrow. I love my mission so much and it´s only been 3 weeks, the next 17 months are going to be amazing. Sister Ellingson ps- shout outs to Tara Anderson, Aunt Suzanne and Meggie for letters this week! pps- shout out to Brian Walton who I saw like 12 times this week since he works at the MTC! Crazy, it was fun to see him. LOVE Y´ALL SO MUCH!

May 7th

Hello Family! Can you already believe I'm halfway through my time here at the MTC? Time is totally weird here, the first few days seemed like eternities, the last week flew by, but it still feels like I've been here a month. I can't imagine how it would be having to be here for 3 months. This last week was full of really good learning experiences and awesome spiritual moments. Yesterday we had Mission Conference and got to hear from the whole MTC presidency and a few others. President Brown did his whole talk on having faith in Jesus Christ and it was seriously INCREDIBLE. I wrote like 3 pages of notes. Then we had a devotional by Mark Lusvardi who is the Director of Public Programs for the missionary department in Salt Lake. He talked about developing and having Divine Love and it was also mind-blowing. I'll send you more details on those in a letter since email time is so much shorter than letter time. So we got out travel plans this week! Sister LaRue and I are leaving at 11am on Tuesday the 15th and we'll get to Washington at 12:30 Pacific time. We're flying with 5 elders, but we don't know who they are. Sister Bonner is the only sister in her travel group to Canada, but she is flying with 18 elders!!! Totally crazy. She has to be at the travel office at 3am #almostnotworthit... haha, she flies from SLC to DFW to Toronto. Long day of travel for her. I do not envy it. I'll talk my 2 1/2 hour flight with no connections. We spent a lot of time this week talking about how we're meant to teach people and not just lessons and how we need to work on listening as well as teaching. It really is crazy how much we start to care about the people we teach here and how much we want them to accept our message. Many times this week there has been talk about how we have been called to specific places for a specific reason and for specific people. Brother Lusvardi talked about that in his message to us and how as we just go out and love those we serve that that love will resonate with them and they'll be able to feel the spirit of why we're there. It really made me grateful to be a missionary because that's what I want to do. I want to meet those people that are waiting for that message and I want to share it will them. Wow, just so amazing. I love y'all SO SO much and thank you again for all the letters, emails and love. Sad news Mom, since I'll be in the MTC on Mother's day I won't be able to call because there are like 2500 missionaries and 4 phones. BUT we're hopefully going to be able to call at the airport. I'll keep you posted on that next week. Love, Sister Ellingson PS- I'm so happy to hear that the trip to Canada went so well and that you got to see so many people! I bet that was so much fun for you guys. I'm also really happy to hear that Mac got that NAIT interview and I'm keeping him in prayers until he finds out the results. PPS- I got your package of cookies and treats! It seriously made me so happy. There's an elder from BC in a district we see all the time and he was very jealous of my candy. Like I mentioned in my letter though, Sister LaRue and I and one of our elders decided to give up treats and see who can go the longest so I had to eat my cookies and candy fast. We've been going for like 4 days now and I have not eaten any treats. We'll see how long my self-control lasts. PPPS- shout out to Monica Jackson, Alex Pehrson and Meggie Cheney for the awesome Dear Elder Letters this week! They totally made my day! I'm working on replies later this afternoon :D OH! Also, shout out to Rayo Budge for randomly walking to the temple at the same time I was there! So glad I got to see you. PPPPS- I forgot to give you guys my scripture for my plaque! If you could use Alma 26:12 that would be awesome :]

April 30th

FAMILY! How are all of you doing?! How happy I am to be emailing you today and what a wonderful first 5 days I've had at the MTC. Things here happen so quickly, after Mom and Stef dropped me off I was taken to my room, given some materials, got my name tag and went right to my classroom where I met my district and my companions. You heard right, I have 2 companions! Sister Bonner is from Bountiful, UT and is going to Toronto, Canda! She'll be leaving on the same flight at Elder Rodee (we see each other every once in a while, it's great). Sister LaRue was born in Hawaii, but has lived in Missouri with her family most of her life. We get along so well and I love them both so much! We have a ton of fun together. We have 4 elders in our district, all going to the Houston South Mission, we like talking about Texas together. Elder MacCarthy, Elder Fellows, Elder Sami, and Elder Suggs are so awesome. We have 3 districts in our zone/branch and we love everyone a lot. We're sad because our other English district is leaving this week for the field, but we're excited to not be the newbies anymore. Life here in the MTC is so fantastic. There is such a strong spirit here that just makes you happy. We're learning so much at once, but it isn't as overwhelming as I thought it would be. The Lord truly is blessing us. One of our teachers is from Tri-cities and so he's told me so fun things about the mission. We've already taught 2 lessons together and we feel like we're starting to figure some things out. Sundays are wonderful here. We have sacrament meeting with our branch, relief society with all the sisters in the MTC and a fireside in the evening. This week we had the director of missionary services, Robert Swenson, come and speak yesterday and he gave such an awesome talk about how missionary work can be happy, fun, rewarding, and productive at the same time. It was awesome. He talked about how important this calling is and that it's a calling extended to us that we accepted. We're meant to be here, we've all been called for a reason. It was pretty powerful stuff. One of my favorite things about Sunday was that I got to go to choir practice. We're singing Jesus, Once of Humble Birth. I guess I had never really taken the time to look through and really read the lyrics, but we did during practice and it has such a powerful message! The whole song is a built upon the verse before, starting with the humble origins of Jesus' birth and building up to His great glory and reign. I recommend everyone take the time to really take a look at the song and feel the power of it. Our director reminded us of how important Jesus Christ is. He is our Savior, He is our Redeemer. He is our message. Everything else comes down to the simple message that God loves us so much that He sent His son as a sacrifce for the sins and imperfections of the world. I know that He died for me and He now lives for me. I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God given to guide us and direct us in these latter-days. I know that Joseph Smith was called of God to bring about the fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I love this gospel, I love my Savior, I love you all. Sister Ellingson