- Sister Beck's Weekly Update
Hallo allemaal!
That's Dutch.
Belgium is a lot like Luxembourg where the national language is basically every language. Dutch and French are the biggest here but we haven't left the house and NOT heard a Spanish speaker either so that's exciting.
Leaving Nogent was difficulttt. I've only had 3 áreas but that was the saddest I've been to leave. I wasn't ready. For Lake Mary I had been there for what felt like forever (6 months jeje), so it was time and I knew that. I loved Luxembourg with all my heart but the last few weeks of it was Struggle Town USA so I was okay with getting out of there.
But Nogent felt like I was leaving behind family.
Fun fact: I always thought it was so weird that missionaries started calling their investigators "friends". It seemed lowkey disingenuous to me.
But since being in Nogent I finally realized why we call them friends.
The people that I taught there are my homies. I would do anything for them. It was so hard to leave everyone. I had real friendships with them and even though I love everyone I've had the privilege of teaching, I haven't seen them the way I see my friends now. Only took like 11 months jeje.
I thought that was an interesting shift.
Anywho, yeah it was sad. We had dinner with the Merinos our last night there and it was so fun. Ana y Amahia got a hold of my camera that my grandparents got me and took the funniest photos. I'll put them below. I love that family.
In the least dramatic way possible, moving to Belgium was brutal. B R U T A L. Between me and Sr Chris we had 6 suitcases and let me just say, suitcases on cobblestone is probably the most unnecessarily infuriating thing known to man. Cobblestone is already wonky and not uniform but one EXTRA wonky stone and your suitcase does a kick flip all on its own. My bags would twist and nearly break off my arm. I also flat tired myself and everyone else probably 56 times. It's not great to find yourself in the middle of a crowded train station wanting to scream at an inanimate object such as a suitcase, but yet there I was wanting to.
Me and my companion have very different approaches to these situations too so that made it harder 😂 I'm more of a: let's just ram through this and get it done and over with even though we're dripping sweat, our suitcases are a million pounds, and our arms might literally fall off. My companion is more of a: let's see, maybe if we look distressed enough someone will offer help.
We ended up losing our group and had to make it to the Gare du Nord on our own :,) We both were on the verge of crying but I think for different reasons ☠️
We left Nogent at 9 am and got to Ixelles at 6 pm. Only an hour of that time was us on a train. We took a bullet train so what is normally a 3+ hour drive or a 2+ hour regular train ride, was only 1 hour and 25 minutes on the fast one. Crazy.
We actually live outside of our mission boundaries lol. None of our area is actually inside our mission either. We see the missionaries from the Belgium/Netherlands mission all the time. It's so weird.
Here I live with à Spaniard, a Swiss, a German, and an Oregoner haha
Sœur Muller (Switzerland) and Sœur Kuchler (Germany) will talk German to eachother all day and it is the craziest thing. My ears want to make out what they're saying so bad but I just can't. I feel like German sounds like it wants to be English but can't quite get the letters in the right place.
#LoveYouKaitlynn #IchlerneDeutsch #Ichfinde
Also everything you hear about Switzerland is true. Sœur Muller is quite literally the nicest person I've ever met. Every day she'll just bring in homemade cinnamon rolls or cookies and leave you feeling so good about yourself for no reason. So I'm not mad about that.
I woke up to myself talking in Spanish one night... yeah, mid sentence of me saying "eso es chistoso". ??
At first I was freaked out and wondered if anyone heard me/ if I was ok, but after some deep reflection I decided Im actually stoked that my brain was working in Spanish even while I was asleep 🤝🏼💪🏽it had nothing to do with the gospel but someday I'll be like Hermana Gonzalez and sleep teach in Spanish. One day. One day.
Church yesterday was awesome! It was so cool to attend church all in Spanish. I loved it. They also had the fanciest tastiest sacrament bread I've ever had. It tasted so good 😂
No matter how much I talk to people they always think that I don't know Spanish because I'm straight American/Russian looking I guess. My companion from Spain got asked 4 times if I know Spanish ☠️ and everytime I would answer and then they'd turn back to her and ask her how I knew it😂😂 #TheCurseoftheGringa but all in all the people were really cool. And I've gotten really good at knowing exactly where people are from based on their accents. I've especially got Peruvians, Venezolanos, and El Salvadorians down to a science. I'm pretty proud of it 😎
One of my comps Hna Gomez is from Spain, and I actually lived with her in Lux ! She's so funny and has been teaching us so much slang it's so funny. We mostly speak in Spanish since she doesn't speak a ton of English. It's been cool !
Today is my niece Maisie's 1st birthday! I've never met that baby but I love her so much. I can't wait to squeeze her some day. Look at the pics below for her birthday celebration 💗🤍🌿🌷🌸
Belgium is cool. I like it here.
Love you guys. Stay righteous.
Fotos:
- My area outside of my mission hahah
- Amahia and Ana
- Why is Schweppes so good
- It's HOTTTT here. And hna Gomez tells us often. "Que calor hace????"
- waiting for the bus in the crippling heat.
- trees & me
- church signs with 3 different languages. They need a Spanish one.
- trio
- Maisie
