HI HI FAMILY!!!!!!! Wow, so much has happened in the last 10 days since we spoke!!!!! The last days in the MTC were great! I was so excited about heading out that it made packing easier and more fun to do! We had awesome devotionals for new missionaries to listen to that were really not funny but had all of us dying of laughter. I am turning into a missionary I think.... so that was great! The MTC President and his wife were so sad to see our group go since we were their first group since they got called! We were with them the longest at 10 weeks. I loved them! I hated saying goodbye to my zone that I loved so much! That was tough. saying goodbye to my teachers was harder! They taught me so much and made me the missionary that I am. All the teachers cried... I didn't cry. I was past emotions haha. The hardest goodbye was easily with my best friend. The second she came down to my room on Sunday night we both started to cry. It was sad. We both know exactly what the other is going through so it's nice to lean on each other. I will miss her and the notes of encouragement every day. She will do awesome in the Philippines even if a tropical storm is headed her way! Pray!!!! Anyway, that was hard but made it easy to sleep that night after crying for hours. SO we woke up at 2 am on Monday and got dressed and ready. We left to the Utah train system or trax and rode them to Salt Lake with all the other departing missionaries. So fun. When we got through security, our first priority was to find a phone! It was SO good to hear your voices! I cried hearing my cute parents' voices and loved hearing my siblings' voices!!! Then we got on the plane to Chicago! On the way there, I sat by a girl my age headed to Europe because she is in the cast of Disney on Ice. We talked about the gospel and I gave her a Book of Mormon and my blog address, and today she emailed me and said she saw some other missionaries in the airport in Europe that gave her a quick lesson and she said she is going to get lessons from the missionaries. So great. She spilled boiling tea on my leg... I wanted to teach the word of wisdom haha. Oh well. Chicago was great! My card to call home would not work so I asked a lady (while sobbing) if i could use her phone to call my mom. I think she thought I was crazy. I cried so hard. I was so frustrated because I really had been looking forward to just talking to my mom and dad and not worrying about time. It was the most stressful thing. I was so so sad. But I got to talk to them for a bit and tell them I love them and express how excited I was to be going to Slovenia. I loved wearing my name tag in public! It was seriously so different and everyone treated us like we are important which was so different from the MTC. Then we got on the 747 to Germany. They make missionaries sit alone so we have the opportunity to share the gospel, but luckily Elder Peterson sat behind me so I had a friend. We traveled with about 200 world champion baton twirlers... random. haha I honestly slept most the way. I was so tired from crying about missing Madi and not being able to talk to mom and dad a lot so I was out. We ate pasta I think... and the breakfast was awesome... I think I wrote about it in my journal haha it was all kinda fuzzy. I loved hearing German! I want to learn it! It is such a cute language and their accents... yeah, I am obsessed. Oh and the lady sitting next to me on this flight also spilled her boiling tea on my right leg.... so I have some awesome blistering on my leg haha oh well. Germany was fun because I got to call home haha it was POURING rain so hearing my parents voices was so comforting. I love them... a whole lot. We were there for 6 hours waiting for our flight. It's a huge airport with such diverse people. I think I saw the gathering of Israel just in that airport. Weird. Maybe that should be a mission. So then they finally assigned our gate where we waited another hour for the rain to slow down so we could leave to Croatia! At this point, I was dying of excitement. We got on the plane and I fell asleep (jet lag is so real) and about an hour later I woke up and we were still on the ground! It was sheet rain and heavy winds but I thought DO you all not realize we have missionaries on this plane?!? We will be safe!!! Let's go to Croatia!!!! Haha I know I'm not logical, but it is what it is. This announcement came on in German and English to explain why we were waiting (rain) and the cute ladies behind me tapped me and said do you speak Croatian (in Croation) and I said (in Slovene) "No ma'am, but I speak a little Slovene!. So she asked me to explain to her why we were not moving in Slovene and she would try to understand.... that's when I realized I don't know any normal people words! I could tell her that God loves her and that the Book of Mormon is true... so I laughed at myself and told her that the rain and wind were too hard for us to go and we would have to wait a few hours. AND GUESS WHAT?!?! SHE UNDERSTOOD ME!!!!!!! I wanted to jump up and down! I had in that moment mastered Croation hahahaha just kidding, but it was still so great. About 3 hours later (kill me) we FINALLY took off!!!! The girl sitting next to me talked with me. She is from Croatia living in Portugal... but she speaks perfect English, so that was nice. We exchanged emails and she said to send some Croation missionaries to her house. She was a doll. Then we FINALLY landed in Croatia! So that is it for the travels! Stay tuned for the arrival! I LOVE SLOVENIA!!!!!
Sister Higgins
Sister Higgins