FAM!!! i love emailing you!!! love pdays!!!

Happy birthday to Amy yesterday. Hope it was great babe.

ok lets start off with the good news, as always. 

-I'm superrrr excited to come home next week for my doctors appointments!!!! woooot we can read our scriptures and pray and wear skirts and do all the things that missionarys do. it will be so fun. 

-Thank you family, for being fab and writing a Sister in need. It for sure made my week 100 times better. I have the best fam in the world. It's so funny to see how completely different everyone is in their letters from "Come home now, I'm not happy you left."- Amy, to "Never ever ever give up."-Dad, to "kyle is the best, I love him"-Emily, to "make sure you get your protein, maybe grilled cheeses?"-mom. hahahah mom do grilled cheeses even have protein?!

 -This week I ask you to do something much more important than writing me letters. If you arent already, I need you all to pray that I will have the gift of tongues! If I remember right, in our family we just say "please bless (name here) on their mission" and that's all. But i need you to say "please bless kelsey on her mission that she will have the gift of tongues so she can communicate with the deaf people she will meet in New York." K thanks you're all the best. 

-Heyyy can someone send me my patriarchal blessing? I forgot it somehow.... and it's mucho important.

-Perks of being in a trio: we're late to everything. Usually that's not a good thing, but our teacher makes us do pushups every time we're late, so we're getting ultra buff. Well not really, but it's good exercise!! Speaking of exercise, Dad can you please make me a good 40 minute work out plan thing? I"m getting bored of running around the field by myself.

-This week our teachers have been focusing more on teaching us charades rather than sign language. Why, you might ask? Because apparently there are real life people out there who are deaf, don't know sign language, and can't read English. Therefore we can communicate with them only through pictures and charades! It's soooo hard hahahahahh. Sign language is way easier. Try acting out the restoration of the gospel without using words or sign language, I dare you. It's completely exhausting. Oh well, at least I'll rock at charades when I get home :)) Oh, our investigator right now is Paco. He's from mexico, doesn't know english, and only knows a little bit of American Sign Language. So therefore we end up acting out a lot of the lesson. Our teachers told us there will be a lot of people like Paco in New York, so me and my comp are getting really nervous hahah. 

-This will make everyone jealous, I'm sure of it. Every Tuesday and Thursday we are privliged to wake up at 6:15 and clean toilets for an hour. This is the life I'm telling you. THE life! -__-

-Hey guess what! I got to sit front row and listen to an apostle again. This time it was the wonderful Bednar!! They started out the devotional by turning on one of his talks he had given at the MTC earlier this year, and we were all bummed, because who wants to watch a talk on the screen when we could have a real live person talking to us? Well that went on for 40 minutes, and then all of a sudden Bednar, the man himself walks in the doors. hahahahha it was so awesome everyone was freaking out. 

-I don't ever want to leave the MTC. I looooove it here. Remember how I didn't cry when I said goodbye to the fam? Welllll I'm pretty sure I'm gonna cry when I leave this place. It's so sad, I make great friends here, but then they leave after 12 days of training. But thennnn new people come and I make friends with them. It's a good life.

-Good news. I now have very great taste in ties. In my pre-mission life I never even paid attention to ties, but now I know there is a big difference between a good and bad tie. No time to explain the difference, but just know that my husband and sons will wear great ties.

-In case you didn't know, deaf people give people name signs. My name sign is the sign for korean because I love asians! I've loved asians my whole life, but then I met something much better.... mormon asians!!! They're the funniest people. The koreans are my favorite.

-Sometimes people ask us ASL missionaries the sign for this or that, and we happily show them. We love teaching people ASL. However when people as us how to sign common sense signs like "hi," "bye," or "love," we show them the sign for idiot, but we don't tell them it's the sign for idiot. We should probably repent and show them the right sign, but it's tooooo funny to see them say "Idiot," when they're meaning to say "hi."  

okkkkk sorry my emails aren't spiritual. I'm spiritual all week I promise, but on P-days I like to pretend I'm a normal person and not a missionary.

love you all :))

xoxo

sister layton

ps. the ASL is coming along so well. i love the langauge. it's so beautiful, so weird, and so so so fun. On Saturday and Wednesday I tried hard to not use my voice at all. On Saturday I mostly succeeded, but on Wednesday I failed miserably, I neeeeded to talk!!