Hola amigos!

Hola everyone! My name is Rebecca Rose Poulsen. I am 19 years old, and have just finished up my first semester of college at BYUI in Rexburg. I live in beautiful Missoula, Montana… for now anyways. I have recently been called to serve as a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Sacramento California! I wanted to start a blog to keep my family, amigos and other people updated with what’s going on with me in the mission field. This mission will last 18 months and I will be speaking spanish the whole time.. Funny story… I’ve never really spoken spanish in my life. I’ve had 4 1/2 years of french so I’m pretty okay with that but I am not used to this spanish stuff! I’ve been using this program called the MTC Spanish Language Learning and it has helped me learn so much in such a small amount of time. Within just one week I could introduce myself, say that I was a missionary, where I was from, ask people where they were from, and I also learned how to pray in spanish. It’s not perfect but I’m working on it! Lately I’ve been practicing bearing my testimony in spanish. It’s really cool doing stuff like that not in my native language because it really makes me think about what I’m saying and I think it makes it more personal in some ways. 

Anyways, As of today I have 14 days, 9 hours, 19 minutes and 50 seconds before I leave for the warm Mexico City MTC. Here, I will spend 6 weeks learning how to teach the gospel in spanish. After the 6 weeks I will be flown up to Sacramento California! (This will be around March 11, 2014.) From there, I will be doing what sister missionaries do for a year and a half, offering service and sharing the gospel!

I’m a little nervous because I’ve never flown in a plane by myself and I have a ton of transfers (is that what they’re called?) between where I live and Mexico City. Let me give you the run down: I board a plane leaving Missoula on January 29 at 7 a.m. From there I fly to Denver Colorado, and from Denver to Houston Texas and from Texas to Mexico City! If everything goes according to plan, I will arrive in Mexico City around 5 p.m. that evening.

So within the next few weeks I’ll be updating this blog with some tips for any of you preparing to go on a mission (especially for sister missionaries.) I know I would be so lost without advice from the sister missionaries here in Missoula as well as other missionary blogs. I’ll see if I can find links of places where I found some really good missionary skirts for a pretty good price as well as a packing list.

So stay tuned for more awesome updates! Oh! And one last thing: My farewell talk will be on January 19th and my farewell party will by on the 26th. Because ward conference falls on the 26th, my talk was bumped back a week. All are welcome to either events! Adios amigos! Talk to you soon!