Hi, I'm Amanda, and I'm a Mormon missionary!

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

It's official: every close friend who's leaving before me is gone!

I just got off the phone with the lovely Suzanne Bikman of the California Redlands Mission as well as the lovely Emily Gerday of the Canada Montreal Mission! They enter the MTC tomorrow but are being set apart tonight! I love them :)
So it's official. My only Mormon friends left are Jenny and Brianna. I won't see Brianna for probably 2 and a half years and I'm leaving Provo next Friday so I won't see Jenny after that. Missionaries really do sacrifice a lot. It's hard not to tell my friends that I will miss them because I don't want them to be sad, but it's hard to be like YAYYY YOU'RE LEAVING!!! Know what I mean?
So, here's a map of where all of my best friends are serving at the moment! (I added myself in there though I'm not there yet:))

The first person to leave was my Pearciepie! I mean... Elder Pearce Yasube Nitta... who I do call Pearciepie... in public. I swear, I embarrass him so much I'm sure he's used to it by now!
Pearce and I actually met at Macy's Great American Marching Band but reconnected at BYU marching band. It was pretty great. Him, Austin and I became best friends because we had all marched drum corps! We connected over our exquisite marching technique... okay, we weren't like BD good but we were pretty good. I love getting emails from Pearce! I stay up every Monday until 2 because I like to read all the funny yet uplifting things he has to say :) He always knows how to make me smile!  Elder Pearce Yasube Nitta is serving in the Hawaii Honolulu Mission and left February 27th! :)
Austin marched The Academy, I marched Jersey Surf,
and Pearce marched Madison Scouts! :)
This is me saying goodbye to Pearce
 the night before he went into the MTC!

Next to leave was Meghan. Wow, that one is a hard one to find my favorite pictures. There are just too many. You see, Meghan is like the eternal best friend. Like... on a scale of 1-meghan, nobody comes even close to being at her status of best-friendship. We met in 5th grade and were political enemies. It was kind of cute! I had a Kerry yard sign on my chair, and she had a Bush one. Neither of us understood much about politics; that's why it's so cute. Anyway, she moved back to California (in my mission area, might I add) for a few years and then back to New York. She came up to me at my very first stake dance and was like "Amanda?" I had no idea who she was... until she said that she was my political enemy in Ms. Rusnak's class. Long story short, she's now my best friend in the ENTIRE world! I'm not quite sure how I managed to find the greatest friend in the history of friends... but it happened. And I'm so incredibly glad it did! Sister Meghan Mary Luisa Ramirez is serving in the Guatemala City South Mission and she left May 1st!
I like this picture because it pretty much epitomizes our personalities!
Next to leave was Austin. I already wrote an entire post about him so I think I'll just let this one slide without saying much. Elder Austin Bruce Hurst is serving in the West Virginia Charleston Mission and he left May 22nd! :)
Fun fact: this was a candid shot and we did those faces at the
same time without even noticing the other doing it. He's so cute :)
And now, last but not least, SuzAAAAAAAAAAAAAnne and EmEEELEEEE! They enter the MTC tomorrow! I'll start with Emily. So, when Emily and I met she didn't exactly like me. She thought I was some crazy New York liberal coming to Provo... and she was absolutely right. She's some innocent little Utah girl, who didn't exactly understand my personality at first. I didn't actually MEAN it when I told her to leave her wheat grinder at home because it would take up space in our apartment. Anyway, she eventually got used to me and recognized that I wasn't as crazy as she thought. I helped free her innocent mind a little and opened her up to the real world rather than just the Utah bubble that she'd been in for oh so long. Fun fact: when she got called Spanish speaking to Montreal (she already speaks English and French because she lived in France), she greeted me with "aloha" and I almost died. EMILY. YOU AREN'T PEARCE! It's HOLA! It's cute though, she has a weird drunken French accent when she speaks Spanish. Anyway, Hermana Emily Amanda Gerday will be serving in the Canada Montreal Mission June 12th!
SuzAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAne! What to say about Suzanne... well, she gives really good head rubs. Whenever I had a bad day, I would just go put my head in her lap and she would play with my hair for hours. It was the best. She was pretty much the mother of our apartment, probably because she's like the second mother to her 7 younger siblings! She fixed holes in our pants, modest-ified our dresses, and of course, gave the best mommy hugs ever. At first when I met her, I though she was going to be a crazy antisocial home-schooled hick from Texas. Well I got a few of those right. Between the John Deer blanket and Texas flag, I'm pretty sure it's quite obvious that she's a hick and a Texan. Texan nationalist actually... she was also home-schooled, but she surprisingly doesn't have any of the weird home-schooled quirks... which is good. I'm glad she's not a weirdo! Sister Suzanne Mardonne Bikman is going to the California Redlands Mission on June 12th! By the way, that borders the Carlsbad mission! :D

This is our suite at General Conference! Suzanne and Emily are in the middle, and Jenny and I are on the ends. Jenny started her papers Sunday and hopes to leave around January! 
We also had a 5th roommate... but she didn't actually live in our room even though she was there pretty much as much as we were. BRIANNA! :D She's deciding whether or not to go on a mission at the moment! I love her so much!
These pictures accurately what we were like in public versus what we were like with each other. In public, we were perfect little Mormon girls who behaved ourselves quite well and always did what was asked. When it was just us... well... bring on the inappropriate conversations and dance parties!
look at us we're so cute and normal well-behaved and oh wait...

never mind.


So there you go, all of my best friends who are on missions. Oh, the life of a BYU freshman. :)
P.S. I didn't forget about you, Brandi! But you aren't going on a mission. Guys, Brandi is my best friend from New York! I will post things about her when I get back to New York! :)

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