Querido familia, Feb. 6, 2009
Tomorrow I have officially been in the MTC for one month! Can you padres y amigos believe it?! I really can't--it feels like I just got here in some ways, but then, in other ways, I feel like I haven't seen any of you in ages! I miss everyone so much.
After I sent my email I got some of your latest letters from Dear Elder! I read them while I ran some errands--Laney is so adorable--we will be able to talk spanish to each other when I come home! And Daddy,--that story you sent me was so good and so sad. Very timely too, but I'll get to that later.
The music on the IPOD is perfect! I'm very pleased with the selection and so are my companeras y las nueves Hermanas en mi cuarto. Some of my favorite songs are missing--but that's okay, they'll be waiting for me when I come home. My favorite to listen to is "I dream of Jeanie".
Mommy-you are so cute--you're totally Lucy, I now always have to look suspiciously at the cafeteria workers! I'm sorry to hear about my poor little car--I was just thinking about it earlier and hoping it was working all right for Jensen.
I'm totally paranoid that Hermano Prestwich and Jensen are in the same Calculus class. Jensen--look for a guy with a broken hand and very pale blue eyes! Then--hide in his trunk and come to the MTC. You and mom should dress as Lucys! It'll be awesome.
Really though, I have such a craving for cheese-on-a-stick.I always wonder now if mommy is thinking about the same foods as me. I've continued to lose weight. The food here is...not excellent. I mostly eat bananas and whatever junk food/ice cream is lying around. Sometimes the soup/salads are all right.

Oh! So--in my email, I had a list of movies that frequently come up. I really wanted to put Serenity/Firefly on the list--but sadly that would be a lie. I bring up that movie a lot, but since no one else has seen it--people get lost in the details. We were talking about agency, for instance, and I tried to tell them about the whole "you can't MAKE people be better-thing--but nobody got it. They were confused by what genre the movie was supposed to be in.
This also means that when I gaze out the window and say; "Here's us, on the raggedy edge." I look insane--but it's still completely appropriate--so why not?
Err--that e-mail thing sounds REALLY cool, but there's one problem. All of the reviews/p.m.s that I get from fictionpress come through the site--and they always leave a "do not reply" message at the end of the little messenger-email. It's probably not a big deal-I bet the email just goes nowhere, but if you can figure out how to make it stop sending these messages to fictionpress, that would be nice. (But I'm sure it's not a big deal." Speaking of which--would it be terribly inconvenient if I asked you to send me all the reviews I've gotten in the last month? I told everyone I was leaving and wouldn't get their messages, but IF somebody sent me reviews anyway, I'd love to read them.Anyway, thak you! Thank you so much for taking care of my e-mail and everything--there's nothing I can do about it here...
Mom--you've asked about my dreams--and I don't think I properly answered your question, so YES, I dream in spanish just about every night. There was one neat one that I had this week--Hermana Thomas interpreted it for me.
So, I dreamt that the three of us were in a beautiful city park teaching a lesson "Dan-Jones" style! but we were also taking turns watching others preach. I think I remember Hermano Richardson posed exactly like Dan Jones at one point..So, we were all preaching, but the people wouldn't listen and we were running late, so we started to leave. A few people changed their minds and said they wanted to be taught--I felt like all of them really wanted to be taught, but some were afraid or proud. I think a few went to go talk to Hermano Richardson (who only spoke spanish) and Hermana Gurney said "Vosmos. Debemos hallar los hijos." We were looking for children. There were children in the park, but they weren't the ones we were looking for. They were being loud and rude and I caught a few of them trying to put candy wrappers in my purse when I wasn't looking. I made them take them to the trash can. Their parents watched and looked tired and bored.
We had to leave. Sister Thomas said that the city was ugly (in English) and we had to travel down under the freeway to find this place where the children were hiding. I thought the city was beautiful. It was an urban mess of dilapidated buildings and twisted metal structures that were crumbling into the sand that was leaking through the cracked road. The sky overhead was red hot, dyed purple like nightime. It was empty however. Sister Thomas said that the city was Beautiful.
I could hear spanish whispers. The children we were searching for were hiding from us. Their little fingers and dark eyes were visible around corners-but they would disappear. It was like a game for them. "Por favor, venid a mi."I'm not going to tell you about Hermana Thomas' interpretation--just because it was embarassingly obvious once I thought about it. It was still a really neat dream.

So, I told you about "crutchy". Elder Frei is his real name. He's a wonderful addition to our district and the other day he admitted that he's pretty sure he tore his ACL because he prayed for patience. I should have taken his advice--and I DIDN'T pray for patience, but I did pray not to be afraid anymore. I was still a little nervous about talking to people (especially on the phones in the RC) but I did it anyway! I was still nervous though.
So, I prayed not to be afraid, and the result is, I'm not...But now I just LOVE everyone I talk to, so much. And...that's a little difficult sometimes, because most of them aren't taking their eternal salvation as seriously as I am. It's so hard to talk to them without saying something like "PLEASE! I'M TRYING TO SAVE YOUR SOUL! LISTEN!"
I'm not a very good RC missionary, but I'm working on it.
Geez, there are so many stories..I just don't have enough paper, ink or time.

But I HAVE to tell you about Hermana Fitches.
Hermana Fitches is one of the new Hermanas in our room--I won't go into too much about her story--but it's an amazing story. Her parents divorced and left the church when she was very young. She lived in an abusive household until she finally quit school and left home when she was just fifteen. She was homeless for four months while she looked for a full-time job to support herself. She described having to shave her head because of the unsanitary living conditions (she stayed in a pipe) which made it difficult for her to find a job.
She got into all sorts of problems for the next few years (smoking/drinking etc.) then when she was 18 she found her grandmother (in Long Beach) and went to go stay with her. Her grandmother said she didn't have to come to church if she didn't want to, but Hermana Fitches said she was so grateful that they were letting her stay there that she went just to make them happy. Her ward did a massive awesome fellowshipping job and she became active again!

She told us this story and it was just so inspiring--I felt sure that her experiences would help her find common ground with some investigators. Sure enough, she's already found someone on the phones in RC! She's been teaching him the discussions over the phone, and he's had hard times too recently, so she's the perfect person to teach him! It's really wonderful how her experiences can help people.

Okay, I also wanted to tell you about Hermana Saylor--she is one of the teachers for our zone and she is my shero! I want to grow up to be her--I love this woman. She's a spanish genius and she had to have a meeting this week about clothes with us--it could have been horrible and vague like they usually are -but instead she was really cool about it--but also CLEAR. She even pointed out things we were wearing that weren't acceptable. (I'll be sending some things home soon...) But she was SO nice about it! I don't know how she did it. Whenever the staff at Kimber tried to talk to us about the dress code, I was always SO ANGRY! But she really got to me. For the first time in my life I actually felt guilty! (Don't be too worried, I wasn't immodest, we're just not allowed to wear socks instead of tights and no corduroy! I'm sad about that because I have to send my adorable corduroy jacket home (though I bet you're happy to hear that mommy.)
Also, I really went through tights FAST. I need mre, but the only stuff they sell here is this horrible flimsy brand that lasts about six seconds of walking with a slight breeze in the air.
Could you possibly send me some nice sturdy support hose? Something that won't get destroyed? Also, if it's not too much trouble, I was really hoping for tights from welovecolors.com (grey and black) they're a really GREAT sturdy brand.
Also...this is sad. My shoes aren't as awesome as I thought they were. It's been a month and the sores on my ankles are just getting worse and they apparently don't have arch support after all...I'll probably be fine WHILE I'm in the MTC, and I can look for better shoes in Texas, but is there any way you could send me some inserts? "Dr. Scholls" or something like that? I don't know anything about this--I just know my feet are killing me.

All right now, before I finish, I just want to tell two more short stories about my companions.
Primero, Hermana Gurney es muy chistoso! She had a hole in her pocket and she sewed it up yesterday and then this morning she noticed that she'd accidentally sewed a pencil into the lining. Silly, but it made me laugh, a lot.
And then Hermana Thomas. She apparently had never heard of, nor read The Song of Solomon before. I enlightened her as to it's contents and we read a bit. You've never seen an adorable little blonde princess look so appalled. It made my whole life.
Before I close, I want to let you know I had the opportunity to do sealings today at the temple--it was incredibly moving. All of our names were from Mexico. The sealer was kind enough to sit and talk with us for a while after we were done--he talked a lot about when we go throuh the ordinance with our husbands someday, and about the difference between Immortality and Eternal Life. Eternal is one of our Father in Heaven's names. So, Eternal Life is life with God. I've heard this before and I could have sworn that one of you told me this, mummise--madre y padre!

I love and miss you all, but I'll see you soon enough. This month passed by rapidly, and I know I've only got a very little time here, and much to accomplish.
Hermana LirioBlanco