To those in Zion

I do miss the mountains, a LOT. I feel kinda of lost most of the time actually. I never know which direction I'm facing. It frustrates my poor companion to know end when it's my turn to drive, because I still have to ask for directions, every street looks the same and there are no monuments to guide my eye. She's got a 'not-too-helpful' way of trying to get me to learn my way around though. Here's how it works:

*Approaching the intersection*

Lilly "Right or left?" (Derecha o Isqueirda?)

Fries *Silence* (Silencio)

Lilly "Serious. I don't know." (En verdad. No se.)

Fries "What do you think?" (Que piense usted?)

Lilly "Err... We're almost there." (Aaii... Estamos casi alla.)

Fries "Hermana, you know this." (Sister, usted sabe esto.)

Lilly "I don't think I do." (No pienso que yo se.)

Fries *Silence* (Silencio)

Lilly "Alright, left!" (Esta bien, isqueirda!)

Fries "No." (No.)

Repeated about twenty times a day. A veces en Espanol, sometimes in English.
The mountains are like a fortress for me, and it's especially spiritual to remember in context with our ancestors and the work I'm doing here. But, I know that people who move from flat places to valleys like salt lake have the exact opposite dilemma, they end up feeling trapped. Ahhh… my Jensen, she is so cute with her little face and all. Elder Hackett says you should write him, I told him “She doesn’t even write me, she’s not going to write some random Elder I told her to marry.” But I’m glad you’re keeping busy, and hay, you totally did write me this week, and you usually add in an enjoyable paragraph into Mom’s ever so diligent letters… It’s lovely to hear from you all and get news. The other missionaries insist you’ll all forget me. Try not to, okay? By the by with people writing people and such, I’m sorry but the letters for Laney-my-boo y Ginna-gabobin are probably going to have to wait, I’m SO busy right now and I started working on awesome like ‘mock-up’ designs for my ever-longer children’s book for Laney. New characters include Isabelle Orchid, Old Admiral Bones and Rainbow Roadrunner. Also, I don’t know if I ever showed you Fredrick the owl, and I might add in a page for The Stained Glass Orchard, but that’s actually it’s whole entire own story… THANK YOU! By the way for sending me the Castle Mirrors reviews. I swear, I think that is the worst book I’ve ever written, but it’s been my most consistently reviewed considering I finished it and have just been letting it sit there for a couple of years… I’m kind of surprised when it still occasionally gets reviews. I’ll have to rewrite it one day and make it not so terrible.
My car died! Oh, I could cry… it’s such a good little car. At least Laney had an adventure. I hope that they can fix it, I’d feel so bad if I wore it out just in time for Jensen to get it! Poor, poor Hung Car. They can fix him though, make him better, faster, stronger! Very impressive work mommy, you could probably give Jason Statham some seriously epic competition.
SO sad that Jensen missed the demo. But that’s great that Sifu’s having more success with the school! I’ve been trying to practice, but I’ve just got NO time. I should be obedient and exorcise in the morning, but I’ve got to admit, more often than not I’m like “…Read in the Book of Mormon, or exorcise?” and studying wins a lot, but I should take better care of myself. I’m going to get all gross and pudgy.
Oh… err, I’m not sure I should admit to this. I think I saw a little tiny bit of that movie that absolutely EVERYONE has written me about. This movie would be Taken. We were checking up on a contact from an English member. (He served in Peru, I think, a number of years ago and was talking with the woman who cleaned his office building—the lovely Miss Maria—and I think she must have asked him where he learned to speak Spanish,) anyway, it came out that she has a Book of Mormon in English and she can’t read it! So, he offered to have us come by and give her one in Spanish and teach her. The kids were watching that movie when we came over. It was the really intense bit when the girl gets kidnapped too. But we waited for a minute while she looked for the channel-changer, and I realized when he said “They’re going to take you” that this was the movie that a number of people had mentioned in their letters. Looks very much like a man movie. I’ll probably love it in a year and half. Liam Neeson is so adorable.
So, this woman is amazing though, she’s SO sweet, and she was asking all kinds of questions and midway through our lesson her friends came over and her boyfriend got home and everyone just kind of sat down on the couch and listened quietly. It’s interesting how so often it seems like we end up teaching a larger group of people. Once, we were teaching a man on his balcony outside and his neighbor came out on her balcony with some snacks and sat in to listen. People are usually at least “curious” to know, what’s difficult is getting that curiosity to make them want to actually DO something. So often you’ll talk about how wonderful the gospel is and this happens:
“Wouldn’t you like to have everlasting happiness?”
“Yeah!”
“Well, you can! And we’ll tell you how.”
“No, I’m okay.”
Urrgh.
Oh, there’s so much I want to talk about… Some stories are just better told in person. Here’s one that’s ridiculous either way, and it didn’t even happen to me, so I’m kind of cheating: Elder Herrman got to help our Zone leader Elder Clark cast out a demon.
I didn’t think missionaries did that. We’ve been asking questions since it happened and apparently anyone can cast out a demon, but you’re more likely to get the desired result (the ‘casting out’ bit) with a priesthood holder/true believer. If you just say the words and don’t really have any faith to back you up then you’re just going to look dumb. Elder Clark didn’t look dumb though. He’s English, of course, Hispanics typically want their dreams interpreted, they handle demons on their own. Anyway, one of his former investigators called pleading with them to come help her with her boyfriend/husband (or something, this part of the story I didn’t hear from the direct source) The only part I heard was that the boyfriend was freaking out and screaming at her ever since she’d taken her old Bible off the shelf. So, they took him out to the car and he was talking about how this was such a joke and there was nothing wrong with him, but then he started talking about his life and some of the things he’d been thinking about lately and there clearly WAS something really wrong with this guy. Elder Clark decided to give him a blessing, at the end of it he added the proper words for ‘exorcism’ or whatever you call it, (even though he technically wasn’t supposed to touch him if he did that, was he?) anyway, he said he did it wrong, but it didn’t matter because it still worked, apparently. As soon as he was done the guy started shaking and passed out cold. He woke up again in a few minutes and was fine.
I was advised not to tell you this story because it would scare you, but… I’m going to go ahead and guess that you’ll find it more interesting that scary. Elder Herrman had this to say on the matter: “…That was weird.”
Indeed.
Oh, what else… I have a boyfriend. He’s got pretty russetty/blonde/chestnut hair and big pretty eyes and he’s only a few months old and a puppy. His name is Rocky and he belongs to my neighbors, but he’s SO cute. I’m not sure what breed, but he’s going to be huge, you can tell by his big-old dog paws. It makes me miss all the bad little doggies back home. Is Izzy-Cow much recovered form her surgery yet?
I miss the bad kitties too, I can’t believe Tommy keeps fighting with that pretty neighbor cat. Bad things. Diggy is so fluffy and silly, is his bald patch gone yet?
The weather here has been nuts this week. We were at an appointment with our VERY stubborn, very Catholic investigators and their… I don’t even know how many dogs they’ve got, and when we left their front yard had completely flooded. It was probably about a foot deep, there was no escape, we just had to swim to Hermana Porter’s car. (We had taken her with us to be our miembro.) It’s SO nice when members come to appointments with us, then they can talk to them like normal people and we can be like “Look! She’s wearing jeans and tennis shoes and is all normal and adorable and simultaneously filled with the light of Christ, don’t you want to be like her?!”
Arnie is doing so good, but we’re having trouble getting our other investigators to that point. Our one who’s doing the best right now is Aurora. She’s really quiet and for a while we didn’t think she was really interested, but then at our last lesson she just kind of casually mentioned that she’s read all the way up to the end of 2nd Nephi on her own, in addition to the assignments we’ve given her but she wants to be sure before she’ll agree to be baptized. We still can’t get her to come the church though, and that’s a huge problem… I really don’t get why it’s so difficult to get people to just come. It’s not scary! I promise.
I’m only half way through reading your letter, but my companion is getting impatient to leave, so I’m going to have to finish reading/writing later! I LOVE YOU! Kia Kaha
Hermana Lillywhite