So here’s us, on the raggedy edge

HI! It’s so good to get your letters! Mommy, I love how you write, you put just the right details so I know what everyone’s up too. I really feel close to you all, and your letters make me miss home, but in a happy, nostalgic way rather than a ‘Lot’s wife’ way. Everyone sounds like they’re doing really well! And it was SOO good to talk to everyone last week. I had my interviews with the Mission President and Sister President this week, and I told them about how I’d talked to pretty much everybody before Hermana Frieszell told me I was only supposed to talk to immediate family, and President says that it’s totally fine if I want to talk to family members like grandparents, uncles/aunts, cousins etc. the rule is just in place so people don’t call their friends/have friends/girlfriends just HAPPEN to stop by the house. So, at Christmas time, I’m okay to say hi to everyone again, I’m just supposed to spend MOST of the time chatting with mis padres y hermanas.
Well, everybody was asking about Erika and El Libro, so I’ve got a little update. She’s been continuing to read it, she’s keeping it in her purse so she can read it at random moments and she says she’s loving it still. She was making a game out of it at school, hiding it in a magazine. During our lesson we had her open up to a chapter to read a verse for us and then we kept teaching her mother Rosa because she didn’t quite understand and when we turned back to Erika she’d finished the entire chapter while we’d been talking. She just REALLY loves the book! It’s so great, but it’s going to be difficult to get her to DO anything about it, I’m afraid. She’s very much a teenage girl. We’re still working on getting her to church. She had her prom this last weekend so she was WAY busy, and she got even busier when her friends nominated her to be a prom queen candidate! I’ll tell you if she wins.
We’re teaching a woman named Veronica, and she is officially my first opportunity to fulfill one of my mission goals. (I want really bad to baptize someone who I just walked up to in the street and started talking to). You see, there are really effective ways to find people like through the members and then there are the two least effective but very, very common missionary methods (Street contacting and knocking on people’s door.) Veronica we found through street contacting!
We were out one morning, trying to get in touch with a couple of people in the apartment complex Imperial Oaks (Where are 90% of the Hispanics in Gunspoint live) and I was thinking about how Hermano Richardson had so stressed street contacting. We all know it’s the least effective way to find people but he told us several times that contacting in the street constantly is one way that we can show God who much we’re really trying. He’ll put people in our path if he knows that we’re going to talk to them, but if we typically just walk right past people without even trying to give them a card, there’s no way he’s going to lead us to one of this precious children. Soo… A few weeks ago I was feeling a little guilty because I felt like we weren’t talking to people in the street as much as we could. And I walked up to the next woman I saw as a result and met Veronica!
She’s a lovely young mom with 4 kids (Karen 14, Jordan 9, Eduordito 4 & Kevin 1) she told us to go ahead and stop by sometime, and that she’s home basically every day all day. We’ve been teaching her for a couple of weeks now and she’s so great! She’s so sharp and really has a strong desire to do what she needs to in order to be in good standing with our Heavenly Father. After we inviting her to church she prayed hard to know if it was the right thing to do. She said that she was alone in her room and in was late and she very distinctly heard a voice say “lleva tus hijos a la Iglesia.” (take your children to church) she tried to figure out if she had fallen asleep while praying and was hearing things but she determined that she was still awake and then she heard it again “lleva tus hijos a la Iglesia.”
Soooo she and her 4 kids came to church! And it was a very good experience, we believe. We’ve yet to talk to her about it too much, but in Sunday school the teacher shared a story about when a man broke into her home late at night and how she saw him walk past her door and her first reaction was to get out of bed or scream, but she felt someone restrain her and she heard a voice say “No gritas.” (don’t scream) and she too had to figure out if she was awake or not and once she realized she was awake she heard the voice again “No gritas”. The robber took some things, including her son’s baseball cap that helped them identify him later. It could not have been more perfectly to have her share that story when Veronica was there! She had been telling us how she was worried people were going to think she was crazy, hearing voices, but the Sunday School teacher (I’ve forgotten her name, sorry) is clearly a very sharp, put-together woman. Not at all unhinged and their stories were just so similar. Amazing. I love milagros… Doy gracias a mi padre celestial.
The Elders are all very curious about this adorable sister at BYU that I keep talking about. Elder Hackett has found competition in Elder Brisco & Elder Perry who are hilarious… here let me give you some vital information about two of my favorite Elders.
Elder Brisco: was a not-so typical skater-boy/teenaged rock-star, whose hit song “Why am I not 16?” won the hearts of millions of miamaids in the Colorado area. He’s one of the funniest Elders around, a real bromista, but he’s also been voted most likely to become a general authority because of his very formal and dynamic way of speaking, as he once said “I’m a bird of a different colour when it’s time to work.” He’s VERY smart, and the first Elder I met when I got off the plane. Assistant to the President. His letters home are pretty funny too, he let us read a little today. This is the Elder whose family moved to Denmark while he was here, so in a few months when he dies he’s headed to Europe!
Elder Perry: Sign-language Elder and one of my current Zone Leaders. He can bend his knees backwards about five inches and once cheated in a wrestling match by using this to get himself an emergency time-out. (He pushed his knee back and screamed until they called a time out and let him get water and get checked out by the physician for a minute, then they finished the match when they figured out he was okay and he won, when he admitted what he’d done to his coach the man replied “That’s sick Perry. I like it.”) The fact that he’s called ‘Perry’ should interest you, my sister, since I know how much you like scrubs. He’s from a big family. His parents had (I think 10?) kids and then they adopted 4 girls from Russia also.
Elder Luke: I don’t know him personally, but I hear he’s really funny too (though perhaps not intentionally) I just wanted to put him on here because apparently his family loves humanity MORE that Elder Perry’s crummy family because his parents adopted FIVE kids from the Ukraine! (That’s what he told Elder Perry)
Elder Brisco and Elder Perry were both lifeguards before they left on their missions and both only ever had to jump in the water once to save infants. (They had to fill out paper work any time they got in the water, so if the person was physically capable of saving themselves, they would just use a pole/lifesaver, but babies need to be rescued.) Both of them told this exact same story to me. They lived/worked in separate states. I don’t remember if Elder Brisco had to yell at the mom, but Elder Perry did.
By the way Jensen, if you want to write to any of these Elders, just use the mission office address and change my name to theirs. I told them that you don’t even write me though, so I’m pretty sure if they start getting letters and I don’t---that’s lame:)
But don’t worry, I understand you’re way busy. And so, so, so many of these stories are better in person anyway. I’ll see you in like… a little over a year. That’s crazy, time really is flying by. I’ve already been out for…. I don’t even want to do the math. I think I’ll start doing like Elder Argyle does and lie constantly about how long I’ve been out. (He’s dying in like… 2-4 months. I’m not sure, because of all the lies, you see, but I think I finally figured out that it’s something like that). He’s always saying “I’m new! You have to help me, I don’t know all this stuff yet! I’ve only been out for like 2 transfers!” but really, he’s been here a LONG time.
Well, I love you all, so, so, so much! Please keep me updated on everything that’s going down in the land of my people. I’m happy, I’m healthy, I’m very blessed, God is taking good care of his servants. The work is good, and I glory not in myself there, but in my God!

Hermana Lillywhite