Let's hear some chatter out there!

Hey! The pics from Alice look great—I dig it. Anne Hathaway looks beautiful, and of course, Helena, my love and I like the girl whose playing Alice. Do I even need to mention my undying love for Johnny? Probably shouldn’t. I’m a missionary you know.
This transfer so far has been a little strange. A lot of the missionaries who were around when I first came out either went home, or are about to leave. So some of the mascots of my mission so far are starting to get all trunky and lame. Some of them are awesome right up until the end though. Like Elder Rowberry, who was an Assistant when I came out. He just went home. He does that thing kind of like Buster in Arrested Development with giving random backrubs, except not creepy. Anyway, he walked up to the Elder Next to me the Monday before he went home and was rubbing his shoulders and then he looked down at me and just said, “I’m sorry. I can’t touch you.” I laughed and he laughed and then muttered something like “Just a few more days…” and walked off. The other Elders and I watched him walk off, a tired broken shell, losing all yet gaining himself in the process… it could have been a very deep moment except that then a bunch of them laughed and Elder Meade added, “Few more weeks! Yes!” As he is next to go home.
I don’t know how I feel about these new kids who’re coming in. None of them are as awesome as the Elders who are leaving right now. I’ve been assured that they’ll get more awesome as they llegar a ser better missionaries.
This last week was pretty rough again, my Hermana Forsling is still ill and we think we’ve figure out I’ve got some pinched nerves in my back that are causing random pain at inopportune moments. Like in the middle of lessons. It hasn’t been a problem yet, but it’s really annoying. Also, Emily, who’s pictures I still haven’t sent you, has NOT been confirmed yet. She was supposed to be confirmed two weeks ago, but Babylon is calling and yesterday the excuse was fishing. I don’t know what we’re going to do… Pray a lot. And try to explain to her, again, with power and authority, WHY she needs to come to church every week and keep the commandments of God; with love and boldness, but not overbearence. We’re working with such great people right now though, I really feel like they all have desires to know more and to be in good standing with their heavenly father. Our big success of the week was getting a inactive woman and her less-active son to church! They’ve been making excuses (some of which are pretty good) for why they can’t come for ages, but we finally got them in the building, all spiffed up and greeting old friends too.
Also, a dry Mormon couple just moved into our area. They were already in our ward, but they had to move, the rent was too high, so they came over to our side of town, and are crammed into a little apartment/casita thing. It is way too small for how many kids they have, and two more are on their way up from Mexico. Eight people shove into two little bedrooms… Anyway, they would have been baptized ages ago, except that their not actually married and can’t get married on account of the woman having a husband who is SOMEWHERE in Mexico, she has no idea where, and the divorce is taking forever to go through. The second the paperwork is final, they’re going to get hitched and then baptized. She’s there are church every week with this army of kids. One of the boys is baptized and the two girls coming up from Mexico are going to need to be taught and baptized too when they get here. This is a really sweet family, I’m so glad that I get to teach them.
I’m glad you liked the pictures! I was going to send more, but I left the disk home on accident… I need to send my whole camera card soon.
That family, the Castillos, are SO funny. We went to drop in on them Friday night and got a big surprise. Hermana Pidwirbecky! I haven’t mentioned anything about her yet, but she was one of the last sister missionaries in this area before they switched it to Elders only. They just BARELY re-opened the area with Hermana Forsling the transfer before I got here. Then the whole masked-ET deal happened, and I ended up here too. So, we hear about Hermana Pidwirbecky ALL the time. She’s the missionary who baptized Hermana Castillo and I think 2 or her children. (Roberto, the one who looks like Sokka, wouldn’t have anything to do with the church until last September when Elder Lowry and Campbell showed up.) she’s still got one son, Mario, who’s, I think 22 or 23, who won’t ever listen to the missionaries, and usually hides in his room when we’re over.
Anyway, Hermana Pidwirbecky was visiting! We were really confused to see this unfamiliar car in their front yard and then Brendita squealed all excited “Porgque hay tantas Hermanas?!” when we walked up. Anyway, Hermana Pidwirbecky forced Mario to listen to us. Which we greatly appreciated. He’d come out of his room to say hi to her (I think he used to take discussions with his mother when she was baptized like 3 years ago) and Hermana Pidwirbecky was like “Sit down you big baby it’s not going to kill you to listen.” He actually participated in the lesson too. More so than his active LDS family. (Roberto & Reyman son bromistas.)
Fun, fun. I like this muchacha.
So, we had a little help that night. And we’ve meet some new investigators this week who are all very special and wonderful and I can’t wait to work with them some more… But seriously, times is hard, yessir.
Roberto got into a fight this week at mutual too. But we’re pretty sure it was the other kid’s fault… Javier is a boxer and a martial artist, like Roberto and depending on who you asked Javier either gave him a friendly hug from behind or tried to put him in a headlock and a fight broke out. At church. It was pretty bad, we heard about it from a bunch of people, including non-members. Anyway, one nice thing about this was that the parents seemed to all kind of wake-up a little. A bunch of the kids had been off at EFY or youth conference or los dos, and when they came back we were all shocked to see a couple of families sitting together that NEVER do usually. Teenagers bore their testimonies and a bunch of the guys cried, and the girls with attitude expressed humility. Very nice. Javier also bore his testimony and started to cry, then asked for forgiveness from the ward for anything he might have said or done to offend them.
So, the ward seems to be changing and growing together as a lovely family… I’m excited for the youth. Since, I’ve got to be honest. Before this last Sunday, I would have told you that this is one of those wards with the way-scary clichish youth that need to be smacked around by the Holy Spirit a little. There was an especially huge change in one girl in particular.
Anyway, so that’s what’s going on with me! Back home sounds lovely and idyllic, except for the presence of rattle-snakes! That’s really terrifying! Don’t go wandering around in the woods. Were you very close to it? because it sounds like you were. Were you really far away from immediate medical care? Is there such a thing as ‘single-serving-anti-venom’ that could be shoved in a first-aid kit? Nobody is allowed to be bitten by venomous serpents while I’m gone, okay? There’s something in the Bible about that. It must have been fun to see Aunt Nuggy & los ninos. I sure miss them, and all of you of course.
It is HOT. It’s so tempting to swim sometimes. You’ll be out tracting and you’ll notice somebody has a pool. (Well, that’s a lie, nobody owns pools around here unless their drug dealers, but you see them at hotels/apartment complexes sometimes). Anyway, you’ll see water and… well, we’re trying to be good and not drown. Hermana Forsling always asks me if we can go swimming and my response is usually “Yes darling, when you go home in November you can swim.” Which makes her angry, as she does not like being reminded how close she is to dying.
Is Kimber curriculum. fun? Sometimes random facts come back to me. They’ve been nearly useful before too. I really want to see this slideshow! Somebody send it to me, PLEASE! The sixth movie sounds like a lot of fun. I’m glad they left in the part with the birds… I’ll try not to be too jealous. But, Ginna, you go ahead and geekout for me, okay? You have to do twice as much geeking-out with me not there.
Well, I’d better get going. Hermana Forsling is part of an All-start basketball line-up between the 3rd ward and 10th ward missionaries. I’m going to go be a cheerleader for 3rd ward. (Which means I’m going to read Jesus The Christ on the stage while they play and occasionally clap in acknowledgement of superior skill. Sports are fun and all. I’ve figured out what I don’t like about them. TALKING. I don’t like the ‘chatter’/’hustle’ junk. It’s so annoying. Let’s all just get tired and sweaty and talk later. These guys are chatterers… silly verbalosity. Totally unnecessary for proper battle. Random sound effects and giggling I approve of, but chatter. No.
I LOVE you all so much. I’m working hard. Not discouraged in spite of the roughness. I know God is giving us the help we need and that we’re with the people who need us. Tengo muchlurve para vosotros. Besito.
Lovelovelove/Hermana Lirioblanco

A New Transfer Begins!

Dearest familiares,
Have I mentioned yet that I am officially a master of Spanglish? I speak Spanish, sure, and I speak English, but when it’s just me and my companion, other Spanish-missionaries or certain recent converts, we all automatically fall into this third wonderful dialect, a fusion of the two idiomas. The best is when you tack on English endings to Spanish verbs. IE “So she dejared the guy and was saliring out the house when he’s like ‘que es eso? Te quiero!’.”
I’m also picking up some weird southern stuff too. “I used to could surf, but now I’m a missionary.” And since I’m living in the disputed ‘most-ghetto’ part of Houston, I’m having to at least learn to interoperate certain phrases and words that white people usually don’t use. I completely forgot the other day that white people typically don’t walk up and kiss each other, and I really startled a pair of English Sisters by swooping down on them.
The English members they were with looked a little alarmed too, but they’d heard me say “Hola!” and saw the Jesucristo badge and basically just rolled their eyes like, “Esas Hermanas... todas son locas.” Except they don’t know Spanish, so it was more like, “Girlcrazy.”
I’m NOT learning pure Spanish is the sad thing. There’s too much of a mixture of people here, so I’m picking up all kinds of stuff that’s exclusive to certain lugares. People correct me all the time, but the different people (depending on where they’re from) with contradict each other frequently. The Bishop is sixth ward said that we should basically just use what’s in the text books, because it’s the most universal ‘pure’ form of Spanish.
I’ve GOT to send you all the picture card soon, it’s getting so fun and full. Also, I need to send back my Ipod so it can be rellenared. I meant to send it out sooner when I sent that package last transfer, but totally olvidared the whole deal. I’m going to try to stop the Spanglish. Transfers are this week and Hermana Forsling and I are going to stay here in Crosstimbers for six more weeks. Next transfer is going to be a big deal just because SO many missionaries are going home. Since I’ve gotten here the question frequently comes up between missionaries, “When are you dying?” (meaning when do you return home) and the typical response is that this missionary rolls their eyes and says “I’m dying with everyone else.” When they say that, they’re all talking about this next transfer. We’re losing a lot of missionaries and we’re not getting very many in for a bit… should be interesting.
This week was very busy. We taught a lot of lessons and found some new people and… We had a baptism!!! It was very exciting. Our investigator Emily, was baptized yesterday. It was wonderful and lovely, but a little sad just because her brother was supposed to get baptized with her, but changed his mind. He came though and agreed to a date in two weeks! YAY! And her mother was there, which I know meant A LOT to her, because the rest of her family is not supportive at all. We’re working with the mom too, but she’s got some word of wisdom problems and she’s afraid to come to church. She says she’s “not ready.” Which is very sad, but, I look hopefully on the fact that she’s taking it all very seriously. We’ve talked a lot about baptism and we know she wants to do it, but you kind of have to go to church first. And keep the commandments of God. We’re working on it.
Emily’s excellent though. She was so excited and so prepared… I feel really lucky to have been trusted with teaching her and her family.
Aside from that, this week was kind of slow. I had a very strange dream about being invited over to a member’s house to try and teach their friend who turned out to be a serial murderer. I can’t figure out whether I was trying to get away from him, kill him, or baptize him. It was a bit of a mess in my head.
We taped Elder Meade playing Pacabel’s (sp?) cannon and singing “The Black Parade”. It works perfectly. I think we should have somebody’s parents put it on YouTube with the tag “Mormon missionary performs My Chemical Romance at Baptism”. It’s misleading since he did it after it was over and mostly everybody had left, but Emily would appreciate it at least.
She wasn’t along at the baptism either, some friends of Patricia and Antonia were baptized too, a family of 6! (minus dad, who was there to support his family but didn’t get wet). The Zone leaders have been teaching them even though they live in OUR area. This is fine, since it was a member referral to them and they had originally been teaching them at the member’s house in THEIR area, but when they found out that they lived in our area and were friends with our recent coverts, they sort of, kind of, maybe, very blatantly forgot to mention it to us, and we had to find out from Patricia and Antonia. This is how the conversation went.
Antonia: “My friends are really excited about the baptism… but they’re kind of confused about some stuff.”
Me: “Oh yeah?”
Antonia: “Yeah—I was talking to the mom and she’s all like, ‘sometimes I don’t’ get what their trying to tell me’ so I told her how you guys always explain everything real good, and I said it was too bad you couldn’t teach them.”
Me: “Well, missionaries always teach the people in their area, you know why?”
Antonia: “Cause we live close?”
Me: “Silly girl, yes, that’s part of it, but the other thing is that we’re assigned to work in specific areas so we can teach the people there… I was supposed to come here and met you! And guess who assigned me?”
Antonia: “God.”
Me: “Exactamente. And your friends live in the Elder’s area, so they’re given the same ability to teach and receive revelation for the people in their area as we are for the people in our area.”
Antonia: “…But they live over there.” *points”
Me: “…Where?”
Antonia: “Behind the school.”
Me: “Huh.”
Antonia: “Is that your area?”
Me “Sure is.”
But, the happy news is that we now have a new family of recent coverts to teach. And their recent convert/part member too, with a couple of members who live real close by and love to go with us to lessons. So, all is well in the ghetto. The Elders were pretty embarrassed when we called them out for hiding it from us. We’ve been teaching a lot of less-active and recent convert lessons recently. The one huge problem I have with being in Houston Zone verses being in North Zone where I was before is that HZ is so concerned with baptismal stats that they tend to work really, really hard to baptize people and then they just most on. Hermana Forsling and I don’t dig it. We’ve decided to go be damage control for this ward for a bit.
Life back home sounds so wonderful. When do you start work at Kimber mommy? Have they made you go to any kind of summer-training thing? How’s the weather? Is dad biking a lot? Is Laney all grown up? Is Jensen ever going to finish… um… a multitude of stuffs? Also, I never got to see those short-films you know! And, I haven’t seen drawings from her in ages, and this new clip-show sounds hilarious! Yo queiro ver! How are mis padres doing!? I’ve decided I have the best parents ever. I knew it before, but out here in the field, that fact is reaffirmed every day.
It sounds like my silly friends and cousins are being taken good care of. How’s laughing stock? Still funny? Am I every going to get that DVD? I paid for it like a year ago and they said they’d get it to me when they got copies! Remind them. Poor Shazi-kins, why is she wandering around looking like a boy?! She’s not a boy, she’s a pretty, pretty girl. I can’t wait to read Dan’s screen play. I was tempted to get him to send it to me, because he as much said he would on the phone at Mother’s Day, but I figured I should try to follow some rules. This whole obedience thing is kind of new for me, but I think I’m… well, I’m working on it! The biggest problem I have is getting to sleep on time. We’re always in bed by ten-thirty, but then somebody will giggle and someone else will ask “…what?” sleepily and this always seems to start a long story about some memory of that day or other. And sometimes we hear stuff outside and then have to get up to move the couch in front of the door and get some knives. Better paranoid than dead, I figure.
We figured out this week that they… for SOME reason, decided to put the two most intimidating sisters in the mission together. Appropriate that they sent us into the ghetto too. It’s all very fun. In turn, they just put Hermana Thomas and Hermana Blanco together, which means that the two smallest and most adorable sisters in the mission are also companions.
What’s this about John Cena being bizarroworld Matt Damon? I went to the pulga last week and there were John Cena shirts everywhere and then Hermana Forsling got a package with some articles shoved in between rice krispy treats… Anyway, the movie looks fun.
I don’t hear much about the outside world, as you can probably tell from that last paragraph. But the political stuff sounds awful. Poor Sarah. Poor USA. What’s to become of us? Hermana Forsling says that by the Jewish Calendar it’s only been about 1600 years since Christ died, so we might have another 400 years before any likelihood of the millennium comes about. What are your thoughts?
We’ve got a barbeque today. Should be groovey! I LOVE you all so very much. Do take care, and tell that silly Laney-bug to work on a newsletter!
Hermana Lillywhite

sweetsweetTRIUMPH!

Dear Family,
What an EXCELLENT week I’ve had. Do you happen to remember Veronica? The woman I found on in the street my first transfer here? Yesterday, she and her two children who are old enough were baptized. I got to go back to Sixth Ward to take part in the program and see the miracle go down. I will send pictures as usual, it was BEAUTIFUL. Utter triumph in motion. She cried, I cried—there was a lot of crying. And babbling “gracias” and hugging. She’s such a sweet, humble person—I feel so lucky that God trusted me to teach her. But we didn’t even really do anything, she was so prepared—before she ever met us, she was being prepared to receive the gospel.
It was a really great day.
And her children are such angels, Karen is almost fifteen and gorgeous, she always has a flock of about 12 young men sort of hovering a few paces behind her just watching her sit there are look adorable. She’s a lot like her mom though, sweet and kind and very in tune spiritually. It’s too bad it sounds like she’s had trouble making friends with the young women in the ward. She’s so shy and their all really loud and crazy… but they like her and a lot of them came to the baptism. All the young men showed up. The over-sixteens all tried to earn the privilege of baptizing her. She had Elder Herrman do it:) Jason is eight and he got baptized too. I LOVE this kid. He’s such a good son. The two weeks near the beginning when she didn’t come to church she said he was asking her “Aren’t we going to go to church? You told the sisters we would go… Mom, I want to go to church.” he’s a way sweet kid. He was so excited to get baptized. And his little brother Eduardo (who’s only four) was so into it. He was watching the whole thing from over the edge of the fount with a big smile on his face. Her baby Kevin is really well behaved, he loves it when we sing and just stars at you with big black eyes. So sweet! I love this family… now we just have to work on dad. He seems nice (I’ve only met him once) but he’s done the reading assignments with Veronica before and she thinks that with time he’ll open us to the idea a little more. He didn’t come to their baptism, which was really disappointing,
That’s the big news of this last week… Other than that, the week was still awesome. We had exchanges—I went down to Louetta with Hermana Bastion who came out with me on the plane. The two of us had a lot of fun together—I really think I’d enjoy being companions with her sometime. I had to go to a ‘drop-lesson’ though. (A lesson when the missionaries and planning to say, “Bye. We’ll probably visit you again sometime.” and disappear mysteriously into the night to fill their record away under “former”.)
I am generally against ‘drop-lessons’. I know their necessary sometimes, but as a general rule, I like to at least stop by once a week to see everyone who is still WILLING to let us inside and listen to us. And this particular guy, I actually know personally, which made it even more uncomfortable. Hermana Frieszell met him last year when she was serving bi-lingual in… I think Navasota or maybe College Station. They taught him once and it was a really memorable ‘not-cool’ lesson, in which their ward mission leader, who was with them, argued with him for about an hour and a half, while poor Hermana Frieszell and her companion couldn’t get a word in edge-wise to calm the situation. They left and didn’t ever go back… then, during one of my first weeks here, working the Pulga with Hermana Frieszell, this guy walks up with his friend and the two of them start flirting, so we get him to give us his new address and Hermana Frieszell writes a big “SEND ELDERS, NOT SISTERS!” note next to the address. Then she turns to me and says “Of all the people I never thought I’d ever see again in my life…” and re-tells me this story that she’d just told me, but now adding “AND THAT WAS HIM! RIGHT THERE!”
Crazy.
So.
Then… I met this guy again at a Zone conference, he was there for the mock-teaching session. We had me and Hermana Forsling, with Elder Meade and Elder Richards, and we were supposed to take turns and the Elders went first. But there was no teaching, Elder Meade and this man (His name is Ediel, I think) just sat and argued for like a half-hour, while we wondered what we should do to stop this, as we were supposed to have already returned to the conference…
So, the guy’s really contentious. And, I just happened to go on exchanges to the area where he is, on the night the missionaries are planning to drop him. (The silly referral people did NOT take Hermana Frieszell’s advice and went ahead and gave him to the sisters in that ward. Which is silly, because they have two sets of Elders nearby.)
So… we were just supposed to drop him and leave, but I decided to go ahead and be that crazy ‘missionary-on-exchange’ who screws everything up, because I figure, we can’t be repeatedly running into this guy without a good reason, right? So… I ended up, sort of, kind of, maybe arguing with him for only like forty minutes and in such a way that was not contentious and tried to settle his doubt. He finds the idea of modern prophets distasteful. This is the same subject that he’s continually argued about with everyone else.
Anyway, it kind of worked, because, for once, I think—I finally saw him speechless and at least seriously thinking about what I’d said, rather than just getting angry. And Hermana Bastion didn’t actually drop him, she just refused to make a return appointment. He kept asking when we’d be back and she said “I don’t know, in a few weeks… when you’re ready to listen.” and wouldn’t actually pull the trigger.
So… mission accomplished. Ish.
I’m not sure how much I helped. But it was interesting. Maybe I’d get transferred there someday and can beat him over the head with that two-by-four of the holy spirit that Hermano Anthony mentioned.
The fourth of July was fun. We didn’t stay in all day—we had to be in at 7:30 though. We had the Pulga in the morning. Some guy tried to get me to simultaneously teach his son everything about God and go out with said son, which was entertaining but uncomfortable. I think he just wanted him to behave better and thought a majorly religious girlfriend would help. I also think he thought I was about twelve, because his son was probably thirteen.
After Pulga we went to visit some members. Their converts of a couple of years and we ended up getting into three very different doctrinal discussions. The oldest son has decided he likes what other religions believe about hell and wants us to explain how emotional/mental turmoil is really worse than physical torture. We explained pretty clearly and he started to sort of see our point even if he wouldn’t admit it. Then we had to convince them all that they really want to go to the celestial kingdom and that the terrestrial is really not that great, we promise.
Sister Bastion has a funny poster that I’d really love to have a copy of. It’s really subtle, just a picture of the two actors who play the devil in the temple films standing together smiling with a note that says something like “Just a friendly reminder to visit the temple!” quite hilarious.
Ask Grandma and Grandpa if they remember the Anthon family at all… Because Dr Anthon is a podiatrist here in Texas now and he totally knows the Lillywhites! Apparently he was very much in love with Kim when he was 5-6 years old. He lived next door to Grandma & Grandpa Wade? in provo? He referred to daddy as “That little guy” so this was a VERY long time ago.
Oh yeah, I was having some trouble with my foot, so I went to see a podiatrist. Hence the above story… but it’s fine now. Pretty sure it was just a pinched nerve. It was really annoying for about a week, but I started icing it every day and if it keeps giving me problems he says a steroid shot will probably fix it.
Aside from that… I’ve got a note about how I need thigh highs. And the inserts for my shoes are getting pretty manky and crushed and useless… That’s all I can think of.
That’s SO good for Nick. I’m glad his mission was such a positive experience for him. Assistants to the President… in MY somewhat limited, but not-all-that-much experience, are typically some of the nicest, wisest and funnest Elders in the whole mission. I love it when we get to serve around the APs and I look forward to when they come to visit. So, that’s way good for him that it sounds like he’s grown so much.
How is everyone?! Your trip to St. George sounds fun. Sorry about the lame bikeride daddy, but cool that you met a nice Samaritan. I bet I’d like the play, and I think I remember the trailer for UP. Looked REALLY cute. I sure do miss you all, and Grandma and Grandpa and trips to St. George. I totally want to take a spin in that little car when I get back. My companion is teaching me a little about cars. I’m probably a bad influence on her, because she says so. She had left behind her days of sneaking out and street racing in downtown LA and I keep asking her perfectly innocent questions like “What if I’m looking for a real, good, little car… stick, and affordable?” and then she goes off on “OH! I remember when I won 4,000$ in a(insertmakemodelyeariknownothingaboutcarssoicantprobaberlyimmitateher).”
I LOVE you all, so, so much my lovely, wonderful, beautiful family. I can’t wait to see all these pictures! I know, I know, you all look the same, which is good, but I. want. PROOF!
Mwah.Mwah.