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