Monday-Sunday Breakdown

It sounds like you guys had a great Thanksgiving. Mmmm. I love food. I think I’m going to have to think about these letters a little more… I think I know exactly which teacher to ask, but I’m not sure how to get into contact with him…
Okay… where to start?!
Usually, you may have noticed, I don’t do a day by day accounting of my time here, just because it usually takes SO long to try and explain everything, since all the actions of the day are results of long, long preparation in advance and foreshadowing… but, I’m going to TRY. It might work this time, since I’m new to the area.
So…
Monday: Wrote you charming folks, very fun, then went and played with the English Sisters in our Zone. I’ve never had English sisters in my zone before. They’re hilarious. We went to the home of a member in their ward, and I took tonz of covert pictures of her house, her daughter is an artist and she’s done all the decoration herself. Gorgeous stuff. She taught us how to make lip-gloss and bath salts and sugar scrub. It was a very fun and girly day… We’re around Elders so much that I forgot how being girly can be a blast too… Then the Bishop ditched us for the family home evening we were supposed to have. Everyone forgot to tell us it was canceled, but it was okay, because we sat and chatted with the man who was doing some painting on his house and he seemed very interested in the church. We gave him the address and hope to hear from him soon…
Tuesday: In the morning we had an appointment with Ashley. Ashley is a less-active girl in the English ward who isn’t allowed to meet with Elders anymore on account of them continually falling in love with her. She’s ADORABLE and nineteen years old, and fascinating. Her life story will be a book; probably written by me. She started reading miracle of forgiveness and spent about forty-five minutes telling us how horrible she felt and how she couldn’t finish it because it was too depressing and making her feel even worse than she already did about what a terrible person she is. (She’s not a terrible person though, she’s actually really amazing.) Anyway, she literally threw the book away from herself dramatically and claimed she’d never pick it up again. We got her to agree to finish it by December 7th. The anniversary of Pearl Harbor, which she appreciated because she’s in the Army. (Or, she was in the army, that’s part of that amazing life story though, and I might have to explain all that later…)
Anyway, then we had some lessons fall through, which was lame because we had Hermana Medina with us, and she’s the best member missionary. But, it worked out alright because we ended up running into a family (Castillo) we’ve been trying to get back into contact with for a while. They were NOT doing well. They were about to get kicked out of their apartment and had no food and no money. We prayed with them and promised that we’d get them some food, at least.
So, our next lesson is with their neighbor and she just happens to have a couple pounds of rice/bread/tostados/cans of food etc. that she’s trying to get rid of, so, we had a quick lesson on generosity, and then she gave us a ton of food to give to the Castillo family. They were sobbing. Everyone was pretty elated and it was a wonderful experience for our Thanksgiving week.
We had several more lessons fall through that day, but we ended up doing a lot of good. We gave the Elders a ride home (they’re on bikes) and they gave us two referrals to check out the next day. It was a great day, but I was actually pretty ill… coughing so hard I was making myself sick. I ignored it though and now we move on to…
Wednesday: More stuff fell through, but we checked out those referrals the Elder’s gave us.
On our way there some guy very obviously checked us out, “Looking good ladies.” (eyebrow wiggle)
Eww. I was just about to give him a card but I was so shocked I ended up just standing there dumbfounded. I’ve never felt less cute in my entire life. I try to rock the ‘church-lady’ chic as much as possible, but seriously sir, what is your deal?
Hermana Russon and I got a pretty great laugh of it. Got lost in this huge apartment complex and found a burned down laundry room (why do the laundry room’s always burn down? Is it the crapy dryers in this state?) The first one explained to us that she had told the Elder’s to go away, but since they didn’t speak Spanish they didn’t understand her and so they wrote down her information as a referral for us. We offered to share our message anyway. She accepted after a minute of explaining that she’d catholic and she’s going to live and die a catholic… But we’ve heard that before.
She mentioned part-way into our plactica that she has a Mormon friend who just moved into the apartment complex next door, and that she came from Utah. We didn’t know of any new members in the area so we asked for her address and name, and then the doorbell rang and the son of this member happened to be outside. We asked them, “Are you guys looking for the church?” and he said, “No.” he corrected the information the woman had given us and said that his mother was home right now.
So, after our lesson, we went to meet Isaura, she opened the door and immediately burst into tears when she saw us. She was wearing a green tank-top over some very new looking garments. She invited us in and explained that she had just gone through the temple right before she moved here. She’s a recent convert to the church and is living with her daughter-in-law here in Houston right now. She’s got no way to get to the church building, no job, no car, no clue and she’d just been praying that someone could help her figure. So, we arranged for her to get a ride to the church. She showed us her collection of books. She loves to read Church literature and is part way through “El Milargro de Perdon” as well, and will probably be starting “Jesus El Cristo” pretty soon here.
Then, on the way home, Hermana Russon noticed some people struggling to pack up a car on the side of the road and suggested we stop to help, so I pulled over and we walked up to these people and they gladly accepted our ayuda. We started chatting with this one woman who was curious to know all about us. Her name is Maria Ester and she’s fun. She practically runs this fellowship and was telling us all about her beliefs and asking us questions about ours for about 40 minutes.
My favorite part was this.
“Do y’all believe in the gathering of Isreal?”
“Uh… Yeah.” (me, smirking, trying not to add, ‘that’s what we’re doing right now ma’am, wanna be gathered?!’)
Part way into this we both had the strong impression to give her a Book of Mormon. We did so, and she started asking us, “You mentioned that Jesus Christ visited the American people, where is that part?” so we marked 3rd Nephi 11, “Where does it talk about Faith?” so we marked Alma 32, and “Are there any prophesies about our days?” so we marked a number of chapters with that one, and then, “Where’s there a discourse on Baptism?” so I marked Mosiah 18.
Then, Hermana Russon, being amazing like she is was like, “There’s a promise in this book… right here (opening to Moroni 10) that if you ask God, he’ll tell you if these things are true, and he’ll give you a witness of them.” And Maria Ester folded the page over and said, “I’ll be sure to read that first.”
We had some more amazing lessons and turned in a little early on a result of both of us now feeling pretty crummy physically. I feel so bad, I think I got my companion sick!
Thursday (THANKSGIVING!) : Breakfast at Ashely’s. She made us an AMAZING meal. Blueberry muffins, pancakes, bacon and sausage and then some amazing tex-mex with tortillas. SO good. We enjoyed this feast and she started to tell us her story of how she really became converted to the church. She was baptized when she was ten, but fell away rapidly and remembered NOTHING and was pretty bitter as a result. After that she lived in Mississippi. You know. That place where missionaries aren’t allowed to go because they still occasionally get tarred and feathered? Anyway, she started her religious search when she was a little older as a teenager and before she joined the army. As she was telling us her story, I was repeated reminded of Glen Beck. She kept saying things like, “I did NOT want to be a Mormon!” and talked about all the deep questions she had and how she actually got kicked out of one church that she was going to for a while for asking too many deep doctrinal questions about the war in heaven and the role of Lucifer. She told us the whole story… which I’m still working on slowly since it’s quite long, but she’s really cool… for our lesson I pulled out my copy of Glen Beck’s conversion on CD and was like, “You need to listen to this guy”. Turns out that she LOVES Glen Beck, she’s been listening to his show for years, and her mom was listening to him even before he got famous, but she’d never heard about his conversion. So we listened to it and the whole time she was like, “THAT WAS TOTALLY ME!”
It was great.
We also watched a few scenes of the Testaments in Spanish and made fun of the dubbing while I parroted back the best phrases of the movie, like “Yo se tu nombre” and “DONDE ESTA MI HIJO?!” “Si tu no lo sabes, quisaz ya no sea tu hijo!” and we spent entirely too much time there, but poor Ashely was all alone for Thanksgiving because the rest of her family left town and she had to work from like 2 in the afternoon until who knows how late… so we spent some fun thanksgiving time with her before she had to go work and it was all very pleasant.
We had lunch with our ward mission leader and his adorable family. I started to feel pretty headachy and miserable, but toughed it out and ate tons while playing Mexican train with Hermana and two of the girls. They’ve got a very big, fun family and the Elders came too, so it was a great time. Then we had an appointment with Isaura. It was really nice to go over to her house. Her room is like a little sanctuary. She’s got all her books and her church music going and her window overlooks the little pound at their apartment complex. We visited with her for a while and made last minute plans for her debut at church… then, we were supposed to go to the Medina’s house for dinner. The Medina’s are those awesome member missionaries I mentioned.
By now, I was feeling really sick, but I felt like we were supposed to go to their house and like we couldn’t just go home. So even though I almost threw-up twice on the way there we showed up and met with the family and chatted for a while with them while I TRIED to eat but failed on account of being so sick.
It was good we went though, because part-way into it some in-laws of one of the kids showed up and Hermano mouths to me, “No son miembros” (They’re not members) they only speak English too, so some quick operations were put in order and they sat these people right in front of us and were like, “HAVE YOU MET THE MISSIONARIES?!”
“Err… no.”
We told them all about what we do and bore some powerful testimony. The spirit was very, very strong. As we were about to leave they asked us for pamphlets and how they could learn more. So we supplied them with some good stuff, and they were like “Well, we’re catholic…” but remembering the way they said it made me remember that line from ‘The Conversion of a Catholic Priest’ talk that I was listening to a while before, where the missionary responds to that same statement with “Sir, we’ve just shattered your faith so significantly that you just said that to reassure yourself.”
Good day. Powerful testimonies… Then, We got in the car and promptly pulled over after half a block so I could throw up a little.
Friday: District meeting was pretty groovy. We’re still sick, so we didn’t do much else that day except teach Stephenie, an amazing woman who’s just getting back into the church and whose husband is planning to get baptized as soon as he get home from Mexico in about a month and a half… we tried to do planning for the week, but we were both so ill we just ended up sleeping for most of the day—in between frantically running between half a dozen other appointments that all fell through. But. We saw a frog. He was big and squishy and I petted him and it felt weird.
And, I got an idea for a vampire novel. Hermana Russon picked out the name Phillip Graystone of Coventry for our main vampire hero. She is so cute. A little innocent thing, she’ll probably never read the book, or if she does it will be the “Hermana Russon edited version” that I will make specially for her and other sensitive readers who don’t need a lot of violence and intensity to keep their interest.
Saturday: Zone meeting, which we pretty much missed because part way into it my poor companion just about fainted and so we went out to where she could lie down and I wrote a rather brilliant little essay on why missionaries get sick and what the spiritual implications are, and I think I’ll have to share that with you later, because although it is great, it’s also long and this letter is already turning into a novel and I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet!
So, That night we decided to check up on our investigator Elena who last we heard had to cancel our appointment for work and because she and her husband got in a huge fight and she kicked him out. (they’re not really married, and she said it was because she’s sick of him doing drugs and drinking all the time) so we went by to see how she’s doing, but she wasn’t there, HE WAS! Edmundo was at their apartment, alone, drunk and crying hysterically because actually, what really happened is that Elena left him and took the kids and all of their possessions, so now he’s got no clothes, no furniture, no car, and he just lost his job and is depressed out of his mind, so we just sat there with him and let him cry for a really long time. We taught him a little, but I don’t know how much he’ll remember. I think it was just good that we were there, he kept thanking us for coming by and apologizing for being such a wreck.
We called his fellowshipers (The Medinas, who are sort of like main characters in my life right now) and told them about what was going on…
Sunday: Good day to come to church, all the lessons and everything was amazing, I could talk about them for a while, but I’m seriously running low on time and space… Anyway, Steven and Jackie came, a less active mom and her 12 year old son who’s going to get baptized as soon as we can finish teaching him all the lessons. Isaura and her nieto came with the Alvareses who also spoke in sacrament meeting and did a great job, and then the Medina’s brought Carmen and her two kids of the Castillo family who I told you about earlier. It turns out that while we were sick/in other appointments, the ward really stepped in to help them. They used the food they got to make a bunch of tamales and they sold them and got enough cash to pay the overdue rent. Huge blessing. And then like half the ward went by to visit them, so they FINALLY came to church. We’re hoping to give the whole family baptismal dates soon… so, that night, there was a baptism. I was playing the piano and Hermana Russon was leading the music, and then low and below, the Medina’s show up with Edmundo who looks sober and isn’t crying anymore.
It was a BEAUTIFUL baptism. The spirit was amazing and everyone was in tears. This woman is one of the Elder’s investigators and her whole family has been members for years and her husband finally got to baptize her. It was a very touching story.
So then, after she was baptized we went back into the relief society room for the rest of the program, but Edmundo was missing and so was the principios del evangelio teacher. We left to go find them, and walked in just as Hermano was explaining to Edmundo that he can get baptized as soon as he feels ready and that he just needs to talk to us about it. So I briefly explained the other requirements for baptism and then the Bishop came and told us to join the rest of the ward please. I sat down next to our district leader who asked me, “Do you want me to interview Edmundo for his baptism?” I thought he was joking at first, but after the program they both disappeared and when we found them, they were having a baptismal interview. So we straightway went and told Hermana Medina and there was much rejoicing and tears.
Edmundo was crying, he knows that this is the answer he’s been looking for and that this is how he can have a better life.
So. That pretty much catches you up on my week. It was a pretty cool week! I didn’t really get the chance to explain everything, or in very much detail, but I wanted to give you an example of what my days and weeks are like, since I really feel like my letters don’t do any of it justice… I LOVE being a missionary. I love Texas, I love these people. I LOVE the Lord and his work and I am so happy to hear from you guys, because really, that’s what it’s all about. You are my motivation to help these people a lot of the time, because I just look at their lives and I can see how much their missing, and I have it. I have exactly what they need. I’m out here doing this so that they can have families just like mine. So they can raise their children in a home with the true gospel of the lord supporting every step. I mean it when I say I miss you all like crazy, but that’s one of the main reasons why I love this so much, is because I love you and I miss you, and I want these people to be able to have the same eternal perspectives for their families as I do with you!
So… this letter is a little monstrous, but it does a pretty good job of hitting some of the highlights of my week. I didn’t get homesick at all this week, which is good, because I’d been warned I might. I hope you’re all happy and well, and doing as good as it sounds like you are. Os amo, besito, besito, BESO!
Hermana Lillywhite