"...He'll Testify. He says he's been to Texas, and it's the only place to be."

Dearest darlingest queridita familia,

I'm glad I'm not hurt too. And it makes me smile to think of Jensen's excitement at my home-coming being compared to her excitement at the release of an awesome movie. I am kind of like an awesome movie in some ways that I've failed to see as I've written that sentence. Anyway, I am also excited to see you all again too. And to see the Harry Potter movie. Me and Jensen will be reunited in our high-pitched squeals about movies as they are released soon enough. Wow, we sure seem to be having a lot of baptisms in our ward recently. I can only remember going to 5 convert baptisms in my entire life before my mission, and it sounds like we've had several this last year. That's exciting. Or maybe I was just clueless and not paying attention to what was going on around me. I very easily could have gone to a couple hundred and just not really understood. Now I get it though. It's a big deal, and it's very exciting.

I LOVE ward soup party! That was always my favorite party. It's just like every other ward party we have, except with delicious, delicious soup! The soup you made, kind of sounds like I would eat the whole thing before we ever even got it into the gymnasium to share with the ward. My poor car. Pobrecito carrito. I'm glad he's all better now. Adorable little Hung Car. I'm happy you are all taking good care of it.

I can't believe Laney is reading legitimate novels now. That's so exciting. She must be so grown up... crazy. It's good you got rid of those extra channels if it was costing so much. The more I think about it, the more I think I might just elect to just have a way nice TV and an impressive library of movies and no cable at all. If there's a show on TV I want to check out, the lest I could do is be social and find a friend who has cable and wants to have a party and watch it with me, and then if I like a show, I can spend the movie I might have used to pay for cable on the box-set. There's probably a flaw in this plan somewhere, but I don't see it yet. Maybe when I actually watch TV again, I'll think of what it is.

Lauren's letter this week had we laughing pretty hard. Mission dreams ARE the weirdest things. I had a psychotic one last night. Mom, if you want to give me an interpretation of this one, it'll be appreciated: basically I dreamt that the prophet announced a sign for the world. In a nutshell this prophecy went like this: 'This afternoon, at approximately 3:42, it will begin to rain blood from the sky. This will come as a sign unto the world that the war has begun (I don't know what war this is referring to. All the significant ones are sort of going on all ready) there will be many who will try to deny this sign. But I prophesy as the Lord's representative that it will come in such a way that none shall be able to deny it.'

So, an emergency mission conference is called and President Hansen brings the whole mission down to the Hafer building, and gives us instructions to stay calm and pray for a confirmation and for the Spirit to bring us peace. Seems logical right? I mean, he only warned us about this so we wouldn't freak out. So, we wait for this sign to come, and sure enough at exactly 3:42 the sky opens up and great drops of blood begin to fall. But it's not just raining outside—blood is pouring from the ceilings inside the houses, in the closets, underneath the precautionary umbrellas that the Elders are holding out for us, and pretty soon, everyone in absolutely drenched in blood. It goes on for a few minutes before the blood is slowly mixed in with water and it turns to normal rain and then stops.

Like I said, psychotic-missionary-dream. As it was all ending, I remembered thinking to myself, 'Hijole, I wish I could watch the news right now.'

Anyway, this week was charming. I can only think of 3 of the twenty appointments that we had that was actually scheduled in advance. Everything we had planned this week fell through, but we had a lot of random 'teach where you find, find where you teach' experiences come up. We had some great experiences and some heartbreaking ones. Including a cita with an investigator in which we were planning to teach La Palabra de Sabaduria (word of wisdom) that he rescheduled three times, and stood us up for all three, then we tried to drop in twice by surprise to teach him... So, we tried to teach him the Word of Wisdom FIVE times this week, and the last time we went over, we couldn't teach him because he was drunk. I knew he needed that lesson. His mother is a less active member of the church. She says he doesn't drink much. Hence why he got so smashed after just a couple of drinks.

Elder Frost and Elder Manship found a man who claims to worship the devil and also drinks. Elder Verhs and Elder Conrad found a woman for us to teach (a very white bi-lingual matriarch of a very Hispanic family) who has a lot of questions about the spirit world and believes what we've taught her about it, but rejects the idea of modern revelation, so she wants us to only teach her out of the 'Real Holy Bible'. We're preparing a lesson using bible scriptures to teach about the spirit world, and that also simultaneously teach about the great apostasy, so that we can help her come to understand WHY modern revelation is important. She seems like a rational person. Aside from the gigantic sparkly Santa Muerte with cash offerings and the baby Jesus in the fireplace. But those might be her husbands. We'll baptize him too:)

We have been teaching a really wonderful family who kind of what to adopt us. They said they always wanted daughters (they've only got too sons). If only we could get them to come to church.

One of our former investigators, Elena, surprised us this week by calling one of the members and asking for a ride to the church. We explained to Elder Frost that she's been to church four times already and has had just about all the lessons, so if we could start teaching he again that would be incredibly awesome, since the only thing that was keeping her from getting baptized was that she and her esposo, still weren't legally married, but then she left him and moved out of our area which is how we lost track of her and she ended up as a former investigator. Anyway, he asked us if he should interview her for baptism, and then, I guess she just straight up told him “I want to be baptized on the seventh of February.”

Hopefully, we'll be able to help her keep that commitment. She's still struggling a lot right now. But she's keeping more of the commandments of God and trying hard to improve, so hopefully she'll keep that fecha! We'll be praying for her.

This week, there was a lot of talk thrown around about whether or not the Holy Spirit testifies of truth in the form of artwork. Some would argue that it doesn't make sense for the truth to be testified of in the middle of something that is essentially a lie (art). But I sort of go with the V for Vendetta phrase 'Artists use lies to tell the truth, politicians use lies to cover the truth up'. I remembered that line from that movie at some time last week. And the awesome bit with all the dominoes. And I tried to recite what I could remembered of his 'V-words' monologue right at the beginning of the movie. “In view a humble vaudevillian veteran cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the ?vestitudes? of fate...” I couldn't remember the rest very well at all.

Anyway—the point is, I'm going to have to go with yes. The Holy Spirit testifies of truth where truth is found. Why else would Jesus teach in parables? Did all of those parables actually happen, or is it possible that his use of parables confirm this little theory of mine that as long as you acknowledge the fiction in the piece, the truth can shine forth?

Just sayin'.

This conversation actually started because of an incident in Sunday school class that I remembered from the year before I left, when Sister Singleton mentioned an article written by an ex-member woman who had said that she first began to doubt her testimony of the church when she felt the exact same feelings that she had come to recognize as the Holy Ghost while watching Beauty and the Beast with her daughter, and she realized that it wasn't the spirit at all, it was just good feelings. I remember raising my hand and saying, “I'd like to submit that Beauty and the Beast is true.”

Anyway, so, we were talking about this and the following decisions have been reached.

Beauty and the Beast: truth, beauty, love, kindness etc. (The Elders also voted Belle as the most attractive Disney character, inside and out. Pocahontas gets second place. Gaston wins for most weak-sauce villain. Dude, she's not your type. She's far too intelligent, if you ever did get married, she'd figure out how to manipulate you in about three minutes and you'd both be miserable forever. See those three blonde triplets over there? That's more you, just go pick one. All three maybe. Also, the wicked step mother in Cinderella was pretty weak as well. Geez Cinderella, just leave. She's not going to do anything about it.)

Hercules: elements of the preexistence seem to be eluded to, along with a heavenly parentage and “En serio, I can become a god one day?!” (Hercules won for the sisters in the same category of most attractive. Tarzan got an honorary mention. As did Jane for the attractive category. Charming accent.)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Clearly testifies of the Apostasy. Anyone watching it, who is paying attention during the hellfire number is bound to suddenly be like, “Hey... you know... I'm pretty sure the catholic church does not get their authority from God.” (Frolo wins in the villain category. He's a creepy priest who secretly worships the devil, and I seem to remember some Esmeralda coveting.)

Lion King: Prophets are essential and their guidance will lead us the reign in righteousness. Also, it's Hamlet and Kimba the White Lion combined in a blender.

“Far longer than forever...” -Eternal families

“Deliver us!” -duh.

Save Ferris! (Doesn't testify of anything we could think of. It's just a funny movie.)

“So here's us, on the raggedy edge.” -Clearly all about Agency and Freedom.

Also, “This sticker is dangerous and inconvenient, but I do love fig-newtons.”

Alright, alright. Talladega nights was pretty much just silly, although there was that split second moment when everybody is talking about their own personal favorite version of Jesus when inside myself I sighed and was like, 'Wow. That's kind of exactly like the apostasy. And also. The Book of Mormon is awesome.' I still think that whenever somebody mentions that scene. The rest of the movie is kind of ridiculous, but I'd say that moment at least emphasizes a need for modern revelation to help man discover the true nature of god. Ignorant people make up their own gods conforming with their own personal wills and vices, etc.

This was an interesting discussion. Thought I'd share. Several people got in on it and tried to justify their favorite movies. We're still working on Waitress for Elder Conrad. I'm sure it testifies of something good. That's a great movie.

We had Temple this last week. That was incredible. I love going to the temple. I bought myself some presents as well. Including the soundtracks for Prince of Egypt and the Swan Princess that were being sold at the church bookstore there, for like 4 dollars each. I can't actually listen to them as a missionary, but they're normally like 18 dollars each (the owner found them in bulk somewhere and was trying to get rid of them) so I figured I'm ship them home. I'm putting together a book of stuff to send home, letters and unneeded winter accessories and those two CDs etc.

I also found not one but TWO cheesy Alma 17-? romance stories about Ammon and Abish or the Princess he refuses to marry. Did not purchase. Do not plan to. I can't read them anyway, and I'm not real sorry about that. I still do kind of want to make a very epic, big-budget, artsy film about the story of Ammon, using very little dialogue and long beautiful shots to tell his epic story. Who's the guy who was responsible for all the prettiness in that movie 'The New World'? Do you think he'd take pity on my project? Somebody ought to do some decent movies using the Book of Mormon. 'It could be a way powerful conversion tool!' -Hna. Christensen.

There will not be much romance in my movie. He's a messenger of God for sobbing out loud.

...He's busy.

But don't worry. Abish and the Princess. And the Queen. And all the other women in the movie, will be gorgeous, so as not to lose our male audience. Ammon will be pretty too. Como no?

Alright. I've talked of nonsense long enough. Just to reassure you that this isn't what's on my mind all the time, I do want to let you know that I'm happy and excited about life again. Although this week had all that craziness that I explained about the citas falling through, it really was a pretty incredible week. It's strange having P-day on Mondays, being the day after Sunday, since Sunday, is always such a dramatic day. I typically go from miserable to elated about fifty times on Sundays. It's the end of the week when we see how all of our work that week has effected, or hasn't effected the people we are teaching. Every less-active, recent convert, or investigator we see in church, is call for a massive hosanna shout and every empty seat leaves one feeling empty themselves. It's pretty exhausting, and if there's a baptism that night (which there was last night, the Elder's investigator Juana) then the stress
and the joy is all combined into a cocktail of terror that leaves one wanting a nap and a hot bath.

So. On Mondays, I'm frequently not-quite recovered from all this. Which I think makes me write like a crazy person. But, that's why we have Preparation-day. (And because we've got to do our laundry sometime) ...we need to recover from the damage of last week and prepare for the upcoming struggle. It doesn't always quite do it's job though... Typically when six o'clock rolls around, I feel a little like that boxer who's sitting in the corner, sweating and bloody and looking not-quite up to the next round, and then the bell rings and it's time to go!

Speaking of time to go, I'd better get. I love you. I miss you like Buster misses his left hand (another show we're trying to find a gospel relation with, tell me if you think of any).

MWAH!

Hermana Lillywhite