Monday, February 22, 2010

The secret remedy: Bunny Tea.

Familia mia!
Que tal?
Man, this was a good week. I was way sick and had to spend a few random hours passed out in bed, but we still managed to get out and do a decent about of work in spite of the fact that I was sick as a dog. Jackie Reyes, a less active woman who we teach, grabbed a sack of limes and cinnamon sticks and honey and gave me very specific instructions on how to make… BUNNY TEA! She said, if I drank it before bed three nights in a row, I’d be cured.
I don’t know if it’s actually making me better, but it’s DELICIOUS!
There was a pretty nasty incident down here in Austin last week. I don’t know how widely the news spread. Some sad, sick Pilate with a grudge against the IRS decided to have a mini-reenactment of 911. At least, that was what I understood from the couple of minutes that I watched on the news at a part-member home. They don’t speak English and wanted us to translate what was going on for them, so they’d know if they were supposed to panic or not.
The REALLY awesome thing that happened this week was that I had the very wonderful privlage to go with Ashley to get her patriarchal blessing. It was INCREDIBLE! Very inspiring, empowering blessing. She was so nervous, SO nervous. But she’d prepared herself well and now she is so happy! It was wonderful to see the change from freaking-out to peaceful tranquility and joy.
Aside from that, there is little report from my week…. Oh, except that we had a really weird Zone Meeting with a reporter present who asked us questions and is apparently planning to write an article for the Houston Chronicle about missionaries. That was strange. The whole zone was super uptight. They gave good answers I thought, but geez… relax a little people. Let’s not forget we’re having the time of our lives!
Your week sounds like it was filled with delicious food. Best kind of week there is. I keep thinking to myself that I’m going to lose some pounds and get back into shape. But I just don’t see how. I’m way NOT willing to give up food. I’m just not. And, well… I LOVE to exorcise. But It’s kind of hard to PROPERLY exorcise out here.
I had a weird dream that I joined the Army a few weeks ago. And then again last night, I might have had the same dream. It’s listening to all of Ashley’s army stories, I’m sure. Thanks for sending the picture from the Davis’ baptism. I really want to print out a copy of that, but I sent it home before I got the chance. Let Chantal know that I finished the ‘book-summary’ notebook and will be sending it to her for her scrutiny as soon as I can find proper mailing material
Oooo, Magna Charta, Russian History, World Wars…. I kind of am excited to be able to study again—I mean, I study now obviously, but I’m excited to study history. There’s a number of subjects I’ve become more interested in recently, and they are just that much more fascinating with it being impossible for me to study them. It sounds like you’re an awesome teacher mommy. I hope those kids realize how lucky they are to have you. I know I’ve come to realize how lucky I was to have all of you as my family.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHAZI! YAY! Is she 17?! Really!? That’s crazy. How old do you have to be to run for president? Is there any way we’d be able to put a bid in for 2012? Any chance? She’s even more a minority than President Obama, being an Arab American Mormon Woman. And she’s a genius. She’s got my vote, straightup.
I’m going to write Nannette a love note today, I think… I need to find out what the East Mission Address is, but I feel confident that the office should have that. I can’t believe she’s here in Houston already! That’s crazy! I was thinking to myself the other day, ‘Nannette should be going into the MTC any time now, right?’ but she’s already here! That’s nuts! I can’t believe how quickly time goes by. Hopefully, there will be a Multi-Mission conference soon so we can take a precious picture together that I’m sure the ward will cherish and hang up somewhere in the capilla.
Wow, I really don’t have much to say this week. I guess I’m tired. I spent a great deal of time passed out asleep lately, but I’m still a little exhausted. I was happy to hear that you folks got to go to the temple this week. I was just thinking this morning how I’d like to try and go to the temple a least once a week for pretty much the rest of my life after my mission. I’ve been really blessed to have a temple so close by that we get to visit so regularly.
Yeah… having my debt card would be cool. Hopefully I’ll have it by next Monday then? It usually takes about two days to get from the office to the apartment. That’ll be good. In the mean time, I’m just trying to be thrifty, which isn’t so hard. Members have been giving us all kind of food lately. It’s VERY nice. And there’s a family of investigators that always gives us food too. They say that they’ve started to notice that for some reason, whenever they feed us, they have more than enough for themselves, whereas, before, they were struggling to have enough for everyone to eat.
I LOVE you all, and I miss you! Jensen’s plan to skip a semester is admittedly ‘not allowed’ I know, but I’ve got to say, part of me wishes we could all just quit life for a few months and play. Alas. Life goes on.

KISSES! YAY! Hermana Lillywhite
P.S. There’s a catchy song I can’t listen to that some of Ashley’s Army brethren did a video to on youtube. The name of the song is WAY familiar. It’s called, The Ding Dong Song, and the band is apparently called ‘Gunther and the Sunshine girls’?! I’m pretty sure it’s already on Jensen’s playlist. She digs the peppy dancey stuff. If it’s not, then it probably should be.
P.P.S. My companion came up with a brilliant idea for a television show this week. Children ages approximately 8 and younger acting out famous stories from literature, mythology, scripture etc. Like Master Piece theatre except with BABIES! It’ll be a children’s show of course. We’re planning to call it “Small Expectations”. Pretty sure we’ll make a couple of ‘trial-run’ short episodes with primary kids from church first, and then… Hollywood!

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Well. I didn't get mugged.

Fambly!
So yes, my wallet was stolen. I’m a dumb bunny. I forgot I live in the third largest city in the world and that outside of cute little suburbias like Murray wallets get snatched all the time and it’s no big deal. The staff at the store were sympathetic but they basically just smiled and said, “Yeah… sorry about that. We don’t have cameras or nothing, so you’re kind of screwed sweety.” And went back to work.
I was just looking through the cards, trying to find an appropriate one for daddy, and we turned away from the cart for about 30 seconds. Maybe a full minute. And when we came back, our wallets were gone. Way triste. Everything in it can be replaced except for the gift cards that I had from birthday/Christmas (yeah, I’m sad about that), and the wallet itself, which I had actually made myself while I was due to train and freaking out a little and needed to do SOMETHING with my hands to keep from pulling my hair out. And there was some extra fabric and a zipper around that Hermana Forsling had left me, so I made a wallet. I was rather fond of it… and I’m sad that I didn’t get to enjoy the giftcards. I was actually planning to use one of them that day for something specific, but I didn’t end up buying it on account of getting robbed. But, I didn’t have any cash in there at all, and my social security card wasn’t there either. A la major they didn’t even find my cards since I made the wallet very cleverly and it’s got the missionary handbook in front, obscuring everything from view. It’s likely they saw that it was a book and just tossed it, but we checked the trash cans and didn’t find anything, and the Walmart people didn’t either. If they did keep in, then hopefully they read it.
It’s a hassle to replace everything, but it’s just stuff. I’m okay. Mommy! I got the new wallet you sent me! I love it, it’s soooo pretty! Gorgeous. I don’t have anything to put in it yet, but I’m slowly filling it. It’s a very nice wallet, and I love it! Thank you also from the Valentine’s day candy! And to Grandma and Grandpa too! My companion and I have filled ourselves with great amount of chocolate. It’s been wonderful.
Sunkitty and His Friends finally arrived! Turns out it was at the office at my apartment complex for a while now, it’s just that the silly office people there forgot to tell me about it. I even came by once and specifically asked if anything had arrived that they might have forgotten to mention to me, and they said ‘no’. Then the next day, I felt like I should ask again, and this time the lady looked at me all confused and was like, “You live in 509, right?” and we said, “Yes.” And she said, “Didn’t they tell you about that?” and went to go get my package which had apparently been there for several days. How silly.
Anyway, I finally got to see it! YAY! It’s beautiful! I can only recognize one editorial change, the word “vanquishes” in place of “kills”. I still prefer the word ‘kill’ there, but I suppose vanquishes is softer. It is a children’s book. But, yeah, I didn’t pick up on any others. I can barely remember writing a lot of these poems. I know I did, because it sounds like me, but I’ve just forgotten so much. Anyway, I LOVE it. It is lovely. I did lots of squealing and jumping up and down when it came. I also turned the comic strip into a bookmark since it was so very appropriately a bookmark for me.
By the by, I randomly remembered a flash back of reading the inside jacket of a novel that was Pride and Prejudice except Mr. Darcy is a vampire? Did I dream this up, or is it a real book? I’m pretty sure there’s about a hundred different versions of this story by now.
Your trip to St. George sounds SO fun. Temples and shoot-outs and good food and Grandma and Grandpa! Wonderful! I forgot about the Olympics. That’s so fun. All the PC stuff is pretty annoying. We very seriously offended two of our investigators last week when we told them straight-up that the other churches don’t have authority and teach false doctrine and are therefore Apostate. We explained to them about True Vs. Not True about ten different ways, but they still didn’t get it. This morning, I finally realized that the problem they were having was probably more that they think we’re saying that everyone else is going to hell because they’re in the wrong church—of course, we’re NOT saying that, but that’s probably what it sounds like to them, since all their previous experience with religion has including mass condemnation of everybody.
We might watch that clips of that Heavenly Father’s Plan is Big Enough for Everyone talk from last Spring’s conference with them and explain that being in the wrong church doesn’t mean you’re damned. It just means you lack understand and knowledge of God’s plan and thus, will have to eventually learn about all that. If not in this life, than in the next.
So you guys got a Plan of Salvation class this week? We had Ward Conference. I’m sorry to say that my relief society class sounded like it had some similar problems to yours’ mommy. Our topic was Reverence. Which is a really great and profound topic, and definitely could of gone somewhere, but instead everyone just went off on horror stories about investigators being offended by how loud the classes were etc. and how some horrible people can’t control their kids etc. For the WHOLE. HOUR.
She also made us take our shoes off. I didn’t mind that part, she was trying to make a point about Moises when he communed with God through the burning bush. It could have been good, but everything seemed to go wrong the second she had us put our shoes back on.
The Plan of Salvation, is so hard to teach sometimes. Because it’s SO important. And It’s so easy to fall back on the cutesy “My Turn on Earth” version of events. I try to teach exactly what Preach My Gospel says. People do often have trouble teaching the ‘Satan sought to destroy the Agency of Man’ part of the lesson. I almost prefer NOT to have members with us for that lesson. Same with Word of Wisdom sometimes, because more often than not, I have to pull the investigator aside later and say, “Hey… Coca-Cola is okay. That’s not actually in there—he’s just crazy.”
Law of Chastity on the other hand… It’s nice to have a cute older couple with you when you teach that lesson. Otherwise it gets awkward and often seems to turn into a challenge of “Well what do you know about it?!” and then I have to be like, “Well I—okay. Nothing.”
I’m so sad my valentines didn’t make it to you! Somebody got hungry at the post office I guess. I thought about sending them in a padded envelope, but my companion was able to successfully send a few off like that, so I thought it might be okay… That’s too bad. Did daddy like his card? It made me giggle. I still want to see a copy of that picture of the sister missionaries from his mission who dressed up like nuns. Also—could you guys e-mail me a copy of the picture of the Davis baptism from my camera that I sent home? I forgot to print out a copy of that one. It’s the last baptism photo on there. The only white people.
This week was… kind of rough. We taught a lot of lessons but none of our investigators are progressing and we didn’t find anyone new really. We did finally get the chance to teach the Jehovah’s Witness wife of an old investigator, which was awesome, but then, they didn’t come to church, which is depressing.
We’re working hard and I know we’re with the people who need us right now. I love you all, and I LOVE being a missionary in Texas!
I miss you and I love you! Hermana Lillywhite

Monday, February 8, 2010

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

First order of business...

*Clears throat

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YAY! DADDY BIRTHDAY!

I hope you have a great birthday daddy, and that you recognize the great gift and blessing and wisdom and experience. And that there is lots of delicious cake/pie to eat. YAY!

Pobrecita bebe, estas enferma Lanita? Poor thing. I hate strep. I feel like I got in annually for a few years too. I'm glad Jensen is enjoy her acting class, especially when it gets silly and new agey. If you can enjoy things when they're silly and new agey than you're set in the acting biz. Or so I've been told. Have no personal experience, although I would like to scream in horror and pretend to die in some movie someday. Maybe Johnny Depp could bite me in that Dark Shadows project that keeps getting put off for years since I was like 12. Denim's monologue sounds great. Quirky. Perfect for Jensen. Has she had to learn to cry on cue yet?

I think animation is a perfect choice for Jensen. I can't tell you how happy it makes me just to hear that there is a young blonde Mormon girl in Utah who is NOT majoring in elementary education. Animation is good and interesting, and she'll have a ton of fun work opportunities. The world always needs artists. Okay, so maybe there's that whole 'starving artist' cliché, but let's be honest here. Jensen is made happy by artsy stuff. Esto quiere dicer: GO ARTSY JENSEN!

Oh Hook dates. I remember those charming things. It sounds like your class is doing really well. They certainly have an excellent teacher.

Mom, I love it when you describe the food. Last I checked, I'm down to a more respectable 145-150 range. I'm going to try to get healthy again. It's a little rough though. People keep giving us food and it's SO good. Plus, we have a car. I think all the tracting we did this week helped. I LOVE having a companion who likes to tract.

Well... Now I've got to admit that I haven't received the package yet. But! I did guess what it was by way of a number of hints. Also, some people wrote to me about it:) Soo.... THANK YOU! MWAH, MWAH, MWAH! I LOVE it. Or, I'm sure I'll love it one the package actually gets here and I get to see it. It's close to transfers, so they often hold up all the mail at the office until everybody's new addresses are legitimately fixed. So... I may NOT get it until next week if it's still taking this long, but anyway. I LOVE YOU! THANK YOU! GRACIAS! Clearly, I am a genius. What editorial changes? What did you do to my work?

Just kidding, I'm sure I won't mind. I just can't wait to see the thing!

I'm self promoting like crazy. President Hansen said he's going to purchase a copy. And I wrote a notice on the board at district meeting.

“What is this?” *Elder Verhs motions to my note on the chalkboard.

“My parents have secretly published one of my books while I'm been on my mission. And as my comrades, you are all obligated to buy it.” *Me

“Sweet! Do we get a discount?” * Elder Frost

“No. Why would I do that?” * Me

“Because... we're your friends?” *Elder Manship

“No. Wrong. Because you're my friends, you'll buy it and pay full price.” *Me

“What about if we recommend it to people? Then can we get a discount?” *Elder Frost

“...What do you not get about me wanting your money?” *Me

Alright, I know that all sounds horribly miserly and prideful/arrogant/covetess or something. I'm sure it's some kind of sin to joke about wanting lots of money, but I thought it was hilarious and they all said they'd buy one after their missions if they remember or want to.

I'm very excited. I sort of want to take a surprise trip down to the office to pick it up, but we're already kind of shot on miles and it's only the 8th and I'm not supposed to.

This is transfer week, and in spite of the fact that my companion and I are both staying in the same area in the same ward, we've been transplanted into a different zone, along with pretty much all the other Spanish missionaries in the mission. I'm back in Houston zone, where the Spanish Language and big stats reign as King and Queen of the ghettos of Houston. Except I'm in one of the nicest areas of the city still, so I'm not in the ghetto at all. It'll be interesting to see how my Houston Zone experience will be now that I'm way out here in the suburbs. Elder Parker, who definitely does NOT have a secret fanclub of which I am treasurer is my new district leader. His daddy in the mission, Elder McGary was one of my favorite district leaders so far. Elder Parker is hilarious. I think I mentioned him before... remember a story about an Elder with a slightly deformed leg (subtle, you don't notice unless he points out that it curves funny) who used said deformity to alarm us all on Halloween and make us think he'd broken it. I was looking around for the phone to call an ambulance when he got up and ran away giggling with glee while Elder McGary was right on his heels ready to choke him. Funny kid.
He also had one of his friends back home write him a fake Dear John letter that was pretty chistoso. I've been trying to get my hands on a copy for a bit now. It includes a romantic morning/surprise-make-out scene on the Y at BYU and a two week engagement.

Elder Frost is leaving us—but he's just going across the street to Westgreens and Elder Manship's new companion will be Elder Geldmocker; the one who almost died in August but then was fine. I'm pretty sure I mentioned that he'd come back out... then Hermana Thomas left, but she's apparently doing great according to President. She was joking before that she wants me to be her trainer when she comes back into the field.

We worked HARD this week. We tracted a lot and found a number of new investigators. For the first time ever a white person let me into their home (monumental moment in my mission, let me tell you). And I've got to think of something else to say at doorways aside from, “...we're here to share a message about Jesus Christ...” because I've been starting to get a lot of people who just say, “Thanks. Already know him very well actually,” and slam the door. If they really knew him so well you think they'd recognize his messengers on their doorstep, am I right?

My poor companion is sick. She's pretending not to be, but she totally is. She's got a terrible cough and she's exhausted. She's asleep on the couch right now, face sort of half buried in her mini-quad. I might have to pretend to be sick also, just so that she can get some rest.

I'm glad you like the book ideas. Some of them are still in their infancy, but the larger part of these ideas are pretty much fully formed aside from not being written down. That's funny that you say that about the mission show, because that was my idea too... I want it to focus on one meetinghouse and the two/three wards that meet there. At least one of them will be Spanish. The missionaries, because of transfers/going home will be constantly changing. So we'll be bringing in new actors and characters all the time to play the main people, occasionally checking up on what going on with old characters, but for the most part, the consistent characters on the show will be the ward members & the investigators who are left behind while their missionaries come and go.

You see, I diagnosed the main problem of the missionary-movies as being that they're far too focused on the missionaries themselves and their frankly uninteresting life crisis, and not enough on the work—O sea, los miembros e investigadores.

I'm not saying that the show will be totally devoid of missionary drama, I'm just saying it'll pretty much take a back seat to what's actually going on in the field and is relevant to the work, and not so much on hidden demons/girlfriends back home/crisis of faith of the missionaries, although I'll certainly include those elements if a relevancy can be made to the work.

Whatever. You should probably help me with this. Not that it's too terribly important. We all know that Sunkitty and His Friends is and always will be my best work.

I'm seriously so excited to see it. Kind of freaking out every day when the mail comes. My companion is fearing for my sanity. If it doesn't come today, I'm going to call the office and see if it's there, and if it is, I'll make Elder Manship or Conrad or Barlow get it for me since they all have to go up their tomorrow for transfers.

Hey as long as we're secretly publishing each other's literature, how is 'The Rickety Old House' coming along?
SO excited to read that one too.

I'd really better go though, but THANK YOU! Best present ever. I hope my letter made a little bit of sense. I LOVE you. I miss you most dearly. Besito.

Hermana Lillywhite

Monday, February 1, 2010

OOOOoooo, I love surprises!

Fambly!

I'm glad my package arrived safely. It was starting to warm up in Texas, but then it's gotten cold again just these last couple of days... hopefully though, it'll warm up again shortly and then stay warm. Probably, it will warm up again shortly and proceed to be too terribly hot for a long while afterwards. Thus is the way of Texas. I'm very excited about this surprise. And suspicious because of the mysterious nature of the thing... a ver.

Yeah my nails have been consistently long like that since the MTC. I'm not sure what happened, I just stopped cutting them. I thought it would be hard to play the piano with my nails that length, but it's actually not bad at all. I did cut them short again like a day or two after I took that video though. Two of them got snagged and torn so I decided to start over. So now they're short again, but I'm not going to keep them that way, I've decided I like having long nails. I don't get too many opportunities to practice the piano. Especially now that I'm in a ward were we have several people who play the piano, so they don't need me to be the unofficial ward pianist like in the other wards I've served it. Hermano Ivory (the funnily named very white man in the ward) plays really well. He always plays Clarie de Lune for prelude every week. It's my favorite thing. I look forward to hearing it while we're greeting everybody at the doors of the chapel.

I was going to ask if they let people pose nude for art classes at BYU. I guessed the answer was probably 'no', but still, when you said 'figure drawing' I was like, “hmmmmmm....”. Too bad. I mean—err, great. Good for BYU. Hopefully Jensen will never have to work on any project that requires her to know how to depict human genitalia, because she will clearly never know how to go about drawing it. And hopefully that wouldn't be necessary for video games anyway. However, buff guys in speedos = probably good to know.

I'm glad daddy got to go out and ride. It's still miserable and cold there though right? Cause, it's kind of chilly here. My companions have been putting together a list of book for me to read as well. The only reading goal I've made for myself so far though is that I want to finish reading Jesus El Cristo by the end of the year. I'm on chapter four right now, and reading it for part of my language study every day. So, as an expert on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, what do I tell the people who ask me about that? Because so far I've just given them a vague answer of, “You know... I'm not entirely familiar with all the details, but my understanding is that some church members were involved in that and they will have to suffer the consequences of their actions. But the church as a whole didn't authorize or condone their actions, and was in fact pretty upset when they heard about it after the fact.” How's that? What would you say to these charming people?

Studying World War II now? Fascinating. And sad. I was trying to remember the name of that Ben Stein movie the other day... the one where he talks about Intelligent Design and religious persecution. Did you folks ever see that? I can't remember what it's called, I just remember I liked it a lot.

This week was honestly a little discouraging. We're still working with Elena to get her ready for baptism this next week, but she's struggling a bit. Her children have been sick, and she didn't come to church yesterday because her daughter was coughing so much, and she decided she'd better take her to the hospital. Getting people to actually physically come to the church has always been the hardest thing for me, but Elena came under her own power. We had dropped her and she still kept coming... The rest of our week was kind of rough too. We found some people and them abruptly lost them, and then lost some other people. It's all been kind of rough and crazy. But we just try to be positive and spend our energy making each other laugh during moments when it would be easy to murmur.

Speaking of that, I've got a number of books bouncing around in my head.

(*=Old ideas that I could never write because of a lack of inspiration, that I now have a completed summary/plan with which to execute the various projects.)

Untitled Sister Missionary Memoirs
Rosenrot*
MirrorGirl*
Curse of the Twelth King*
Salvages/Semilla/Sakura
Untitled cutesy 7 Princesses Novel
Redboat*
A Lullaby for the Innocents: The Adventures of Philip the Happy Vampire.
Untitled missionary themed TV script project

These are probably what I'll be working on when I get back. The vampire one is actually going to be a fairly serious novel. Although not really, because we honestly have enough dramatic vampire novels around. But, I'm planning on working with a very good artist I know who happens to be studying Modest Figure Drawing: A Prerequisite to Non-Genitalia Studies at BYU, to help me put together a comic strip about Philip that will be much more light hearted than the book and will probably come with it as 'a free gift with purchase of book' or something adorable like that. He won't drive a shiny silver Volvo or dramatically try to commit suicide in Italy. He might have a cool Barnabas ring & cane combination.

Hermana Christensen has a good friend in the art program at BYU. Stephanie White. Does Jensen happen to know her? From her letters, she is hilarious and they should clearly be besties. She makes me laugh and she's just writing my companion.

Speaking of making me laugh, who in the world is this Lady Gaga creature?! I leave the world for a couple of seconds and a new superstar rises?! We were at the house of a part member family and their cute little daughter began to tell us all about her favorite music. They're going to put together a list of Artistas Latinas to check out when I get home. But she apparently is in love with some song call “Bad Romance” that sounds rather peppy & groovy. (It's Ashley's Ring Tone.) So I guess, she's hugely popular right now and it sincerely shock everyone that I had no idea who she was. (HELLO! MISSIONARY!)

But this chick sounds very odd.

Well, not much else to report that wouldn't severely depress you to hear about it and me to write about it. I'm not discouraged or anything though, don't worry. I'm just a little bit disappointed that I was incorrect in my previous assumptions about how our investigators were progressing... But, tonight starts a new week, and I am confident that we are doing what we should be doing and that we, and the people we're teaching will be greatly blessed for it. Maybe not soon, but soon enough. So. Onward. In the mean time, we can continue to make each other laugh to keep from crying.

I love you all, and I pray for you, and I miss you!

Hermana Lillywhite