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