"Come and see me, and bring all your friends."

Hola familia mia!

I’m glad the package arrived safe and sound and that you’ve enjoyed the pictures I sent. I’m also glad that the Castle DVDs work. The guy at the shop warned us that all sales were final and so we couldn’t return them if they were messed up. I only paid about 20 bucks for all those DVDs (plus Sons of Provo) though, so I wasn’t too concerned. They looked alright to me, just a couple of little scratches.

This week was a lot more fun than last week. No flu. I do have a nasty cold now—I think it’s like you said mom, after you get something like the flu, you’re more susceptible to other illnesses. My companion and I have been running on cold syrup these past couple of days. I got a call Sunday morning from Hermano Solano in the Obispado asking me to give a short talk in sacrament meeting. I agreed to it, and gave the talk with minimal preparation aside from picking some sections in Predicad Mi Evangelio to read and expound on. Everyone says it was really good, and Hermano Solano thanked me for telling the ward ‘exactly what they needed to hear’ which worried me a little. I hope I wasn’t too mean. I don’t really remember much except that the usual stage-fright was totally absent as I stood up and started to talk about missionary work, in what I thought sounded like slightly slurred and cold-syrupy Spanish. They I lay down in the mother’s room for a bit.

But that was just Sunday, in the days previous to Sunday it wasn’t so bad. A sore throat and some trouble sleeping is all. We managed to find a couple of new investigators and new contacts. Out of all my areas, this has been my hardest and the one of which I’ve had the least success, and… I’ve spent a third of my mission here. I love this ward so much. I really feel like we are finally on the brink of a turn-around and like we’ve going to be finding some amazing prepared people soon here. I don’t know if I’ll stay or go, but we find out this weekend and I can tell you in my letter next week, whatever my fate may be. I can speculate that if I stay in this area, then I’ll probably spend the rest of my mission here, otherwise, I’ll have one more area and probably just one more companion… We’ll see. The anticipation of transfer calls, always drives me mad. There’s something so surreal and making appointments and plans that I might not be there for.

I’m not offended that you haven’t had any dreams about me, mom. It’s okay. All your dreams sounds horrible—even worse than regular nightmares because they translate perfectly into the real world and are situations that you could actually find yourself in. I’m sorry! I’ve been having more and more dreams of that nature too recently, but always with bizarre, unbelievable elements mixed in to keep things from getting too settled into reality.

I keep hoping that I’ll have a cool ‘investigator-dream’ experience, but so far, no luck. Hermana Christensen and I were discussing it and we decided that a ton of people should probably have a dream of us sitting on an old wooden porch, playing the guitar beside a corn field and then we say something like, “Come on down to Houston and bring all your friends!”

And then we knock on their door and they’re golden. How sweet, right?

That’s all I ask for. Honestly, I’d like just one miraculous-dream baptism before I go home.

I have dreams about being at home too. More recently than before. It’s always a little weird though, because I’m never supposed to be there.

I LOVE the Old Spaghetti Facotry. Man, I’m hungry. I just realized I forgot to eat today. How silly. I’ll have to take care of that after my letter. Crown Burgers sounds like my kind of joint.

You may have noticed that I don’t talk about my investigators much. I think I already explained about that before, but just in case I didn’t, I wanted to assure you that I am teaching people… well, okay, for a while we weren’t just because we could find anybody at all for the last two transfers almost, but generally speaking I usually have a handful of people we’re teaching. There is a lot of heartache associated with things not working out the way we’d all hoped though, and so I’ve elected to basically only tell you guys about the people who are getting baptized/progressing nicely into the church, which sadly isn’t too many of them right now. We often see a glimmer of hope, but it takes time and patience for many of these people to make the kinds of necessary changes that they need to. For example, our two main investigators right now are only not members of the church ya, because of legal problems that are keeping them from marrying their ‘husbands’ or to clarify, the father of all their kids. It’s hugely frustrating to watch them struggle like this, but don’t think I’m discouraged at all. Every incorrect choice brings disappointment, but God never gives up on us and I’m not about to give up on anyone either. I know that the people I’m teaching right now will be excellent members of the church one day. I hope I’m around to see it, but if not… no importa ahora, I still have to do everything I can to help them right now while I’ve got the authority and power to do so.

Last order of business: if you’re ever around people who say something along the lines of, “How’s Ailsa doing… oh, I need to write her!” encourage them to do so. I’ve had a recent slump with mail, and by recent I mean that I don’t think I’ve gotten more than like 3 letters in the past 2 months that were not from other missionaries. And at least one of them was new nametags from the mission office. Which is kind of like being from missionaries? Whatever. It doesn’t count. I have taken sad-face pictures with the camera looking out of my perpetually empty mailbox, and I am fully prepared to send them to everyone I know, begging for mail. I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this.

But seriously, how is everyone?! What’s going on in the world out there?

Also, I’m going to ask president if it’s okay for non-immediate-family personnel to email me. I had understood ‘no’ for my whole mission, but never thought to ask about it until recently, since it finally dawned on me that the missionaries around me are communicating though e-mail with pretty much everyone they know. I’ll check and find out if it’s allowed and then maybe it’ll be easier for certain people to tell me how their merry lives are going. Letter-box mail is still very exciting and fun however. I don’t want that to cease entirely.

We recently watched the David and Goliath ‘Liken’ musical. I forgot how terribly adorable it is. Also. Daniel Beck is kind of a stud. Even with the shaved head and silly antics. Since we were watching it with a member, I felt restrained from making a comment mientras such as, “Hermana, I think I’m coveting Saul.” But later she said something about David sort of being “The Mormon Zach Efron.” And we giggled and then remembered that it has been about a decade since we were 12 year old girls and should probably grow up.

Seriously though, how do we all feel about a David Epic? How heartbreaking and Oscar-worthy would that be? Of course, to tell the story in real detail, one will require a bit more than the usually 2 hours. How about a miniseries? Are miniseries dead? I think it’s a decent length for some stories. That Jane Eyre they did was amazing, and let’s just gush about Pride and Prejudice for a minute… anyway. Enough of that.

I miss you all so much, and I LOVE you! I’m really excited to talk on mother’s day. I’ll hopefully have details about that next week, but for now I can say that you should plan on an EARLY pre-phone-call to let you know what time I’ll be calling that night since I probably won’t know until the day before. It’s likely it’ll be the same as before 7 or 8 o’clock.

When I say early, I mean before 7 o’clock Sunday morning.

Sorry.

MWAH! CYBERHUG!

Hermana Lillywhite