I call dibs!

Mom & Dad, ah.ha.ha.haaa Mom & Dad, somethingsomething… automatic arms.

Suffering from weird music flashbacks lately. I think I mentioned before that although I haven’t listened to any of my music in a year and a half, I still have it playing loudly in my head at night while I sleep sometimes. A few weeks ago it was Alan Parson Project ‘To One in Paradise’ I think it’s called… or at least, they start reading that poem at the end of the song, but it might not actually be called ‘To One in Paradise’. It’s a trippy song. Perfect for nighttime mind-jukeboxing.

Youth conference sounds like a blast, except for that misguided and overused ‘leap of faith’ thing. That’s so dangerous, I don’t get why they always want to do that. The Elders did it with some of the young men in church a few weeks ago. It wasn’t as bad because they were lower to the ground, but it’s still a cheap thing, I think. There’s got to be a better way to teach about faith. They always feed you so well at those things, and the swords and mock-fighting and archery… well, you know me. Green with jealousy right now!

I LOVE lagoon! The Sisters have started this new thing, where I tell them bedtime stories that are actually just dates I went on before my mission and I did one from lagoon a few days ago. I got some letters from Chantal this week, I hope ya’ll had fun this weekend, it sure sounds like it. Saturdays are a troubling thing to me. The white handbook says that Saturdays and holidays are the best days to find and teach people because ‘most families are together an at home’. LIES!

I’m sure it’s very true in other cultures, but for the Hispanic person living in Houston Texas, Saturdays are the days when they either work, go to Mexico or the Pulga. I swear—everyone wants to make appointments for Saturday. On paper, it looks like our busiest day, but it’s actually the day when we’re most likely to get blown-off. Out of the 6/7 lessons we had fixed in advance, only one of them happened. Then, in the evening we had a father’s day party to go to. That was pretty hilarious. They had a little ward talent show, and Elder McGary read some of his raps and is probably in trouble with the Bishop now.

We figured out that we’ve been teaching a lot more lessons than we were counting. I can’t believed I’ve been out almost 18 months and I just now learned what an ‘other lesson’ is.

A recent convert whose granddaughter we’re teaching right now, had to go in for surgery this week for cervical cancer. They said they got it all, and it sounds like she’s doing well. We got to go visit her in the hospital and the Elders gave her a blessing. She was fine, very cheerful and sweet—the only sad thing was it hurt for her to laugh at all, so we had to try to be as un-funny as possible, which is very hard for our district.

Hermana Ang is doing amazing. Hermana Taets is such a great trainer. I relinquished my position as Senior companion to her ages ago, but she won’t except it. She says I’m not allowed to do that, to which I replied, “I’m senior companion, I can do what I want, and I say, you’re in charge.”

Actually, I think it is allowed, because it’s my last transfer. I should ask… “President, can I NOT be senior companion anymore? I’m tired of it.”

Yeah—I decided to pay for five guys using my home-card, because, firstly, I have no money left for the month on my blue card, and secondly, I remembered that you asked about five guys and I’d forgotten to let you know that, yes, they have it here, so I figured it might be fun for you to see the charge on the card. It was a little more expensive than it should have been, because I also paid for Elder Kerr’s food. He’d forgotten his wallet and was hungry so I took pity on him. He says he’s started drinking caffine and he let a girl pay for him, which means he has to tell his family that he’s walked away from all the values they ever taught him—and on his mission, no less, for shame!

I, on the other hand, have continued drinking caffeine, as I pretty much always have, except for that summer when I cut out soda entirely and lost like 15 pounds. And I have not stepped away from the values you taught me, though you didn’t teach me any ridiculous ones, so that might be why. I feel bad—I may have corrupted a few of my companions. I definitely talked Hermana Russon into drinking a Coke—but I didn’t pressure her or anything, I just explained that caffeine isn’t actually against the word of wisdom (so that she would stop teaching false doctrine to people in our Word of Wisdom lessons) and it’s a personal choice that everyone needs to make, just like eating anything else is also a personal choice, and if you don’t want to drink caffeine, that’s cool, but don’t be a jerk and try to trust this as a rule onto everyone else you see, or judge them harshly when they aren’t living ‘the same standard’ as you with regards to soft drink choices. Then I waited and when someone offered her a coke again, I told her I’d take it if she didn’t want it (like I always did) and she just smiled at me all coy and cute and said, “I think I’ll try it”. Ahhhh, precious hallmark moments.

I probably will stop drinking soda again when I come home, just to lose weight. I can’t really help it out here, because I just drink/eat whatever people give me and am grateful for it, but once I have a little more control over my eating habits… I plan on cutting out a few things. It will be rough though. I do love eating.

Our respective meetings with ken were really good. He’s got me working on ‘parallels’. Basically, I have to draw up a separate plan for everything I might kind of be interested in doing with my life. The hardest one is the ‘social parallel’. He said that I have to draw up plans for dating/marriage etc. But I really can’t figure out how, since I just straight up don’t know of ANYONE at all, who I want to even date, let alone marry. So my plans for that look something like this:

Step 1.) Find poor unsuspecting priesthood holder/dream-guy.

Step 2.) Call dibs.

I don’t know. I think maybe I’ll just stay in the basement for a while and write books. I’m not sure I really want to even date right away. I think I just want to chill with you folks and then I can worry about all of that dating stuff when I go to school next year. That will probably be the plan I present to Ken.

Hermana Taets said that she just chatted with him the whole time. She hasn’t told me too many details about their meeting, but I think that’s probably all there is to tell, since I could hear them both laughing down the hallway. He’s SO friendly. He’s just easy to talk to. He does improv, like the laughing stock guys, and he’s got a total comedic delivery and everything. He also likes to write, so we talked about writing a lot. He told me that I’m the sister missionary who the other sister missionaries talk the most about, because they all love my stories, which made me feel happy. So even though he’d never met me before, he knew all of this stuff about me already because of what they other sisters told him.

Well, I’d better rap this letter up, there’s more I wanted to tell you, but I guess it’ll have to wait. It looks like Hermana Taets needs some help with another question for her uncle. I copied and pasted the paragraph mommy wrote about it and sent it to her as ‘suggestion from mom’ because I figured she should probably just follow your advice, mom. She says thanks!

I LOVE you all so much, and I miss you!!! BESOTE!

Hermana Lillywhite

Hola! Happy Father's day!

Dear Family,
My new daughter is so cool!
Hermana Ang, (pronounced Awwng, or she actually says it like Aang, like from Airbender, but her mother doesn’t like that because she’s not pronouncing it correctly). She’s from Hawaii, most recently, but she was born in California and she’s an eighth Chinese (that’s where the last name comes from) and the other 7/8ths is Filipino. Like Hermana Blanco and Hermana Fitches and Elder Master! The Philippines is representing very well.
She’s so cool, she’s making Brenda (little 8 yr old girl in the ward who is getting baptized) a lai to wear at her baptism and she gave us some candy/cracker lais when she first got here. Pictures to come.
We are officially the coolest district ever. Everyone wants to abandon their less cool districts and join ours. It’s just because we’re all friends and have a lot of fun and work hard together.
At 5 feet, she’s only an inch taller than her sister Hermana Christensen, she’s so adorable and pretty, and she reminds me a lot of her sister, except like the other side of the ying-yang because she’s sooo dark.
It’s going to be funny… Actually, it already is funny, because her Spanish is still just a work in process, people look sort of surprised when she has trouble speaking in Spanish but the huge white girl next to her is doing just fine. We will have fun this transfer. She’s so fearless though, we’ve already made her share the spiritual thought totally alone at several member lessons and she’s doing great!
Our trio is so chill. This is by far the most chill trio I’ve ever been in. Probably because all three of us are pretty laid-back people.
Is anyone else counting? That’s 13 sisters I’ve been companions with and 2 Elders on the way home from the Airport. I counted them because I thought it was funny.
You guys are doing swords for youth conference? Is this like the sexy-Nephite-trek thing that we did a few years ago when we reenacted all the stories from the book of Mormon? Including the battles? That was so fun. Pool parties and Macaroni grill, mmmm. I missed so much yesterday daddy! Obviously, I miss you all, but especially daddy yesterday because it was father’s day and all and all the cute daddies had quirky ties on with #1 Dad or pictures of their kids and cute things.
You’re so intuitive mom. I wasn’t going to mention it, but since you brought it up, I’ve been trying to convince Hermana Taets to go see Ken (the missionary psychiatrist) ever since she got back from Arizona. I’ve had a couple of companions who’ve meet with him before and they tell me he’s a genius. He’s very good at help people take on a new perspective and he’s super nice. I talked to her about it a couple of times, but she was really resistant. She didn’t want to waste her time, and felt that since she’s dealing with it fine as long as she’s awake, she shouldn’t need to worry about spending time talking to him. But, the nightmares and some stuff that President said to Elder McGary about her (President said he got a clear prompting from the spirit before interviews that we all still needed to keep a close eye on her, because it’s just not over yet) she decided to agree to see Ken, but only on the condition that I’d make an appointment with him too. Sooo… we’ve both got appointments to go talk to Ken this Thursday. I’m probably going to see if he can’t help me figure out what I want to do with my life after I get home from San Clemente, since I still don’t know. And she’ll discuss the whole situation and he’ll do some probing and hopefully be able to help her out a lot with working through her grief.
She honestly is fine as soon as she’s showered and fully awake, it’s just late at night when she’s really tired, or when she’s asleep, or right after she wakes up that she feels horrible and heavy about everything. I think it’s her body’s way of mourning. Like I said before, I don’t think it’ll all really set in until after she gets off her mission and can’t go live with her dad and buy an old house to fix up with him like she was planning. Hopefully Ken can help her work through some of that now so that she’ll be alright later.
So yeah. We’re both going to start talking to the missionary physiatrist. His whole job is just to help missionaries specifically, and I’ve heard he’s very good at what he does.
1.83 at Mcoodonodudos was for a snack sized Mcflurry. I really like the Mcflurries, but I never get them because they are expensive and I can never finish them anyway, because it’s too much, but the snack-sized one solves all my problems there. Heehee. We picked them up on the way to the stake talent show. Elder McGary performed a rap he wrote at the last minute because they didn’t have enough people from 10th ward participating. It was hilarious because he used a word in the rap that’s really bad in some parts of Mexico and totally fine in other parts. A bunch of people complained to Bishop and Elder Mcgary asked, “Obispo… Will Mexico ever be united?” And Obispo said, “Oh, Elder… No,” with a sort of sad resignation.
What else funny happened this week?
Oh! So, on the way to the talent show, I was driving and Elder Inkley, our District leader was sitting behind me, and when we stopped at a stop-light, he (for SOME reason) decided to smother me with a bag of Jelly Beans for several seconds. To retaliate I did the best thing I could think of and slid the seat back as far as it would go while also pulling the lever to incline my seat all the way: The result was my district leader, screaming in high-pitched, pathetic agony, as he was violently pinned underneath my seat for a few seconds until I decided to be nice and release him. It was hilarious. I think he knows not to do that anyway.
We do have fun.
Urgh. Hermana Taet’s uncle Mike just e-mailed her trying to Bible bash. Totally harshed my mellow. She’s so bold teaching people she doesn’t know, but with her own close relatives and family members, she gets really timid… I guess that’s understandable. Still, this guy needs to read some Joseph Fielding McConkie (sp?). He keeps trying to get her to only use the Bible to explain, and telling her that she should only use the Bible to teach people because they won’t believe the Book of Mormon and if she wants to convince people, she should just use the Bible since people believe that. Basically, he’s just got no experience with the spirit or being a Mormon missionary. Probably not totally his own fault. Take it from me though; trying to use the Bible to prove our beliefs or create common ground will lead to more contention than anything else.
For example, experience from a few weeks ago: I usually don’t Bible bash, but one of our investigators had looked up some stuff on the church and was demanding to know where in the Bible it talks about Baptisms for the dead. I let him say (mistakenly) “It never talks about Baptism for the dead in the Bible,” about five times and he kept demanding, “Show me—show me where it talks about that!” Like I said, I didn’t immediately turn to Corinthians, I tried to just commit him to pray about it first, but he would NOT let it die, so I finally just turned to the scripture in Corinthians where it talks about Baptisms for the Dead. He had promised me that he’s be satisfied and let it go if I’d just show him where it talked about it in the Bible and NOT in the book of Mormon. I shouldn’t have shown him, but I did, and then he was just really pissed off that he’d been wrong and that I just proven to the other people in the room that he didn’t know the Bible as well as he pretended to. Far from resolving his doubt, it just embarrassed him and made him angry and I shouldn’t have done it.
I’ve had the same thing happen whenever people are like, “Where does it talk about the Book of Mormon in the Bible?” and then I show them, or my companion does and it’s the same exact reaction. It just pisses them off because they have to admit that they don’t know anything about the Bible or that they don’t understand it all. That was the part that really made this guys angry too, was that he kept trying to get us to admit that we’re just as ignorant about the Bible as everyone else. But we’re not. Sooo… sorry man.
The Bible causes so much contention. Probably because it’s translated incorrectly and misinterpreted all the time by apostate-Christian-churches.
Sometimes people try to argue with passages from the Bible… I remember one woman who got pretty angry about the ‘great and abominable church’ with ‘many harlots’ etc. because she figured it was probably talking about the catholic church, but then her husbands who was more actively investigating the church responded to her ranting with, “Well hun, that’s just historical fact. If anything it’s proving that he’s experiencing a real prophecy since all of that really did happen.” Which I always found REALLY funny, because it’s true. He still hasn’t gotten baptized because she won’t let him.
The Book of Mormon is pretty harsh, but it’s also reasonable. It just tells the truth is all. I’m here to testify of the Book of Mormon and help people receive a witness of its truthfulness. We’re not here to prove that the Bible is true. For the most part, the people I teach believe in the Bible. Good for them. That won’t save you though. It’s a decent start, but it can also be a pretty nasty snag if you’re unwilling to believe that God still has the ability to speak to us now if he wants.
That’s too bad about Bob and Lee losing their jobs! Geez, how harsh. Hopefully they’ll be able to find a new nitch somewhere soon.
Well, I’d better get going, I’ve still got to write my letter to President. I was just going to count how many P-days are left on my mission, but I’m tired and too lazy to do the counting required in my head right now. I know it’s not very many though. I’m still way enjoying myself out here and working hard, I love and miss you all like crazy!!! Mmmmwaah.
Hermana Lillywhite

Baby #2 on the way!

Fambly! (I’m forgotten how to spell familia in English. I did it, but it looks so weird… I’ll try to refrain from writing that word and I’ll just use cute, obviously misspelled words instead.)

Home sounds so wonderful. I have heard about this horrible dance that Johnny Depp does at the end of the movie—I’ve heard it’s so stupid, and for some reason, I’m like… REALLY excited to see it. It might turn out to be one of those things that everyone else hates, but I love. I have the same feeling about ‘Where the Wild things are’. I heard it was horrible, and I can’t wait to see it, because I’ll probably love it. Did you mean to write Christopher Columbus? It is Tim Burton’s movie, isn’t it? Did Christopher Columbus have anything to do with it? He’s the guy who did Goonies, right? And the first two, not-very-good Harry Potter movies? I apparently haven’t forgotten everything about the world.

Except, I saw an ad today for the Dark Shadows movie, with a picture of Johnny as Barnabas Collins and I MIGHT have freaked out in Walmart. Elder Kerr was a bit alarmed. Even more so, when he made the mistake and saying that it looked ‘like it wouldn’t be very good’ and I hit him. How dare he ruin my childhood.

I’m pretty stoked.

Aw, Marin. I love Marin. Let’s go back. That’s fun that the kids get to go visit for a while and work at their dad’s shop.

Hermana Taets is doing well. It was her father’s birthday this last week, and then it was a little rough for her today as well… she wanted to get a father’s day card for her ‘Mormon Dad’ a good friend and a good man who’s family kind of adopted her after she got baptized. She found the card that she had bought for her dad the year before and it was kind of rough on her. And she’s not sleeping well—having nightmares and then just not being able to fall back to sleep for hours. She’s very mature though, and she’s dealing with all of it as best as humanly possible. I’m really amazed by her example. I don’t think I’d be in this good a shape para nada. I’d be a mess actually.

This morning the Elder came over and I made French Toast for everyone, it was pretty fun, though our apartment isn’t nearly as sweet as theirs. They live with the Deaf Elders, so they get a TV. (The Deaf Elders need one for their personal study). We went over there to eat a few weeks ago and watched ‘Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration’, which I don’t think I saw before I went into the MTC. I always get pretty emotional watching it. It’s actually pretty well made with decent acting and menos cheesiness. Not like Legacy. It was hard though, to get too emotional with Elder Inkley playing MST3K on the love seat across from me.

Well, out one big bit of transfer news is that although Hermana Taets and I got our wish and we’ll both be staying here until the end of MY mission, we are going to be trio-training! YAY! NEW SISTER! We saw pictures of the 2 newcoming girls. They look adorable and new. There’s a Sister Porter, and we’re kind of hoping we’ll get to train her, just because Elder Porter is leaving our district, so then we can still have a Porter around which I think would be funny. We’ll see though. What’s more important than funniness is the will of the Lord.

But still. I’m very excited to get to train again before I go home. Hopefully this new chicka will be filled with greenie-fire and will keep me from going all trunky.

What else has happened recently… we saw a guy eating corn-on-the-cob, while driving. I love Texas.

Uummm… Elder McGary read like half my journal. That was weird. I think he was disappointed with all the lack of scandalous secrets.

Sorry. I’m just not all that scandalous: )

I found out Elder Kerr can do a pretty great Joker impression, so that’s been entertaining…

I’m really just excited to meet my companion! This will be my fourth trio that I’ve been in.

Also… HAPPY DADDY’S DAY, DADDY! I wanted to buy you a card today, but I couldn’t find any that I thought you would like or find funny… so, I figures I would send you a big old cyberhug instead. I LOVE you daddy, and I miss you so much. I finished making my new planner for this last transfer this morning, and for Wednesday July 28 all I’ve got down is PARTY WITH THE FAM! I’m going to work hard for this last transfer and I’m way excited to see you all again!

Hermana Lillywhite

Q.B.S.P. -New cool Spanish thing I learned.

Vuestras Altezas

Thank you so much for not yelling at me digitally about the car. I know I’m a moron, I’ve honestly been stressing about it all week… I’m going to be good from now on. Hermana Forsling diagnosed my problem perfectly once, “You’re fine as long as the car is going really fast, but as soon as you slow down/get to the parking bits, you fail utterly.” And you can tell Papa that yes my companion was outside of the car, trying to direct me. Of all the missionary rules… I still don’t have a testimony of backing. I follow the rule alright, but I’m telling you. The trial of my faith has not yielded a testimony thus far in my mission.

Remember when Hermana Christensen hit me?

Nuff said.

Home sounds absolutely splendid! That’s so fun that you got to hang with Becca and Megan and eat homemade icecream! OOOooo and pool time. It’s so hot here.

I was just talking about Idaho and Preston this week. I sure do miss going up there as a big old family… so quaint and relaxing. Looking for graves as a family is still one of my favorite activities. Don’t worry, everyone’s family is weird. Just… In different ways. Our is pretty different though. I like it: )

Prince of Persia does look pretty cool. I hope I’ll like it. I thought I remembered Jensen being all mad that they cast a white guy, but then she said that she knew all along he’d be awesome, so maybe I’m thinking of the rumors that that blonde kids was going to play Prince Zuko. Whatev.

I’m so excited to see movies… but I think I’ll have to take it slow. You understand. I want to start with the basics. Harry Potter 6 and the first half of 7, since that’ll be out, followed by the Twilight movies I missed and then maybe Lost in Austen and Taken. How’s that order sound to you? Oh. And The Last Air Bender. And Toy Story 3. Dang. Now I’m getting excited. I do so adore movies, you know. But, it’s funny… I haven’t missed them nearly as much as I thought I would. Especially not lately.

Still. That’ll be sweet.

Mom. Can I just say, I LOVE Joseph Fielding McConkie. I was reading one of his talks again this last week. AMAZING. He’s just so fuerte, I love it. I’ll definitely have to borrow that book.

What a week.

Our P-day last week was hard on Hermana Taets. A lot of people are awkward and don’t know what to say so they either end up going, “Uh… sorry your dad died!” and running away or just avoiding her completely. Pretty much it was just our district and Elder Astin who would talk to her at all, and Elder Astin admitted that he was afraid to go up to her, which is why it took his like 20 minutes. So sad. They’re good friends, but even he didn’t know what to say to her. She’s having her 3-year baptismal birthday on Wednesday, so today I’m making her a blue cake (Devil’s food with white frosting and blue sprinkles) and putting a little #3 candle on the top.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures. These are some highlights from last week. Olivia got married on Saturday and then baptized on Sunday! It was a very nice wedding, though it started an hour and a half late which was a little stressful on everyone. The baptism was only about an hour late, which is kind of typical for bearcreek 2 ward. I’m so excited that Olivia was able to keep that goal and get baptized on the 6th as planned. She’s been waiting so long. I could just feel it though, the 6th was her fecha. She would be totally ready then, and she was! Her husband was there to show support and apparently he’s been coming with her to church. He’s a really nice guy. He’s just weighed down with religious baggage, like so many other people. God doesn’t make sense to them and they’ve been taught to believe that that is just the way it’s supposed to be. I know he’ll come around. His wife has made so many amazing changes. He’ll see the change in her and follow her example. Hopefully soon. All of their little children are so adorable, I’m so happy to have seen their mother take this step! I’d give anything for those children to be raised in a home with the gospel. Where the parents can look at them and know exactly who they are seeing.

This weekend was amazing though. The whole week really. I had an amazing experience at the temple, and man… I love Hermana Wardle and Hermana Hastings, but it was SO good to be back with Hermana Taets. She’s incredible. She’s doing great too. Nobody believes her when she says she’s fine, but she really is. She’s still sad that her father passed away, but she knows exactly where he is and she knows what she needs to do and there is a LOT of comfort in knowing all that. She told me that she’s kind of nervous that Heavenly Father is possibly just giving her a huge portion of the spirit right now to keep her cheerful so that she can keep working hard and finish her mission and that afterwards, when she has to go home and he’s not there is when she’s going to really break. I don’t know though. I think she’s stronger than that. I think she’s just surprised herself by how well she’s taking it.

I don’t think I mentioned this last week, just because I was so rushed, but there was this hilarious role reversal that went down the night that Hermana Taets came back to Houston. She was all cheerful and AMAZING like she usually is, and just talking with us about everything that happened and asking about how the area was doing, and Hermana Hastings was being REAL quiet. Finally Hermana Hastings lost it and exclaimed something along the lines of, “Why am I SO depressed about this?!”

I figured it had to be something serious if she was going to try to suck attention away from the girl whose dad just died.

I figured wrong.

She was freaking out because her district leader is kind of a jerk and she can’t get along with him. Elder Woodruff. He was in my district in Louetta. I like him a lot. He’s funny. But he IS a jerk. He just decides to harass people sometimes, for the sheer pleasure of watching them get mad. He argued with me once for like 40 minutes about whether anyone’s race/gender will change in the millennium. He didn’t do it because he actually believe that everyone will be Caucasian with perfect resurrected bodies, but because he enjoyed watching me getting more and more pissed at him as he played devil’s advocate.

I sort of knew what he was doing just because I have experience with this kind of thing. (Yeah, I’m talking about you, Foolio. Remember trying to convince me that cannibalism could be classified as a system of government?) But I still just couldn’t stop myself from citing scripture and everything to back up my point. Anyway, he’s apparently started doing this kind of thing with her and she was on the verge of tears upset about it because after getting into another argument about absolutely nothing with me that morning, he wasn’t returning her phone calls and she needed to ask him a question.

Anyway. It was all pretty hilarious because Hermana Taets was like, “Aww, it’s okay honey, everything will be alright. I’m sure he’s just busy.” Etc. trying to comfort her.

Ridiculous. Urgh. I can’t stand girls sometimes.

The members have been offering us dinner appointments like crazy. I barely bought anything this week just because we’ve got so many dinner appointments. The members are really sweet about it. Several of them have had to deal with loss recently as well. Hna. Nunez lost her two little boys, Hna. Marin’s brother just passed away and her husband went nuts and is now in jail. That actually happened the same day as Hermana Taet’s father dying, so when Hna Taets saw Claudia (her daughter) they hugged and Claudia said, “I’m sorry about your dad,” right as Hna Taets was like, “No, I’m sorry about your dad.” And then they were both kind of like, “Hey—God has a plan.” It was this great little connection they made immediately. We’re going over there tonight with ten other missionaries. Sounds kind of like a party, I know, but President gave permission since they family is in hard times and they specifically asked if they could please have us all come by. And President too, actually, but I don’t think he can make it.

Creepy nighttime phone calls: OOoo, I knew this would happen at some point in my mission.

Somebody called while Hermana Taets was on exchanges Martes (she JUST got back and they took her away from me for 24 hours. Tramatic. In Hermana Taet’s words, “Wasn’t I just on a week-long exchange?!”) Anyway, Hermana Gurney was here with me in Fairbanks and somebody called us at like one in the morning, disguising their voice and they wouldn’t say their name. I only talked to him for like 2 minutes before he hung up. He wasn’t being perverted or anything, it was just weird because he wouldn’t reveal his identity and was asking me about how to get closer to God. I tried to reason with him, “Just tell me who you are and we’ll come by tomorrow (more like send the Elders) but I can’t do much to help you if I have no idea who you are and what your situation is. Also. It’s 1 AM. Don’t know if you noticed but it is.” He got all triste and hung up pretty fast. I was pretty sure he was drunk, but the voice was just so creepy—I can’t figure out if he was talking through a napkin or what.

Anyway. I was sufficiently freaked out. Hermana Gurney asked what had happened and I told her not to worry about it and go back to bed. Just a drunk call. But honestly, I just didn’t want to scare her, because I figured if I told her that I was freaked out, she’s the type who’d just get scared with me and offer no emotional apoyo or comfort.

Also, did I mention there was a thunderstorm?

So… Couldn’t sleep for a bit. Every little sound or movement out of the corner of my eye made me flinch. I was positive the guy with the creepy voice was going to break into our apartment and rape us, so I just thought of some plans; push couch in front of door, grab bucket knives from drawers, call the Elders! That seemed like a good idea, after all, they could probably at least tell me a story or sing a song and calm me down so I could sleep. But, I didn’t want to wake them up, so instead I just prayed harder (had already been praying). I’m a rational person, for the most part. I knew that I was just freaked out for no reason, but I couldn’t get my heart to stop beating so fast. Finally I remembering my prayer going something like this, “Listen Heavenly Father, I know I’m just being stupid, but honestly, I’m scared right now, and I don’t want to be, I just want to go to sleep… soooo… I’m just going to keep praying to you until I fall asleep, so if you want me to shut up you’d better just knock me out, alright?” and I don’t remember anything after that, so I must have fallen asleep immediately afterwards: )

God is so patient with me.

The Elders said that if it happens again we should call them, and they’ll sing “Disturbia” (Elder Kerr can beat-box way good. sp? On Beat-box. So not gangsta soy.) which will not calm me down, as such, but it will make me laugh, which is almost better.

Then though, he called us back again this morning. He’d ditched whatever was disguising his voice before and we ended up talking on the phone with him for like 40 minutes, giving him all the spiritual consejo we could think of and trying to get him to reveal his identity. I’m pretty sure it’s a member. Somebody from the ward who needs some help and is too ashamed to come to us in the open, so he’s trying to get help in secret. So sad. He called at like 4:40 in the morning this time, so we just got up when we were done talking with him. I don’t know how much good we did. Every suggestion we gave him was rejected immediately. “Prayer/study/saying my name/not drinking doesn’t work for me.”

Whatever. I’m glad he called back, because I’m a lot less worried about it now. I just hope we can figure out who it is so we can really help him. It’s hard when he won’t reveal any personal details at all.

Thanks so much for sharing with me about what’s going on and your thoughts. I really do appreciate it a lot. I know I’m coming home soon, but it doesn’t really feel like it yet. I’m excited to keep working hard to the very end. I really love the letters I get from everybody. They have this amazing recharging effect. Oo. Tell Chantal I’m sorry, I just remembered that I wrote her a letter like three weeks ago and it’s buried under all of my stuff on my desk. I haven’t finished/mailed it yet.

Anyway, I love you all very, very much. And I miss you like crazy. Whenever anyone asks me what I’m going to do after the mission I’ve taken to exclaiming, “I’m going to talk with my family.” And then they’re usually like, “…and later?” to which I respond with a shrug.

HERE’S ALL MY LOVE COMIN’ AT YOU FROM HOUSTON! PEACE YA’LL! Yeah, North Side.

Mwah&corazones

Q.B.S.P. / Hermana Lillywhite

The Car Thing

Mommy thank you so much for your letter this week! It really meant a lot to me to have your testimony of the plan of salvation in writing. I got to read it yesterday at the memorial day BBQ that we had in Bearcreek park. The missionaries in Citiview where nice enough to bring it up to me from the office. We've got temple today, so I don't have a ton of time to e-mail, but the Zone leaders told us that we were good to come beforehand to the college to write e-mails. Anyway, I loved your letter and also the package. The lotion and E-oil you sent is amazing. I've only been using it for a couple of days, but it's so nice. My poor scarred legs aren't so bad. Except that now I'm working on new scars since being attacked by more bugs. Man. They are huge here.

My week was a little stressful, but good. Hermana Hastings and Hermana Wardle are great. The three of us had some great experiences together, but I'm so happy to have Hermana Taets back. She came home Sunday night--I drove down to the airport to pick her up. She's really excited to be home soon. It's kind of hard for her, just because she wants to get right back to work and normal life and everyone is treating her really weird. Either not talking to her at all, or just not talking about anything except that her father's just died, which, thank you, she remembers. She's so strong. It's a real inspiration to me. Obviously she's in a lot of pain and needs some love and understanding from everyone, but I'm of the opinion that healing comes with time more than anything else and that the best thing to do is just seguir adelante, and she feels the same way. It was kind of a rough first day back for her, but she's cheerful and I know she'll be fine.

She had a lot of stories from last week. I haven't gotten to hear them all yet, just because she's barely been back, but she has told us some wonderful/funny/heartbreaking things about going home to be with her father in the hospital for his final hours and then having to plan and attend three very Catholic funerals in two different states.

Mother, remember how you want to be buried in a plain pine box? Just letting you know, it's the most expensive one apparently. Everyone was a bit slap-happy at the funeral home after having cried all weekend. The funeral director was getting annoyed.

There was a place on the program to put a scripture but Hna suggested that the put ACDC lyrics instead since that sort of fit her dad's personality a little better. Her aunt said, "As long as it's not highway to hell." which made everyone laugh pretty hard for a WHILE.

Also, she got blessed by a Catholic priest at the funeral with her nametag on and everything, which she said was the most surreal experience that she had to try not to laugh during.

Right after her father passed away her younger sister said, "Dad always said that if anything every happened to him, everything we would need is in the acorn." So they ran home to search his house for this ceramic acorn that they both remembered seeing floating around somewhere, kind of. After tearing the place apart, they finally found it and figured out how to unscrew the bottom of this big old rock thing that kind of looked almost like an acorn, they found his will inside. ('There's always money in the banana stand.")

The saddest part of the whole experience is that as his legal... decision making person... Hermana Taets had to be present at the hospital to make all the medical decisions and this includes when they told her that they could either do a surgery that might save his life, but leave him as a vegetable or let him pass away. She said it was the most horrible, nightmare part. She was agonizing other the decision for a long time. Or what seemed like a long time. She prayed and basically just said, ‘I don’t know what’s right. Please help me do what’s right.’ And when the moment of truth finally came, she had a total stupor of thought, and the only right thing seemed to be to let him pass away.

We had a good long talk last night, and we decided that she probably won’t really start grieving until after her mission, when she goes home and has to try to pick up where she was without him. They were planning to buy a house together and fix it up.

I know that she’ll be fine. She’s very strong. Even if she doesn’t have much spiritual support from her family, she has a double portion from the Lord. And we’re all here for her tooJ

Urgh… now to business.

Mom and dad... I don't want you to start dreading my letters or anything, but I've got more bad news. This isn't nearly as bad as last week's bad news, but it's still going to be pretty upsetting to you. You see, I got in a car accident and it was totally my fault, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to need to pay for the damages. And when I refer to myself, you'll understand that I have no money, so I'm really refering to the abstract concept of you, probably needing to pay for my mistake and then I pay you back at a future date when i eventually have a job/money again. I was REALLY hoping to avoid this situation through my whole mission and I was doing great until the I hit that pole. Basically what happened was... well, I don't really know actually and neither does my companion, we've been trying to figure it out since it happened. Remember how I used to misjudge the distance in the garage way bad and hit the mirror? Well, the mirror was fine, but I was at this weird angle so I mised the mirror and than somehow managed to get the car jammed awkwardly between this pole that holds up one of those fake-roofs in apartment complexes, and the curb. So--I couldn't go up onto the curb at all, because it was too high and the angle was such that the car wouldn't let me, and I couldn't move backwards and forwards in either direction. Long story short, we eventually got the car unstuck, but not before scraping up the side something nasty.

So nobody was hurt ect. But I've been commanded to refer to it as a car accident, Because I had to fill out a report and they made fun of me when I called and said, "Err... I had a car thing."

"...A car thing?"

"Yeah."

"You mean a car accident?"

"...No... It was just..."

"Is the car hurt?"

"Yes."

"That's an accident, Sister."

Okay. So I'm kind of a dummy sometimes. I don't know how much it's going to be, but it's dented up all ugly. I really hope it's not too bad, and I'm SO so sorry. I don't know why I'm not black dotted already. I really thought they would just take away my driving privileges, but they haven't. I made Hermana Hastings drive all last week as a result of just not wanting to deal with it. Plus, she likes driving.

I really have to go. Sorry to close on a flat note there, but I figured I should let you guys know… The office will probably be calling you as soon as they figure out how much is owed.

I love you all! (I hope you still love me:)

I miss you, but I’m working hard. I won’t be ready to come home until the very last second and even then… I know that there’s a part of my soul that will always be here. But I am excited to see you all again.

Love, Hermana Lillywhite

P.S. A lot more stories later from this week... but I've got to go!