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