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