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