Hi family!
Mom, I'm not saying this just to rub the Utah weather in
your face... but I love the weather here right now! It's like what Spring is in
Utah: just need a cardigan, maybe a jacket, and you're comfortable all day.
While I love it now, it's making me nervous for how hot the summer is going to
be. I've been warned multiple times, but I guess I won't know how much I hate
it until it happens. :)
I think I told you last week, but we went to the Stockyards
on P-day last week! I didn't really know what to expect, or really even what
they were, but it was pretty fun; very Texan. A member, named Kayla, took us.
She's 18, just graduated from high school, and is moving to Orem in a few weeks
to go to UVU. She is awesome! She loves the missionaries, and apparently is
still really good friends with a bunch of them that have served here in Chapel
Creek. She took us out to lunch at Chili's, went grocery shopping with us, and
then at the Stockyards, she bought us ice cream, wooden postcards (I'll be
sending that home as soon as I remember.), and gave us each a t-shirt from the
shop that her family owns down there. She's the best! So, the stockyards are
basically where they have a bunch of longhorns--from what I can tell, basically
just for show...?--and they've made it a tourist-y spot with lots of cute
little shops. The parade the long horns down Main street twice a day, and we
had just barely missed it when we got there. Guess I'll have to go back... The
streets are all brick, which I loved, and it just looks like it's own little
town made up of like two streets. I have a couple pictures that I'll send when
I have a way to do so. :) So yes, the stockyards were fun! Being in a
tri-panionship meant that laundry, and pretty much everything, just took longer
than we expected, which put us behind schedule all day. We got back from the
stockyards later than we wanted, but I thought it was worth it and the
day ended up being fine. Just a little stressful.
My companions: I started out with 2, and now I just have 1.
We knew coming into this that Sister Tullis would be leaving us eventually, we
just didn't know when. We had been anxious and waiting for days, and then we
got a call from the District Leader saying that our interviews with President
Sagers would be on Tuesday (tomorrow). We were convinced that that meant Sister
Tullis would be with us at least until then! Then the DL asked her to do a
training at District Meeting on Wednesday. We figured that meant she would be
staying until at least Wednesday now! Nope. President called at 9:00 on Friday
morning, and Sister Tullis was picked up and transferred at 11. Yes, 2 hours to
pack everything after living in the apartment for 3 months, but she was a
champ. As soon as she left, our apartment was MUCH quieter! Sister Tullis was
always singing or cracking jokes and laughing. No longer. It was a little weird
to get used to, and we still miss Sister Tullis, but Sister Karratti get along
great and we are managing. Sister Tullis was the one who had been in our area
before, so luckily we got a week and a half with her to show us around and
introduce us to a bunch of people, but now we have to rely on Ben, our GPS/best
friend, and hope we have everyones addresses written down somewhere. It's fun.
:) Sister Karratti is great! She reminds me of Lexie Wright, she looks a lot
like her and kind of the way she does things... I don't know how to explain it.
And I haven't seen Lexie in years, so I could be totally making things up! But
then her personality reminds me of Kaitlin Jackman. But, like the less anxious
version of Kaitlin? Sister Karratti is a little more go-with-the-flow than
Kaitlin, but they kind of think the same way.
In other news, we eat with members pretty much every night,
and it's all been good food. On Thursday night, we ate with the Petersens and
she made this little cheesy pasta stuff, salad, broccoli, and tilapia. And
guess what? I LIKED IT! Yes family, I ate fish and broccoli and I liked it.
This mission is already doing great things for me! Haha she also gave us super
good chocolate cookies. Bonus. We like them. :)
I don't know if I told you or not, but you can probably
figure out that we don't ride bikes much. In fact, I haven't ridden mine yet.
Our area is this weird, long, skinny shape so it's hard to bike a lot of it.
Luckily, there is only one area in the mission where sisters can only ride
bikes. Otherwise, I'll have a car. My bike was hard to put back together. I
don't know if the UPS guys messed it up, or if it just got messed up in
shipping, but my companions and I could not get it to work. Luckily, our bishop
is a big mountain biker and offered to help us, so we took it to him. He had a
hard time figuring it out, so he took it home for the weekend and he told us
today that he has it all put together and working. He's awesome!
We had a crazy experience this weekend! Mary, one of our
investigators, had a baptism set for Saturday, the 26th. Her sister, Rachel,
who she lives with, texted us on Tuesday and said Mary wasn't ready to be
baptized. We didn't get a chance to get over there until Friday afternoon to
see her and kind of figure out what was going on. At that point, Sister Tullis
was gone, so Sister Karratti and I had to get to know her really fast! Haha we
read from the Book of Mormon with her and talked a little bit. All of a sudden
Mary starts crying and says, "I'll do it. I'll put Him first. I'll be
baptized. I'll be baptized tomorrow." WHAT?! Sister Karratti and I
kept our cool, we were kind of stunned, but inside we were freaking out and
wondering if we'd still be able to get everything arranged. She hadn't been
interviewed, we cancelled the reservation for the ward building, and had no
program lined up. Everything needed to be done in a mere 24 hours! We realized
that she hadn't quite had all of the lessons she needed before being baptized,
so we gave her the summarized Spark Notes version of tithing and fasting. We
read through the baptismal interview questions with her. It was crazy! We were
so excited, but didn't know if we could get everyone on board that fast. We
called the DL, and the Ward Mission Leader. They were both a little flustered
by how fast this was happening, but were willing to make it all work. Awesome.
We had coordination meeting the next morning with the ward mission leader and
we helped him finish up some plans, and then went on our way. Our first
appointment for the day was with Mary, to help her get everything ready. She seemed
a little different than the night before, but I figured she was just tired (we
had woken her up from a nap.) We made sure she was ready, and then went home
for lunch and to a couple more appointments. At about 3, an hour before her
interview was scheduled, we get a text from Rachel saying Mary wasn't ready...
What...? So we raced back to Mary's to talk to her. We figured we'd be able to
help her remember how she felt the night before when she decided and was so
excited to be baptized! It didn't quite work though... Apparently her mom, who
is Catholic, found out she was being baptized and got kind of mad and didn't
think Mary needed to be baptized, yada yada yada. That was really hard for
Mary! Like, really hard. She know she needs to be baptized, but couldn't
accept it yet. That was hard, but we realized we had to give up on it for now.
We were pretty bummed... But we just kept working, and went out to Braums (WAY
GOOD!) for dinner. We went to church the next day, yesterday, and talked to
Rachel. Apparently Mary had MOVED out of our area that day. We saw Mary at
about 3:30 on Saturday, and then we have 9:00 church. Sometime in there Mary
moved to Aibileen. Super weird... So Friday and Saturday were emotional roller
coasters, but we're still working. We met some cool people because we kept
working instead of being at the baptism. I would have preferred a baptism, but
we still had some cool stuff happen. :)
Okay, wow. That was really long. Hopefully it makes sense...
Haha. I've gotta go, but I love you all! Missions are hard, but I'm learning
and happy. Keep praying for me; I pray for you guys everyday.
Love,
Mal
OH! Will you email me my mission picture or just one of me?
I need it for my mormon.org profile.
Also, what is Papa Joe's address? He sent letters through
Dear Elder when I was at the MTC, but they have his Draper address on them.
That does me no good.
No comments:
Post a Comment