May 9, 2014

Goodness gracious I am a lazy blog writer. I would never succeed as one of those happy homemaker Utah moms.

Alright so we left off at the airport reunion, yes? Well after that it was announced that Sister Maile would be my companion and my greenie. I'm training her! She's Tongan so this is how every conversation with senior missionaries goes:

Senior: "Hi sisters. Sister Maile, where are you from?"

Maile: "I'm from California."

Senior: "Where are you from originally?"

Maile: "I was born in Hawaii."

Senior: "No, I mean originally?" 

Maile: "I'm Tongan."

Senior: "Ohhh! That's wonderful!"

hahahaha everyone wants her to say she's from Tonga.

Fun fact about Tongans that I learned the other day. The younger generation gets gold teeth as an accessory. Sister Maile has one tooth that's outlined in gold. I got a Rolo wrapper and made myself a gold tooth so I could be an honorary Tongan. Pictures to come ;)

After a couple weeks, all the second-summer sisters (meaning those who were here last summer versus those who just got here for their "first summer") got their callings. Sister Etherington (one of my companions from MTC!) and I are over Call Center! I remember thinking last year, geez, I hope I'm not over call center next year. And ta-dah! I'm actually really happy about it. Both of us feel that we can make call center so much better. Call center is where we do our outside-of-Nauvoo proselyting. It's how we make baptisms happen!

The seniors have been glad to have us back. They say we lower the average age of the mission drastically. :) They've also started a thing where they provide a meal for us every Sunday so all 19 of us can eat together once a week. It's so good. And Easter was outrageous. I think we still have some candy lingering around here.

We did a cool roleplay with the first-summer sisters. All of us oldies dressed up as investigators from our outbounds and wandered around the Visitor's Center (henceforth known as the VC) so they could practice contacting us and teaching. Sister Searle went to West Virginia and apparently every stereotype you've heard about West Virginia is true. hahahahahaha.

We do a thing called Nauvoo On The Road. One or two companionships of YSMs (Young Sister Missionaries, which is us) and a few seniors take a trailer and go to surrounding areas of Nauvoo, up to I think an hour away. We do all the fun pioneer stuff, like their pioneer games, how they made ropes, candles, bricks, etc back then. Sister Maile and I went to one that was at a Civil War reenactment. So cool! It was the first time I had been on Nauvoo on the Road and didn't feel out of place because of my pioneer dress. AND there was a half-Friesian that someone used for the reenactment. Stop it. He was so beautiful. I totally ditched on our stand to go pet him. :)

Okay, highlight of my LIFE. We got to watch a recording of the new British Pageant which is coming from England this year. Oh man. It was SO GOOD. No, more than that. It was phenomenal. AHHH I am so excited for anyone who comes.

This monday we went on a three mile handcart trek in our pioneer dresses. We stopped at various points along the way to have spiritual messages and such. It was awesome! Again, more pictures to come next week when I get around to taking pictures off other sisters' camera.

Tuesday, for a bonding activity, we all took the color personality test. I'm a yellow! Which was no surprise to any of the sisters. :) If you know about the test, I was 3 red, 5 blue, 12 white, and 24 yellow.

That's all, folks!

~ Ashley