June 17, 2014

I started out last week by announcing at our Sunday-night sisters' family prayer (we have it every night- we sing a song, tell of miracles throughout the day, then we spin a hat to see who prays, then everyone compliments the person who prays) that we were entering my Birth Week and that everyone must participate :) It worked well because everyone was very aware of when my birthday was. 

That Tuesday (when I said I was going to a Mennonite town to shop), we went to Cantril, Iowa to the Dutchman. It's this great Mennonite store with everything your heart could desire. The senior couple who took us told us to get whatever and however much we wanted. So we are pretty set for the next little while. :) We then went to a Mennonite cheese factory- oh man they make good cheese.

Wednesday, we found a baby bird outside the Visitor's Center! Oh so cute. That morning, we went to the YPM's district meeting and did some fun roleplays with them- practicing how to change casual conversations to gospel ones in 45 second. We did questions like "What color is your toothbrush?" and "Do you say fireflies or lightning bugs?" and "How do you feel wearing a pioneer dress all day?". It was quite funny. 

AND THEN IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY. My companions from the MTC (I'm "real" companions with one of them, and I room with the other) made me french toast and eggs in the morning, then I got to take the sacrament (spiritually reborn on the birthday! yeah!), then they announced my birthday in Sunday School so I got to ham it up, we took a mission picture, I served in Carthage, some seniors brought over Hawaiian haystacks, then we went to district meeting where a couple made me a totes awesome cake and gave me balloons, and that evening, a some sisters and I learned some dance moves (which I will never be able to implement). Scatter some cards and "happy birthday"s and such throughout the day, plus being a missionary, it was PRIME.

I have a lot of pictures to send for next week's blog!

June 10, 2014

I know I don't share enough spiritual stories (literally, it is because they happen so often that I can't write them all) but here is one! Cool story about the Women's Garden. A youth group came in from Richfield, Utah, and Sister Etherington and I started talking to a group of 6 girls. We invited them on a tour of the Women's Garden and they readily accepted. We talked to them a lot about becoming that "virtuous woman" that the scriptures talk about- and about how that foundation that they are building right now will support them throughout the rest of their lives. We got to the Courtship for Eternity statue and I felt prompted to share my philosophy on marriage- that it is not "he completes me". They are not half of anything. They are lovely, upstanding, whole daughters of God and that they should look for other lovely, upstanding, whole sons of God. We talked to them about one more statue and explained to them that if they continued to the end of the garden and looked back, they would see the Savior standing there, and he had been there the whole time. We let them have that moment by themselves and we went inside. A few minutes later, they came back in the Visitor's Center to find us and half of them were in tears, they said they felt the Spirit so strongly. We got a picture with them. It was so sweet!
A couple days later, we were assigned to Pioneer Pastimes, which is where we play games that the pioneers once played, and I met a girl whose aunt and uncle were in my ward in Texas! Cool coincidence.  That same day, it started pouring so badly that we had to shut it down and a sweet family helped us pack up very quickly so we all could get out of there. We got quite wet.
A group from BYU called the Living Legends came. They do Native American, Polynesian, and Latin American cultural dances- it's amazing! Their performance is centered around the pride cycle in the Book of Mormon. The Polynesians have a unique yell (and each one of them is different, ie Tongan, Samoan, Tahitian, etc) and Sister Maile was doing it during the Polynesian dances- it was so cool. The night after we got home from seeing them, she taught all of us how to shake our hips like they do, but of course we're all a little too white to do it right. Living Legends also did a sociable for us and sang. It was interesting- looking at all the women in the group, I could see which ones had been on missions and which ones hadn't. The ones that had, had something "more" about them. It was verrrrry interesting. 

Yesterday, we did service- cleaning the motel rooms that the pageant casts stay in. Sister Etherington and I weeded for three hours. The seniors we were working with fed us Casey's (a gas station that is famous for it's pizza, seriously, it is so good) pizza a root beer floats. I can count on one hand how many times I've had a root beer float in my life, which is a shame because they are dang good.

June 3, 2014

We had transfers and boy was I wrong- in a very very good way! I thought I would stay with Sister Maile in the basement of the Hatch house. We all went to the Seventies Hall for transfers and President announced the new companionships. When he got to me, he started talking about Teaching Center (previously named Call Center), the significance of it, etc, and I have got major ants in the pants at this point. Get on with it! Then he announces that Sister Etherington and I are companions!!! Get OUT. She was my companion in the MTC and now that we're "real" companions, we'll get to hit our year mark together. And my twentieth birthday (which is on the 15th ahem). The picture is on our first full day being companions and we were walking home from the Visitor's Center. Believe it or not that was at like 8:30 at night.

On Sunday, we went to Carthage (how it normally works is the Carthage sisters will come up to Nauvoo to serve in either the VC or sites and some of the Nauvoo sisters will go to Carthage and some will stay in Nauvoo. A lot of things in this mission are complicated so I hope I explain and represent them correctly) for the fourth week in a row and it just so happened that it was the very first Sunday that the YPMs were performing their Carthage vignette. It talks about the events after the martyrdom. They did it three times in a row so everyone could see it and I cried my eyes out all three times. Good Ghandi it was so spiritual. After the second time, Sister Etherington mentioned to me how she wished a non-member would come to see this. And who else but a non-member comes for the last performance? A young guy named Dan happened to be running by the jail and thought he would stop and come in- just in time for the vignette. After it, he enthusiastically agreed to coming on a tour with us- it was great! We gave him a Book of Mormon afterward and we got his phone number. He said he didn't want to be converted (he's a strong Catholic) and we explained that our purpose as missionaries is to, first and foremost, strengthen peoples' faith in Jesus Christ. He was chill with that.

Sister Etherington and I work so well together. Sunday (at Carthage) and Monday (at the Visitor's Center) we've just been busting our tails and seeing miracles right and left. I'm so stoked for the rest of the transfer!!

PS this cat used to come to our house in the mornings and go running with us. Seriously. His name is Alfredo because of his color. He disappeared a while ago and we found him on our walk home!