Numb toes

The dance analogy for this week will be simple because I am out of time. I wore my pointe shoes today for the first time in weeks - and subsequently I have numb toes. I need to wear them more. But once the numbness fades away, I know I'll be happy, because I'll have finally practiced.

It's been a good week. I honestly can barely remember it - thank goodness for planners. Time is racing faster and faster. I keep trying to ignore the fact that November is almost over - but little reminders keep showing up: trunky papers (mom's note: I believe that this is a letter from the Mission President which reminds her to keep going until the end, and possibly some instructions for preparing to leave the mission), departing temple trip, college class selection. I wish it would all disappear sometimes.

Just a couple of fun events from this past week to share:

Last Monday we had the chance to go and help our Relief Society President at her bakery. We got a little taste of what it would be like to be Cake Boss - not really. Her bakery was a lot smaller than that. But it was fun to help make cupcakes and mix batter.

We also met a new family this week - the husband R requested a bible. When we visited to drop it off, we also gave him a Book of Mormon. We visited later in the week and met his wife - J. She's had a long search for Christ and the gospel. She loves the Bible because she didn't know it at all before. She also has super strong morality and isn't afraid of what other people think. They have a lot of potential and we're excited to teach them some more.

We also have another investigator we're excited about - L. We met her months ago, but not a lot was happening up until this week. When we visited a few days ago, she randomly mentioned that she had read the Book of Mormon - happy dance! It is so cool to see her start to progress :) The church and the gospel will bless her life a lot. 

There are good things happening in the work. I'm so grateful to be part of it and to have this time to be a missionary :)

Costume sorting

One opportunity I enjoyed while dancing at Dance Concepts was the chance to help sort costumes. It was most enjoyable for the Christmas performance because it was more of a puzzle. Costumes for Spring recital and competitions come individually packaged and all that needs doing is attaching a pair of tights and identifying the dancer they belong to. Christmas is more complicated. Dance Concepts has a storage room of all the costumes we use for Christmas - bins and racks and garment bags - there is so much fabric. So the sorting is done by costume, size, color, etc. In the end, there is fabric everywhere and you end up a little overwhelmed. But when things finally come together, it's no problem at all.

So my use in this dance analogy was just to express how crazy this week has been- and each different thing was a single type of costume that needs sorting. But as always, it has all been  a wonderful adventure, especially watching things come together. To begin:

Meet Ro Thomas, newest member of the Texas City Branch

​What a wonderful step this has been for her - and Satan fought it every step of the way with work, school and family troubles. Even sleeping late. But good triumphs and Ro was able to be confirmed yesterday. It's been a unusual experience working with Ro. The love I feel for her is different from others who have been baptized, but still just as strong. I think it's in part because we didn't have the normal struggles with her of overcoming bad habits and learning to keep the commandments. She came to us totally prepared, so we didn't have to fight the same battles. But I'm sure there will be plenty in the future - we all have them :)

We also had a wonderful zone conference this week. I always feel so spiritually uplifted coming out of zone conferences and ready to take on the world. I feel especially privileged because President Hall likes to show us clips from the Seminar for New Mission Presidents. This time he showed us some of Elder Holland's training about suffering the will of the Father. One of my favorite thoughts that he expressed was that the use of the word "suffer" was a deliberate choice. In suffering the will of the Father, Christ literally suffered. He said that it is only logical for doing the will of the Father to include some suffering - because Salvation isn't cheap. He also expressed that agency would be an utter disaster without obedience. We are seeing that more and more in these days. Obedience is so critical. Following the zone conference I've been making an even greater effort to make sure that I'm as obedient as possible.

One different opportunity we had this week was a swap and shop put on by the relief society - called My Sister's Closet. Basically we accept donations of clothes and other household items for a month before, and on the day of the donations are laid out in the main room of the branch building. The community and other members can come and take what they need/want. We had a good crowd, some that literally took piles of clothes, and afterwards still had clothes leftover. The missionaries were told to browse and take what we wanted. I have some cute new shirts as a result :) It was a cool experience though, not for the clothes, but seeing the gratitude of those that came. Some really needed these clothes and it made such a big impact on them. It was a wonderful experience.

So all in all, the work is going well. We're seeing a lot of good things happen, and the Lord is behind it all. 

At the Last Minute

One thing that drives me nuts in when dances are changed at the last minute. Either the choreographer will have a new idea to implement, or the stage won't be adequate for the needs to the dance so it will need some last minute alteration. It takes a lot of work to be able to remember the new choreography and to get in enough practice before the performance. However, these last minute changes can sometimes make or break the dance. But when they make the dance, it always feels more than worth it.

There has been a lot of last minute stuff going on this past week - the biggest last minute event - we're having a baptism tonight. Her name is Ro, and she fell into our laps. No joke. She was taught by missionaries is Louisiana for the week up until her baptism, but then stuff happened and she had to move here to Texas. But she is so prepared! It is going to be wonderful for her to take this step and enter the waters of baptism.

I've also been starting to work on returning to college, and that's also felt rather last minute.But that's a story for another day.

But the work is going well here. This email is going to be a bit shorter than most because we have to set up for the baptism in just a couple of hours and there is still a lot to do in between. 

It has been a very good week though. We've gotten to do some service and we've done a lot of good for individuals who were otherwise struggling. We also (strangely) had the chance to watch Meet the Mormons twice this week with investigators. That was cool.

And apart from the baptism, probably the biggest miracle that happened this week is with a less active family I've been working with literally since I got here. They have such strong testimonies of the gospel, but they just won't come to church. But they've made a lot of progress - they now come to Bible Studies and branch activities - still working on church though. But this last week the husband Keith told us that he's going to be getting Sundays off work soon and that he wants to start coming back to church! Best news ever!

Anyway, so the work is going well and life is too - I'm feeling much better from being sick. The work is great :)

Series of Unfortunate Events

To start off, no I am not referring to the book series. But the point I want to make is best explained by that title, and the books contribute to that point. In most media, the ultimate tragedy of a situation is only accomplished through a series of very unlikely unfortunate events that lead them there. Let me use the ballet Giselle as my example. 
Giselle is a young woman with a heart defect and has led a sheltered life - how sad! Then the prince decides he wants to go chill down in the village in disguise - nobody would talk to him otherwise because he is 1) engaged and 2) royal. That right here was just a bad decision. Then he meets Giselle and she learns to easy it is to fall in love at first sight. Then it comes out that he is the prince, and engaged, as such things always do. Well that news breaks this already fragile heart. And then she dies - how tragic! 
And that's just act 1. I won't go into the rest. But most of the tragedies that occur in ballet are possible only because of this series of unfortunate events.

So I've had my own series of unfortunate events this week. Sorry that my past couple emails have had rather depressing tones to them. This one with hopefully be the capstone and then the emails will be full of good :)
But anyway, for this week, I got an email on Monday that talked about getting the flu shot.  Sister Bird and I decided that we would get them this week. However, Heavenly Father has a strange sense of humor. I discovered that in full this week. By Tuesday I had a sore throat. Wednesday I had full blown flu - temperature, aches and all. But I woke up better Thursday, only to lose my voice on Friday.  Totally gone - I could barely even whisper. My voice is recovering now, but I sound like a teenage boy in the midst of puberty - I squeak and crack all over the place. I also cough a lot and have not been able to sleep well for congestion. It's been a fun week.
But I do know the source of the sickness. I've been helping out in nursery for the past month or so. There is almost always at least one sick kid. I guess it finally caught up  with me. The other nursery worker is also sick, so I don't feel as attacked as I did before.
But despite the fact that it's been a harder week, it's still been a good one. We had some wonderful teaching experiences this week, and one major miracle. We met and taught R for the first time - she's so cool. She's been taught by missionaries for a while in another state. She actually moved here to Texas a week before her baptism! But the move didn't stop her and she actually sent in a referral for herself that literally said "I want to  join your church". Heck yes! She's made some major changes to her life recently and is ready to start a new chapter of her life. She's preparing to be baptized next week!
The work rolls forward, regardless of the challenges that come. It's even better than a mailman - rain, snow, sleet, flu and storm can't stop it. The Lord is more powerful than they all.

Dressing Up

Halloween brings the chance to dress up - even in my dance classes. No matter where you go around Halloween time, things look different - spookier and more edgy. But dressing up gives you the chance to change who you are for a short period of time - or at least what you look like. If you decide to get really into a character, your entire behavior can change as you will it. My dance teachers used our dress up day to help us practice characters and expression through movement. If we were dressed up like a lion, they would encourage us to dance like a lion - whatever that means :) But you learn a lot about yourself as you change things up.

So there was a good bit of change that went down this week.

Meet my new companion - Sister Bird

She's from Syracuse Utah and has been on her mission for almost a year. We're going to have a good time together. 

This week has been full of adventures. For sake of time, I want to describe just three of them.

1) Asp.

Now, before anyone starts to panic, I am not referring to the snake kind of asp. I'm meaning the little caterpillar thingy that looks fuzzy but pack a killer sting. For those of you with internet access, google a picture. For everyone else, sorry :) We were doing service with a member on Friday and one of these little suckers got me twice. It was an interesting experience to say the least. I ended up having to go home and take some Benadryl - which knocked me out. It left a nice little mark on my arm though. Fun huh?

2) Branch Halloween Party. This is why I was talking about dressing up before. The branch party was a lot of fun. It was a taco bar with  a dessert contest, costume contest and haunted room. The missionaries were in charge of the haunted room. It was fun. We used partitions to make a maze and then we made sure it would be pretty dark. Then the Elders hid in the corners to jump out and scare people. Everyone who went through could choose how scary they wanted it - everyone seemed to enjoy it :)

3) RAIN

For those of you who don't know, hurricane
Patricia hit Mexico just a couple of days ago. The Houston area was lucky enough to get some of the rain that came with it. It rained for almost 48 hours straight. I don't know about the rest of the mission, but we got some flooding down here in Texas City. As far as I know, no homes were affected, but all of the rivers, lakes and bayous were overflowing and the little bay area we have had white-capped waves. We got pretty wet, but all is well :)

Its been a great week and I'm looking forward to another. Missionary work, as always, is an adventure!