Letter #26

Dear family!

It sounded like it's been an eventful week. That makes me
very happy and excited; I'm so excited for Preston!!!  I wish I could
have been there....I've learned.........that's the hardest thing about
being on a mission -- is missing important milestones like that.
Missions would be so much easier if your life at home just stopped. :)
But I guess that wouldn't be a sacrifice then...

I'm so happy for you, Preston. :)  I wish I would have gone through the temple
more before I left. I went like 2 weeks before I left? That's one piece
of advice....go through the temple as much as you can before you
leave. Cause you probably won't go for the next 2 years. Unless
there's a temple in your mission? But enjoy and love the temple while
you can :) It's the best part of your P-day at the MTC. I'm glad to
hear there were a lot friends and family there to support you. It's what
I imagine heaven to be like :)  Being around everyone you love and
cherish.

So I forwarded you a couple pictures from last P-day!  We went gator
hunting :)  It was so much fun :)  Scary but FUN!!!  And on the way home
we found this little rest stop and got to talking to the owner and he knew

we were Mormon (because of our name tags) and said last time there
was a hurricane or something, we handed out tooth brushes in their
community :) So he let us go in the back and see all those animals for
FREE!!!...so it pays to be nice :)

He let us hold a little gator and a 250 pound snake. It was so cool. I
have a ton more pictures I'll send next week; but I forgot my camera
cord. Sorry :)

So this was an interesting week! It’s really hard living with another
set of missionaries -- not that I don’t like the sisters. I love them!!

The Spanish sisters are the best!  I'm actually picking up on a couple
words; daddy would be so proud :)  But because we're both living out
of our area, we're trying to coordinate plans together and helping
each other out. It just makes it hard, because we're just on different
schedules. Like for example, they have an extra hour for language study
so most of the time we'll do mapping and updating roster during that
time instead of being out :(  But then when we don't have anywhere to
go for dinner (this new ward isn't great at feeding us yet :( ) we
have to bike an extra 10 miles to and from our apartment.  So we're
losing more of our time so that's kinda frustrating and tiring!

So we've been trying to plan ahead; but some days you never know what
is going to happen. Missionary life is so unpredictable  and then at the
end of the day, we end up talking about how our days went.....and most
of the time I feel like I’m comparing myself to them cause they have
more investigators and people they're meeting with. And we're just still
getting to know the area, the members, and the investigators that the elders
handed off to us. So I'm trying not to compare myself to others and
just continue to try to do all I can do.  Because that's all I can control.

But we had a really neat experience this Sunday.  We had a lady just
show up at church. She was walking around and happened to find our
church and decided to come in....that never happens, you just read
about that happening!!! She just showed up; so we're meeting with her
tonight to answer any of her questions and hopefully begin teaching
her :)

~ Her letter ended here. Not sure if she ran out of time or what happened! :)