Sick in Aurora

Email #4

Yes, finally an email from me! Last Monday, Sister Hoynacki and I couldn't email because our car had some weird problem where I'd buckle my seatbelt and the seatbelt indicator would still beep beep beep beep...it was very annoying but it took 4 hours to fix and basically cut into our email time. And, guess what? The seatbelt's STILL not fixed. Oh well. Now we try to sing songs to the beat of the seatbelt indicator. It's kinda sad.

The weather here for the past 2 weeks has been crazy! The first two days were about -15 degrees F but the next day was 50 degrees F. It's true what they say: if you don't like the weather, wait 10 minutes! But then that backfires because if the weather's nice and you wait 10 minutes, then you're outta luck.

But there's so much that happened in these past two weeks! Sister H and I started with absolutely NO investigators. Because our ward boundaries are VERY small, the elders that were already in this ward had only 2 investigators. But at the end of 2 weeks, we officially have 6 investigators! From 0 to 6! The Lord really has guided us directly to them! It's amazing!

Oh, but this past week was pretty physically demanding on me because...yes, I got the flu:

Monday - my wisdom tooth swelled up during a lesson with a less active member. That was embarrassing. I was teaching with a lisp and a lopsided face. But (GROSSNESS ALERT), during the lesson, pus flowed out of it and the swelling immediately went down. Fortunately, there's a dentist in the ward that we had dinner with on Tuesday and he gave me a syringe to clear out the gunk.
Tuesday - woke up with a sore throat.
Wednesday - began coughing
Thursday - got a fever of 101.2 while I was at zone conference from 8AM to 4PM. And my body was all achy. Oof.
Friday - fever be gone! But I continued coughing with a horrible sore throat.
Saturday - woke up congested and weak all around. I ended up staying in all day until 4PM to rest up. I felt so bad for Sister H, though. She had to be inside with me the entire time!

Email home #3b: In Denver

(Continued from 3a: On the way to Denver)

Denver all started with finding our new car (red Subaru #OHYEAH), slipping on ice and scraping my knee (#livingontheedge), getting lost on our drive to the completely opposite end of the mission, and also realizing that Sister Hoynacki and I are actually new sister missionaries in the ward we were placed in. This means...both of us don't know our new area or ward very well.

So, our area book is completely empty and the elders in our ward already only have 2 investigators. We split up the area so that we actually ended up with NO investigators at all....We have a lot of work to do.

And it's already been hard work. Getting the 8.5 hours of sleep last night helped but I'm still very much in a daze from lack of sleep. I feel like I'm not 100% myself because I'm so tired, which might be a good thing, but still. Sleep is my biggest temptation right now.

On the other hand, the members' house we're staying at is very nice and they themselves are very hospitable. They generously fed us dinner last night but I basically said nothing because I was just SO TIRED. I couldn't keep my eyes open at all. Not even when the elders came over to explain the ward a bit. Sometimes I even pretended to be looking down at the papers they gave us just so I could get a little shut-eye. They probably noticed anyway, though....

The members' basement was renovated just for missionaries. They'd apparently been waiting for new missionaries for 5 months now! The basement has a nice little bedroom with a large closet and even a dresser. The bathroom is also really nice and so is the living room area where there's a table for us to study on.

Email home #3a: On the way to Denver

(Sent February 4)

HI PARENTS!

I am officially in Denver! I arrived yesterday (Monday), which is going to be my usual P-day. They allowed us to email today because we just didn't have any time to email yesterday and I'll tell you why: 

The other Denver North sisters and I all woke up at 2 in the morning to get to the mission office by 3:30. The other 4 sisters generously woke up at 3 to come help us move our luggage to the bus taking us to the airport. We hugged and said our goodbyes. It was a really sad goodbye. We had all grown so close to each other in just 11 days. It was like we've known each other for our entire lives...we have a theory we knew each other in the pre-existence and planned to meet up at this time in our lives.

At the airport, Sister Mills and I were able to get some quarters to use the payphone and call our families. (Btw, note to future missionaries: buy a prepaid phone card at the MTC Bookstore with your MTC card because it's free. I wasn't told this so I had to pay for my phone call home). Anyway, when you picked up the phone and I heard your voices, I pretty much wanted to cry. I don't think I realized how much I missed you both until I talked to you. The payphone counted the seconds pretty fast, though. It said I had 1:30 minutes left when, in reality, it was probably half that because of how fast the timer was going.

But the last 10 seconds was probably the saddest thing ever. I could only say "bye" and "I LOVE YOU" so many times up until *click*...it turned off.

I got a middle seat on the plane, which normally would suck but I got to strike up a conversation with the other two passengers. They were both really nice. We probably would've continued talking had we remained awake...

Email home #2

(Sent February 1)

From one of the Sisters

Herro famiry!

I'm finally towards the end of my MTC training! I leave Monday morning at 3:30AM. Ugh. But, it's awesome. I've met almost all the sisters going to Denver (North) with us so it's going to be a missionary party on the plane! hehehe

K, hmm, what to write about. There's seriously so much that goes on in one week I can't remember it all!

We began teaching our TRC investigator (basically an someone who's hired to act as an investigator; sometimes they're real investigators, though; either way, we have to treat them like an actual investigator)! Sister Mills and I began with the Plan of Salvation because our investigator wanted to know the answers to the basic questions of "what is the purpose of life" or "why are we here" or "where on Earth did we come from" (except not really on Earth...see what I did there?). But whenever I teach the Plan of Salvation / the Plan of Happiness I always remember how I've lived such a privileged life because I've grown up with the gospel in my life. I already know the answers to those questions that seem to be the biggest, most profound questions of life simply because I was blessed with the word of God early in my life!

Here's out my first Sunday at the MTC/ on the mission went:
1. Last week, our entire branch (of less than 20 elders and sisters combined) were all asked to prepare a 5-minute talk on baptism and the Holy Ghost. I prepared a couple of bullet points. I had a weird feeling that I would need to be prepared.