Missionary Picture #2 (December 6, 2010)

Missionary Letter #10 (December 6, 2010)

a few nights ago, the night after sis k got here, she was showing us these hand warmer things that you put in boiling water to heat them up. and so she put them in the boiling water, forgot about them, and went to bed. with the stuff still on the stove. then i wake up to the morning alarm, get out of bed with my duvet around me and start praying that i can wake up. i hear my companions talking and sis g goes downstairs. i smell something funny. they keep talking and i'm like, why are they talking instead of praying?? then sis g comes and taps me on the head and is like, "what are you doing??" turns out, it's 11:47 at night, the smoke alarm went off! sis g fixed it, sis k woke up for a sec, asked what the smell was, and if the window could be opened. and i'm just saying my morning prayers. hahaha! can you believe that?! we've been cracking up ever since. i just roll on the ground and start praying. my goodness.

so last week we had to come up with a zone challenge. did i tell you we told everyone that they had to sing at one house when they picked a street? so anyway, we were doing that last night, and we just kept singing at a lot of houses (in three-part harmony. yay!) and the first house just said thank you and closed the door when we had barely started. what? we didn't know what to do! they even had christmas lights up! then another house with an old lady told us that it was too early for that. what? it's december! tons of people have christmas lights up! then we went to another one with a young mother who was excited and ran upstairs. we thought she was going to bring some people down to listen but she got some money to give us. and we were like, what the heck? we don't want money. so we talked to her for a bit. then we went to another house and he tried to give us money too! so we asked, okay, why do people think we want money? is that what people do here? apparently 12 and 13 yearolds do that! how dumb is that! they like ruined caroling so we can't even go around singing. so dumb. we might carry around a sign that says, "we don't want money" or something.

today at zone meeting they asked us to do a special musical number "with a twist" so sis g showed us a hula dance. paha! so we're doing that in a few minutes.

i feel like the most i've learned here is the universality of the message of the restored gospel. helps me to not be apologetic because i'm not saying anything that won't help them if they want to find what will truly help them. and of course that it's all about their choice. so that's good to remember when we have things happen like george. boo! hope you all have a wonderful start to the christmas season!

and goodness the ducks goin' to the natty!!! that's SO COOL. i'm jealous i'm not there! that must be so fun!

love you all so much! happy christmas!

The Ducks would be the University of Oregon football team that are going to the National Championship game. We're real excited Duck fans!

Missionary Letter #9 (November 30, 2010)

it's transfers this week. sister g and i are staying in canterbury, but we're getting ANOTHER sister! her name's sister k. she's so cute, and she was trained by sister j as well! she's from japan and is tiiiiiiny. perfect for that japanese family we can't communicate with. i liked having just one comp, i have to say, and was looking forward to it, but i don't know. i guess this is what the Lord thinks is best right now.

k, cool story: we were waiting for a bus one morning and this old lady comes up to us and is just like, i didn't know there was a church here! she went for a while in london, never got baptised, but her daughter did! then she came to church on sunday! a very interesting woman. kinda weird,  but she's cool.

sis g was cracking me up on thanksgiving because she read pres monson's talk about being thankful and it said good always outweighs the bad. so she wrote down everything she WASN'T thankful for and then wrote everything she was thankful for! and of course the good did outweigh the bad. so if you're ever being really real, it'll always be good, you know? dwell on the bad a ton isn't real either. anyway, i thought that was hilarious. it's something that at first you might be nervous to do. but that's dumb, because then that's saying it's a possibility that your life really is awful. haha! well, as long as you do the second part with a thankful heart.

things are good.

love,
sister emma