Look for the lie......hehe

Well, it's hot outside, but it's raining, so we get to jump in a puddle, don't we?

Sorry. I'm pretty sure...Erin is the only person that will get that. But I remembered it last night and laughed pretty hard and have been bursting to start my letter out with that. (Don't disappoint me, sis.)

Anyway. How's it going, my people? As honesty is an attribute of Christ (though not listed in PMG,) I am going to just tell you all straight out that I did not write a single word in my journal this week. A SINGLE WORD. But don't worry. I wrote down some things this morning to stir my memory. I'm sure it will be enough to stir your interest. 

Let's actually make this into a game. I am going to sneakily hide one lie in this email. All of you have to guess what the lie is. Okay? Let's go.

First of all, my companion has gotten me HOOKED on something SUPER. WEIRD. So you all know how I don't like popcorn? Well, okay, I don't like it very much...but, when presented with the opportunity to eat it, I CAN'T STOP EATING IT. It's the worst, because I don't even like it. At all. Anyway...I mentioned that to my companion, and she told me that the first time she went to the movie theater in Provo (she lived there for a little bit,) she bought popcorn and then immediately asked her friends, "okay, so where's the salsa?" They all looked at her really confused...yeah, I guess in Mexico they put salsa on their popcorn?!? What the?? Anyway, she bought popcorn this last week and she squeezed a LEMON on it and then poured HOT SAUCE on it! I was dumbfounded, and she just went about making her little weird popcorn, stirring it up and all...so then...I thought...I would try it...

GREATEST. THING. EVER. Can you get in trouble for smuggling hot sauce and half a lemon into a movie theater? Because THAT is how it is DONE. They know how it is. 

Last week, I had a little extra time on the computer, so I went through and sent every single email I've ever written home to my iPad, and spent a significant portion of the day reading them. IT WAS HORRIBLE...AND AWESOME. A few things:

1) I would like to apologize to my posterity for leaving behind a nine-month-legacy of getting pooped on.

2) I am never attempting to speak Spanish in these letters ever again. "Yo Ustedes Ama"?!?!?!?!?! WHO THE HECK DID I THINK I WAS?! 

3) IT HAPPENED.

...what happened, you might ask? Well. A few weeks into the MTC I wrote a letter about bugs. We had a bit of a cockroach problem in our house, and I had to sweep up all these dead mosquitoes and I was gagging...anyway, at the end of that letter, I said that one of my goals during the mission was to become a "FEROCIOUS BUG MURDERER." (I do believe that is an exact quote.) 

Well, who would have thought that this goal would be realized, not in Mexico, not in Chile, but in TEMPE, ARIZONA? We have cockroaches in our apartment. Nothing awful, but...okay. It's awful. Just because I HATE BUGS. (Not as much as I HATE BIRDS.) But do you know who is even MORE traumatized by bugs?.....MY COMPANION. Oh my word. She squeals. You'd think a thousand of them were crawling up her arm. Anyway, at first I tried to push them aside, like if I saw one, I pretended like I didn't see it, and hoped someone else would kill it. Then one night I was laying in my bed, and I thought about how horrible AWFUL ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE it would be for one of them to be crawling around in my bed...so...the next day...in the name of sleeping peacefully...I became the Tempe cockroach murderer. I have killed SO. MANY. COCKROACHES. IT IS UNBELIEVABLE. 

So. That. As for people we are teaching...I LOVE TEMPE. We don't have a ton of people, but the people we ARE teaching are incredible. I love them!! We are teaching a girl who is 17 and her boyfriend (I think I've talked about them...she has a 3 year old daughter...?) and they are AWESOME. She is from Mexico and he is from Guatemala (I LOVE GUATEMALANS.) Anyway, they might be getting married on the 14th of June, so if you all could pray for that, that would be amazing. They are the cutest couple and WE LOVE THEM SO MUCH. 

We are also teaching a man named Juan. He's a crack up. He lives with his parents and his sister and nephew, and he always answers the door without a shirt on...and he always goes back and gets one on. (And it's not in a creepy way. He just doesn't like shirts.) Anyway, he's overcome a few addictions and is really looking for a deeper meaning in his life, a way to change. We are teaching him and his sister, and they are awesome! Pray for them, too! 

President Toone went to a big mission president's conference the other week with Elder Bednar, and this last week we had the chance to meet with President and hear about what counsel Elder Bednar gave. He told us a LOT of things...things that really, really changed...A LOT for me...but there's one thing in particular that I wanted to share. Elder Bednar told the mission presidents that he wanted the missionaries to feel SUPER "WEIRD." In fact, he wants EVERY MEMBER OF THE CHURCH to feel that way. Isn't that an odd word to want to be known as? "Weird"? But Elder Bednar said that if we do not feel "weird," we are not living the gospel of Jesus Christ.

How many times have you tried to comfortably live the gospel, and maybe compromised a little? I know I have a thousand times. BUT FEEL WEIRD, PEOPLE. Jesus Christ himself felt weird. He knew He was different. He was supposed to be. And as members of His church, WE ARE ALSO EXPECTED TO FEEL WEIRD! Weird, huh? 

Elder Bednar also said that the future of the church does not consist of chapels or meeting houses. It only consists of prophets and temples....what does that mean? A direct quote from President Toone: "The home will be the MTC. It will be the mission field. The persecution is going to increase. Something is coming. It will come down the the essence of our personal lives and homes." 

Now don't get all worked up and think the end of the world is coming next week...but I believe that what he said is true. The world is not going to accept the teachings of Christ as willingly in the near future. This time is a preparation for that. What we do now, how we live our lives, how we prepare our children will have a direct impact on our posterity's safety in these worsening times. Live the gospel! Make it a part of you TODAY. Start converting yourself fully to the gospel NOW! You will have so much security! Christ is the rock that will not be moved...build yourself on him! 

Well, that's my spiritual thought this week. I love you all so much! I can't believe...I've been out...for...more..than...three...months....ugh. I am going to stop looking at the date...

PRAY READ ATTEND LOVE (pray read the scriptures attend church love everyone the whole shabang.) AND WRITE (me.)

LOOOOOOOOOOOVE, Hermana Thomas

PS oh my gosh I forgot to tell you guys this week a GIANT APE CRASHED THROUGH OUR ROOF AND TORE UP THE FURNITURE AND ATE ALL MY HONEY BUNCHES OF OATS I'M SERIOUS IT WAS so weird.

So......(letter from April 21, 2014:-)!!!

So let's get to the nitty-gritty (still haven't figured out if that's how you spell "nitty"...? Help me someone.)

9 MONTHS. NINE. COUNT 'EM. Holy cow. It seriously feels like two weeks ago that I hit 6 months in the mission. I can't believe how quickly time flies here. Why didn't the hours feel like minutes when I was sitting down practicing for my piano lesson? I remember wishing SO BAD that I had a remote control that fast-forwarded life for those few hours I spent practicing. Can I have a remote that slows time down a little, now?

My nine-month mark was a little different than I'd imagined it would be. Usually that's the point where people think, "yeah, I kind of get this mission-thing," they've kind of been around the track a few times, they get it. Well, welcome to THAT IS NEVER MY LIFE. I never know what's going on. Here I am in the middle of Arizona, learning new mission rules, new traditions, a new language (MEXICAN SPANISH. IS SO. DIFFERENT.), etc. But if there's one lesson I've learned in my life, it is to love where you are while you're there! So that's the plan. And so far, it's worked out pretty nicely.

So many things have happened in the last nine months, including...drum-roll, please.................TUBERCULOSIS. Yes, that happened. And, I am happy to announce that this week I finally started my treatment! Wahoo! (Mom can take a big, huge sigh of relief.) 

Hermana Berbert and I spent some quality time getting totally LOST in Arizona together to retrieve this medication. And while I'm glad (hopefully) that this saga in my life is finally coming to an end, let me tell you, it was not as easy as a "snap the neck" ending. It took Hermana Berbert and I TWO DAYS to get it all sorted out. Her companionship has an iPhone, so we put the address to the doctor's office in there, but lo and behold, thanks to my eternal pot of guess-what-it's-not-that-easy, the phone died in less than ten minutes of our journey, and we were left to fend for ourselves in the midst of the Gilbert Arizona deserts. Luckily, we pulled into a photography place with a REALLY nice lady who has a LOT of Latter-Day Saint friends, and she was more than happy to help us out. 

With her directions, we found the doctors office. The doctor is awesome, he's a member and doesn't charge missionaries anything, so that part was nice a quick (but not without my terrifying fears that someone somewhere in that office was preparing a needle-injection for me while I was unawares.) Anyway, then we went and took an x-ray, where there was confusion about some insurance, then we went out to search for this B-6 Vitamin in 25 mg that we have to take with out medication to avoid the side effect of our limbs going numb (kind of important,) which, SURPRISE, almost no one sells in 25 mg. Anyway, through this whole adventure, I just reminded myself how thankful I was that I was getting the help I needed. It was actually fun...Hermana Berbert and I rehashed them ol' Chilean memories, and talked about how excited we are to work in Arizona. 

Really, this mission is so cool. It's so different, but it's so cool! I love it here. I love the President and his wife, the missionaries, and especially the people! Arizona, man...it's its own thing.

This week was also scattered with some more "Baby's First"s. Hermana Berbert and I "stumbled upon" (code words for "searched embarrassingly-diligently for") a Chic-Fil-A...chicken nuggets have never tasted so heavenly. I also indulged myself with my first pint of Ben and Jerry's cookie-dough ice cream. (#health) (It was me and a spoon. That was nice.)

Hermana Arellano and I got to help with the Easter Pageant again! It was so awesome. There were two highlights of the night. I will start with the spiritual one: we were all given little hand outs to give to people, inviting them to visit the Visitor's Center. I got to a group of women, two daughters and their elderly mother, who I assumed were members since they had been to the pageant for years, now. However, when they asked me if I was just visiting and I replied that I was a missionary, they asked, "what does that mean?" and I realized that these three women were actually not members! I talked with them for a little bit about the church's missionaries, and they asked me if it was hard to sacrifice my life before to be doing what I am doing now. I told them that it was a little hard, but that I LOVE what I'm doing SO MUCH now, because I've seen the joy the gospel brings into my life, and I love to share that with others. One of the women immediately said, "I can tell, because there is a light around you, and you glow!" That comment really touched me. Sometimes I think that I take the gospel for granted in my life, but we really do GLOW when we live it! Other people notice it! It lights them up! This comment was one of my favorite moments so far in my mission.

The other highlight is that Hermana Arellano and I "stumbled upon" (remember the code word) a sheep to pet! Cast members were walking around before hand letting the kids touch real, live sheep, and we found one! THEY ARE SO SOFT. The rest of the night, Hermana Arellano was explaining how she believes wholeheartedly that every apartment in the mission should have at least one sheep, as a reminder to find the "lost sheep." She made a good case. 

My companion also has a habit of calling herself "Sister Pooh." For a while I thought she was saying "Sister Poo" and I kept wondering why on earth she was saying that, but I finally asked this week, and she said it's because she's gotten so fat on her mission that her shirts bunch up on her stomach like Winnie the Pooh. 

Well, everyone, the mission is awesome! But even more awesome than that is the gospel of Jesus Christ! I love it! It has the answers to everything, it can heal every wound, and it brings light where there is darkness. Two days ago we met a woman who has harbored some really negative feelings for more than two years over the death of her young son. She doesn't understand why he was taken from her. It has obviously left some serious wounds in her soul. We are so excited to go back and teach the Plan of Salvation...that her son is not lost! That in fact he is SAVED through Jesus Christ. I love the gospel!

Keep reading and praying and serving! And LOVING. I loved President Monson's simple talk about Charity and Love. We can all do better.

O ;PBR UPI S;;@

...okay. that sentence was "I LOVE YOU ALL" with my fingers on the wrong part of the keyboard. But...it conveys the message, I think.

LOVE, Hermana Thomas