HELLO!
I don't know why but I just wanted that to be really big and really pink.
Hello,
world! I am in a super weird mood today! Fo' realz. I don't know why. I
think I'm just super hungry. My breakfast...was...six oreos.
ANYWAY.
This week was super awesome and SUPER busy! Lots of things happened.
But for some reason the only things that are coming to my head are FOOD
RELATED, so...this email might have a theme.
PS: I forgot to say I LOVE YOU ALL!
Okay.
Let's talk about Thursday. OH MY WORD, THURSDAY. Wait...just kidding.
It was Friday. Sorry about that. We'll come back to Thursday. But
FRIDAY, OH MY WORD, FRIDAY...
As
missionaries (and humans in general) the most skipped meal of the day
is breakfast. Hermana Homer and I have been pretty decent at eating in
the morning, though. Sometimes we'll make a smoothie, or we'll have some
toast or fruit...well, Friday morning we went all out. HUGE smoothie,
half a peach each, and a egg and cheese breakfast sandwich. The works.
It was so good.
Then we had our Weekly Planning meeting with the Zone, and at noon
we all went out to eat together. We decided on Thai food (yay!) and we
were seated by this pretty grumpy Asian lady who seemed super
inconvenienced by the size of our group (it's like....oh, you don't want
our hundred dollars we're about to drop you? Okay, we'll find somewhere
else then...) Anyway, I got yellow curry and I ate the WHOLE plate.
Hermana Homer only ate half, but I ate it all. (By the way, just so
everyone knows, I've gotten a lot better about controlling my portion
sizes. It's just...THAI FOOD. For the first time in more than a year!)
Then we worked for a few hours, and our dinner appointment rolled up at 5:00,
so we go, but they were late getting the food, so they just bought a
giant pizza for us to share and asked if we could eat it somewhere else.
We were like...yes. So we just got in the car and started driving to
our next appointment, which was with a member of the ward that we were
following up with on something. So we're cramming this pizza in our
mouths, IT WAS SO GOOD, we ate the whole thing in like five minutes. We
were feeling pretty good, getting a head start on the evening, feeling
definitely full...
Well,
turns out that this member didn't know that we were just there to
follow up on something, cause we walk in, and instead of sitting in the
living room she guides us to the kitchen table where there are two
heaping plates of DELICIOUS Mexican food for us. She thought she had to
feed us dinner. So Hermana Homer and I look at each other, we're like,
here we go, and we sit down and eat. And as we eat we are following up
on that thing we came there for, so that we lose the least amount of
time possible, and let me tell you, that food was good, but holy cow,
one egg-sandwich/giant-smoothie/
But!
We had a super fantastic week! Other than eating three times my own
weight in a space of 16 hours, we found some really cool investigators!
Actually, they were all referrals, and they are SO GREAT!
We
have one woman who has known about the church her entire life. She has a
pretty rough past...like, pretty rough. But she found the light of the
gospel a few years ago, she knew it was absolutely true, and knew she
needed to go through a repentance process. This process included
jail-time for a few years. I still don't know what it was, but she
recently was released and is cleaning the rest of it up so that she can
be baptized as soon as possible. She didn't miss a week of LDS church
her entire time locked up. She has a boyfriend who we are teaching as
well, and he's awesome! They are both so happy and friendly, you'd never
guess that she's had the past she has. He has just started
investigating, but they are absolutely amazing, planning on getting
married beginning of October...so keep them in your prayers!
We
also have Ivan, he is the grandson of a member in the ward. He and his
cousin, Daniel, are about 14 years old. Daniel was baptized, but he is
super less active, runs in a rowdy crowd, doesn't have the best
background from his parents. They are sweet though, and have really
started opening up to us in the three times we've gone by. Ivan wants to
get baptized, we'll just have to keep him moving forward!
We
also have a referral that we haven't met in person yet who has already
put herself on-date, she wants to get baptized! We don't know too much
about her, but she's actually English speaking, but requested sister
missionaries, and we're the ones that can reach her easiest with where
she lives, so we are going to be teaching her! So cool. We're excited to
get to know her better.
Yes,
Dad, I did sing in the Mission Tour this week! (That was Thursday,
August 28th. Remember that date.) We met with Elder Schwitzer. It was
amazing. (Fun Fact: I just accidentally wrote "Fun Face.") (Real Fun
Fact: he was directly involved with most of the decisions made
throughout the Tuberculosis adventure. He didn't remember me by name or
anything, but he remembered all that drama and said that he's glad to
see that I'm okay with the switch, and that he can now sleep at night.
He's super friendly and nice.)
Anyway,
preparing to sing for that event was really stressful. I wanted to sing
it so good, I wanted everything to be perfect. We practiced for hours
the week leading up to it. We recorded ourselves, listened to it,
changed it a million times. It got to the point where I just wasn't
feeling it anymore. I was so stressed out about it. I wanted to call
President Toone and tell him never mind. My voice was acting up and
cracking, I couldn't hit the notes I wanted, it just wasn't working.
We finally got to Thursday morning, and Hermana Homer and I got there early to practice. It wasn't even 9:00am
yet and my voice would not warm up. I stood at the piano, plunking out
the notes I was going to need to hit, failing miserably, feeling
discouraged, and suddenly, hardly controlling what happened next, I said
"I can't do this!" and I sat on the piano bench fighting tears.
My throat was welling up inside me and I knew that if I cried, my voice
would not come through for me. Poor Hermana Homer, she came over and
offered to pray with me, so we did, but I couldn't keep my eyes closed
because I knew I would start crying if I did.
We ran through it a couple times, and it still
wasn't working, but I had calmed down a little. As we finished up the
second run-through, though, said a prayer in my heart, begging Heavenly
Father to help me do this.
Then, I had the strangest out-of-body experience.
Suddenly, I was back in La Florida, sitting on my top bunk. The lights
were out, and my roommates had long since curled up into their beds and
begun to fall asleep, but I was still awake, kneeling, face against my
covers, choking on tears. I don't think I'd even started praying yet. It
was August 28th, 2013, and I hadn't understood a word anyone had said
to me for a solid 12 hours. I didn't know what I was getting myself
into. I remember silently sobbing, and the words bobbed around in my
head, and I finally whispered to myself, "I can't do this!"
Then I was back in Arizona, and I stood up straight,
soaked back the tears, and stopped practicing. I prayed in my heart,
"Heavenly Father, please help me. I know I'm not perfect, I know I
probably won't ever be in this life, but you've strengthened me
before--do it again. Teach me something more."
Then we went in, we sat down, we prayed, and Hermana
Homer and I got up and sang. And my voice cracked once. And Hermana
Homer missed a few notes. But I felt it. And I understood, a little
deeper than before, the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
He's not there to make it perfect--He's there to
make US perfect. And we only become perfect by going through the
perfection process. And that's not over night. That's not even over
thirteen or so months. That's an eternal goal. And it's not easy. But He
will never--NEVER--leave us alone. He is teaching me.
I love you all so bad. I miss you tons!!!!! But I
love being a missionary! I may come home some time, but there are two
parts of the world that will still have my heart! Sorry about that.
KEEP READING AND PRAYING AND BEING THE MOST AMAZING PEOPLE IN THE UNIVERSE.
Love, Hermana TBhomas
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