June 18, 2012

Helloooooo familia!

First off, feliz dia de los padres! to all you padres out there. I hope it was so good! I hope Rod enjoyed his first Father's day as a dad (if they even celebrate it down in australia, that is...), and that eric enjoyed his, and that papa enjoyed his, and that dad enjoyed his! you are all such good ol' dads, and I am grateful for your ejemplos. also, dad, you should look at the vc director's blog...they did a little tribute to our dads on there. I think its beckstrandbeat.blogspot.com, something like that.

And so how's that for a subject line? hahahha. I will explain where it comes from. Probably the resounding highlight of this week is that Sister Cottrell has turned up with this crazy mysterious rash that keeps spreading. We keep joking that she's turning into a mermaid, and for now she's just in the stage of growing scales hahaha. But yes...poor sister cottrell, she has had so many random health problems since she got out here. I have been SO blessed when it comes to my health on my mission...I really have hardly had any problems. but poor sister cottrell...she's gotten the stomach flu several times, hurt her ankle, and lots of other things. And now, this past Sunday, she started getting this weird rash. We went to the doctor and he thought it was just an allergic reaction, so he prescribed her this stronger version of Benadryl. So she starts taking it, and it just starts making her superrr sleepy, but it doesn't do any good for her skin. So, each day goes by, and her rash has spread to cover her legs up to her mid-thighs, her arms, and this morning she woke up and it was starting to get on her face! So, I feel so bad. Because she has no idea what it is, we have to wait til tomorrow to go to the dermatologist, and it itches like CRAZY. In our lessons, she'll just be like hunched over scratching the whole time. So sad...pobrecita. So, why I start with this random detail I don't know, but it has been the fun detail of the week. She's had to take some time to sleep, to get a blessing, to buy out the entire local Walgreen's, etc, etc, so that kind of made things a little bit slow in terms of the work. But it's all good! No se preocupen. So, I'm excited to let you know when we finally get the diagnosis, if it's a heat rash, or a virus, or an allergy, or if she really is just turning into a mermaid. 

But I will tell you something cool about her having all these sicknesses. We were talking about it one day, and she was just kind of asking "why is this happening to me still?", and then we sat back and realized all of the blessings that have come from her being sick. One thing, is that since she's gone to the dr's/pharmacist's/etc so much, i've had the chance to talk to a lot of random people while we're in the waiting rooms! and help them to get familiarized with the gospel. Another huge blessing that came from it, is that back in like march, when she first got sick, we were at walgreens, and the lady next to us at the counter I recognized to be a recent convert, Lupita. I had only met Lupita once, but had talked to her on the phone, because she had moved out of the area and worked on Sundays. But I recognized her there at walgreens, started talking to her, found out she was going to start asking for sunday's off and was back in our area. She came to church that following sunday, and has been coming pretty regularly since! Not just that, but she's been fellowshipping 3 of our investigators! If we hadn't gone to Walgreen's that one day, she could very easily have still been lost by the wayside. But, she is just the opposite! cool, no?

Innnnn otherrrr news....hmm. Well, our area is doing pretty good. Our ward is still awesome, with awesome leaders and members that help us out a lot. I don't know if i mentioned that i made it my goal this past transfer to get better at delegating things, esp to members. I'm trying to really help them to take the initiative in serving & helping out our investigators, and so far it's going pretty good. But, as for investigators, we are still trying to find those prepared ones!

I will tell you about Judy...she's still awesome, but didn't come to church yesterday because she was in Phoenix celebrating father's day. But this last Tuesday we had a really good 1st lesson with her. In the middle of it, h er brother called. He is in a prison in Washington, and has been in there for like 15 years...since he was 14. Crazy, no? He still has 3 more years. But so she gets to talk to him like once every 3 months, and so when he called she told him she's meeting with missionaries, and he was really happy. Anyways, sooo yes, the lesson! Well, Judy gave the prayer at the very end, and it was SO good! first and foremost, it was a prayer that was completely out of gratitude...she didn't ask for one thing. And she said in it "i really like what I'm feeling right now, so thank you for this feeling that you're giving me, and i hope i can feel more of it.", and after the prayer she had tears in her eyes. She's so good! I love it when investigators recognize the Spirit completely out of just them having a prepared and open heart, not out of anything that we do. 

What else...we started teaching this one former, whos name is Pedro, who also seems really good. His wife and daughters aren't interested though, which is normally the opposite. He's really good...he was meeting with missionaries before, and had gone to church and a baptismal service with them. One funny thing though...us sister missionaries have to tener cuidado with male investigators hahaha. A funny story, I asked him when we first started teaching him, "Que es lo que llama su atencion sobre nuestra iglesia?" (What is it that gets your attention about our church?) and he goes "que todos son tan guapas!" ('that you're all so pretty!) hahahhaha. and sister cottrell didn't know what "guapa" meant, so she was just like "huh???" and i had to be like "alright, asiiide from guapas, what else interests you?" So, we have to have cuidado, but aside from those comments, he seems like he has a lot of potential. (Maybe that sounds really naiive/idealistic, but i'm being serious! hahahaha)

The VC continues to go well. We have a new art exhibit, by Liz Lemon swindle, called "witnesses of christ', that's really good. I love teaching w/ art! We taught one tour in there a few weeks back that was to a group of young women. The leaders said that they had had a lot of problems w/ gossiping, etc, as of late, so we got the talk from President uchtdorf, "the merciful shall obtain mercy', and picked out different sentences from it, and had all of the YW pick out a picture that portrayed that phrase. So it was cool, they all got to pick out events from the Savior's life, and how he taught those principles, and then they all shared their insights w/ e/o. Chat is also going well. So, Caitie (the lady from Washington) couldn't chat this past week, but we've been emailing. I think she actually has teh crazy pregnancy sickness thing that katie had...what's the name of it? anyways, so she was sick, but we set up another appt. She had an okay experience at church...but she did say that some of the members weren't super friendly to her, which is sad. But we've had some other really good chats. We had a chat w/ this guy in Las vegas that said he's just looking for a church that helps him to hold up his values, and he's always been really impressed by the way that LDS people live. Then we had another awesome chat w/ this lady whose mom's best friend is LDS, and she's always been super impressed by her family. She accepted missionaries, and seemed super awesome. We definitely are privileged to be able to work with people that start off our conversation saying basically "I'm interested in learning what the LDS church believes, and how I could convert." hahaha! For reals though, we are very lucky. When they say stuff like that, it's almost like "Where do we start?!" So, that's pretty sweet.

What else...Sister Cottrell and I are doing well. She's great. We had a little "heart to heart", if you will, this past week, where we just talked about our companionship and how we're going to make it work, and how we can help eachother. I feel like I'm definitely like the needy one in the companionship, but then i look at it and realize how we both have different needs, and we just got to help each other out where one falls short. it's definitely new for me/an adjustment...I feel like I wasn't super needy before my mission, but again...marriage prep 101! So yeah, since then, we've been doing really good (despite the whole mermaid syndrome thing), and she's awesome. We have the same sense of humor and the same goals, and she's just great. 

que mas...maybe I'll finally send you all some photos for once! Ok, I love you all so much. Thank you for all of your support and your examples for me. Have a great week, you're in my prayers!love love love, Sister Fors