25 August 2009

Hello!

Sounds like you've had a busy week. But it sounds like it's been a good one as well. Ughhh I'm wasting time because the chairs are too short and my keyboard is weird.

So, our letter experiment last week went pretty well. We strictly observed quiet time and had our lights out before 10:30 and I got mail every day last week. Pretty cool.

This week has been a busy one. Last Tuesday night we heard from Spencer V. Jones of the seventy, he was a pretty great speaker, we enjoyed him. He told us to look up and listen to what comes down. He also told us to love the people, but not too much because we want them to stay in their own countries and build the church up there instead of fortifying Utah. We sang where can I turn for peace in choir, and it was a pretty arrangement.

We finished teaching our progressive investigator Patrizia, and the real Patrizia in Italy has a really cool story. She became a member about 12-15 years ago. She was taking an English class that was taught by missionaries and she hadn't heard them say much interesting until they gave a spiritual thought on priesthood blessings and she asked them if they could give a priesthood blessing to her son who was sick and they did. And she had a really cool spiritual experience and joined the church and is now the happiest person ever apparently. And she and her husband have brought like 30 families to church, and a couple of years ago they were talked about in a priesthood session of general conference. They had their picture shown and a letter read in a talk about food storage. Way cool.

We got to act the parts of people that our teacher met when she was in Italy doing finding work. I was Maria, a girl about 22 years old who had about 15 boyfriends and looked really happy all the time but really she was miserable and had very low self-esteem. Kind of a fun part to play, I got a limerick written about me by one of my teachers saying I'll make googly eyes at people but I'll still remember that I'm there to teach the gospel.

Sunday was great. In Relief Society we were told by the MTC president that if an elder has a crush on us we are encouraged to be visibly disgusted. We were also told that we're supposed to be conservative and attractive, I wonder if he knows that the pictures that show us what to wear haven't been changed in 20 years.

Then there was the Oquirrh Mountain Dedication, which was beautiful. It was kind of cool, it really did feel like an extension of the temple, missionaries do know how to be quiet sometimes, crazy. It was a beautiful dedication, and a lot of great talks. We were really lucky to get to participate in that, I think it makes up for the fact that we haven't had an apostle come talk to us yet.

Our fireside Sunday was awesome too. Steven Allen spoke, he had spoken before and we really like him because he makes us sing enthusiastically and apply the hymns. We sang count your many blessings and wrote down blessings, and "family" didn't count, we had to write down individual names and all, but we only had two minutes split into 30 second intervals. And then we watched the mormon commercials and talked about the little catchphrases at the end. It was a lot of fun. We also ushered on Sunday night, we were on the stadium seating so we really didn't do too much, but it was kind of cool, we didn't have to wait in line to get seats.

This computer doesn't seem to like me, it tried to steal my email...

Anyway, I might write more in a bit but my companion left stamps in the laundry room and we have to go get them.

Life is good though, and I love you guys a lot. Hope everything is great.

Oh, and I did get the package, thanks so much.

Love you!

Eliza

By the way I think my scripture might be D&C 6:36, but I'm not positive and I'll send a more definitive answer this evening, I saved five minutes just in case.

I love you guys, have a great week!

Eliza