ups, downs, spiders, and humidity

cool architecture in the area

more cool architecture

one more

Hedge Balls - read about those below - you'd NEVER guess what they're used for....it's NOT food.

Nauvoo Temple

School's mostly started here, so we're frequently working around when school lets out for appointments.  The college where we do our email is alive again, packed to the gills with people.

 

Oh internet. (we told her about our recent internet-outage adventures) Such difficult. Very hard. I'm glad you and the rest of the family are learning to fend for yourselves though (she was our techno-guru). I was somewhat worried about that, but it'll get done somehow. I hope that it wasn't too traumatic. I wish I could help, but alas. What a plane ride that would be. 

 

(I asked questions about her companion and the first baptism photo from last letter)

My companion's name is Sister Sharon Boone. She's from some little town in Idaho. She's the 14th of 16 kids(her mom married a widower with 10 kids, then had 6 more- what a trooper.). Hasn't done a whole of things with her life, but has had a variety of jobs. I'll be her last companion- she goes home in October. She went out not long after the age change, so she's 20 (until recently, women could serve a mission when they were 23, now they can serve at 19). Young young young (Christine is nearly 24).

My first baptism was a 13 year old named Cindy. I can't give a lot of personal information about people, since its you know, getting passed around on the internet, and we need to respect privacy, but long story short she's been taking lessons for several years.

The heat and humidity has only just picked up in the last few days, so I'm just now getting the full measure of what it is to be in hot and humid. Every time I get out of the cool car, my glasses fog up. Wow. But the summer thus far has been otherwise very mild, mostly not breaking 85 and a low humidity index. I'm told last winter was horrifically cold and I'm going to die. It's great.

Seeing more and more the importance of home teaching (male members visit with families to bring the First Presidency message to each assigned family) and visiting teaching (female members visit assigned ladies to care for, help, & attend each other and the family's temporal/spiritual needs). It's incredible for keeping people active and involved. It's a lot easier to be involved in church when you have people you know and want to see. Being accountable to the Lord sometimes just isn't enough, since it's frequently so intangible for people.

I did get those recipes (that I sent of simple meals), and come this next month when I have money again I'll try them (after I translate them into meals for one or two or so- we don't have a lot of tupperware and how often we feed ourselves is super hit or miss, so I try not to have a lot of left overs at any given time). Fun fact- we toast things in frying pans because we have no toaster. Such talents we're developing.

By the way, send stuff by the flat rate shipping boxes- the boxes that aren't can't be forwarded, or I end up paying for them so I can pick them up. It's a little silly to pay twice for something.

Every day is a new adventure. We've been trying to contact a less active that no one's met but is on the record, so we've done a little tracting around her place, and had an appointment with one of her neighbors. Despite having many cars in her driveway, no one answered the door. We talked to one of her neighbors who was sitting outside, but they didn't know much. We went to leave a sticky note on both the less active's and the potential investigator's door, when a man came up to us. The less active had a little dog chained up outside, and it was barking at us, but my companion pet it and it was all well. The man told us to back off, insinuating that we were stupid for approaching a barking dog. Okay, whatever. We asked if he was the lady's husband, to which he got super suspicious. Who wants to know? he asks. We talked to him some more, and was very rude. He was apparently "religious in his own way" but didn't attend church. Okay. We asked if he had internet and he told us that we asked a lot of personal questions. Hmmm. We gave him a card and asked him to give his wife/girlfriend it, to talk to us. He made some weird comments about not judging (though we made no comment about anything of the sort) and saw us off. It was very weird, very uncomfortable. After the fact I was a lot more weirded out by the whole thing. Yay protections of the spirit! This trailer parks on the edge of town is suuuuuuper shady.

So attached are photos of what are called Hedge balls? I'd never heard of them before, but apparently they ward off spiders and bugs because they dont like the smell, but they hardly smell at all. Not sure what to make of that. So we have two in our house now, under the sinks, for winter. Since they last clear until spring effectiveness wise(they do eventually mold, since they're seedpod type deals, but we've got them on top of plastic bags for when it comes time to get rid of them)

Attached also is some house pictures to give you an idea of the housing here. Its all really old and pretty, and some houses are very well kept, A lot of them aren't though- broken glass, sagging roofs, chipped paint, over grown weeds. What you would expect for unmaintained housing. We're finding it usually reflects the state of the family within.

One of the members fed us this awesome stew stuff, and I had the recipe, but I forgot it in my apartment, so I'll have to send it next week. I think you'd enjoy it.

So my big spiritual problem right now is the "opening your mouth and it will be filled" thing. I'm getting better, but its never as fast as I feel as it should. I cried for a little while the other day about it, so I got a blessing. More crying. Just kind of a hey, keep doing what you're doing, keep being obedient, keep being diligent, etc. It's good. I'm better. I'm also struggling with how to study, so I've been just straight reading through the Bible and Book of Mormon, since I haven't done that in a while. That's really hard at 8 in the morning when I still haven't slept through the night. I've seen that it is a blessing to stay awake; and I just got into Deuteronomy, so Numbers is done.

We went to the temple with our ward on Saturday. What a cool temple. We did go from room to room, and I saw one of the new videos, but it was weird. Also, the Nauvoo temple is TINY (as compared to the Los Angeles Temple). Its really colorful inside, a lot more colorful than LA, and of course the murals are beautiful. The ceilings are unnervingly low, except for the celestial room, which goes on forever. We might have a chance to help clean it next month, so I'm hoping to get to explore more. They have some cool stuff historically too, so worth meandering about on the first floor as far as they'll let you.

Anyhow, I love you, the Church is true, Joseph Smith was a prophet, obedience gets easier with maintenance.

Christine

First baptism, a cool church in town, and Pday

 

First baptism

 a cool church in town

 

P-day basketball game

Burlington, Iowa

Missionary opportunities come in all forms, including members. Sometimes its just as important to be able to share and edify each other- the church is meant to build us up, and buoy us up when we're weak. If nothing else, service is an act of charity, and charity is the pure love of Christ.

Burlington is nice in that it's one of the larger towns I guess, and there's higher income areas. It's a bit like Los Angeles in that there's good and bad parts of town. Where our apartment is at is nicer, and the apartment itself is very nice (both aspects are frequently untrue of missionary apartments)... But there's a LOT of welfare need here, a lot of people on unemployment or minimum wage work, etc. The education level here is weirdly low. I'm constantly pronouncing and explaining words used in the Book of Mormon and Bible because people honestly have never learned it. The schools around here aren't very good and dropping out for the usual reasons (pregnancy, drugs, etc) is pretty common. Many of them lived on the street too.

There's an area we fondly refer to as little Chicago because almost everyone we spoke to was from there. I've heard (an I don't know how true this is) that Chicago was giving a chunk of change to people who would move out of the city. But most people, the story was the same- they wanted to move out and get away from the crime. Unfortunately that means many of them are taking the gang activity with them; there were 5 murders in the last 2 weeks alone. That's unprecedented here apparently. I had to laugh though. We went on exchanges (companionships trade companions just to mix things up a little) this last weekend and both days we were walking through Little Chicago... I was totally comfortable. It felt a little like Los Angeles. But my companions, little white girls from Utah, definitely had a certain amount of anxiety in them. It helped to talk it out and change their perspective and understanding a bit, but it's still a very different world from what they were used to. We found a lot of people to talk to, and many appointments. I think my favorite part was the herd of kids we passed as we were walking. Several of the little girls, maybe 3 or 4 years old, ran up and gave us hugs and waved vigorously at us as we walked away. Little ones just know something's missing, and they're so excited to see it. These people need the Gospel in their lives; we hope we can share that with them.

The offended inactive woman and her sister will be working with us again this week. We figured we wouldn't be able to try until school started (which it does today for most schools around here), since their children were difficult to manage. The offended one is working with her home teacher, who is a trained psychologist I guess? So he's trying to help her. But they're both fighters, so its slow going. Fiery personalities.

One of my big revelations this week (and I feel silly for taking so long to come to this conclusion) was the way the Spirit works, and the way He works with me specifically. So we've always heard the Spirit is always with us so long as we're striving to do what is right, and we're supposed to listen to His promptings. Well, I've always felt more than a little deaf, and really struggled with 'what is the spirit saying?' 'Is He here?' 'How do I know this is the Spirit answering? It sounds an awful lot like myself.' So... basic equations. If we're striving to align our will with God's, trying to do the right thing, then the Spirit is promised to be with us. The Spirit speaks to us in a way we understand- ie, our own methods of talking, thinking, feeling. So... If you're striving to be as we've been commanded to be, many times those thoughts ARE the Spirit. The little good things, the details. Elder Bednar (one of the general leaders of the church who likely spoke to the new missionaries in the training center) gave a great talk on it- DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT. Just keep doing the right things, and it'll work out. 99% of the time you won't recognize it as the Spirit when it's happening. I think that's why its important to evaluate the day in your evening prayers. It's easier to recognize in retrospect. Sometimes you never recognize them, and that's okay too. So long as you keep at it. Often people don't remember the specific words anyway. They only remember how they feel.

That being said I'm still really horrific at street contacting and tracting. My application leaves a certain amount to be desired. So that's my current goal- improve my tracting. It's hard but the only way to get good at it is to do it.

I know I'm not supposed to compare myself to others, but sometimes district meetings are hard, in that it seems like everyone's got at least one big miracle a week to share and my miracles are that I stayed awake through all of my studies for the whole week. The little things. But those things are important too and there's more of them so at least I'm recognizing them and appreciating them for what they are- the Lord's help in my struggles.

I enjoy the members when we get to spend time with them- there's this returning lady who's very stereotypically black in her prayers and I love it so much because she's so enthusiastic and so devoted and I wish more people could be like that, regardless of their shade of skin.

I haven't been to the Reagan Library (Mom and Dad took the Cub Scouts on Saturday, this is a response to that) since middle school. We should go when I come back. Reagan's time was definitely different. The whole country's attitude was different. I don't know that he would have been elected now, like Obama would not have been elected then. It's a reflection of the times. I think now that I'm older, I could appreciate it a little better though. 

So much scout stuff going on! I'm not used to being so uninvolved, so I get a little excited when I run into the scouts and scout leaders on the mutual nights (church youth program nights) out here. The scoutmaster here is a riot, but we don't really get to do anything with them beyond shoot the breeze if we somehow manage to cross paths.

My babyyyyy (the blue truck was in a minor accident before she left). I hope she gets fixed- she looks so sad with her teeth pushed in. Is it at least all superficial? Nothing behind the bumper got broken I hope.

I'm doing well; settling into the schedule. It feels like I've been doing this a long time, though I have mixed feelings of "I have so much longer to go" and "I feel like I'm going home soon". The hymns aren't THAT different, but yeah, there's been a good peppering of hymns I don't recall ever hearing before. I'm coming around to the mentality that everyone keeps telling me about, so it'll start flying by soon-ish I think.

I love you! Keep writing!

Christine

PHOTOS! MTC, Provo Temple, & Nauvoo Temple/Pageants

 Sister Robinson (I think) from the MTC

 MTC Trio

 MTC roomies

Christine front of the Provo Temple 

 

Hello world!  I'm a missionary!

 

 Provo Temple

 Nauvoo Temple close up of the missionaries

 Nauvoo Temple

 President and Sister Jensen

Mission President (playing the part of her parents for her 18 months)

mail, teaching, learning, and wondering

Happy birthday to Katie (younger sibling). I wrote her a letter; hopefully that will get there before the end of the month- it certainly feels like mail takes forever around here. I received the box with my skirt in it- it took so long because they tried to forward it from the mission office, but the post office kicked it back because the box was damaged, so I had to wait until Zone conference to get it. So sad.

Anyhow! Mission life!

So a lot of teaching going on between now and last I wrote- we taught 27 lessons total this week, though most of it was my companion being really, really good at what she does, and I stand idly by with the occasional word to throw in. It's getting better, but its not easy. We've spent a fair amount of time tracking down inactives and such, so that's an interesting experience to see people who have a testimony, but aren't really doing anything with it? If you know something, you need to do something...

We have two investigators with a baptismal date- one is working on moving out of her super anti-LDS parents house so she can go to church and be baptized. The other was a total surprise- her parents are going through a bitter divorce, and her father is very anti, and so won't let her get baptized. Her mom was a member when she was very little, but stopped going at a very young age. She's since started coming back now that her husband isn't there to control everything, but she's got a lot to relearn since primary over 40 years ago. But I'm anxious- I hate it when legal things are involved, so we're praying aggressively that this all works out for them. We've got a little 9 year old investigator who's the daughter of a returning member as well, but her mom doesn't want her baptized until she understand what she's asking for. A couple of potential investigators as well, but not quite off the ground yet, so we're crossing fingers and saying prayers from specific people.

I cried the other day over another piece of mail- I love mail, and I tear up every time I get a piece, but this time I finally stopped succeeding in holding it in and cried for a couple minutes. I love all the love and support you all have been sending me, and it really helps. I'm tired, I don't sleep through the night, I'm awkward and somewhat frustrated. This is hard. But its really, really good. Its not even been quite a month since I've been gone and I feel like I've grown a lot. I've learned a lot, about myself, about the Gospel, about my relationship with God and Christ and with people around me. I'm having to re-learn how to let go, how to put it in God's hands and not worry, and how to "embrace the awkward", as my companion so aptly puts it. Scheduling and studying and coordinating with people is something I for the most part understood, but this is the first time I've had to do so much of it. My life is very regimented, but its that way because I make it so. Its very free form, because we have to plan it all ourselves. I like the service we do, and wish we did more.

To Nick and Jake, and even Katie (all three siblings), I encourage that you pray about a mission. Pray and study and wonder about it. This has been an awful, trying experience. But as I have been taken to quoting from Ron Weasley(from the part in divination) "You'll suffer... But you'll be happy about it." It's a growing experience. Its hard. But even only a month in, I see that I've grown, more than camp, or school, or anything else has ever taught me in such a short time. It's a long time. But it goes by fast. And you learn how to be an adult very quickly. It's good. I'd recommend it to anyone. "It's not about the destination, but the journey." And the journey is extraordinary.

Keep teaching, keep sharing, keep on keeping on.

First assignment....and it's NOT Nauvoo.

From Mom/editor - because we saw a photo of Christine in Nauvoo, Ill just days after she arrived in Iowa, I mistakenly assumed that's where she'd been assigned.....Nope, she's assigned nearby, and was able to visit for a special event.  I became overly excited....my mistake.  I was just glad to see her in the field!  On to the good stuff......................... 

So I landed in Des Moines on Wednesday mid-afternoon. All was fairly well, though I was baffled by the size of the airport - this is their capitol, their largest city by far (Des Moines' population is 207,000+ and City of Santa Clarita is 209,000+), and it was comparable to maybe Van Nuys airport? Tiny tiny. We rode in on a puddle jumper of maybe about 90 people. I'm a little biased I guess. Go big or go home. Our luggage ended up having to be driven to the mission home, as half of it didn't actually ride with the plane I guess? Couldn't fit all the luggage on such a tiny plane I guess. The mission home is different from the mission office apparently, and we slept there for the night. Transfers were in the morning the next day, in Iowa City; 2 hour drive. It's like the Lord likes me motion sick? But we managed to finagle it so I could ride up front and not die. Transfers took forever, and everyone was excited. I guess it would be if you made friends and since you can't write people in your own mission for the most part, this is the only time we could connect with people we've worked with before. So the new kids (including her, I'll guess) of course didn't get why everyone was laughing and giggling every time a new transfer was announced. My new companion is Sister Boone (I forgot my camera at home, so no pictures until next Monday I'm afraid! Sorry!), and we're assigned to Burlington, Iowa, which is a little less than an hour from Nauvoo.

I did get to go to both the Nauvoo and British Pageants (click here to learn about the pageants), and I'd recommend them to anyone in the area; it's really good. Perhaps if you were doing a tour of the cool stuff along the pioneer route? Very spiritual, very heart touching. Definitely good to take investigators to, since its written in the way to explain a lot of the terms and things we use.

I've been to church once so far, and they're good, loving people. Apparently it's more of an accomplishment to get so many of them to church at all. It was a tiny, tiny ward (congregation). Thought I'm under the impression the number of inactives is pretty significant.

My companion is a lovely youngin from Idaho (number 14 of 16 kids) and will be going to college for the first time I think when she goes home (after training me- I will be her last companion before she leaves in mid October). Laid back, patient, very flexible, and very helpful. The Lord has blessed me with one of the most spoiled areas and one of the best trainers in the Iowa mission, apparently. Not that I have a lot to compare to, but this does seem a lot nicer than I expected. I'm not the oldest lady serving in the mission, but I'm among the oldest.

I had my first lessons on Saturday, and I definitely learned a lot more than I taught. The first two were very pleasant, very receptive, and then the third I got laid out for a couple of reasons. The investigator had some difficult questions that she wasn't responsive to the answers to (since she'd, you know, have to change some of her life choices), and there were a million little ones running everywhere interrupting constantly, so it was hard to get the spirit in the room, let alone keep it. And her less active sister kept steering the conversation to about her and why she's not active (essentially she was offended and so won't come because she won't come to places where she doesn't like people; i.e., she's letting other people dictate her spirtuality... Apparently she wasn't seeing the Sisters for a while because one of the previous ones essentially told her some of the things she was saying was a problem, and you guessed it, she was offended... but then she was mad because I wasn't being myself'... So I'm a bit of a rock and hard place there. Because the regular me would tell her what a child she's being.) So... Lots of learning.

Surprising amount of paperwork... We will have training on the iPads in September, and I'm not sure when after that the technology ends up coming, but it would be really nice to not be killing so many trees. Our Area Book is very fat (An Area Book keeps track of where they have knocked on doors, contact information, etc...they don't want to bother people too often...). A lot of reams of paper die every year to Area books. Also I like technology and keyboard much better than people's handwriting, because a lot of people here can barely read, let alone write legibly. Our phone will also get an update hopefully soon, because it's not very good at sending or recieving texts, and it's somewhat hampering. For a people who are barely literate, there's a suprising number of people who prefer to text than to talk. I've also made more phone calls in the last two days and than I have for the past month at home. But I'm comfortable with it - probably a carry over from the days where there were no cell phones and everyone knew the dial up tone.

I've had a lot of really good spiritual moments here. I'm learning to identify those moments more readily, and am realizing just how often I normally have the spirit with me, so that's part of why I've been struggling- it's there more often than not, and it's usually only gone because its been practically specifically sent away. I liked Elder Bednar's comments on it (Elder Bednar is one of the Twelve Apostles of the LDS church - it sounds as if he spoke to the new Missionaries in the Training Center.  Click here to learn more about the structure of the church leadership). He essentially says not to worry about it- if you're living righteously, and striving to have the spirit there, it'll be there. We frequently just don't know it. Little kindnesses, little promptings, frequently go unrealized for what they are- only after the fact, if at all, do you find out.

Thank you for everyone's letters! Keep writing please!

first photograph - NAUVOO, ILL

Christine is  in Nauvoo, Ilinois!! A couple from our ward (congregation) was visiting Nauvoo as an LDS church historical site, and ran into Christine - now we know where she has been assigned! Her Pday is Monday, and so we would not have known until then. Thank you to our friends at church who took and sent this photo!

Mom is glad to see her with her official name tag....that makes it official to see her with that.

We can't wait to hear from her on Monday!

Before leaving the MTC, she purchased (and sent home) a Hymn book in German and one in Japanese....her language skills will be reinforced when she sings them.
 
click here to find out more about Nauvoo, Illinois

Short history of Nauvoo - after the extermination order of Saints in Missouri encouraged them to leave, they went to the swamp lands of Nauvoo, drained it, built a magnificent city, laid out by Joseph Smith, and created a wonderful place for so many Saints to gather.  They were eventually chased out of there, too.