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