January 22, 2014

Hello Everyone!

Our friend from Vanuatu left yesterday. She came and found me as I was about to get in the shower right after gym and told me she was going. We hugged and she told me, "Thank you for encouraging and supporting me. I love you." I told her I was so glad to have met her and wished her luck. She started to walk away and then turned back to say, "You are my eternal sister." She said the whole thing with a lot better English than normal.

This morning we went to the temple again. We made friends with this lady who works in the clothing rental area, who has a daughter serving in the same mission as Sister Lefler (Adriatic North). Apparently she'd also talked to my will-be companion (whose name is Sister Schofield), because she already knew everything about Macedonia when I told her, and this morning when we went in she grabbed my hand and said she'd told Sister Schofield she'd met me. "I told her you were cool! She says hi and that she's excited and waiting for you. She's been shuffled around so much, I think she'll feel like her mission has officially started once you get there." I told her about how I had started my mission papers in June, and it had taken so long to get them in because of doctors messing up my records and stuff, and how if I'd have gotten them in on time we could've been in the MTC at the same time as one another. "I wonder why the Lord wanted it that way," I told her. She gave kind of the same theory I'd thought of myself, "Maybe something will happen or you'll meet someone or move on your way in or out, or her way in or out, who knows."

The temple is such a good place to be. I was thinking today while we were there for an endowment ceremony. Before I had ever been to the temple I remember hearing about people learning things at the temple, and now that I've gone to the temple myself I see what they mean. The Spirit of the Lord is in such abundance there. I've been able to think deeply about ideas I've received in the temple that I would not have thought of otherwise. The scriptures make more sense to me now. Next Wednesday will be the last time we'll be able to go for a year and a half almost, which makes me so sad. Anyway, after the endowment ceremony we (some of the others from our zone who were in our same session) ate in the temple cafeteria. Easily the best food we get all week. Me and Sister Lefler split a huge waffle and I ate some real eggs. 

We should get our travel plans soon, and I'll be able to email you again and let you know when exactly I leave. 

Well, no one's really "replaced" the Polskis, but we did get two new Croatian sisters and one Slovene elder. They're cool and I like them. I have heard from Sister Stratton and one of the Polish elders, too. Sister Stratton sent us the coolest email this morning, though. She has Celiac disease and always has to be really careful about what she eats. Her last two weeks here were really rough because she'd been accidentally ingesting wheat and felt really sick. She normally brings her own piece of bread for sacrament and just has to remember where on the plate it is so she can eat it. She said one week in Poland she forgot to bring bread, but she really felt like she needed to take the sacrament that week and just prayed that it wouldn't make her sick. She ate it and was completely and totally fine. She was super happy, and decided to see if she could eat other things without feeling nauseous. Basically she's now been eating pizza, kebabs, and chocolate muffins out her eyeballs and has been completely normal. The subject line of her email was,"I'M HEALED!!!!!!!!!" What a miracle. It really is amazing and everyone in our zone thought I was being sarcastic at first when I looked up from her letter and said, "Sister Stratton has been cured of Celiac disease." I wanted to copy and paste a scripture, Alma 38:5, which is about the Lord healing us of our afflictions if we have faith, but the computer is being dumb. That story helped my faith so much. And receiving so many letters from the people I love every week, it was just awesome this morning with everyone sharing their news. One of the new sisters said her friend emailed her and said she'd started praying again, after eleven years of not doing so.

I have to go soon but I wanted to tell you something funny/sad. So, at the MTC they hire actors and actresses to talk to the missionaries about the church. They told us all on the first day that they wouldn't entrust real investigators' salvation to us, but I guess three elders in our zone didn't get the memo. They came in our classroom yesterday and started energetically telling us about how "a guy who's girlfriend sent him to the MTC to learn about the church" had talked to them and that they'd been able to get through to him and set up an appointment with him. None of us yet have had the heart to tell them he isn't real.

обичам тебе!

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