August 10, 2009

My companion is typing away, and has been while I read your emails. Usually I print them out then read them later when I have more time through the day, but since we’re not tooo strict on a time limit because we’re not driving any where and so don’t have to worry about making other sisters late, we’re kind of taking our time, meaning that we actually ate lunch, and did a few things before coming and doing emails. One of the things we did was go to the top of the Church Office Building (COB) and took pictures. It’s kind of weird to be able to look at my whole mission from the top of a building, all but the Beehive house which was behind us. I think we could even see Welfare Square and the Humanitarian Center, which are both parts of our mission.

So this week… um… I’m very glad we have planners, otherwise I’d forget half of what I want to type at you all, if not more than half.

I’ve been working harder on eating healthily. I don’t know if I’ve really mentioned that I’ve been working on that much, but it’s been something that I’ve been doing for the past month and a half. In that time I’ve gotten rid of about 12-15 lbs, and my companions have been very supportive. I’ve noticed, now that I have very little sugar in my diet, that when I eat sugar, like a small piece of cake, that I get a mild headache, so that has been helping me not eat sugar in large doses. Graham crackers are some of my best friends, because they taste sweet but have very little sugar compared to a lot of things.

I had my first ASL tour this transfer on Wednesday, with two people who didn’t really need it, but since they had requested the tour the day before or earlier, I gave it to them. It was fine, but directly after, sister Droege and I contacted a motor coach(huge tour).I also am starting to fill in my responsibility as the American Sign Language coordinator by talking to one of the new sisters who wants to pass off Sign Language. It will be interesting, but good.

I’m continuing to learn German, and have used it, especially on Friday when I was on exchanges because sister Dröge needed to pass off English so she could pass off German, so I welcomed some people from Germany using German and mentioned where I was from, and they said something in German that I didn’t understand until I heard Sacramento or something like that and realized they were talking about visiting California. It was pretty neat. But I still have a LONG way to go. >.>

Also on Friday we had our Zone Conference, which was excellent, we had two gentlemen who are in charge of Visitors Centers all over come and talk to us about things we can do to be better missionaries here, which was mainly by not being rote and following the spirit, plus making it personally applied to them. Meaning not being Tour Guides as some of the guests call us. We don’t say the same thing over and over again because every one is different, so we need to apply it to them personally as much as possible.

We also got to see a video that’s going to be/is in buses when people come to see temple square in big groups, and from the air port so they have an idea of what they’re getting into when they arrive so they can go and find a sister missionary when they arrive if they’re not already going to take a tour. It’s going to be a lot of fun. :D I’m kind of happy that I’ll be staying another summer, just because I’ll be able to see a portion of the effects that this video will have on how guests interact with us, and so on. You all probably won’t be able to see it just now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were on youtube in a few months…

On Sunday I got to announce ASL for the first time. Meaning that after Music and the Spoken word, we go out side of the Conference Center and speak (sign) a message saying that we have tours that they can have here on temple square in about 15 different languages at that time. So basically the English sister says, “Good morning!” and every one (meaning the other sisters) responds, “Good morning!” and she continues, “Welcome to Temple Square, we’d like to invite you to join one of our complementary tours which explains the Grounds history and Basic Beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day saints. Please meet your Missionary Guide after the presentation.” And I’d translate it into Sign. My last Companion, sister Cox was the one announcing in English and it was her first time too, and she was a bit nervous, so she changed it a time or two, but it’s all good.

Today we went to the temple and a thought came to mind that all the big things in life are just a bunch of little things put together. Little things make big things, so don’t let the little things that don’t matter get in the way of the little things that do matter, because if one takes over the other, then it becomes a big bad thing.
And if that doesn’t make sense… it’s okay, that’s just how my mind works sometimes :P.

Sister Droege can usually understand me when I’m joking, or when I say something in a funny way, because she has a similar sense of humor/way of speaking, which is nice, so even when we can’t communicate as well just speaking, we can normally get our point across with the tone or what naught.

Right after the temple we had to go to a Safety Training meeting, where a woman, Tracy, came and talked to us about being mindful about our surroundings, not being naïve, try to be/look confident and listen to the spirit. Basically if we feel uncomfortable, that’s when we take action, not after words. After words it’s too late. And when we listen to the spirit, we need to remember that the spirit gives Guidance, not explanation in the majority of the time.

So just as soon as we got out of the meeting, we had a tour with three gentlemen. One of them, both sister Dröge and I didn’t feel comfortable about, so we mentioned it to the elder there and the security guy there, and had someone shadow us. Two sisters kept an eye on him and helped us in our first stop when he kept on interrupting us. He wasn’t malicious as near as I could tell, just couldn’t control himself from saying what was on his mind in the moment it was exactly on his mind. He said we were both good girls before the tour started, and during the tour he interrupted a time or two, mostly talking to sister Dröge, saying, “It’s okay, you can just say what you want to say.” Etc. It was a bit weird, but we did our best to give the information and keep the spirit there, and be polite to the man. We started on to our next stop, and normally we would intermingle with the people, but because we were both feeling a bit uncomfortable, we stuck together. When we got to our second stop, the Tabernacle, we went one way, and he didn’t follow, so the sisters that were following us went to him and made sure everything would be alright (apparently when the organist started playing, he bolted towards the organ, and one of the sisters went after him.) then had the security guys help him out.

Sister Droege and I continued our tour and it was very good overall, because the two gentlemen saw how patient we were with the other guy, they wanted to learn more, so they referred themselves. It was rather nice.

Directly after that, sister Droege passed off German, so now she can take German tours! YAY!

Lots of love to you all!

Thank you so much for your emails! I'd love to get pictures of all ya'all in the mail so I can carry you around with me ;)

Love youuuu!!!