The World is a Puddle.

Email dated October 14th

Hello from the wettest place on earth! You thought you had it bad in Oregon? Nope. It's a torrential downpour outside right now- and everything is flooded. It's the best. :)

I have gotten my first chigger bites. For those of you who don't know what a chigger is, they're these irritating little bugs that live in the grass and bite your legs, kinda like fleas. My companions have tons of them.

Life has been crazy this past week! I'll just jump right into it, after emailing on last P-day.

Monday- After emailing, we went grocery shopping, went to Cici's again (so good, and they have a lunch buffet that's only 3.79? What? It's the BEST.) We went back to the apartment and watched a church dvd and fell asleep. We got about 40 phone calls during our nap, but one of them was someone calling to confirm a dinner appointment we didn't know we had, so that was cool! :) We went and had dinner with the Anderson's. They're a newlywed couple in our ward. Kind of weird, Sister Anderson is 3 years younger than me. But they are the sweetest and funniest people! Also they make some killer french bread. Man.

Tuesday- Kind of a weird day. We got up, but Sister Clark was really sick so she didn't want to get up. I tried to stretch out my back because it's been all wonky with my bed, then did personal study. Eventually all of us were up, we got ready, and went and visited Gabriel, one of our investigators. He's the funniest guy. With just one question you can get him to tell you so much! It's really cool. After our lesson, we picked up the elders and went to dinner at the George's. Nope, they're not related to the George's from Philomath.. I checked. Anyway, they're vegan, and we had these really good wrap things. Sister George told me some terrifying things about cheese and her daughters taught me how to "dance ballet good". So cute. Man. After dinner we went to Walmart because one of the elders rode his bike through a patch of thorns with unfortunate results. We dropped them off, got home, and planned.

Wednesday- We quickly got ready and took Sister Clark to be on splits with the other sisters for the day. Sister Leavitt and I went back home and studied, then went out tracting! So fun! We have one specific approach that we use that works really well- "Hi, we're representatives of Jesus Christ, and we're in your area offering to pray with people. Could you use a prayer today?" and then we pray with them and get to know them. It works so well. We met a really sweet woman named Coral in a coral colored robe. She was pretty cool. Seriously. Oh, so we were driving and there was this cute little dog sniffing around in the middle of the road. My companion just wanted to drive around it but I didn't want it to get hit, so I had her stop and I got out and found it's house. Oh, also- my companions think that I'm obsessed with cats because I always say "holy cats!" and whenever we see a cat I try to catch it, but really I just miss having a pet. After that, we talked on the phone for a bit with one of the elders about some doctrinal stuff, then went and picked up Sister Clark. I got a desk chair! Best day of my life.. not kidding. I was so excited. We dropped it off at the apartment then had a classy dinner with our district at Taco Bell. None of us got dinner appointments. This, mind you, was the first time I'd gone without a dinner appointment since getting into the field, and we've had dinner every night since.. so yeah. We went to check on one of our investigators, Gayla, but she wasn't home, so we knocked doors in her area. We met a couple really nice people, but no one was interested. We prayed with a lot of people though. After that, we went to visit the Clark family (confusing I know, my companion's last name is Clark). They are this really amazing family that has gone through a lot and is going through a lot more. I really felt like I connected with them- I love that family so much and I just want to help them out so badly. Thank goodness we're missionaries.. so that's what we get to do:)

Thursday- We woke up, did the morning routine, went to an appointment.. and got stood up:( So my companions decided we needed to go to Taco Bell and get some pity Crunchwraps. I promise I haven't eaten any fast food since.. I've decided it's gotta stop. Anyway. We went and did weekly planning, went to another appointment.. it fell through, too, so we went home finished planning, I did language study, then we went to check on Mehri. She's going through a hard time too. It's frustrating because she wants our help but won't accept what we teach her.. It's okay. Heavenly Father will help us figure it out:) After that, we went and got the elders, and went to dinner with the Zukas family. They are so cute! They have 4 kids under the age of 6, another on the way. They have this one really rambunctious little boy named Bronco- he's the sweetest. After dinner we dropped off the elders and went to check on Dan (not to be confused with our other investigator, Danny) but it turns out he doesn't live there anymore. We did however get to talk to this really really great guy named Doug who accepted a Book of Mormon and was really solid. Unfortunately, he doesn't live there either, he lives in Tulsa, outside of our mission :( But he's a great guy. After that, we walked around with the intention to do OYM's (open your mouth), but we didn't encounter anyone. We went back home and FINALLY re-dedicated our apartment. My companions had me do it, so that was kinda cool.

Friday- we didn't do much. We had district meeting, and we ate at this really great place called Fuzzy's tacos. A couple of the elders dubbed me the "District Adele" because they think I sound like her when I sing. Don't know what that means. Anyway, Fuzzy's tacos. Sounds super appetizing right? Yeah. Anyway, we knocked doors to no avail, and all of our appointments fell through :( 

Saturday- we did the morning routine, then Sister Clark had an appointment to talk to President Walkenhorst so we went to that. After that we came back, I did language study, then we went tracting. We met a really sweet woman named Wanda and we're going to go back and visit her hopefully. Also a woman named Marilyn. Both of them are really cool! We met this guy named Allan who talked to me in Spanish and I spoke back to him in portugues. I understood him really well but he couldn't understand a lick of what I was saying. Probably my fault on that one, ha. Anyway. I hope we can go visit Wanda and Marilyn. Our area boundaries are getting moved.. I'll explain that in a bit. We had dinner with the Palmers on Saturday, and that was really nice. Brother Palmer talked with me in portugues too. It's amazing how many people speak spanish and portugues, and it's so cool that I can understand them! The Spirit is so cool.

Sunday- GREAT DAY. AH. I loved Sunday. We got up, studied, picked up the elders for church. We had testimony meeting and in Relief Society, they asked minha companheiras e eu to talk about why we decided to go on a mission and what sacrifices we were making to be here. It was really cool to share that experience. After church and correlation, we went to dinner at the Hannah's. Sister Hannah makes AMAZING food. We had that chicken noodle soup that we make back home with the homemade noodles.. and we had roast. And we had veggies for days. So good. Cool thing about Sister Hannah. She asked me where I was from.. like everyone does. 

This is how the normal conversation goes:

"Where you from?"

"Oregon!"

"What part?"

"Do you know where Corvallis is?"

"Nope."

"It's where Oregon State University is, it's about an hour and a half south of Portland. I'm actually from a small town next to Corvallis, but people never know where that is."
"Oh, cool. *Some comment about how I'm not from Utah and that's weird.*"

This time, when I was talking with Sister Hannah, the conversation went like this:

"Where you from?"
"Oregon!"
"What part?"
"Do you know where Corvallis is?"

"Yes! I have an uncle that lives there! Well, actually.. he lives in.. Philomath?"
"I ACTUALLY LIVE IN PHILOMATH!"

I was SO excited. SO COOL! He's a non-member, she says he's not interested at all. But he lives on West Hills Rd. So crazy right?

Anyway, after dinner, we had to go to a special meeting where they announced that the ward boundaries in our stake are being moved.. so our areas are changing too. Weird, not sure how to handle it, but it's cool! No one told our mission president, so he found out yesterday too.. so we're not sure what our areas are right now, but it's cool. I'll keep y'all posted.

I love you all so much and I'm grateful for you! No picture this week, maybe next week I'll get a worthwhile one.

Be safe, be strong, be good, be glad.
The world is a beautiful place.