Note: Kara has access to e-mail once a week, on Tuesdays. She can only e-mail family, so I'm sharing a portion of the e-mail we received. I'm sure she would appreciate any snail mail you care to send. Her address was the first blog entry.
January 24: Things are going great! It's been a great day! We just got back from the market a bit ago and it was fun having our first outing in England! Got some chocolate and a new skirt! We went to the temple this morning! It was beautiful! Just us missionaries! There's 41 of us total, 11 sisters and 30 elders!
My companion is Sister Milander! She's from Idaho Falls and went to ISU, we thought that was pretty interesting! There are 6 missionaries here from Idaho! All from Southeastern mostly!
The trip over here was interesting. At the Salt Lake airport I ran into some other missionaries and we just kept finding more. When we got on the plane we were 15 strong. We landed in the Paris Airport which is beautiful and we had no idea where we were going and most people didn't acknowledge being able to speak English. We finally got to the right spot and then we realized all the announcements were in French. SO we sat and listened really hard trying to hear the word "Manchester." We thought for sure we were going to miss it. We didn't though, but the plane was the squeakiest, sketchiest sounding plane... and everything, EVERYTHING was French and smelt of perfume. We got to Manchester and all my bags made it safely. We got picked up and driven about 45 minutes to Chorley. We were welcomed and quite literally THROWN into orientation... we were tired, all the sisters' makeup was botched, I was not happy to still have to be doing orientation and whatnot for 6 hours... but I survived.
We had a "Fire Drill" on Friday morning but it wasn't exactly a drill because no one knew it was going to happen and the alarm was actually triggered somehow in the attic. We had to rush outside at 7 AM when all of us were in the middle of getting dressed and had to wait for the fire department to give us the all clear. One of the elders in my district (Elder Barnett) ran out in his garment and a towel! Haha! President Walker gave him his suit jacket to look a little more covered!
We are all getting to know each other really well and we are all getting along really well! There's another sister here that went to BYUH and we have some chitchats about Hawaii every once in a while.
On Sunday, we had choir practice and we sang in small groups to get better acquainted with the singing capabilities of the group... afterwords, I was asked to sing a solo that night at the fireside and was asked if it was okay if they called on me often to do musical numbers... a bit of pressure.
Keep praying for me, and pray for my fellow elders and sisters, I know we are all struggling to find good footing to stand as we are being thrown into the work.
