Monday, June 11

So, it's been fun so far... The sun finally started shining. I am grateful for that.

I've sent some pictures with this. As always, explanation... 1) Since our district leader was going home, we decided to give him a going away present. So we found a really ugly picture frame, printed off a copy of our hideous painting we were given, and wrote a letter that sounded like a company congratulating him on his once in a lifetime gift. He thought it was hilarious. 2) The olympic torch. President wanted all of us to go and see the torch. Since I was on exchanges, I ended up seeing it twice, but this was in Congleton. I was close enough to touch it, but there was too much security.  I did manage to hold up the Book of Mormon as journalists took pictures as the torch went by me! Maybe I will influence someone that way. 3) Running through an open field. Sometimes you just have to escape and feel free. :)

I am feeling better. I stopped taking the ibuprofen a while back, I just gave up trying. My knee is feeling better and my back hasn't given me any further troubles. I'm still sickly, but on the mend. Just a lot of coughing right now, so I walk around with a waterbottle. I called President last night about a question and he said I am sounding less like an elder, so that's promising! :)

I'm still working on my Chinese. I know a few phrases. Wo zhi dao moermenjing shizhenshidao (I know the Book of Mormon is true). Wo daoqian (I apologize). Orr Jianmei (Sister Orr). TianFu (Heavenly Father). Yesu Jidu (Jesus Christ). Shenglin (Holy Spirit). etc.etc.etc. So it is progressing slowly. They just whitewashed sisters back into Liverpool and let me tell you, President was probably really sorry he was around when I found out. I was like Why am I not put back there?! He just said inspiration. But as we were leaving he said, "Sister Orr, you behave, remember, Liverpool depends on me." I just said Zaijian and went on my merry little way. :)

  

The people that the elders left us to work with are great so far. We had a baptism on Saturday which went well especially considering that right before the baptism we showed the investigator the filled font and she said she had an extreme fear of water.... you would think the elders would have figured that out in advance.... but it went well none the less and everything was great.

Well, I am running out of things to say, but I hope you are still enjoying the kids and I am glad you get to take them out camping this week, that will be fun! I miss doing things like that. The highest mountain in Wales is within our area so maybe one Pday we will get to go hike it. I think that would be fun!

Friday, June 8

So. I'm no longer in Birkenhead and the Wirral. We both got transferred (whitewashed again), but we are staying together and we whitewashed into our area. And you will never guess where we live now.... we live in.... wait for it... wait for it...... Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, Wales. Yes that is actually the name. It's the longest name of a town. It is actually a whole sentence in Welsh about a church on a hill by the seaside or something. We are on the Isle of Anglesey. It is very spread out and it hasn't stopped raining since we arrived. They gave us a car though because the area would be impossible without one, but they didn't give us a GPS.... So here I was the first couple of days with my map while Sister Hoffman drove looking for signs for llanfairpwllgwyngyll when there are towns also called Llangefni, Llandegfan, and Llanglouister. It was ridiculous!  So we asked bishop last night if he might have a spare GPS that we could borrow until we get one. (I had already made a very stern phone call to president regarding the ridiculousness of not having a GPS.) So we are borrowing bishop's until next week when we should be getting one from the mission office.

Our other adventure thus far is that the phone we have has no service in our flat. None. So we can't make phone calls in our flat, in our parking lot, or anywhere near our complex. We had to drive out to a parking lot in the middle of nowhere on a hill to call President to tell him I was sick and staying in for the day. So that was our fun adventure yesterday, the joys of living on an island. I am sickly, but getting better. I've lost my voice and when I called President I sounded like a dying goose and he laughed and said with the tone of my voice he thought I was an elder calling him. I said that wasn't funny. So hopefully with lots of water and rest I will get better.

Oh, other adventure:  We got whitewashed into an area that was 3 days away from a baptism. So we've been rushing this way and that trying to make sure everything is prepared for this baptism that is happening tomorrow for an investigator we know nothing about! It is crazy!

Well we don't have much time to write and I still need to write president, but luckily I will get to write in a few days again, but thought I'd let you know I am alive and where we are at now.

Monday, May 28

Well, it has been another interesting week. I have been having problems with my knee for a couple of weeks... My District leader kept telling me to call the mission doctor. I ignored him, then on Tuesday we had our specialized training and I was wearing my ace bandage. President talked to me on the phone that night and told me to call the doctor. I said "yes", but I had no intention of doing so. Well, apparently God Smites you if you lie to the mission president. I woke up the next day with a spasm in my back that had me on the floor not moving. So we called president and he said to call the doctor about my knee and my back. So we did. His prescription was to take 600 mg of ibuprofen with each meal and 400 mg before bed. My thought was that he was going to have me overdose with ibuprofen--12 a day seems to be a bit excessive right? 

I followed doctors orders on Friday and woke up nauseous and vomiting on Saturday.  The mission president came to give me a blessing of comfort but ended up giving me an all encompassing blessing for health and comfort and counsel. It was good. They asked if we wanted to spend the day with them going to baptisms rather than just hanging around the flat. We decided that would be a day well spent, so we left our flat and went to Bolton, Chorley, Blackburn, and Preston for baptisms and got home after 9:30 in the evening. It was good! I got to know President and Sister Preston better and was able to allow my body some time to recooperate. The weather has been beautiful and hot here lately. Sister Hoffman got sunburned and I got a boot tan. Lovely.

Transfers are next week so we won't be emailing on Monday. Monday is also the Queen's Jubilee. So it is a big day of celebration and our ward is having a picnic event with the church across the street. So it will be a good day!

We haven't had any more problems with Sister Hoffman's stalker. I love how protective our District leader (Elder Cline) is of us. He forbade us from going back there and He hates hearing or even talking about the stalker. I brought the painting to specialized training with us to show people and tell the story and he looked me straight in the eye and said, "It's not funny, you should burn that." we laugh at him. I just joke about it now to see him react. Our goal this last week was tofind a fear each day to overcome. So one night I was reporting and I said that we had changed our fear for the day last minute and that as we were on the train we came across the stop that we got off to go see demonboy and I said we were inspired that we needed to overcome the fear of being afraid of going back and seeing him. There was a long pause on the other end of the phone... Elder Cline said, "Are you serious?..... for what reason?" we could just tell he was trying to maintain his cool so I was like, "I was just kidding." Another long pause.... "Okay. Good. I was about to go nuts over the phone." I don't think he appreciates me joking about it but I just think it is funny. Elder Cline goes home next week. We will miss him.

We got a dog! Just kidding. We were walking down the road the other day and this dog came bounding through the busy intersection and just came and stood by us. He had a leash on but we couldn't see anyone looking for him. We stood there for a second wondering what to do and we checked for a tag... nothing.... no one on the street. I called Elder Cline and he said to call President and ask for permission to keep it. ha ha! Finally this lady came up to us and asked us if we just found the dog. Apparently it was her neighbor's and her neighbor was drunk and lost it. So that was the extent of our having a dog. It was pretty funny!

So those are my adventures for the week. We are going to go do some clothes shopping today so I will have some warmer weather clothes. So that will be good.
There is a street near our flat called Wellington Road.  It is LINED with Wellington boots.  That is what these pictures are about:

 

Monday, May 21`

(I had inquired how the visit with the man followed by demons went.  This was her response.)

Ah...the man who called us and said he was being haunted by demons... that is a GREAT story! I have basically been telling everyone! We ended up going to see him on Thursday. We had called President and he had told us not to go without a member of the bishopric present. So we took Brother Davies and Brother Parker. We were very wary of going, but decided to just talk about Christ and how through Christ we can conquer anything.

So we get there. It is this man with tattoos EVERYWHERE. He is wearing a bandana and he is WASTED. He is completely drunk. So already I'm thinking, this will be fun! I am first into the flat. The place is covered in American flags. Covered, okay. So we sit down and start talking. And he starts to confess to us. He started talking about having ties into the middle east (and I have to be careful of how I phrase this so it doesn't send red flags up through the web) but he said he was a double agent and was supplying the FBI with information... right. So we refocused a bit to Christ and I asked him his belief in who God was and he briefly covered that and then started talking about the Devil and how the stigmata had appeared on his arm a while back.... yeah, basically it was more bizarre than scary to listen to him, but we told him about the Atonement and that if we pray and call upon Christ the devil can't harm us... We asked him if he'd read the Bible and he said he has only read the book of Revelations. So I'm thiking, GREAT he has probably only read the dragon chapters! Needless to say, he has in the past been into witchcraft and other things that have just not helped his situation. But here is the best part. He said that after talking to SIster Hoffman on the phone for the first time he had felt inspired to  paint Christ (because apparently he is an artist) So he donated this painting of Christ to us to hang in our chapel. It is a Picasso-style painting of Christ with a crown of thorns. It is ridiculous. So we were like yeah..eh... But yes, we have it. This man called us the day after we saw him (still drunken) and left a message about how he really enjoyed Sister Hoffman's company and that she is a "Very Beautiful woman" and that hopefully she will hang the painting in our flat to remember him. So yes she has a phone stalker now. I think it is hilarious, Brother Davies and I were dying laughing yesterday. I told our district leader about it and I was laughing hysterically and he said, "Sister Orr that is not funny." I was like oh come on! Have a sense of humour!... but we have been forbidden from seeing him again.... haha Sister Hoffman doesn't want the painting so I asked if I could keep it as a souvenir! haha! I still think it is hilarious! :)

So that is one adventure of the week. Next adventure. Friday we were out trying to talk to people on the street and it was shortly before we were going in for the night and we found this man maybe in his 40s.  We started to have a good conversation and we had a great discussion about God. Everything seemed relatively normal... UNTIL... he looked down the street and he saw his bus coming and said he had to run, then he turned to me and stroked my cheek and said, "You're beautiful" and lingered then he turned to Sister Hoffman and stroked her cheek for a second. We then handed him a pass a long card trying to maintain our composure and he turned to me again and stroked my cheek with the pass a long card and then turned to Sister Hoffman etc. then headed for his bus. I just stood there horrified not knowing quite how to react to that... it was interesting. There are weird people in the world.

Saturday morning we got a phone call from President Preston who said he would be in the area that day and wanted to drop by. So President and Sister Preston dropped by "just to chat" (I said they had to have a hidden agenda of some sort, but nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary). They brought us Baskin Robbins ice cream which was nice.

Something President said during his visit to us did hit me hard last night. I have come to a conclusion... I am going to start learning Chinese. Yup. President had said that in August we have 4 Sisters coming in that are called to speak Chinese and we will have no one in the area that will really be able to work with them. I was thinking about some other things last night and it kept coming into my head. When I got my mission call I was kind of surprised if you remember that I wasn't called to speak a different language because in my patriarchal blessing it says, "You will have the special blessing of teaching the gospel in the language of the people you are called to teach." That popped into my head last night in conjunction with President's comment and it just felt right. I prayed about it and I pondered it and as I lay in bed last night I just had a thought to reread the wording in my blessing for clarification. This morning I looked at it and I saw that it doesn't say that I will speak the language that I am called to but I will speak the language of the people that I am called to. The first area I was called to I was assigned to teach Chinese. So I will begin learning Chinese, hopefully. Yup.

So, that is what has been happening this week. Very interesting week.