Monday, March 26

  I only wrote a few days ago, and here I am again! 

I guilt-tripped President Preston in my last email to him on Thursday.  I wrote all about Ben (10) crying and only about Ben and left it entirely at that. I saw President on Friday and he said he just felt horrible after reading my email to him. I said that was what I was aiming for!  :)  I am going to get permission from President today to write Ben letters to just keep encouraging him and let him know we still care about him. Plus his mum said she'd send me raspberry bon bons when she knew my address.

It wasn't just that I was leaving that made it difficult to leave Liverpool. I understand we get moved around a lot, but usually when we leave, one companion stays there who knows the people and can help in getting the transition, but when you are whitewashed completely out of the area you leave your investigators to strangers and that was just horrible.

Friday we had our "Sister's conference" where all of the Sister Missionaries in the mission go to the mission home for a conference. There are 19 Sister missionaries currently. It was a really good conference. one of the elders that was just going home this transfer has a mom who is a really well known LDS music artist and so she and her husband were here picking up their son and she agreed to do a presentation with us because she also runs a therapist practice particularly working with LDS women. It was really good and she said many applicable things to not only the mission but to life in general.  And she sang us a couple of songs as well.

Saturday was a good day. We took our gospel Principles class to the temple grounds in Chorley and our ward mission leader arranged to have a tour of the MTC as well. It was a beautiful sunny day and the flowers are blooming now so the temple grounds were glorious. We went over to the MTC and I thought no one would really remember me there because they've had several groups go through already since I left, but Sister Walker got all excited and gave me a great big hug, Sister Smith heard I was there and came and found me to give me a hug, so it was nice to know they still remember me! We had 3 investigators with us and one of them came up to me and was asking me all sorts of things about the MTC and he said that he could "just feel the power of the place." And I was like, Yes, that is the spirit. All of our investigators wanted to know what they had to do to go into the temple, they all just loved it so much. It was a great experience.

The ward here is a bit different than Liverpool. I miss the Liverpool ward already. Many of the sisters in this ward don't see the need to wear skirts or dresses to church and so they just come in whatever they want and it is not that they can't afford to have those types of clothes because some of them come in very expensive trouser and jumper combinations. It just isn't really something I see as appropriate.

Things are going well. I got your package with the ear plugs in it, maybe a bit of overkill with 7 pairs of ear plugs... but thanks. They came in handy today as we were cleaning our flat because our hoover makes the most obnoxious noise more so than the average. So we were walking around our flat with ear plugs in while I was hoovering. Thanks for the packages! They make me feel nice and important! :)

I found out as we were reading our information packet this morning that I should always encourage anyone who is sending things to me to not use FedEx if possible. Apparently their costs on this end are outrageous and they make delivery almost impossible because they can't just leave things with the mission office so we missionaries end up having to get to the FedEx office ourselves and it is just a big hassle. Good to know.

The weather is great over here currently. I have been told to enjoy it because it will only last two weeks. I hope it lasts a bit longer than that.

We taught one of our investigators last night who had a baptismal date planned but we had to move it. She is having a hard time giving up coffee. We asked her how many cups she has a day and she told us she drinks 15 cups of coffee a day. I was shocked. She then proceeded to tell us she had made such great progress from her 65 cups a day....  Sister Hoffman and I just were in shock. She said she used to have a cup every 15 minutes or so. That is not healthy at all. She asked us about the rule on decaf and I wasn't sure what to tell her. We did a bit of reading this morning and there are so many chemicals within coffee (decaf or not) that are harmful to your body. So I had a bit of enlightening.