"Auntie Orr" with Kai Ling and her mother.
Welcome to the New Year! The Mayan
calendar has been proven not to have predicted the end of the world and now we
have a ton of disaster movies from the last year that 20 years down the road
the kids will all wonder why we seemed to be so obsessed. It's wonderful! :)
Well, first email of the new year.
And it's Thursday which means I've
been moved. I'm now in Oldham, near Manchester. Sister Smith stayed in Gaerwen
and another Chinese speaking missionary was moved down there to be with her.
Sister Smith is senior companion now in the area. We found out Saturday what
was happening and Sister Smith went a bit into panic mode. She said she wasn't
ready to be senior companion and that she wasn't ready to be separated from me.
Bless her heart. She told me once she never cries. She cried all of Sunday and
Monday. I tried everything I could to make her feel better, but nothing seemed
to help. I called President for advice and he asked to talk to her. She now has
permission to call me if she needs to and he might put us back together before
the end of my mission. I'm glad we became such good friends.
My new companion's name is Sister
Fortuna. She's from California and has been out since June. She's really sweet
and also has described herself as a bit shy. I don't know a whole lot about her
yet, I have only met her once before and now we've only been together for less
than 24 hours. But I am sure we'll get to know each other very well.
So, back track a bit to last week.
Christmas was really good. We got
lots of sweets for Christmas as well as tights and hand warmers. I got the
boots from Amazon which are Italian (OoOo fancy!) and the nativity. We spent
the day at the Quilters home and had lots of fun playing games, helping make
Christmas Dinner, and watching the Grinch. Also, it was very nice of them to
allow us to use their computers to skype home. I was so happy to see you! It
was nice to see Hailey and the kids via the ipad as well (and I think I saw
Dusty for a second)! (Note from mom: We held the iPad-Facetime up to the computer for Kara to see, since Hailey's family wasn't with us.)
New Year's Eve (since the ward found
out I was leaving), the Quilters had us over again since no one was on our
schedule. So we headed over there for the evening and had an enjoyable time.
Gabrielle (who is 6) sat next to me the whole night and was talking and talking
and talking. I loved it. She even fell asleep on my shoulder. Oh little kids! I
really love their family. Brother and Sister Quilter have 5 kids. Tristan (21),
Connor (17), Ethan (14?), Aiden (12), and Gabrielle (6). Brother Quilter's from
America.
So we had good holidays.
It was very hard to say good-bye to
the ward. The love in that ward was incredible. They were honestly just like
family. Some people cried when I said good-bye. I tried to make a note of
personally thanking everyone who really made a difference during my time there.
I got teary eyed quite a bit. I've got their addresses written down and plan to
keep in touch. Bishop and his wife Jana (also from Idaho), the Quilters, the
Gills, the Sansomes, oh so many wonderful people.
It'll be interesting to be in this
new ward. I hear they take care of the missionaries properly. There's 2 sets of
missionaries in this ward... us and the zone leaders. And President is like
personally friends with everyone. I called President the other day and asked if
I was in trouble. I feel a bit like I'm under a microscope. Not to mention I'm
a short drive away from the mission home.... oh that reminds me... I no longer
am in a car area. Back to buses. Yup. It'll be a good adventure still!
I love you all very much! Hope you
all had a wonderful New Year's Eve/Day.
Take care of yourselves. I'll start
writing again on Mondays starting this coming Monday.
