Received May 20, 2014
Hi Guys!!!
Today is my P-day so it's the first time that I get to e-mail you, but I've sent you two letters, they should be coming soon :). Thank you so much for all of the letters and the pictures, it really made my day. I hope you guys had fun at the zoo and that it cheered you up! It's been really hard here, but really fun at the same time. I loved reading all of your e-mails and seeing the pictures that you sent! I got your letter from Dear Elder, it was great to hear from you. We are allowed to read those on the day they come, just not until after 9:30 when we get back to our dorms. My toe is doing fine. I noticed it started to swell and get pussy on about Thursday. The first thing that I thought when I noticed it was 'dang it mandee! you infected me with your gross toe disease!' haha. I just kept putting oils on it and I thought it was starting to get better, but then on Sunday my branch president was telling us this story about a sister who had one and had to get this huge surgery done on it, so I decided to go in to the health center and get it checked out. They decided to send me to a Podiatrist to get it taken care of, but they had to call you (mom) to let you know what was going on. I was sitting in the room when the lady called and I heard your voice and I literally just started bawling, my companion just looked at me funny and handed me a tissue :). So they sent me to the doctor. It was amazing to feel the difference in the spirit from inside the MTC grounds vs. outside. It was pretty cool to see how much spirit is actually at the MTC. I had to repent for thinking how cute the doctor's intern was :). Anyway, they decided that it wasn't bad but just to be sure he wanted to just fix it, so he dumped some kind of freezing stuff on my foot and started to numb up my toe. and I was just sitting there with one arm over my face and squeezing the arm rest while my companion was making me recite things like the outline of the plan of salvation and Josephs Smith's vision in order to get my mind off of it. Long story short, he cut off about a 16th of an inch of my toenail and then put some kind of acid on it to kill the follicle so it will never grow back, so my toe is kind of deformed now :). He wrapped some gauze around it and was like "I wrapped it really tight so you won't bleed all over the place, but you're going to want to check it every once in a while to make sure it's still pink and not blue or something, because if it does you might loose your toe." I was just like, gee, thanks that's exactly what I needed after all of that!! But it's fine, I checked my toe like every 30 seconds and to my knowledge it's still there (and pink) so it's fine :).
So just to answer a few of your questions:
I am for sure leaving on the 27th. My flight leaves at 8ish so I have to wake up at 4 to get there!! But you guys can expect a call from me that morning around 6-7:30ish am.
A normal day is seriously all day in the class room, we hardly ever get out!! We do a lot of practices where my companion pretends to be an investigator and I have to teach her. It get's pretty crazy because she asks some seriously hard questions, I've dug myself into a whole trying to answer them on several occasions, so it's been a good learning experience for me. We also have what's called 'Progressing investigator' where one of our instructors goes into another class room set up like a little living room and we have to teach them and pretend it's the real deal. That's not so bad. The hardest thing we have to do is called TRC, and we have to teach volunteer investigators. Some of them are LDS and some of them are not. I think the one my companion and I got isn't. She is Russian and doesn't believe in God, and hates the plan of salvation because she doesn't want to live wither her family forever, and she doesn't want there to be an afterlife. So it's a little bit difficult and my companion and I have had to pray really hard for the spirit to be with us. We have gym time at the very end of the day from monday to friday. it starts at 8:25 pm and goes to 9:15. I usually spend most of that time on the cross country machines while my crazy companion runs 3 miles around the track. :) We get back to the rooms at 9:30 and the hour before lights out is the fastest of the day! It's like you blink and it's time for bed and we're just like, 'oh, well I guess I'm showering at 5:30 tomorrowmorning'. We just really need to pray for more minutes in that hour. :)
Everyone is super friendly here. They're all super smiley and all of the Elders hold the doors open for you, so it's really nice. We went to the temple today and did an endowment session and sealings (which I totally didn't know you could do before you're sealed!) Everyone loved us and we got free temple clothes because we're missionaries.
There are 8 of us headed to the Santa Rosa mission, 4 sisters and 4 elders.
We don't have anything electronic except for these computers and our cameras, so I guess we get the Ipads in the field.
I like it here, but It's kind of easy to get down on yourself and feel like you're not a good enough missionary, but I've just had to push through and work harder in my studies, especially when preparing to teach Kya (my TRC from Russia).
The showers are fine, as good as you can expect of community showers. It's just awkward to only have a curtain to hide behind!
There are lots of different things that you can do for service projects. We set up chair for Sunday's devotional (Which was super cool! Elder Bednar came and did a question and answer session with us! I was like four rows back from an apostle!)
I've seen two Elders that I went to school with but don't know very well, a Sister that I was acquaintances with so it was fun to see and talk to her, and an Elder that I worked with at the pool. It was pretty cool to see him because he came in the same day as me. He's like two years older than me so it was exciting that he came on a mission!
Mom,
Thanks for all of the letters! I'm doing great but I love to hear from you guys as much as possible, so send me lots of DearElder letters please!
Dad,
I'd love to get a hand written letter :) let me know about everything that's going on and maybe send some pictures that I can look at more than once a week. Thanks for taking the time to write me though, I know you're really busy.
Tyson,
I'm glad you're enjoying my Ipod. Don't let Mandee beat you up too much (but possibly think about not wearing her skinny jeans, It's not a good look for you) haha :) It's good to hear that you had lots of fun with Daniel, you better make the most of your time with him because he's moving to Arizona soon!
Mandee,
You might want to think about getting a filter for that mouth of yours :). It sounds like you're having a hard time with offending people. But then again, your funny stories always make my day :)
I love you guys so much and it was so good to hear from all of you! keep sending letters (especially through DearElder)!!!
Love,
Sister Lesser
