email of 19 May 2010

Happy Temple P-day!!!

Sorry I didn't give you any warning ahead of time...I just didn't think about it. How is everyone doing today? It was great to hear from ALL of you this week! What a pleasant surprise! I'm glad to hear that the road trip/firefighter training/electrical test passing is all going so well...and that my prayers are working! Yey!

I got my birthday package this past Friday - Thank you SO MUCH!!! I love everything! David, thanks again for your sweet note and gift, and Mom for the pearls and shirt. I LOVE them! I wasn't totally sure about the shirt at first, but turns out it looks better on than off :) And I really do love the pearls...I couldn't believe it when I opened them! Thank you so much. It all reminded me very much of you, but in a good way -- the pearls especially are just very classy and feminine, and I just feel so special and loved!

And THANK YOU for the granola!!!!!!!!!! That's the best part of all, and I've been enjoying it all week! I just had to laugh when I saw the pretzel m&ms because I actually bought a little package of those at the store a few weeks ago, and thought, "oh boy -- salty, sweet, crunchy -- when Mom finds out about these...!"
And of course, thanks for the PB M&Ms!

So today was temple P-day!!! I know I've said this before (i.e. every time I have a temple pday), but I LOVE the temple! Today was interesting because we had the 7:30am session, and it was almost entirely made up of missionaries...and by that I mean that only 3 of the people going through the session weren't missionaries. And with Sis Tittle and I being the only 2 sisters in our whole zone, we were 2 of 3 sisters in the session, with about 25 brothers! That was different! Wonderful though, just wonderful!

Just after our session, our zone helped in putting together/organizing the mission 72-hour kits, which one of the sr. couples in the mission is taking around to all the missionaries to make sure we're all ready and prepared! Following that, we hit up the distribution center -- I got a gospel art book (a must as a missionary), and a mini Children's songbook.

Highlight of the week:

Patricia got baptized!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yep, May 16th finally rolled around, and Patricia (one of my favorite investigators from Marina del Rey) got baptized!!! The service was really nice -- Patricia was really nervous, but really happy too! Right after she came up out of the water, she said "oh my gosh!" in sort of a "I can't believe I actually did it...I'm a Mormon now" way :) It was cute -- It's always funny to see/hear people's reaction right after their baptism.

Let's see...we also had Zone Conference this last week, which is always great! There's a lot of changes taking places right now in our mission, the most noteable of which is that we are no longer a bi-lingual mission. For the last several years (since 2006 or so), all the clam missionaries were bi-lingual (Spanish, Korean, or ASL), but recently the brethren have decided to change us back to a Spanish-English mission, and we'll be getting some of our first English-only missionaries in this next transfer. Now, what does that mean for those of us who are here now and are bi-lingual? Well, that's what we'd all like to know too! We won't really know though, until our new president gets here in June/July. Pres. Blackburn says he doesn't think it'll really make much of a difference for a while though. Meanwhile, we still study Spanish most everyday, and try to speak it as much as possible!

Dear family of mine, life is wonderful! Challenging, but wonderful! So often I look around myself and just wonder why and how in the world I ended up being so blessed! Thanks for being the best family ever! The church is true!!!!!

I Love you all!
I Love Being a Missionary!

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!!!!!!!!

Love,
Hermana Sallie