Christmas Time is Here!!

This week was the best.  Sister Rush and I have been improving our missionary skills together like crazy! We are getting really good at focusing on our purpose and inviting people to be baptized and as we get the courage, motivation, and desire to do it, the Lord just keeps blessing us with more people to teach.  This was the first week in my mission that I ever hit standard- two new investigators and two investigators at sacrament.  So blessed!  Plus one of our new investigators wants us to teach her sixteen year old daughter who wants to be baptized and we taught her on Sunday night too, so that's at least one new investigator for this week.  Plus yesterday Jesse finally came to church.  Plus Sandy accepted the invitation to be baptized.

I guess first things first, Christmas was great!  We spent Christmas Eve with the Wolfs, slept over at Talita's (the YSA rep in our ward) and then went to the Koehllers in the morning for Christmas.  They bought everyone in our district a different onesie, because they always wear onesies in their house!  I made the Elders a comic strip of our district as Cats.  Elder Turner got me a little dog ornament because I'm a werewolf and she can howl at the moon with me, and then Elder Richins got me a hat because I had asked the district to get me one, but it happened to be a Molson Canadian hat.  When I showed Sister Rush and Elder Turner and we started laughing, Elder Richins said, "What's so funny?" and I told him that Molson was a beer company.  I guess it's appropriate, since Elder Richins has the nickname of Moonshine anyways.  That afternoon we got to go to the Larsons where we watched Puss in Boots, had a delicious Christmas dinner, and opened Christmas crackers which I had never done before.  Super fun.

This week we went on Exchanges with Lewvan.  I went with Sister Ashton-Korn (or Acorn) and Sister Rush went with Sister Elkins.  Sister Ashton-Korn just came out and she is super fun! I'm pretty sure we should be bungie-jumping friends after the mission.

After exchanges on Saturday I was starting to get a little stressed.  First, Sister Rush was a little upset about the exchange and so she was complaining to me in the car.  Then, when we got into Moose Jaw I hurried and made it to the church where we taught Jesse, but Talita was late so he couldn't come in the church so that was stressful.  And then, during the lesson, I got snappy at Jared (who has asked us to call him Brother Bachiu but because everyone else calls him Jared and he is YSA aged I always forget), and I interrupted and talked over him, and then Sister Rush gave me this look like "Why are you doing that?" and I was so tired and stressed and overwhelmed.  (Back story to all this, Jared Bachiu just got off his mission in Guatamala and has told the Elders horror stories about the Sisters in his mission giving Sisters a bad wrap, so I'm pretty sure he just hates sister missionaries right?  And then I go and trip in the lesson and probably make him all upset at me).  So after feeling totally angry at both him, and Sister Rush and me for embarrassing myself I apologized to him.  Problem: My apology face looks like an I'm-so-mad-I-could-kill-you face, when the truth is, I'm mostly just mad at myself.  So Jared accepted my apology.  Luckily it was Sports Night right after that because I just took that volleyball and started serving until everyone got there, smacking the ball as hard as I could.  Then at one point I called him Jared again (he was at sport's night) and gave him another crusty-filled apology for calling him Jared instead of Brother Bachiu.

That night I went home laughing, because I was pretty sure Jared Bachiu thought I hated him and I told Sister Rush as much.  She just told me that "Honestly, he probably doesn't care", but I was right.  Last night his sister told us that he thought was hated him.  Ha! Oh man...  I really need to work on my apology face...

But the stress didn't stop on Saturday.  It extended into my Sunday.  Like I even did the classic go-into-the-bathroom-to-escape your companion for 15 minutes.  Mostly because Sister Rush never stops doing stuff!  And it stresses me out... So bad in fact that during companionship inventory I legitimately told Sister Rush I wanted to punch her.  BUT REALLY.  I know what you're thinking, and the answer is NO, I haven't punched her.. Yet.  Just Kidding.  Things are better now that she knows how stressed I am and I think we're going to tone down on the ridiculous amount of unnecessary things that get tacked on our To-Do list.  OR at least it seems as much.

Anyways, Thanks so much for the CD's and the Christmas packages! I love them! but I love you even more!

Yours Always!