week 7 in cali

Nov 16, 2015

I have been asking Blythe all sorts of questions each week, but she never has time to answer them. Today she tried extra hard to answer me, wahoo! Today marks two full months since the day we dropped her off at the MTC. Craziness! I need to get a package in the mail to her with some fingernail polish, some instrumental music, and some recipes. If anyone knows of anyone driving to the Irvine area, please let me know because she really wants her violin. She refuses to let it be shipped, so it needs to be driven to her.

Mom, to answer your questions – Sister Davis wrote me once and Madi writes, but nobody else.:( The ukulele is awesome, and several people have music that I can copy for it. If you could, I’d love an inexpensive tuner, since the only place I can tune with a piano is the church, but don’t worry too much about that. We normally eat every night in a members home, though this week has had a lot of open nights. I cook lunches and dinners when we’re not in a home. We do laundry at Tina O.’s house, and she is fantabulous! She has the funniest impression of her mom walking, of Disney characters, and anything else you can think of. She found out that Sister Shumway loves popcorn and gets popcorn of varying flavors for us to try. Of her and Carlos O. we say she wears the suit and he wears the dress and totally agree.:) She has all the power tools and is always doing some project in the house. Carlos likes cooking and always gets out stuff to make Italian sodas when we’re over for dinner. They are both hilarious! Tina is currently switching her front door to face the other way, and Carlos tore out all the carpet in the living room so they could put in a new floor. They always have projects going. I like all my clothes. I can’t think of a favorite, but if Old Navy still has those navy flats, I’d love more, they’re my favorite.

Now on to the important stuff. This week has been a little weird, because we worked really hard, and actually did some really good things, but they weren’t in the direction we thought it would go, which sometimes happens. Our key indicator numbers look really bad, but that’s mostly because we weren’t able to contact most of the people we were hoping to. We haven’t been able to contact Liz for 2 weeks, not since our last appointment. Her baptism can no longer be on the 5th, because she didn’t come to church yesterday, and she has to come 3 times before she can be baptized. It looks like we still have some ground to cover there, but we’re working on it. Hopefully we’ll see her tonight!

We actually got an actual appointment with Jennifer for this next Friday! Super exciting! Set appointments are really hard to get. I’m crossing my fingers.

Joanie is always busy, but absolutely forbids us to lose contact with her, especially with this last possible transfer. But we are setting up a dinner with the Mausses (who know her and her daughter, the mom of Elder Everette). We keep visiting her and one of these days I’m sure it’s going to pay off.

A lot of our success this week has been with less actives. We had another awesome visit with the Miskinyar/Gudmaunsen family and each time it gets a little better. We also got in with Raquel B. She’s always traveling and it’s super hard to see her. She’s Filipino and we have a Filipino Elder who has been trying to get an appointment with her. We got a time he could come by and we talked to her for quite a while. Her husband is a big businessman and doesn’t like the church. She tried to come a couple times, but hasn’t made it yet. She asked us to come by for a while on Thanksgiving when her family (who are active) will be there. She’s super friendly and I like her quite a lot. She’s also seriously pretty and has an adorable little boy who is basically a monkey. We’ll also be able to stop by soon again hopefully.

So for Thanksgiving we’re going to Raquel’s, and the bishop’s, at least for a minute, since they bring marines from the base south of us to have Thanksgiving in their home, and he likes us to come meet them, and having dinner with the Cheney’s. We’ll be well taken care of, I’m sure. :)

We picked up a few potentials, and one of them conveniently is friends with several of our ward members, and gave both of them a Book of Mormon! Yea!

Alright, so the Mausses. They live way out in the rolling hills away from the city and in fact are outside the mission boundaries. We have special permission to go out there once a month for dinner. You have to go up this skinny little road perched on top of a mountain. I’d hate to be pulling a trailer! They are loud and fun and hilarious and great singers. One daughter is expecting her mission call any day and the whole family is highly involved in our missionary efforts. Basically, they’re awesome!

It’s been really cool recently because several ward members have gone out of they’re way to tell us that they really appreciate our sincere efforts and that they can tell that all four of us work well together and are really engaged in the work. It’s great to know that they see that.

My emails may start being shorter, since everyone here just learned that they want us to keep our emailing under an hour.:( I’m not that fast at typing… Anyway.

Love you all!!
Sister W.