I'm 50 years older than I was last week.

I'm 50 years older than I was last week.  Let me recap:

Going from serving at Temple Square to San Jose and then to Redwood City was like going from an all girls prep school to public school.  Now I'm serving in Morgan Hill which is like the Norman G or adult high school.  I've been exposed to so much shocking missionary disobedience that I thought my mind would explode.  A missionary just went home early last week and a few more are sure to follow this week.  Me and my new companion are caught in the middle of a lot of drama.  My new companion is Sister Tapopo, is another Samoan but she was raised in Southern California.  She is super easy-going and so hilarious so we are having a good time.

 

One of the things we do as missionaries is work on the rescue misison to re-activate the less active members of our ward.  We have a list of people to check up on so we got right to work.  We quickly figured out that there's something super awkward about knocking on less active member homes.  The first family that we found home shut us down pretty quickly.  It turns out that her name was not Michelle; her husband is Miguel and he used to be mormon and they are not interested in anything from us.  Welcome to Morgan Hill!  I like to refer to Morgan Hill as the farmland for rich people.  It has a small town feel, a lot of skunk in the air, and a lot of the people we visit live in big beautiful mansions on a hill.  I'll upload some pictures next week.  A lot of the other houses that we knocked on seemed like the owners were probably vacationing in their other huge mansion but finally we found a retired man home.  Sister Tapopo and I are so awkward.  After a rough conversation start with this one man, we learned that he hadn't been to Church for a long time.  He got out of it because he just got too caught up in his business and then he retired.  We didn't know what to say so my companion asked him if he was planning on coming to Church this Sunday.  "Well yes actually, I haven't been to Church in 30 years but I was indeed planning on coming this Sunday."  He did not say that.  He mostly just laughed at us but we found a way in since he's open to having home teachers visit him and his wife.  So after that experience and then asking a different man if his wife was his daughter, we decided to just play the whole -we're new misisonaries and we want to get to know the ward- routine.  It's working out better so far.

 

Our miracle of the week and definitely my miracle of my last area in this mission is named Jack.  Jack has been prepared to receive the gospel by his long term, member of the Church girlfriend.  She lives in Utah and he lives here temporarily.  They found the missionaries at Church a few weeks ago and so my companion and the sister before me got his contact information.  We went to go teach him on the second night that I was here in the trailer park where he stays.  We took forever to get there, we knocked on an angry man's door who was not Jack and then Jack called us kind of angrily.  Sister Tapopo decided that it was too late and Jack sounded too drunk on the phone so we ran away from the trailer park.  Jack did not like this but we made amens and decided to teach him in the Church building the next day.  He rocks.  It turns out that he wasn't drunk, he's just a rough guy.  We kind of hated him at first because he was super impatient to get started and seemed like he didn't want to be there with us.  However, he asked all the right questions and accepted the invitation in the first lesson to be baptized on February 8th.  Then in the same lesson, we moved the date up to Feb 2nd.  We taught him one more time since then and so far so good.  We just have to get him off of the chew and he's almost good to go.  We're excited to hopefully take him to the Oakland visitor center so that he can experience even more of the Spirit there with the displays and the movies.  One of my favorite things about teaching Jack are his prayers at the end of lessons.  He ain't trying to impress no one but he is real-life.  After every lesson with him, my companion and I are on top of the world.  There is nothing better. 

 

Also in this area is a woman who we call Mama Smith.  I'm pretty sure every mission has one.  I am her 139th missionary and after interviewing me and taking 500 pictures of me, she gave me a quilt that she made and a big bag of everything that I could ever need as a missionary.  I chose the tackiest quilt I could find and now I sleep with it every night.  I don't look forward to seeing the pictures she took though. 

 

Oh yeah, and I live in a mansion.  Well we have our own apartment corner of the mansion which includes the cleaning lady and a treadmill.  Life is good!

 

I know that I am where I need to be though it's hard to be away from home and my sisters at the square and my Redwod City zone.  The Lord has a bigger picture than I see for myself. 

LOVE YOU ALL,

SISTER KATIE