7.04.2016

Hot dogs and scabies

Happy Fourth of July! Today is going to be a little rough because for

the first time I am living in a state that allows you to buy fireworks

and light them yourself. The sad part is mission rules prohibit it, so

no fireworks for me! I was really bummed that I wouldn't be able to

watch the hot dog eating contest this year, so I decided to bring the

hot dog eating to me! After district meeting we recruited other

missionaries, and in a matter of ten minutes I ate six hot dogs. It

was so gross, but totally worth it haha!

The programmed piano that our branch uses to sing at church didn't

have any recorded patriotic songs in it, so last week I was asked to

actually play the piano instead of push a button. It was a perfect

excuse for me to be able to practice the piano a bit this week, and it

was so great! I've really missed sitting down and playing the piano

for semi leisure. Thankfully, I also didn't make a complete fool of

myself during church haha.

This past week we went to Ju's to teach her a lesson and within a

matter of minutes she told us she is ready to be baptized!!! We are so

excited for her, and she is now planning on being baptized on July 29,

a perfect way to end a transfer. We were super surprised because just

last week she told us that she would tell us when she would be ready

at the end of July, but she said she was thinking about it and it just

felt right. We are so excited!

We met D this past week with Brother R, and it was so good to

see members already reaching out to help him. What made our lesson

even better was that Brother R's colleges' daughter knows a

little sign language so she came along to help us. She isn't a member,

but she has so much charity that I'm not surprised if she gets

baptized soon ;) Later that night Brother R sent us a text about

how S called her mom crying "good" tears after our lesson because

she could see the love that our church has for each other, and because

she got to act as the hands of God as she signed for us. Talk about a

cool story!

We did an exchange with the sisters in our district this past week.

They also serve in a small branch so it's nice to know we have other

people who know what we are going through. For some reason the sister

that I was on exchange with and I didn't start off on the right foot.

I don't know why but you could just sense a little hostility whenever

we got put together for role plays and stuff. The cool thing was we

were totally able to knock down the awkward barrier and become really

good friends! I am so grateful for that because no one likes knowing

that you have a riff with someone.

We ended our past two weeks with one word: scabies. I seriously don't

know how Pennsylvania has so many bugs that like to burrow in your

skin, but due to exchanges, Sister Thompson and I got some bugs.

Thankfully I only got one or two bites, but I feel so bad for Sister

Thompson because she got a lot more than I did. On Sunday we were told

to go to Walmart to buy the cream that kills the bugs, and let me tell

you how weird that was. Obviously, we teach people all the time that

we should not shop on Sunday so Sister Johnson told us to take our

name tags off so we wouldn't portray two disobedient Mormons. Spending

two hours in a Walmart without name tags on a Sunday is probably

something most missionaries will never do, but now I can happily say

that we are bug free again!

Sister Morrison

The studious, boring, serious leaders here in the PPM

J has this ceramic horse outside his door, and since he

wasn't home when we went for our lesson I decided to capitalize

on the opportunity!

Before we started eating hot dogs!

The champions!