I don't have a lot of time today (we have so much to do today!
P-days are nuts!), and I get to talk to you on Sunday (yipee!!), so this
won't be super long.
I'm doing wonderfully! I finally conquered my flu. It took a few
days, and I had a few very frustrated moments that I wasn't better as
fast I as I would like, but we're through that now. I'm back on all
normal foods (as of Sunday) so we're good to go. I am staying warm, and I
do wear my suit jackets sometimes. They are nice. Thank you. :)
I love Christmas time! I'm just having so much fun out here. I am
definitely feeling the Christmas spirit. The Winterlight CD that arrived
last Thursday definitely helps. :) Thank you so much mom! All of my
packages have arrived. They came early this week, so in plenty of time.
No stress. I LOVE the pictures of everyone with their letters. We hung
whatever-you-call-that above our little Christmas tree. I just love it!
It makes me so happy. Everyone was telling me what a cute idea that was,
and that I must have an adorable mom. Yep. :) It's funny because all of
my Christmas memories and our Christmas traditions are coming to mind,
but it is making me happy, not homesick. I have been so blessed! And I
am still happy to be out here, even on Christmas. One of the new sisters
is really homesick, so we're all trying to help her have a good
Christmas.
I'm so excited to talk to you on Sunday! I'm not sure how
everything will work out with timing, but it will be between probably be
after you call Willie. We will drop a text or a short call to figure
out timing on Saturday night. We have three families we are going to see
on Sunday, and it depends when our dinner is - she hasn't decided yet.
So I will let you know.
I love the pictures of my little nephews! Little Eli has grown so
much! I love his red hair and his eyes are such a cool color. Ethan is
adorable as always. I loved how he's screaming in his picture with the
"R". Hilarious. Best thing ever.
Okay, this week hasn't been super eventful. Little things have
happened, but the probably most memorable thing happened on Monday
morning. On Mondays we have early morning sports at 6 at the stake
center with the other missionaries. So we were leaving our apartment at 6
in the morning, having just rolled out of bed. I lost my key a while
ago, so while Sister Dodd was locking the door, I turned around to go
open the outside door. See, the front door of our apartment is inside of
a building. It's a tiny building, and our door is in a tiny hallway,
right across from some other sisters. There are two apartments upstairs
and that's it. So our little hallway downstairs has just our two doors,
and connects the outside doors on either side. Anyway, so while she was
locking the door, I turned around to go open the outside door for her.
And there, laying in our little hallway was a homeless man dead asleep
with his bike. I wasn't all the way awake yet, and he was right there,
so I assumed Sister Dodd had seen him. I jumped, and just stepped back
staring at him. Then 5 seconds later she turned around stepped forward,
and jumped back gasping. We just stared at him, with his filthy hand
flopped out to the side, completely unconscious on the floor.
Not knowing what else to do, we just left out of the door he wasn't
blocking and went to sports. I guess we just hoped he would be gone by
the time we got back. He wasn't. So we ran into our apartment and locked
the door. Sister Dodd called the Zone Leaders as a first option because
we didn't really know what to do. We were not freaking out, but we
figured we should do something. Meanwhile, I got in the shower. They are
very protective, so their response was "We'll be there in two minutes".
They really aren't supposed to come to sisters' apartments. Sketchy.
Right when they got there, they saw the man get on his bike and ride
away. They came down to talk to Sister Dodd. I had just gotten out of
the shower, so she quickly knocked on the door to warn me to not come
out. So I was standing in the bathroom in a towel, and the Zone Leaders
and two other elders (so there were 4 of them) talked to Sister Dodd
just for about 30 seconds and left (still sketchy). We were laughing
about the whole thing when the Zone Leaders called again and said that
they had seen the guy on the road riding his bike, so they stopped to
talk to him. One of the elders got out of the car and told him to never
sleep there again. The homeless guy was kinda drunk and said his mom
used to live there, so he felt comfortable there, or something. Anyway,
he said he wouldn't come back.
So that was our adventure of the week. Nothing too exciting, but it
was really funny. It's something to remember, anyway. "Remember that
one time a homeless man slept in front of our door?" "Yeah, that was
hilarious."
We did find a family this week. I'm not really sure it will go
anywhere, but we found them. It's funny, because we were looking through
the ward directory and didn't recognize the name, so we decided to drop
by. It turned out to be the home of two sisters. One has 8 kids and one
has 1, and there doesn't seem to be any male head of the home. They
also have at least 5 dogs, one of which is a pit bull that was abused
when it was younger, so it has a lot of anger for anyone not family. So
we didn't go inside. One of the sisters is Methodist, and one is
Jehovah's Witness, and neither of them know anything about the church.
Only one of them is down as a member (the Methodist), and I am just
confused out of my mind how that happened. "I knew a guy named Elder
once in your church," she said. And she doesn't really know what the
Book of Mormon is. The one sister is newly Jehovah's Witness, which was
obvious in how nice she was to us. She actually was the one that wanted
to hear more about our church. She was fine taking a pamphlet, which
makes it clear she's still learning about being a JW (apparently they
aren't allowed to take any materials from other churches). So I'm
excited to meet with them again and hear what all that is about. 2 moms,
9 kids, 5 dogs = madness. I don't think either of them have a job, and
when we stopped by and the moms weren't home, the oldest sister was very
suspicious of us. I think she was afraid we were some government people
or child protection people. All of the kids looked filthy. She shut the
door quickly and told everyone to stay inside. It was strange.
Anyway, that's my week. I'm sure I forgot something, but I will tell you about it on Sunday.
I have the best family ever!
Love you thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
~Sister April Atkin
P.S. I also received a package from "Erilyn H. Jessica B. et. al." and it made me very happy. :)
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