Lovely

It was a long ten days to have to wait for an email, but it's here and, of course, it was worth the wait!

Hey hey hey! (Fat Albert style) 

What a lovely time of year in a lovely place doing a lovely thing for a lovely reason. I have been blessed with another great week (well, 10 days) since I last wrote. In case you couldn't tell from my amazingly creative diction, I am doing lovelily (<--- whoa!! That's an actual word? Who knew?). 

Remember a few months ago when I compared my brain to mushy oatmeal? Well, I would say that it is now more like ground beef plus breadcrumbs (you know, the makings of some delish meatballs) or perhaps some really good chicken salad. I am good at remembering small details for about 48 hours (as in, long enough to compose a write-up of a lesson on a teaching record), and I'm great at remembering how to navigate, but other than that my brain is pretty much a giant struggle. I have had several more "put-water-in-mouth-and-feel-it-dribble-out-down-my-chin-and-get-my-shirt-and-desk-wet" moments this week, and also I sometimes lose my thought-trains mid sentence! Also sometimes I spell the word "sentence" like "sentance" and "obedient" like "obediant" and "of" like "uv" (<-- that's when you know it's getting REALLY bad when I'm thinking phonetically haha). So, I guess the reason for me telling you this (aside from encouraging you to laugh and celebrate your own mental prowess which is magnified by my void) is to just gear yourself up for some random bullet points. 

• Last pday we went to GoodWill because Sister Jordan wanted some new tops. I was not going to get anything because I already have way too many clothes out here,  and because money doesn't grow on trees, did you know that? So we walk in, and after about 45 minutes she walked out empty-handed and I walked out with two new skirts! Oops. But they were 5 dollars apiece so luckily I harvested the funds necessary off my money bush (<-- I tried SO hard to word this sentence in a funny way. It's not even funny and I should just delete it but it's actually so NOT funny that I want to leave it in). So no worries there :) 

• You know how I sometimes "get" words (like "rainbow" and "trashcan")? Well, I had a good one a couple weeks ago: "discover" OOOOOH. That's right. It's awesome, yeah? Tell me I am not the last person on earth to figure out that that is actually a compound word... 

• We got our t-texts last Saturday and Sister Jordan and I are both staying in Boston 1st! There was QUITE a bit of shifting around this time. 4 new zone leaders, a new AP, and (most applicable to ME) they CLOSED OXFORD AS A SISTERS AREA! What? Man, that means I won't ever get transfered back there :( But the good news is that they transplanted Sister Burr and Sister Caldwell who were in Oxford to the BELMONT WARDS, which is an area that had been closed for a couple transfers. I don't think they've had sisters up there in like 10 years! So that makes another area that I could possibly be transferred to. Exciting! 

• We just discovered that there is a Greek pastry shop on the way to the library. 5 minutes from our house. NOT good. Now excuse me as a wipe the baklaava off my lips... 

• D*, the awesome young NEU student that we had an AMAZING first lesson with STOOD US UP for our appointment last week where we were supposed to pass him to the Elders! Grrr. He still has not responded to us. Such a bummer. 

• I mailed home an SD card this morning. It has stuff from my first week in Oxford on it - yikes! I'm sorry it's been so long since I've sent anything home! There's not a TON on it, but there are some fun videos so hopefully you get a kick out of it. Also, we no longer live right next to a CVS so I'm at the mercy of the Post Office for what kind of packing goods are available to me. Please don't laugh when you get the very heavily secured and oversized package whose actual contents weigh less than an ounce. haha 

• We had Zone Conference last Wednesday. It was the BEST Zone Conference of my entire mission so far. MAN I love our mission president and his family! Also, we just got our mission presidency organized and guess who is first counselor? Oh, no big deal, just Clayton Christensen who just won an award for being the smartest man in the world. YEAH!! I love Clayton Christensen! I think I would cry just listening to him read an owner's manual to a lawnmower - THAT'S how powerful he is as a speaker. He is so humble. I love everything about him. And he gave a GREAT training at Zone Conference about asking the right questions (related to that article you sent, Pa, but specified for missionary work). In order to COME to Zone Conference, he had to drive over an hour, then stayed only for his speaking portion and left to go teach a class at Harvard Business School, where he's also the Dean. Wow. I am SO blessed to get to work with/meet/learn from such incredible people in this magical area.  

• Our lesson with P* last week went well. We had planned to go in and teach about the Holy Ghost and personal revelation. Right after the opening prayer he referenced his homework assignment in Moroni 10 and asked, "So how can I feel the Holy Ghost? How can I "know the truth of all things"? and "What does the phrase, 'By the power of the Holy Ghost' mean?" HA! I love that. So we had a really good lesson and… 

• I met a little girl named S* this past week, and absolutely fell in love with her. She is 6 years old, and is from Nepal (though she's been here for more than half of her life and doesn't speak with an accent). Her parents are friends with the G*s in my ward, and Sister G* watched her for a couple days while her mom was in the hospital giving birth to their second child. She was there when we went to visit Sister G* and we sang "I Am A Child of God" with them because that's S*'s favorite song and the only thing that keeps him still. She LOVED it and memorized it after singing it like twice! It was so cute! Then she came to church with the G*s and sat by me in Sacrament Meeting. She sat very still and was very quiet all throughout Sacrament Meeting and turned to Hymn 301 and just started writing out the lyrics. Then she looked at my name tag and wrote out "Sister Broekhuijsen" and then put next to it "Sister S*". AW! It was so cute. Neither of her parents are religious, but she just loved church and when she was looking at the pictures in my Gospel Principles manual she got to one of the Atonement and pointed to it and asked, "Is that Jesus?" Oh man. I am tearing up just thinking about how wonderful she is. I just love her. 

• We had a lesson with an investigator, D*, this past week. We've only seen her twice in these two weeks now but she is great and really wants to learn. The part I wanted to tell you about is that she often gets off on these rambling stories and it can be really hard to reign things back in and focus. So during this lesson she started telling us about a dream she had had where everyone was dressed in white and she knew it was people smiling down on her from Heaven, and then one of the people turned out to be Michael Jackson! He was wearing sunglasses and smiling at her and comforting her and she just kept telling us about how she knew he was a good person, knew he is happy up in heaven, etc. It was cute. 

• A young couple just moved into our ward from Provo. Their name is the E*s and they have 3 dogs, a cat, 2 rats, and a black widow spider for pets. Haha! It was awesome! I got to play with big ol' dogs and force a cat to love me for like 2 hours. PLUS they just got called to be ward missionaries and we are THRILLED about that. They said I could stop by any time I needed my cat fix. :) 

• We had another lesson with J*, our professional bible-studier. It was a great lesson, again! We spent most of the time talking about the Book of Mormon and he said he was really excited to read it and decide for himself if it's true. I love that I feel so comfortable in telling him that everything he knows and loves about the Bible will be supported in the Book of Mormon, and especially that the historical/chronological elements will line up really well.  

Well, I'm sure there's stuff I'm missing but I am running out of time. I shall close here and just wish you all well! Joshua and Garrett - I hope you have a great first week of school! Andrew, keep destroying those bugs. We could use your rubber-band skills over here in Boston with our clouds of fruitflies all over the house. Parents, keep on truckin'.  

Love you,
Sister "I think I've officially survived the worst of Summer in Boston" Broekhuijsen