Monday, Monday

Sounds like Melissa had another full and productive week!  But, I should just let you hear it from her personally…

Before I forget to tell you... next week is transfers, so I will not be e-mailing you on Monday. It will be Wednesday. I don't want to cause any alarm, so I'm letting you know now. 

NOW - Hello to you all. 

This week went by just as fast as the week before. It is crazy! I can't believe I've been here for more than a month already. One of the elders who was AP when I came into the field (and drove me to my apartment that first night!), Elder K*, went home on June 1st and got MARRIED on Saturday. That is way way fast, and mind blowing to me. 

I have been too tired lately to get through my BoM reading (I'm in the heat of the Isaiah chapters and it's exhausting) so I don't have any Book of Mormon insights for you from this week - I've been reading Jesus the Christ and the Ensign. But I will give you some updates on what happened this week! 

Monday - we went up to Haymarket and experienced my favorite things about the North End, namely, sandwiches and cannolis. :) It's a good thing calories don't count on pdays! We had lunch at my favorite sandwich place in the whole state of Massachusetts (and also in the whole United States, and also in the world and universe)! It's called Al's State Street Cafe. I've probably told you about it before - it has the crazy good chicken salad sandwiches (and you KNOW I don't even LIKE those things!) Then we e-mailed, then we went to the famous Mike's Pastry and got cannolis. I got a peanut butter one and Sister Jordan got an oreo one. We took cute pictures of ourselves holding cute boxes with the cute city skyline in the background. Then we stopped at Downtown Crossing and tried to find a watch for Sister Jordan. No luck. After pday ended we had a lesson with J*, finishing up almost everything she needed to be taught before her baptism Sunday. Her cousin, A*, came, so that was nice to finally meet her! We've been trying to meet her since our first week but we could never get our schedules to work. 

Tuesday - This was a great day, although it had the potential of being a really terrible day. In the morning we had our first new member lesson with our recent convert, S* (from Nigeria - so cool!), who got baptized the Sunday before we came out. Our next three appointments (constituting the rest of our day!) all cancelled on us immediately thereafter. Not cute. But we didn't complain, we just went and did some work on mormon.org and then made calls and plans. It was still a good day. That night, we had a cool miracle happen to us! We called up a potential who was originally contacted over a year ago - we found the number on an old potential sheet in our area book. Unsurprisingly, it was a wrong number. BUT *surprise* the guy who NOW owns the number was actually interested in meeting with missionaries! So we got his info and game him as a referral to the "Haitianaries". That was awesome. 

Wednesday - This day (like Tuesday) did not go as planned, but it was still a great day. I am learning again and again that a  lot of it is really up to my attitude. One fun experience is that we waited on Hyde Park Ave for an HOUR waiting for the 32 to bus to take us up to Forest Hills (the closest train station). During that time, 3 buses passed us that were all too full to pick up any more passengers so they just drove by mercilessly as the people inside seemed to mock us poor folk waiting in the heat. THREE BUSES! Eventually we decided it wasn't worth it to wait so we walked home, had some lunch, and took a DIFFERENT route to get to Forest Hills. 

We set out to Dorchester (lovingly referred to as "lock-your-dorchester" because it's the most scary/violent place in all of Boston) to contact some referrals. The first was a lady named S* who denied ever even talking to Elder Okelberry (who is the person who gave us the referral)! haha. When we explained that we came because she gave her info to a missionary a couple weeks ago and said she'd be receptive to visits from us, she said, "No, no, no, I couldn't have done THAT - I have my OWN church!" Ha. Her name was even S* so it's not like we just got the address wrong. Methinks perhaps she was more interested in getting a visit from ELDERS than from us. 

The other referral we got to contact was a woman named S* (who is the downstairs neighbor of J*, our investigator!). J* is so awesome for referring her - she (J*) even gave her (S*) a Book of Mormon before our first lesson! The best/most hilarious part of the story, however, is that when we came to the house, J* came down with us and found S* and her daughter, D*, who were chilling in the backyard. When J* told them that we were there for them, S* and D* immediately got up and ushered us inside and had us sit down in the living room. It wasn't until we were like 6 MINUTES into the lesson that they realized we were missionaries! haha. They had an appointment with the National Guard at the same time, so they thought we were them! That's probably the only reason they even listened to us, so that's a miracle. They did hear us out, though, and even agreed to a return appointment so that was good. 

THURSDAY was a great day, too! I woke up and made banana bread for district meeting. A* (my favorite lady EVER - the one who runs the food pantry at CEOC) gave us like 12 overripe bananas so we had to use them up! I used a base recipe that we had and then augmented it (and added way less sugar than it called for) to make 2, new, Sister Broekhuijsen-original flavors: cinnamon-coconut and peanut butter chocolate chip. Both were delish and well-received. We had J*'s baptismal interview after district meeting and it was great because Sister Jordan told her, as she was going in, "Okay, now just answer all of the questions correctly" just teasing her. J* responded, "mmmm, how about truthfully?" haha it was a great retort. 

Our last appointment of the day was with a man named D*. He referred himself on mormon.org and was very entusiastic about having us come over! Because we didn't bring a member with us to be our chaperone, we had to just "go for a walk" with him instead of having a lesson inside his living room that he had very obviously prepared for guests. Luckily, he didn't think it was weird and took us up to this really cool tower//fort thing in Roxbury near his house. From our benches near the fort at the top of this hill, we had a wonderful view of the city and it was peaceful with a gentle breeze - just idyllic. It tuned out to be a wonderful location for our lesson because a lot of D*'s beliefs are centered on being grateful for the beauty around us and in recognizing God's hand in all things. He is so awesome and is really just searching for truth! As we shared a couple passages from the Book of Mormon and challenged him to read and pray about it, he said, "Are you kidding me? I'm going to start this toNIGHT - it'll be done in 3 days!" hahahaah it was a fantastic response. He was so grateful to listen and learn from us and just be able to have a religious conversation (he said most of his classmates at NorthEastern are atheist). 

I feel like meeting and talking with him is a direct answer to a prayer I offered back in May (I think) while serving in the LP wards. I remember being on my knees and just sobbing because I felt so low - I genuinely thought that there was NO ONE in all of Boston who would listen to us and/or be humble enough to change. Finding D*, who is the very definition of a "humble seeker of truth" is such a blessing. We will be passing him to the University Elders, since he's single. So that's a bit of a bummer, BUT the University Elders are Elder Hall (from my district out in Oxford) and his greenie so that is awesome because we love him and we think it will be a good fit for D*. 

Friday was another day where we had many cancellations, which are always a bummer but we still got to meet with Sister G*, and that was good. She feels like she's not being spiritually nourished at church, since her two year old son, S*, won't stay in nursery so she had to just wander the halls with him for the last two hours of the block, and never gets to go to Relief Society of Sunday School. So she asked if we would come over and teach her/leave spiritual thoughts. We were, of course, happy to accept that invitation and had a really great lesson with her. 

Saturday, ALL of our appointments cancelled on us. That's cute. At least we didn't make the hour + trip out there for nothing, I suppose I should be grateful that they called ahead. :) I had a pretty grumpy day (woke up with a headache and really sore muscles - stuff like that) overall, but after a very thorough (and LONG) companionship inventory in the afternoon, I felt better in a lot of ways. We made dinner together and watched The Testaments during our dinner hour. It was nice - I haven't seen that movie in YEARS and I love it so it was fun to be refreshed. I love how they pull in lines from actual BoM characters and weave them into the fictional characters portrayed. And I LOVE how Kohor is crushed to death by the very block of stone he commissioned Jacob to make for him to symbolize his power and wisdom! ha! Sweet justice. 

Yesterday was a good day. We had our early morning meeting and were just go go go the rest of the day, but it was good. J*'s baptism HAPPENED! And not only did it actually occur, but it went well. The copies of the program were thrown together at the last minute and by Elders. Both of those facts were glaringly obvious but that's okay. Sister Jordan and I sang "I Need the Every Hour" for the musical number. It was the same arrangement that we came up with and performed at the Interfaith fireside a few weeks ago, and we even got N*P* to play for us again! J* said she really appreciated it, so that's good. We had a dinner appointment with a new couple in the ward. They seem to like us and even set their own really good member missionary goals. Plus they drove us home which is ALWAYS nice, especially coming from downtown Boston. 

Man - that was a weird way to reflect on the week. I don't know if I like it this way so who knows what next week's will look like. You may want to prepare yourselves for more bullet points and less organization :) 

Well, I love you. I'm thankful for you, and I want to wish you a happy belated anniversary! I'll have you know that I wrote in my journal last night, "Today is my parents' 25th wedding anniversary." I'm sorry I forgot to e-mail you LAST week to prove that I would have remembered without a reminder from you. But know that I was thinking about you and sending congratulatory wishes to you via thoughtspeak (Animorphs, anyone?) 

Love,
Sister "Please pray that I will survive 10 days until my next p-day" Broekhuijsen