A Flock of Yellow Vests

Our hard-working daughter sounds very happy!  It's so good to know that she's loving what she's doing.  Here's today's email!

Hello to every single one of you.

I am having a great time! Since I e-mailed you last Wednesday I've been getting to do even more Helping Hands projects. I've seen that video that's going viral about the projects going on in NYC, and that's really similar to what we're doing! Isn't it sweet to see how appreciative everyone is?  I love that our church is all action.

Last Thursday we went out with a couple Elders from our District and did helping hands all day. We were mostly sweeping/shoveling sand and raking up muck out of a basement, but we also got to do a fun project called, "Remove dried insulation threads/chunks from a chain-link fence." That was the worst job of them all! Ugh - it was very annoying, and even after 4 of us doing it for an hour, all we got done was a kind-of-clean chain link fence. Not the most rewarding work, haha.

Friday we had district meeting in New Haven and then we went to J*'s house. J* is our kind of investigator. She has a summer cottage in the ward boundaries, and was taught by Sister Vicente and Sister Garcia, but she moved to northern CT right before I got transferred here. The good news is, she moved back into our Zone, into New Haven a few weeks ago! So she's not in our ward boundaries, but she likes our ward a lot better than the ward she's geographically assigned to. So we try to see her whenever we're in New Haven. Last week we helped her clean and paint her new place, and we were supposed to help again this past Friday, but we ended up watching church videos and reading the scriptures with her instead 'cause that's what she wanted! haha. She is such a delight - I absolutely love her. She's one of those people that makes me especially grateful that I got called to this mission.

Saturday was QUITE the day. We left our apartment at 6:45 and didn't get home until 9:30! Whew! We met the Elders at their apartment in Hamden, and then got a ride with them down to Milford where we got divided up into our MHH [Mormon Helping Hands] teams. We worked on one house (picking up debris from the backyard, cleaning out a garage, cleaning up their porch, and then sweeping and shoveling sand) for about 6 hours. It was the BEST transformation I've seen! I wish I'd've (<-- is that grammatically acceptable?) taken before and after pictures. After that project we had some lunch (Mormons are REALLY good at making sure people get fed) and then went to a different house. Sister Vicente spent two hours in a 4-foot crawlspace/basement raking up buckets of muck/rocks/sand which then got passed up the stairs and dumped on the beach. I spent that time shoveling a big mound of sand into army sleds and then dragging the sleds to the beach and dumping it. I have bruises and bloodblisters on my hands! haha It is great to work hard. I love manual labor (don't get too excited, Ma. I don't think I'll EVER enjoy weeding.)

Church was nice yesterday. G*, our recent convert from Ecuador (who got baptized the Sunday before I came down here) got to pass the Sacrament for the first time! That was so nice to see! Then we actually got to teach some lessons, so that was nice! It's been such a good week. We have more projects lined up for this coming week so I'm in heaven.

I must be going now, but I hope that there is a wonderful Thanksgiving to be had for everyone! We'll be going to one place (with cute children! yay!) for dinner and another for dessert so we'll be very taken care of. I'm so lucky to be in this ward!

I love you. I hope that you are all doing well! For all those of you who have been less than exemplary in your letter writing, you still have a couple months to make up for it, so start now. Please and thank you.

Love,

Sister "Goodbye to my dear Zorro until we meet again" Broekhuijsen