Ring Out Wild Bells!

Sorry I didn't get this posted sooner.  We were up in Salt Lake when it came - but it was a very pleasant surprise to come home to!

It was beyond wonderful to get to skype with you, my favorite family of all. Fun fact to those of you who haven't heard, I actually got to "talk" to Andrew in RUSSIAR for about 3 minutes while he was skyping home! It was 6:00 pm in Russia, 7:00 am in Utahr, and 9:00 here in Connecticut so I called and got to say a little howdy to him.

I will now tell you about my week in chronological order.

The night of Christmas eve was spend with the F* family (the same family that had us over for Thanksgiving). We had a delicious dinner and then sang Christmas hymns and read the Luke account of the Christmas story. That's just how Christmas Eve SHOULD be. When we got home, Sister Rivera helped me to continue my lifelong tradition of getting brand new pajama pants on Christmas Eve. Fear not, little flock! I got pictures.

The next morning was just lovely! We went to a wonderful couple in our ward and they fed us breakfast and then let us have a great Christmas morning with a real Christmas tree! We brought our presents and opened them one by one with the couple. It was so fun to have that sense of "family" away from home!

After breakfast we headed down to New Haven and picked up some Elders and went to J*'s house. She had 2 laptops and her iPad all hooked up and ready to skype on her super super hi-speed internet. It was SO nice of her to invite of us over! Sister Rivera and I didn't end up skyping there, but the 3 Elders got to (the fourth was just calling - not Skyping). J* was so cute saying things like, "I might not ever be good at baking cookies, but I can still be a good Mormon because I can serve in OTHER ways!!" haha. It was, indeed, a FANTASTIC way to serve, J*.

Dinner was to be had at the B* family. Brother (or should I say, "doctor"? He's our dentist that does free work on us missionaries!) and Sister B* have one daughter who is 11 and so wonderfully mannered. It's a little miracle. They let us Skype on their equipment, and after Skyping I got to have a long, deep, intellectual conversation with Sister B* about passion and finding a career that's eternally significant and about moral relativism and the cankers it's causing in our society. MAN! I LOVED it! So it was just a marvelous day overall. It felt a bit weird to be Skyping with you because I knew it was my last time - I don't have another one to be looking forward to. Yikes.

The day after Christmas, which usually proves to be one of the most depressing of the year because you know that the NEXT Christmas is as far away as physically possible, was actually really nice again. What do you know. We got to go to the soup kitchen for service and it was fun to introduce all the cute Italian old men to Sister Rivera, She was, unsurprisingly, very well received.

That night we went to the Y*s for dinner. They are another favorite family of mine. I feel like I say that about EVERYONE in this ward, but really, this is one of my favorite of the favorites. When we were driving there around 6:00 we saw a few snowflakes! Fun! We had a delicious dinner and then a great lesson with them where they all set fabulous member missionary goals. Sister Rivera shared her conversion story (which is AWESOME, btw - I'll have to tell you about it sometime) and they loaded us up with leftovers and  Bath and Body Works (Christmas presents - SCORE!). When we walked out to our car, we were surprised (but delighted) to find about 5 inches of snow on the ground! And it was still coming down in big, fluffly ol' flakes! I was unable to get out of their driveway because their house is set in, down, off the road (does that make sense?) - as in, you have to go UP their moderately steep driveway to get to back to the street. So, Brother Y* offered to drive us out. Fine with me! I am a good driver but I've never had to deal with a two-wheel drive compact car in the snow. I miss my baby Subaru! The thing is, HE was unable to get the car out either. SO, after about 15 minutes of spinning and going nowhere, he went and got his huge truck (I'm talking... Andre the Giant would have needed to sit on a phonebook to reach the steering wheel) and towed us out. Moral of the story - don't buy a Toyota Corolla for a winter in New England. We drove nice and slow and made it home just fine, but it was a fun little adventure.

Unfortunately, it rained all night and when we woke up there was no snow to be found in Clinton. Sad.

Thursday we had district meeting. That was very nice. On the train ride home, Sister Rivera and I both got SLAMMED with a virus. I mean, SLAMMED. We were so sick and weak we could barely walk home! My lymph nodes were going nutso and we were congested and had all kinds of headaches. That was no fun. Our district leader is also sick and the word on the street is that there's just "somethin' goin' arayound" (apparently everyone in Connecticut has a hick accent - that's how I've typed them out to be, at least). So the rest of the week (until now) we have been fighting an illness with the courage of lions and the wisdom of ravens and the cleverness of snakes. And the niceness of a badger? Too far, Sister Broekhuijsen. Not funny.

Friday we had lots of lessons scheduled, so that was fun to get to work! Our dinner appointment mixed up the days we were coming so even though we confirmed with her the day before, she was not expecting us when we showed up. "That's okay" we told her, "We'll just go home early and sleep because we're actually feeling rotten." haha. Blessings in disguise.

Saturday we had an early meeting and then two lessons with investigators. R* (our sweet 82 year old) and M* (our sweet 16 year old). Man I love being a missionary. Sister Rivera and I teach really well toGETHER and it is just so fun to get a be a missionary! I love everything about it except for the parts that are not fun. But even those are things I'm GRATEFUL for, I just don't always like them. Make sense? Probably not. Like I said... we're sick. It started flurrying when we went into the library for our lesson with M*, and when we left there were 5 inches on the ground and it was snowing SO HARD!!! We got lots of pictures - it was just beautiful!! I love snow (until January - then I will be sick of it. Guess I'd better love it as much as possible for the next 7 hours).

Saturday night Sister Packard and her daughter, A*, came down (despite the huge storm) to see us and by the time they got here (about 5:00) we were both feeling so much better! "Yes!" we thought, "We have been healed! We can now get back to a normal schedule and work harder/longer!" So the Packards took us out to dinner and we talked about ideas for our Sister conference coming up in January. It was a great time. We got home and shoveled the driveway - I don't know why but it was a BLAST. I've never had more fun shoveling! But it was coming down so hard that by the time we finished there was already 3 new inches where we had started!! So we called it a night.

Saturday night was a roughie. To put it lightly. Probably the worst night's sleep I've had on my mission. I started coughing like a deranged hyena. Luckily, it was a very dry, unproductive hack. Not fun. I woke up at 12:30 and layed there WHY-HI-HIDE awake until after 3:30. Sister Rivera wasn't doing much better. So Sunday morning we decided that we were definitely contageous, we were getting worse, and that we shouldn't/couldn't go to church. It was the first time Sister Rivera had missed church since she was baptized when she was 16 years old. Can you believe that? That tells you how sick we were.

BUT

The story gets better. So we rested a lot yesterday, and we were very well taken care of. The bishop called and arranged for our WML to come give us a blessing, our WML's wife, Sister C*, brought us delicious soup, and we made therapeutic brownies. How are they therapeutic, you might ask? Well, I made them in a special way: I put chocolate chips and Hershey's kisses on top before I baked them. Therefore they were more concentratedly chocolately. Therefore, they made us feel better.

Today I am feeling a lot better than yesterday, despite having another less-than-ideal night's sleep. I still have a cough but my throat hurts a LOT less and my headache has come down significantly as well.

Hmm... this seems very complainy. I'm sorry, I've just been terrible at writing in my journal this past week so I'm writing down as much detail as possible to try to make up for that. I really have been in a GREAT mood even though I've been physically down. I'm super happy! Sister Rivera is a riot so we're always laughing. :)

Whelp - the library is closing now so I'll have to tell you about my next two bullet points:

Sister Rivera-isms
Old Navy cardigans

next week.

I love you, family! I'm bummed that Andrew didn't e-mail today, but I suppose I should just count my bleepin' stars that the library was OPEN for ME! :)

Hasta next week,

Sister Broekhuijsen

P.S. Happy Birthday shout out to my PAPA!!! This Saturday. I think I'll celebrate by watching J* get baptized. :) 

P.P.S. Do you realize that tonight end of 2012 which is the only calendar year in which I didn't see Andrew or the rest of my family for the entirety of it? (<--- awkwardly worded, but you know what I mean, right?) Bring on 2013. I've still got plenty of time to be a Melissionary!!