С Днем Рождения!

Hey!  Isn't it our OTHER missionary that's supposed to be using the cyrillic alphabet?  :-)  By the way, I have no idea if that post title actually says anything!  Anyway, Melissa had LOTS to say this week, so here you go!

Today is my Russian Brother's Birthday. Or, should I say, my Brother's Russian Birthday. Either way, his birthday is today and I am celebrating by these opening three sentences.

I've had a good week. To be honest, I'm finding it very difficult to stay focused. It's not that I'm not wanting to still be here, but I just know that I have a lot of good things to be looking forward to, and I'm excited to be with my family once again. NEVERTHELESS I am trucking through and trying to focus on individuals and their needs. I think that will work, and will help me keep my eye single all the way to the end.

Let's see, what shall I share...

Ooh! I finished the Clayton Christensen book. To be clear (since apparently I was not clear last week) this is a NEW book, and if you have read this sentence on this blog/e-mail, you are now morally obligated to go buy it and read it and apply the principles in your life and become a better human being. The title is The Power of Everyday Missionaries and even my exhuberant praise is not overselling it. It's that good. I had an important realization about it. One reason that I love it so much is that it perfectly embodies the first 9 months of my mission. For my first 6 transfers, I was teaching 10-15 member missionary work lessons a week - all from the principles Clayton Christensen shares! I've met many of the people who are characters in his miraculous stories! I've developed my own testimony of the power of member missionaries because of these principles. I feel like I am very shaped by what's taught in this book, so it's so cool to have a tangible reminder of these truths I've grown to love! How lucky I am.

Everyone in the world (or at least Connecticut, or at least in the Madison ward boundaries) is sick with the flu and/or a nasty cold. So that's made it rather difficult to meet with people (especially investigators) but it was still a good week. We've managed to not catch the flu (knock on a sequoia) so we're feeling very fortunate about that. We DID get to have a really nice dinner with R*. The B*s, a wonderful family in our ward, invited him over for dinner and invited us as well! It was a really nice time - he is just the sweetest and I love that the B*s are such good fellowshippers. This ward is awesome.

Sister Rivera cooked Honduran (Hondurian?) food for me this week. It was divine and 87% extremely unhealthy. It was kinda like pupusas with the El Salvadorean coleslaw, but with a Honduran/ian twist. Super delish. Also, lately she's been doctoring up some canned soup and turning it into heavenly soup. When you take a low-sodium, low-fat Progresso soup that's only 70 calories/cup and add plantains, cabbage, garlic salt, and lime, it is STILL pretty healthy and becomes mouthwateringly good. Just a tip for all you viewers at home.

On Saturday we got to have dinner with a new family in the ward, the K*s. They just moved here from Cedar Hills, UT! Woot woot! They have four girls (14,13, 9, and 7) and both parents served missions. They are AWESOME and are already doing a TON of member missionary work. It's like a family of golden investigators, only they're already baptized. So cool. That was definitely a highlight of my week.

Coming up this week we have interviews with President Packard, lots of dinner appointments with great families in our ward, and hopefully continued health. We have a lot of potential investigators that we are trying to transform into actual investigators, so that's going to be a big focus this week as well as forcing our other investigators to be healed so we can meet with them. Both of these seem like reasonable goals to me. (Speaking of goals, this week when we were writing out our action plan for one of our investigators, an actual step we wrote out was, "Have a lesson with him and make him feel the Spirit so strongly that he actually has no choice but to be baptized into Christ's restored church." haha.)

I set the goal a couple months ago to complete the Book of Mormon (for the third time on my mission), the Doctrine and Covenants, and Jesus the Christ before I go home. As the end draws nigh, it's now seeming highly unlikely that all three of these will happen, but I have been reading a lot from Jesus the Christ recently and I just love it! Talmage is the best (except for Nimoy, Mormon, and Moroni of course). I love his insights PLUS his impressive diction is a bonus because I constantly have to look up definitions so I'm actually getting smarter as I read.

RANDOM: I just remembered that at the store this morning I saw something called a "grapple". The tagline was: "Crunches like an apple, tastes like a grape." That's weird enough, but what's weirder is that a cartoon gorilla was the mascot on the packaging. What the what? There was no mention of banana (texture OR flavor), which, so far as I have been able to tell from my intentionally limited exposure to gorillas/monkeys in general, is a favorite of those vile creatures. So what is this crazy company thinking? I guess the weirdest part is that a pack of 4 grapples was priced at $5.99. Who would pay THAT? How about if you want something that crunches like an apple, you eat an apple? Or if you're craving grape flavor, eat a grape! Some people are spoiled.

I've been delighted to have some very "deep doctrine" discussions this week. I love learning deep doctrine! One thing I've been thinking about is why Satan tries so much to obscure the simple truths about the nature of God. Why is it so important to him that mainstream Christianity views Him as a spirit essence or three beings in one? Why is the principle "God is our loving Heavenly Father" the first point of the first lesson that we teach people? I love looking at the things that Satan is specifically attacking and trying to glean why it's important for him to skew them. Because I know that that means God thinks they're really important for us to know and understand! Ah. SO cool. I'll share more later but it would take too long to type out. Just something to think about.

I've also been blessed to be getting really cool revelations about myself recently. These half-hour prayers are just so cool. I used to think that Heavenly Father would not want us to be annoying and ask for lots of revelations, but Elder Ramos taught me that the parable of the unjust judge (found in Luke 18) teaches us that even a wicked man will eventually grant your request if you bug him about it long enough, so it is much MORE likely that a loving Heavenly Father would answer your petitions for guidance. Therefore I've been asking and knocking and oh baby oh baby have things been opened unto me. It's a practice I recommend for all. Some cool questions to consider asking, "What advice would my (n+10)-year-old self give me right now?" "What kind of person was I like in the pre-mortal existence?" "What kind of questions do You want me to be asking?" "What can I do to more fully give up control and align my will and actions with Thy will for me?"

Well, that just about does it. Thank you for being a champ and reading up to the end. I hope that you all have a wonderful week and that you Utahans aren't too jealous of my almost 60-degree temperatures over here in Connecticut (<-- try pronouncing it how it's spelled - it's fun).

Love,

Sister "I'm actually kind of regretting not buying those grapples..." Broekhuijsen