Dear All,
Wow! I am terribly sorry. That sounds like a down right awful week. That is just awful. I guess it is a good thing everyone has been praying so hard, that just might be the only thing keeping the whole house from exploding. I am grateful that Dad was able to survive with his hand in tact. Wow. That must have been terribly scary. Ouch. I will keep praying for you, and I told my companion to pray for you.
It seems to me that wonderfully spiritual experiences are always accompanied by really rough moments. On Wednesday we committed a couple to baptism and marriage; :D they decided to get married the day before their baptism. The lesson started out with the guy receiving a blessing, and the Spirit just took over from there. Sister Jackson bore an incredibly strong testimony of the importance of baptism by the proper authority, and nearly everyone was crying by the end. It was a beautiful evening.
The next morning, we were invited to the temple for the wedding of a member who is the unofficial missionary mother... actually she is kind of the everything lady. She does everything to move the work forward in whatever ways she can- both asked and unasked. Her son came back from a mission, spoke in Stake Conference, she quit her job, got married and they are all moving to Utah within 3 days... It has been a rather crazy week for her.But. After a few crazy min of calling up the chain to get permission from President, we got permission to leave our area and attend the wedding. :)
Funny moment on the way to the temple, Sister Jackson and I have been working on being joyful (ironic considering how many hilarious things happened this week...), but we were getting frustrated because we were lost. (Just hours after we made this goal) A car pulled up in front of us, and the license plate said: JOYFUL. :) I guess the Lord wanted us to remember something... :) And of course we found our way and got there on time. The wedding was absolutely incredible. The promises made in the wedding/sealing ceremony are amazing and beautiful. It nearly blew me over listening to the things this couple was promised. :) Not being separated at death was just a drop in the ocean of promises they were given for their faithfulness. Absolutely beautiful.
Friday and Saturday were... well... not so great. :) At the end of Saturday, Sister Jackson said, "Well... today hasn't been that bad..." I responded. "No. Today stunk. It just plain out stunk." :) and we just burst into laughter. Sometimes I guess you just have to say, "Yep. Today stunk." and then laugh about it.
Sunday was incredible because we had Stake Conference, and then afterwards we were invited to a fireside for the Youth because President Hanks was speaking. Getting to the fireside was rather interesting. :) We got lost, and then we passed the house. The house was on a rather busy road, and the only place to turn around was in a driveway. I got out to back Sister Jackson, but there were two cars waiting for her to finish turning around. She started going slowly because she didn't want to get in the way of the car behind her, but I had to stay in sight and sound, so I started running next to her, motioning for her to roll her window down, and she got confused because I was running, so she kept going, and we just went like that for about 100M until we got into the driveway of the house. :) Turns out it was the Ward Mission Leader in the car behind us, and he was got a kick out of watching us turn around.
The Fireside, on the other hand, was great. President talked about preparing for a mission with Luke 2:52, and it was absolutely incredible. :) He talked about mental toughness and a lot of things that people don't think about when preparing for a mission. During, he asked the missionaries (we were there and the Elders were there) if a mission was tough. The first thing that popped out of my mouth was, "Actually, not as tough as I thought it was going to be..." :) The ward mission leader yelled out, "Careful, transfers are coming up." And everyone was laughing. :) Luckily for me, President has a great sense of humor and loves to make people laugh. It was also really neat because we had the opportunity to talk to President while everyone was getting refreshments. First time we've not seen him with a bajillion other people. We also got to talk to Sister Hanks after Stake Conference, and can I just say, she is my idol. She is the sweetest lady on the planet, everything about her just screams kindness and loving care. Wow. She is amazing to watch.
Also on Sunday, the Elders sent us a text telling us to send in our numbers by 8:00, or else he would have to call us to repentance. :) We figured we would pick up the Book of Mormon theme and respond in like manner. We ended up having to break our response into 14 different text messages, but it was great. Next time I will have to send you the exact text. It was pretty great.
I guess this week was one of those weeks where everything was either too amazing or too depressing, and the only thing left to do was laugh. I keep praying that you will be able to do everything you need to do, financially, physically, emotionally, ect. I'm incredibly grateful that in the end everything was okay. :) As one lady said during relief society, "Everything will work out in the end, and if it isn't working out, then it isn't the end."
Don't worry too much about the music. :) Or bug repellant. Whenever you have time is fine, I was just wondering if there was anything I needed to do on my end. If you haven't sent it yet, or have room, I could also use a few of my sweaters and don't worry about the bug spray. The temperatures plummeted to 60 degrees this past week, and it has been a bit chilly. I do have a sweater, so if there isn't room, don't worry about it. Thank you SO much!! Yikes! I did NOT realize how much I would be sending things once I got down here. But thank you for helping me with everything. :) And honestly, if waiting a few weeks for music is a test of patience, then I did NOT learn ANYTHING whilst growing up with 9 people.
Love you all tons and tons! I hope this next week is much better for you. Once after a rather bum day of missionary work, Sister Jackson and I went to visit someone, and I said, "Oh well! The sun will come out tomorrow." She said, "Honey, the sun has been there the whole time. You just can't see it because of the clouds, but it has been there." I thought it was an incredibly profound thought. Yep. The sun has been there, even if I can't see it.
Love you! Good luck to everyone with school! :) May this year be the best year of your lives!
~Sister Pratt
p.s. There are a lot of pictures, and I'm running out of time... Ummm...Can I explain them next week? As well as get the pictures from my birthday? I finally found a way to hook them up!! :D Yay!! But too many things happened this week to really share the stuff from previous weeks. :P Sorry.
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