Monday, September 23, 2013

Sept 2--Dear Elder

Dear Elder,

Hi.  How are you?  How is Mexico?  How is your companion?  How is your ward?  How are your investigators doing?  I hope all is well!  Thank you so much for the emails you sent last Monday.  It is so good to read about what you are doing; it always warms our hearts.

In your one email you said that you woke up at 12:20 am and had the feeling that Dad and I were very sad, and you said a prayer for us.  I just want you to know that was definitely the Spirit.  Dad and I were both awake and both sad and not understanding each other very well.  I had gone outside to be alone for awhile.  Not long afterward, he came out, and we both felt better and happier.  This was shortly after your prayer.  It is wonderful to us that you are so close to the Spirit and that Heavenly Father answered your prayer so fully. Thank you, Matt, for caring so much and being so in tune.  It also is wonderful that Heavenly Father cares so much about us!

It must be really challenging, with the new mission rules, to find investigators, but I am sure that the rules will help new members have friends and be fully committed to the gospel before they are baptized.  We have been praying as a family that you will find people to teach, and we know Heavenly Father will bless you.  Have you been able to discover new ways to find people to teach?  I hope so.

It has been a good week for us.  Monday I went to Elizabeth’s house and helped her do a few projects.  Actually, I just talked to her while she did them, pretty much.  It was fun to be with her and her little girls.  When I got there, Elizabeth was still getting ready for the day, and the girls were watching the “picture scriptures” in video form.  The first thing that little Mercy said to me when I came in was, “I love Jesus Christ.”  I told her that I love him, too, and that He loves us.  A little while later, she said, “I love Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ!”  It was very sweet.  She is only 2 and a half.

Monday I got to talk to Cassandra on the phone a lot.  She was at Walmart looking at fabric and also at some holiday decorations.  It was fun to talk to her about them.  Monday night, we worked on the basement a bit and also went for a drive as a family up Hobble Creek canyon.  Everyone was very talkative, and we had a wonderful time.  We got Slurpees afterward, which we enjoy doing because they don’t cost much and Dad can get one that’ sugar free.  We had had our Family Home Evening lesson Sunday night, so this was just a fun way to be together.

Tuesday I had a job interview and I also had one on Wednesday and one on Friday.  After the Tuesday and Wednesday interviews, I decided I needed to exude more confidence.  After all, my resume is obviously good enough to get me interviews, so I need to stop thinking I’m not what they need, and start being more positive.  The Friday interview went better because of that.  Thinking I may be away from home a lot working soon has sure made me appreciate being home more.  I really love it!

Wednesday wasn’t the best of days.  I got 5 boxes of tomatoes from Sister Peery and began making tons of spaghetti sauce and salsa, but they weren’t tasting so good.  Then the carpet guys came and put in the wrong carpet pad with the carpet, and also we ended up with a different color of carpet than I wanted.  It was all pretty disappointing.  Then I ended up spilling a bottle of cumin into the salsa and scorching the spaghetti sauce because I left it on too high when I went to take Thomas to gymnastics.  After that, I forgot to pick Thomas up after gymnastics.  When I finally remembered,  he’d been waiting an hour.  Katrina went with me to get him, and on the way there, I realized that the meatballs I’d made to go with the spaghetti sauce were still in the oven and had been there for at least two hours and were probably burnt.  The whole time we were driving, I was lamenting to Katrina about how late we were and how upset Thomas would be and the meatballs, and the fact that I wouldn’t have time to cook spaghetti noodles before we all needed to be at our various meetings, and that we wouldn’t be able to have family dinner together, and the carpet was wrong and the sauces were ruined, blah blah blah.  She is so sweet!  She told me over and over that everything would be okay and that it would all work out.  Even the fact that she was so sweet was so comforting, and she also turned out to be right.

When we got to Thomas, he wasn’t upset at all and had been having a delightful time discussing computer programming with a little genius that happened to be at the gym, too.  When we got home, the meatballs weren’t burnt at all.   With only a half hour before my meeting and young men and young women, Dad said that all good spaghetti sauce should be aged in the fridge a day before being eaten, and we went to Wendy’s and had a nice family meal there instead.  We even got to our meetings on time, pretty much.  Turns out, both the salsa and the spaghetti sauce aged wonderfully in the fridge and now taste amazing.   Lowes gave us $190 refund on the pad, so even though we are disappointed that we have the wrong carpet pad, we are a bit richer to make up for it, and the carpet color matches very nicely with our curtains and comforter.  I feel very blessed and humbled and am sorry I was so ungrateful.

Thursday, Elizabeth came over and helped me work on putting the bedroom together a bit, and also do some other projects.  Dad and I were going to go to Café Rio and get tamales together, but we had a miscommunication, so that didn’t happen which was very sad.  Instead, I ate outside in the back yard with Elizabeth and her girls, and that was fun.  She loved my salsa.   Thursday night we went to Thomas’s game which was really disappointing because they didn’t play Thomas at all.  He sure puts in a lot of work to warm that bench.  Still, I guess the bench is a pretty safe place to be.  After that, we had a late late dinner of delicious spaghetti and meatballs.

Friday, Cassandra and Lily called to Skype, but I had an interview.  Afterwards I couldn’t get a hold of them, so that was sad.  Instead, I worked on the house which was in an uproar because we are moving bedrooms around.  When Dad came home, he finished getting the wardrobes assembled, and we got all our clothes moved out of Miriam’s room.  She has since then organized it and it looks really nice.  Katrina’s room still has a ways to go, but she has big plans for it.  After Dad finished the wardrobes, we started our date.  First we watched a very cute Bing Crosby movie and ate ice cream, and then we moved our lazy carcasses and went to the Latino festival in Provo in search of tamales.  It was after nine, so they were out of tamales, but we got tacos.  We ate our delicious tacos and a fruit smoothie, listened to Mexican music, and thought of you, Matt.  It is nice to think that you are probably eating such yummy food all the time!

Today Dad and I are taking Katrina to a festival to watch two plays. Thomas works today, and Miriam is at class.  She will drive Thomas to work, and they plan on doing something together afterward.  I hope they have a nice time.

Now it is Sunday morning.  Yesterday was a nice day for us.  Dad, Katrina, and I went to the festival and watched the plays.  It was nice to have a bit of one-on-one time with Katrina.  The productions were very well done, although it was not as easy to understand what was being said in one as it had been in the other Shakespeare plays we saw there, and the other play had some inappropriate references which was disappointing.  Between plays, we drove to the mouth of a National Monument.  It was a beautiful drive, all misty and rainy.  On the way back, traffic was held up because of a mudslide, and only one lane of traffic could cross at a time.  Back in town, we were amazed at the number of police cars around and also noticed that there were tons of bikers with matching jackets.  We began to think that the two points of interest were related, and when I looked up the name on their jackets on the internet, it was obvious that we were right.  They are a rather unsavory motorcycle gang that periodically engages in criminal behavior.

I’m really glad we figured that out after we ate lunch at a delicious barbecue place since three of them were in line there while we ate.  Not knowing anything about them enabled us to enjoy our good meal in peace.  I ate a bit too much there, ha ha, and am glad it is fast Sunday today.   I kept in touch with Miriam and Thomas by phone, and they seemed to have a nice time while we were away, and I’m very glad they could spend the evening together.

The second play got out at almost 11:00 pm, and we didn’t get home until 1:40 am.  Dad drove the whole way home, as usual, and let me sleep.  I’d wake up periodically and asked him if he needed me to drive, but he always said he was fine, and to go back to sleep.  He knows I sleep very well at night, but not in the morning, and he wanted me to get sleep in while I could.  He is a very sweet husband, Matt.  He had to buy Coke and ration it out as he drove.  I think he wanted to drink enough to stay awake while he drove, but not enough to keep him awake when he got home.  I really appreciate being able to sleep like that.  Now it’s my turn to let Dad sleep.  Good thing we have 1:00 church!

Today I substitute in Nursery at church.  After church I have a meeting and after the meeting, around 6:00, we will eat dinner and celebrate Katrina’s birthday as a family.  Miriam and Thomas bought a cake mix and ice cream for the occasion, plus we will probably have to make a sugar free cake for Dad and a wheat-free cake for Dad.  Fun stuff, eh?   We have Monday, which is Labor day, off of school and work.  For Dad and Thomas, Labor Day will be just that—labor. Dad will work at the laundry and Thomas will work at the water park.  Katrina didn’t make the Shakespeare ensemble, so she plans to get together with Ashton to practice an dialogue, hoping to get on the Shakespeare team with it.  Miriam wants to go to a shopping village, so we might do that.  I hope we can all meet back up after Thomas’s work and go bowling or something.  We’ll see about all of that.  

Now it is Monday.  Yesterday’s celebration of Katrina’s birthday went well.  Miriam and Thomas gave her a throw pillow to go on her new bed in her new room.  We ate cake and ice cream, and I made Dad a little sugar free cheese cake which he really liked.  We all went around and told what we would get Katrina if we could give her anything.  Miriam said that she would give Katrina acting lessons with William Shakespeare.  I thought that was particularly creative and thoughtful.  Katrina is getting a new comforter for her bed, but not till her actual birthday on Wednesday.  We also had family home evening where we read from “Authentic Happiness,” and also a book on parenting.

Like I said before, we have today off, and we will see what happens with the day.  Right now it’s time to send you this email, Matt.  Thanks for the pictures you sent.  We are so happy to see the people your work had blessed.  I’m glad that Elder Gramajo took off his shoes in that flood, and I hope you did, too, so that you won’t get athlete’s foot from wearing wet shoes!  It you do, boric acid kills fungus.  It also kills cockroaches!  BTW, where did all that water come from?  Is that common?

I love you, Matt.  I fasted for you yesterday, and I hope you will find many people to teach!

Love,
Mom

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