Whewwww...alright, the passage of time is looking to be less and less exciting and more and more scary. *sigh* Today marks 10 weeks left, people! Wheww...lucky for me, I got a nice little impression at church that I should look to gain all I can from this context while I've got it, and I can worry about all that other stuff later. Still though. Yikes. There's like a nice happy 'Oh, when I go home I can go on facebook!' kinda feeling, and then there's the scary 'Oh, when I go home I'll have to...watch movies and not be productive all the time and....' ...yeah. Bleh. I know those are all not a 'have to's', they will just be options unlike what they are now. So! So so so...moving on!
UPDATE:
Things are going pretty well here :) Still working to find more solid investigators, but doing what we can with those we have. Finding is perpetually the struggle in YSA, which is why we're going to send around a sheet for active members to receive the first lesson from us! And then refer us to all their friends :) But a few specific detail highlights (cause I need to do that more): Demi came to church, we had some solid lessons (vague, I know...I'M WORKING ON IT)...and 2 weeks ago Sister Van Leuven made me puke in the car when she made me laugh (on purpose) while I was drinking water. Then we had to drive home with the windows down smelling gross post-Cafe Rio puke smell. Enough details? ;P
PROFILE:
Name: Alexa Kiene
Age: 2..6?
Acessory of choice: Basketball shorts. Definitely.
Best friend(s): Her puppy Theo, and her roommate Valerie (former mission companion)
Status: RM, served her mission in texas, highly quality oriented and has crazy expectations for herself (read: Blue)
Struggle: Was so perfectionistic about her service at church that it was driving her to insane stress levels...so she stopped coming (and Valerie too, who has other struggles)
Head-scratcher: We couldn't figure out why coming to church was stressing her out so much...till we got to that perfectionistic thing in one of our lessons, and I think that helped.
Crazy happening: Their apartment burned down. Seriously. Well, rewrite, their BUILDING burned down...and their apartment was saved, but the smoke was pretty thick and was aggravating her allergies...
Future: Because of the smoke and things, she's moving, which is a bummer.
But, wonderful development: They have both been at church the last 2 weeks! Whereas before they were wondering if the church was really the right path for them, now it seems they're more open to the idea of continued activity. Which makes us really really happy.
SPIRITUAL THOUGHT:
These last couple weeks I've thought about conversion as less of a change of self or change of habit, and more as a change of culture, from whatever dictates their culture might have (smoking, drinking, sleeping around are okay, etc.) to a more elevated, Zion-like culture. Let me give a few examples of present culture vs. gospel culture:
WESTERN CULTURE
Materialism>>>selflessness/not caring about stuff (tithing/consecration)
Hedonism (focus on personal pleasure)>>>Discipline and self-control (Word of Wisdom, Law of Chastity, etc)
White lies (to be polite)>>>Complete Honesty
Immodesty>>>Modesty
SPANISH CULTURE (from the little I know about it from the Spanish Elders/Sisters in the mish):
Flakiness>>>dependability
Laziness (that's not coming from me, but other missionaries have commented)>>>work ethic
And the list could definitely go on. There are good things about every culture too, obviously, that may already coincide with gospel values or may not matter one way or another. But the cool thing is that no matter what your culture is or where you're coming from, the Gospel culture is universal and will require change. It's even different than Mormon culture ('mormon standard time' comes to mind as something that would not be in the culture of a zion-like people). Ultimately true Gospel culture is personified by the Lord Jesus Christ. We're all trying to be like him, and even if we just move the needle a little bit each day, that's still progress.
Seriously cleared some Ivy off a hillside for a service project this week. It was insane.
I love you all so much! Have a wonderful week!
Sister Hale
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