Are you freezing yet?

Hey Mom!

How are you? It`s always so good to hear from you! Things here are insane, like always. This week wasn`t quite as good as last week in our work ethic or quality which was pretty frustrating, but we already have a million lessons planned for this next week, so it should be a lot better! Except it`s crazy...I really thought that leaving BYU and coming on a mission meant that I wouldn`t have to deal with boys asking me out anymore. Obviously, I was wrong. I don`t think I told you about Sonny, but he was actually from last week. We met him on the metro (we had planned on going home about 20 minutes earlier and eating dinner, but we ran into one of our zone leaders and he said we couldn`t leave the metro until we had at least 2 phone numbers) and I went up and in the middle of introducing myself he asked me for my phone number. I gave it to him on the condition that he gave us his. I counted it as one of the 2 I needed to appease Elder Sabin, but really had no intention of calling him since he kind of creeped me out. He called us twice that week, and we missed it both times and didn`t call him back. Then we were in the metro last saturday waiting for a man, Curtis, and he came up to us and just kind of stood next to us for awhile. We got the elders to teach him the first discussion and he said he`d be baptized, but then never called or came or returned the missionaries calls, so they decided he was really just in it to meet me and then when he found out I wouldn`t be teaching him, he wasn`t interested anymore. Then I was talking to a man from Turkey on the metro the other day and said we were missionaries and gave him our card with our number on it and he has called EVERY DAY this week to ask me out for coffee. I`ve missed every call and haven`t called him back yet...I need to at some point, but I`ve always been horrible at that...;) THEN we were teaching a less active recent convert, David, the other day and he said at the beginning he wanted to get to know us both better. I said we had tried to get this girl Genevieve to come with us, but she couldn`t, but she`s way cute and we love her so we`d try to get her to come the next time, and he said "Well you`re pretty cute too, I think we should just have you come next time." I wasn`t quite sure what to make of that comment, so I ignored it and went ahead with the lesson. I thought the lesson was going pretty well until about halfway through when he randomly asked "Are you allowed to date on your mission?" I said no and he asked whose choice that was and I said that it was mine. It was a rule given to us, but my decision to obey the rule and I wasn`t going to date until I got home and he said "Well I can easily see someone following you back to the United States when you go home to date you." We tried to get back on topic, but he wasn`t paying much attention at all and we asked if he had any questions for us at the end and he said the dating one was the main one; he just wanted to know if i had a boyfriend or anything. We decided we`re only teaching him once a week from now on and Robyn is coming with us EVERY time. She actually volunteered and said there would be NO comments like that made again while she was in there...she`s so fun; I just love her. She`s probably one of my favorite people in the ward and she helps us all the time...I love it. But yeah, so that made for an interesting week..

Other than that, we decided on Tuesday to start the day of with service. Robyn was having a really hard time with some things, so we made cupcakes for her and wrote "we love you!" on them. It was so cute :) We had extras, so we made some with the same message for another recent convert, April, who`s been sick for the past 2 weeks and then we made a cake for a recent convert/less active, Mike, who had a birthday on Saturday. It was so fun...we went to RObyn`s house to deliver it, but she wasn`t home, so we tried to break in (she wouldn`t mind). The back door was unlocked (turns out she keeps it unlocked just for that reason...in case someone needs something from her house and needs to break in), so I opened the door, but I forgot that she had a MASSIVE dog who started barking at us and I slammed the door shut and then we couldn`t open it again. So we just left them for her outside with a little note. It was fun :) Then we went to April`s house and gave them to her and she loved her cupcakes as well. On the way back though there was this woman on the metro who started screaming at another woman who was getting off because she had a baby and wasn`t married. The woman was calling her all kinds of names and being HORRIBLE to her, and the woman with the baby just ignored her and got off the metro. I looked down the car and made eye contact with a girl about my age and she kind of half smiled so I did the same and the woman hit me with her purse and started screaming at ME asking what I was laughing at and just started swearing at me. I have NEVER been talked to that horribly in my life! It was completely shocking. So I apologized for whatever I had done and she kind of stopped. I looked the other way again and this man smiled at me (I think he just felt bad for me) and so I smiled back to show him that it hadn`t bothered me that much and she started yelling AGAIN asking what I had said, and I replied that I hadn`t said anything and I was sorry, but I really hadn`t said anything. She must have been having a horrible day because she kept swearing and yelling for another minute until the metro stopped and we got off. I just kind of laughed it off, realizing she was having a bad day adn it wasn`t anything personal, but Sister Williams was a bit shaken up and was almost crying because of it. We had interviews with President McKinnon on Wednesday and I mentioned all of those experiences to him (that was the 4th person in as may days to yell at me...and we had another woman on Tuesday tell me that Mormons had no rights and we shouldn`t be allowed to talk to anyone and we were all brainwashed and someone should investigate it. She was a journalist, so she would know ;) ) and he told me that if anyone said anything again, I didn`t need to be polite. I should tell them exactly what I`m thinking. I said I didn`t want to give the church a bad name, and he said the church wouldn`t look good if I punched the guy, but it also didn`t look good if I looked spineless standing there letting him walk all over me. So next time to go with my instincts. I haven`t had anyone bother me since, so I haven`t tried it out yet :)

Hmm...what else happened this week? Oh my gosh! This morning it was awful! Well first, Saturday night we came home a bit early and S. Williams spent 2 hours calling all of the old potentials we had and setting up appointments and since we only had the one phone and I really couldn`t help with anything, I decided to scrub the bathroom and kitchen floors and they were SO gross...I really don`t think our apartment has been deep cleaned in about 2 years. But anyways, so while I was cleaning the bathroom, I felt something in my hair and I freaked. S. Williams came running in - turns out there was a spider in my hair. It was so gross. Then this morning I was in our room doing an ab workout (we have 30 minutes each morning to exercise) and I saw this HUGE bug speed across the floor, so I called her in just as it ran across the floor the other way under her bed. We spent the next 15 minutes trying to find it and finally found it on top of her suitcase. It crawled on the floor and we caught it under this tupperware container. It was so gross...it had about a million legs and was at least 2 inches long and super fast. So we kept it under the container and waited for it to calm down and then had this master plan for S. Williams to lift the container and I would slam the dictionary down on it and kill it. Unfortunately, I didn`t anticipate how fast the little booger would be and I aimed wrong, missing the bug and it came sprinting RIGHT AT ME. I shrieked and jumped on the bed and S. Williams grabbed a tissue box and mutilated it. We decided we didn`t need a cardio workout after that...it had gotten our heart rate up enough :) Hopefully there are no more...

And other than that, life has been pretty standard. We taught a lesson Saturday to a man about blacks and the priesthood. His name is Theo,he is extremely intelligent, not receptive to testimonies in the slightest, and extremely passionate about blacks and the priesthood since he is from Ethiopia. We tried SO hard to find a member for the lesson, but after calling about 10 people and 8 sets of missionaries, we realized we wouldn`t find one. Elder Jest gave us a copy of a fireside he had found on the subject though which helped a lot, and we spent an hour and a half just answering his questions. He still has more, but we answered quite a few. We were pretty proud of ourselves at the end. And it was really neat...there was one point where he asked a question and I answered it, but I had never even THOUGHT of the question before. The words coming out of my mouth were definitely not mine, because they weren`t even ideas I had ever had before until I was saying them, and I knew the Lord was speaking through me and answering Theo`s question with me just as the mouthpiece. It`s a little hard to describe, but it was a really neat experience.

But that`s about it for this week...it`s supposed to snow tomorrow (it`s starting to get REALLY cold here) so I need to go buy boots...wish me luck! Oh, and I`m speaking in Sacrament on Sunday as well as teaching the lesson in Sunday School...please continue praying for me, I need all the help I can get :) I love you all and I hope you have a wonderful week! I miss you tons!

Love, Nicole