P-Day, a Whole New Meaning 11/30/09

Hello Family!

We have had quite the morning, so we got to the library later than we usually do. Today started like any other P-day. My companion noticed the water in the toilet was quite low, so she flushed it, and it continued to be low. A little while later, we noticed a puddle of water in the kitchen. Hmm. That’s not normal, so I called the senior couple in charge of housing and told them a pipe must have broken, which surprises me, since we’ve had the heat on since October, and it doesn’t seem likely that any of them would have frozen over and broken. We continued with morning study, and then got up later to find out that the puddle of water was getting bigger, and very yellow. Then our carpet started getting soaked…from the living room to the bedroom and also in the bathroom now. It smelled really bad, so we moved EVERYTHING in the apartment off the floor and onto the beds and counters. Then we found the crowning element…human feces in the tub. Apparently the sewage line to our apartment broke, and now our apartment is filled with pee, and poo and whatever else might have been in the sewage tank. Beautiful right? It literally is a pee day. The landlords are on top of everything, and we’re going to spend P-day elsewhere. But it makes for a great story, don’t you think?

We’re excited for Christmas in Albuquerque. One of the families wants to take us to see the luminaries and the festival of lights when it gets closer to Christmas. There should be some fun traditions here; I’ve heard a lot of families make tamales for Christmas. My companion, Sister Brown, wants to be in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir someday. That literally, is her dream, so we’ve been listening to The Messiah this whole week. I’ve never listened to all of it before, so it’s been really fun. One of the sisters heard Sister Brown sing in sacrament meeting yesterday and asked us to do a special musical number for Christmas…we agreed, oh boy!

We’re excited to think of creative ways to find people to teach this Christmas (wrapping up Book of Mormons, delivering cookies to investigators and potential investigators, caroling, etc.) We’ve been finding scriptures in the Book of Mormon that talk about the Savior’s birth. Hopefully we will be able to share them at doorsteps. These are some of my favorite scriptures in all of the Book f Mormon, because you can literally feel how excited the Ancient American people were for Christ to be born!

One of my favorites is in Alma 13:22-25. It is fulfilled in Helaman 13:7 and 3 Nephi 1:13. It begins this way:

“24 For behold, angels are declaring it unto many at this time in our land; and this is for the purpose of preparing the hearts of the children of men to receive his word at the time of his coming in his glory.
25 And now we only wait to hear the joyful news declared unto us by the mouth of angels, of his coming; for the time cometh, we know not how soon. Would to God that it might be in my day; but let it be sooner or later, in it I will rejoice.
26 And it shall be made known unto just and holy men, by the mouth of angels, at the time of his coming, that the words of our fathers may be fulfilled, according to that which they have spoken concerning him, which was according to the spirit of prophecy which was in them.”

This week was interesting because one of our most promising investigators dropped us, another one was out of town, and it was also the Thanksgiving holiday, so a lot of people were out of town. We went tracting a lot, because we want to find more investigators since our pool feels like its getting smaller than usual. But not a lot of people were home. We’re going to pray for referrals.

Sister Brown and I took one of Sister Anderson’s quotes to heart; “We’re here to be awkward.” We were walking down the street, and saw this guy who didn’t look like he’d be interested, but he said, "hi" to us, and we didn’t really take the opportunity to talk with him. We both felt awful about it so we went back, even though it looked like he was driving away, and got to stop and talk to him and give him some information about the church. We were glad we got a chance to take hold of that situation, even though it was a little awkward at first. Hopefully, a seed will be planted.

We did get to teach Donna, who has read the Book of Mormon and Pearl of Great Price and Doctrine and Covenants already. I wrote about her a little in my last email. Anyway, she’s awesome and knows the church is true. We’re just waiting on her to get baptized. She shared her experience about knowing how the Book of Mormon was true. Logically, someone as young as Joseph Smith couldn’t write the Book of Mormon and have it turn out so beautifully and in depth. On the other hand, if Joseph was being influenced by Satan, it wouldn’t lead to good fruits, or testify of the Savior at all. If Joseph was truly a good person, he wouldn’t lie about the origin of the Book of Mormon. She then related this to Jesus Christ. “So many people revere Christ as being a good teacher, or a wise sage. If Christ lied about who he was, then no, he wasn’t a good teacher. If he lied, he would be despicable,” she said. Another quote from that lesson: “Each of us has a perfectly God shaped hole in our hearts…nothing else will fill the space.” I love that.

Thanksgiving was great. We had it at the church with a ton of other families. Then we had pie at another member’s house, and THEN another member cooked us another Thanksgiving dinner on Friday. It was great!

We’re excited for Christmas! The work continues to move forward, in some ways I wish I got two Christmases in the mission. It’s a fun time of year and I know that this work is so important to our Savior.

I love you all and miss you.