Natasha's Weekly Letter: Week #14

So I did real bad at writing in my journal again this week so I don't know what to write about, but here I go.

So nothing much happened that's worth writing about on Tuesday or Wednesday. Thursday was my 3 month mark! Woo! 1/6 of the way there. There may be some of you who are thinking, "Sister Schouten you still have like 5/6 of your mission left, that's quite a bit." Yes I know this, but for some reason, it doesn't seem like that much to me. I also woke up with hives on my arms that morning and I have no idea where they came from, but they're gone now so that's good. We had another lesson with the Hernandez family. That family kind of stresses me out. I think they're awesome, but they're not the greatest at keeping commitments and both Sister Smart and I feel like something has been missing in the past few lessons we've had with them. We're not sure what it is.

On Friday I tried ending a call by saying prayer... I was leaving a message to a new person we met and at the end of the call I started saying, "and we say these things...." then I gasped super loud so she probably heard it in the voicemail and said bye and hung up the phone very fast. Sister Smart laughed at me for probably a solid 2 minutes, but I was laughing right along with her. I feel like I've heard stories about how people have done things like that and I just thought, "What's wrong with you? How do you even do that?" but now I've done it. I guess I'm so much a missionary that I try praying even over a voicemail... *face palm*

On Saturday I had exchanges with Hermana Anderson. While we were there we went to a ward correlation meeting and it was in the Hermanas area so the meeting was in spanish. I actually understood a surprisingly good amount, but I was super exhausted after it just from trying to figure out what people were saying. If I didn't put every effort into trying to understand, I didn't get anything out of it. I asked Hermana Anderson if she was just super exhausted for the first couple of months in her mission and she was like, "Ya. I was tired all the time." So I now have a new respect for everyone who has to learn a language on their mission.

On Sunday it rained.... I got very wet. I have an umbrella, but it was blue skies like a second before so I didn't take it with me. Virginia weather hasn't been able to make up its mind lately. One second it's dark clouds and 5 minutes later the sun is shining and I'm sweating again. Yesterday Sister Smart and I were walking back to the car and it started pouring out of nowhere. We were only out in the rain for probably 3 minutes, but 3 minutes was enough for us to get soaked. I would have run to the car, but #mylegisstilldumbandIcan'trunyet.

We also met again with Sister Hill, the less active member who I wrote about last week. We met with her and her daughters and it was super cool. Both Sister Smart and I feel like it could be her daughters time to accept the gospel (they're both not baptized). So that was super cool.

Also funny quote for the week. There's this lady in my ward whose name is Fern and she spoke in Sacrament yesterday and at the beginning of her talk she said, "In college I had a professor who called me plant because he couldn't pronounce Fern." Hahaha

Well that's all I can think of without having written in my journal, so ya. Love you all!

OOOHHH WAIT. Something that I've been meaning to write about for awhile now is that Sister smart has the song called, Brothers why must the good die/free at last by Kenneth Cope!! For most of you, you probably don't understand why that's a big deal. Honestly it's not that big of a deal, but I was listening to it in the car and I was like, hold up I know this song. My family used to listen to it like every sunday when I was younger and I totally forgot about it. So when I heard it all these nostalgic feelings came flooding in my brain and now it's like my favorite song to listen to of hers. Anyways probably not that cool to you guys, but I thought it was fun.

Love,

Sister Schouten