Happy New Year! Well...we all made it through another year.
It's finally gotten really cold. 4 degrees on the way into the office this morning and it's supposed to be 14 on the way home. The next couple of days are supposed to be even colder. Even bundled, with leggings and socks on under a long skirt, sweater, coat, scarf, and gloves couldn't get me warmed up! But there's a change on the horizon...it's supposed to get up to 38 on Saturday.
Tomorrow (Tuesday) we have six missionaries going home. They are leaving early to begin the Spring semester of college. One of them is Sister Moore. She and Sister Wilde were our first set of sister missionaries in our ward so we got pretty attached to them. Saying goodbye is always hard...but harder with some more than others!! One of the sisters, Sister Dotson, gave me a thank you card. We've worked hard together the last 6 months to get her to this point. It was touch-and-go for much of that time but she made it.
As usual, our New Years Eve was uneventful...bed at 8, sleep before 10, I didn't even buy any Sparkling Cider! President Hughes said he got a call just after midnight from one of the Shawnee Elders telling him, "They're shooting guns out here". Shawnee is one of the rougher areas in the mission (it's a suburb of downtown Louisville). The Elder said, "What should we do". The President told him, "Whatever you do, don't go outside". The gunshots stopped about 3:30. Evidently, shooting guns into the air is the customary way of welcoming in the new year in Shawnee.
I've decided instead of making a list of resolutions that will get broken the first time I take a bite of something fattening, I'm going to follow Angie's idea of having a one word mantra this year. Hopefully focusing on this one word, will lead to the other things I would normally put on my list!
We went to a beautiful baptism on Saturday afternoon. The woman getting baptized is 30, and has had a rough life. She actually asked for missionaries to teach her. She knew some Latter-day-Saints at one time and like how they led their lives and how happy they seemed, and when she hit rock bottom, she called the number at the bottom of one of the LDS commercials, asked to be taught, and was baptized. She is so sweet and had a ton of friends come to the baptism, not to mention family who were skyped in to watch.
One of the things I am noticing...or learning...from my mission is to be more accepting. I read a really good article by Jeremy Goff about the "culture" of Mormonism, and was sad to say I recognized myself in some of his examples. Not that we purposefully do any of these things (hopefully), but they have become part of the fabric of our church lives. We get used to a certain stereo-typical Mormon...especially in some geographical areas...and when someone doesn't "fit" those stereotypes, we don't know what to do. If I learn one thing from my mission, I hope it is to be more inclusive and to recognize the gifts that each individual has to offer. Putting all of our diverse gifts together opens us up to greater understanding and love, and allows us to become more Christ-like. And isn't that our ultimate goal?
Happy New Year!!!
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