Coughing Up A Storm

1- Last P-Day with the old district before transfers :(

2- Awesome Bluetooth keyboard!  >:D

3- Mustard Seed! So excited to go back!

4- False Fire Alarms

5- Lots of contacting and Facebook

6- New person we're meeting with

7- Funny moments with the phone

8- Eating a blizzard in a blizzard (kind of)

9- One of the worst jump-scares of my mission. XD

10- Getting sick. Bleurgh...

11- Shoveling a driveway! It was so exhausting...

12- Priesthood blessing :)

1- P-Day was bittersweet. It was so fun to get to hang out with the district/zone once again, but the entire time goodbyes were looming over us like circling vultures. I've always hated goodbyes... I thought about what I was going to say to the amazing Elders and Sisters that I've been able to bond with in this district, and then I completely pulled up a blank when the time actually came to voice those words.

1- Anyway... I don't want to pontificate about how awful it is to say goodbye to people, so I'll talk about the rest of P-Day sports. We got there a little late and parked on the opposite side of the church from everyone else. Sister Marsmaker and I banged on the door and I kicked the door--much to my regret a few seconds later. XD  We walked around through the deepening snow--a steady dusting of cold powder fell pretty much all day--and reached the other doors. We could see inside the glass entry doors and into the open church gym. We saw at least half of the district racing up to the basketball hoop while we stood outside. I tried jumping, shouting, and hitting the glass to get their attention. XD  Sister Marsmker tried calling some people with the phone. Finally, Elder Robinson saw us stuck outside, then bolted over and let us in.

1- We played a couple different kinds of chair soccer, which I failed at. XD  Sister Marsmaker and I got a couple of calls during the time, so we stepped out of the gym. One really memorable moment was when Elder Russel kicked the ball so hard it flew up and hit the ceiling, then bounced down in my direction. I tried to block it with my arms and it nailed me in the gut. Then, it bounced off of me and hit my chair, meaning I was out for the round. XD  I sat down and wheeze-laughed while trying to tell everyone that I was fine. It hurt for a little bit and kind of knocked my breath out, but I was okay after a few minutes.

1- After we did the chair soccer, we did indoor ultimate frisbee. It was a little scarier, because all of the Elders throw far and fast. The frisbees would often fly across the gym and bounce off the opposite walls. I rarely caught the frisbee. I think I did twice? XD  I had many fails. But, my luck decided to do weird things, as usual. One of the times I did catch the frisbee, I decided to attempt scoring with it. We were aiming for the basketball hoops, and if you've never tried throwing a frisbee in a basketball hoop, it's pretty difficult. I acted on a spur-of-the-moment impulse, then threw the frisbee. Much to my surprise--and everyone else's--I somehow managed to score! :O   I wasn't able to recreate my impossible feat again, but that's okay. XD

2- I don't know if I talked about this in my last email, but my parents sent me a Bluetooth keyboard! I love it so much! Now I can type faster and more efficiently when I don't have access to a computer! I really hate typing on a small phone screen with two fingers. XD  I've been working on responding to people, but my email has been a little whacky lately... I seem to have lost a couple of emails that people have sent me. If I don't respond to you and you emailed me, I'm really sorry. :( 

3- I was so glad to go to The Mustard Seed again! We went on Tuesday and Thursday, as normal. :)  We were going to go a third time to cover for some other Sisters, but I'll explain why that didn't work a little farther down. On Tuesday, we made sweet and sour pork with rice and a mix of carrots and peas. I was mostly scooping rice. We also helped to package some meals for delivery.

3- On Thursday, we didn't have much to do. We helped season chicken by rubbing garlic and sauce into it while it was frozen. My fingers got so cold! The kitchen gloves didn't help at all. We put the chicken in the oven, then measured out rice and filled pots with water to cook veggies. We left much earlier than usual because we were told there would be no point in sitting around waiting for the water to boil and the rice to cook. XD  So, with the extra time we came back to the apartment to grab my phone, which I had accidentally left. 

4- Thursday morning, when we were getting ready to go to the Mustard Seed, the fire alarm went off. We were already getting our stuff gathered to leave, so we weren't quite sure what to do. The alarm stopped, so we assumed it was a false alarm. Then, a couple of minutes later it went off again! And a third time! I grabbed my journals (I've already filled two since coming on the mission), my sketchbook, and a couple of other things that I deem irreplacable. In the confusion, I left my phone on my desk. XD  Sister Marsmaker teased me about that a bit. Honestly, though, I'm not super attached to this phone. My photos are backed up, and if need be, I could get a new phone. The fire alarms were just drills, though. The apartment building was being routinely tested. We just weren't told about it. XD

5- We've been doing a lot of contacts and Facebook. Sister Marsmaker and I made a goal to contact every member in the area--including inactive ones--at least once during this transfer. Not all of them have phone numbers, so this means we'll be doing some stop-bys a little later. I just want to at least reach out to everyone that lives close and is a member of the church, especially if we've never met them before.

6- We're meeting with this new lady who is super sweet and open. She reads the Bible and is incredibly well-versed in it! We've been meeting with her over Zoom, and she has rather similar beliefs. She is confused about a few things, though. She ran into some anti stuff a while ago, but instead of being scared off, she asked us about it. We were able to soothe her concerns, and she's willng to meet again. Her only stipulation is that we don't try to argue with her because she hates contention. That works great for us! We can't stand contention either! :D  I'm super excited to meet with her again. (I would say her name, but again, Canada's privacy laws... -_-)

7- We've had a few odd moments with the phone this week! XD  Once when Sister Marsmaker and I called a member, and the phone glitched out. We weren't able to shift the audio to speaker--which is a must for missionary companions, as both of us need to be able to hear and speak to people when we call them. Sister Marsmaker held the phone to her ear and I got in her bubble trying to listen. XD  Luckily, the member was actually busy and asked us to call her back. Teaching would have been difficult if only one of us could hear at a time!

7- When we were calling another member, Sister Marsmaker was bearing her testimony. It was awesome; I was able to feel the spirit so strong! Sister Marsmaker is realy passionate about what she believes. She concluded, then asked the member a question. There was a moment of awkward silence, then we realized the phone had disconnected. :l  OOF.  He called us back, though, and we were able to summarize what he missed and continue.

8- One day--I believe Wednesday? It's hard to remember--we had to rush to the church right after studies, and we didn't have time to pack lunches. So,we stopped by Dairy Queen to grab some food. I got a bacon burger and a Turtles blizzard. They're delicious! It was maybe -25ish Celsius. (I'm too lazy to calculate that now, but suffice to say it's very cold.) We went back to the church to eat because it was freezing. We met a sweet lady in Dairy Queen, though. She had a heavy Russian accent and was telling us all about her cute grandchildren. :) 

8- We ate most of our stuff, but I've always been slow with ice cream, so I still had a significant amount of blizzard left when we were going to head home. Sister Marsmaker is still driving--even though this is her last transfer, so we're a bit confused. But she likes driving and I don't, so no complaints! XD  But since she's the driver, that means I have to back her. I stood behind the car and guided her as she backed up. It was snowy and breezy, so just for kicks, I took another spoonful of my blizzard. It was so cold that my tongue stuck to the plastic spoon for a second! :O  I'm not doing that again! Also never licking anything metal. I'm not that gullible. XD

9- So... I'm still taking my daily walks on the Cowleys' orders. Since there's been a frostbite warning for the past couple of days and we've been advised to stay indoors as much as possible, Sister Marsmaker and I have just been walking inside the church. It's one big oval of hallways around the gym. Well, during one of those indoor walks, I nearly had a heart attack. XD

9- We were walking the other day when I saw a dark, shadowy figure at the far end of the hall. My mind loves to play tricks on me, so I thought it was just a figment of my imagination. As we got closer, movement triggered my vision again, and I realized with an awful jolt that there was actually a person at the end of the dark church hall. Sister Marsmaker stiffened beside me. I had a moment of panic, then the guy turned around and I recognized Brother Purnell! XD

9- I was relieved. He was just coming to check on something. But why the wolf spiders didn't he turn on the lights?! That was what really threw me off. I thought he wasn't supposed to be there at first, because he was just walking in the dark. I was a little jumpy for the rest of the day. Every time the pipes made weird noises or something I'd just about leap out of my chair. Some of the worst jumpscares I've had have been on the mission!

10- Welp, it happened. I got sick. -_-  Not Covid, but something mean and awful. I started feeling kind of sluggish towards the beginning of the week, and every day I've just felt more and more off. Mentally groggy some days and physically exhausted on others. I started to develop a sore throat and weird feelings in my gut Wednesday morning. I didn't feel too great on Thursday either. Friday I was pretty dead. I rolled out of bed and coughed up a bunch of nasty stuff. My throat was so sore it felt like it was lined with sandpaper. We decided to ask people if we could do Zoom meetings instead of visiting them in person. I don't want to get anyone else sick. :l

10- I've been surviving on a diet of mostly chicken noodle soup, applesauce, hot apple cider, and cough drops. The soup is good, but it makes me cough. The applesauce is pretty bland, but it's about all I can stomach. The apple cider soothes my throat for a second when I swallow it, but the relief doesn't last long. Same with the cough drops. 

11- So... basically all we did on Saturday was shovel some lady's driveway. She'd driven on the snow and packed it down into ice. -_-  Dad, if you read this, I now know why it rankles you so much when we drive on an unshoveled driveway. 

11- Sister Marsmaker and I did her porch and walkway just fine, but the driveway was like, three inches of powder on top of two solid inches of ice. We shoveled off all the powder, then chipped, whacked, and stabbed with our snow shovels to make a dent in the ice. We finally got down to the driveway in a couple of places and worked on prying off chunks of ice. Sometimes we'd get lucky and break off a big, thick sheet, but more often than not it would explode into little ice pebbles and we'd just sort of jackhammer in one spot with our shovels. I was so exhausted by the end...

11- We weren't able to get the whole driveway, because it was huge. After about an hour, we had to call it quits. Both of us were getting cold, and I was about coughing up my lungs. Also, I had blobs of ice sticking my eyelashes together, and frost was coating all my flyaway hairs. My eyebrows and headband got frosty too. We got some fun pictures, then went back to the apartment to warm up and have more soup and cider. :)

12- Not much else happened that weekend. I was able to get a Priesthood blessing on Saturday night. Elder Russel, the new district leader, was the one who blessed me. :)  It was such a neat experience. I was still feeling a bit sick on Sunday, so we watched church over Zoom this week. I have started feeling better now, so I'm glad.

Well, I hope no one else is sick! It's miserable... I hate having a sore throat. >_<

Take a few pictures! I tried to take some pictures of snowflakes, so I hope they show up! They're super pretty! Also, Sister Marsmaker and I after we shoveled that crazy driveway.