Tick tock on the clock, but my watch has broken off now

Oh man. This week has been. No words. I am having such a hard time typing too haha. But anyways, CRAZY!

First matter of business, as suggested in my subject, yes. I have mastered the art of stopping time so that I don't need a watch anymore. I am limitless. But no, I wish. Actually my watch broke so I don't know anything about time and such. Soon I won't even have a concept of where I am. Awkward.

This weeks shout out goes to Ashley. She wrote me two letters and I had to pay 20 cents because you can't send coins through the mail. All about them bills yo

On Tuesday we stopped by the chair because some wonderful children of God decided to put this crap piece of furniture on our lawn. And the second ward said they'd move it, and the first ward said they'd move it, but no one did. I can't say I'm surprised though. But anyways, we took it upon ourselves to move it. So we did. And we went to the bathroom and holy crap it was like the biggest congregation of everything I've never wanted to smell in my life. Of course the toilet is clogged. And of course I take it upon myself to fix it. It was weird though because someone like flushed half of the chain and I was like "the heck how does that even happen" but anyways I just used a paper clip. It's holding up as far as I know. I am most definitely NOT going into plumbing.

And I totally did not write "your mom" in the dictionary on page 376 and write the page number in my companions planner since she's going on exchanges and she can find it later today.

The other day I was like "I totally miss my guitar" and God said let there be a guitar, and there was. No joke. We pulled into Eli's house. He's the drunk guy who won't change his ways but one day he will. Anyways, there was just a guitar sitting outside and I was like hallelujah and I swear it was a tender mercy, if not a miracle. Maybe next time I'll be like "I totally miss Taylor Swift" and she will just sort of appear.

One of our investigators/lady who removed her records from the church has decided to be re-baptized! She is such a nice woman. She has a heart of gold and she's so willing to take care of people. Literally, her house is filled with people who work for her but would otherwise not have a home or a job. She had a miracle happen to her and she hasn't felt the desire to drink coffee since. I seriously hope I'm around for her baptism, otherwise it'd be super sad :(

We taught this guy named Alex from Reno. He was... interesting. He talks a lot. Like A LOT. And it's all relevant-ish. He told us about the visions he's seen. And spirits and good people and bad people and it was a good lesson though. He's super nice and if he lived in the area, he'd totally be baptized. He knows it's true. He says he feels something in the church he's never felt before and he's way awesome. He's a cowboy haha he totally came to church in boots and a cowboy hat. So cool.

Annelise went to girls camp and LOVED it. It is such an awesome tool for feeling the spirit and I can't imagine a better place to be. And unlike the girls camps I've been to, bad things like lice and fleas did not occur. Lucky ducks. But she gave an awesome talk, first time ever speaking in front of that many people, and rocked it.

So big news! Transfers are next Wednesday.  Can you believe I've been out 6 weeks? I can't either. But look at this

"I have started working on transfers, and this is going to be a major effort from just about everyone. We have three missionaries who were new just two weeks ago, and at transfer we will get 31 permanent missionaries and 7 visa waiters. Then a couple of weeks later we will get three more. That is 44 missionaries. As if that weren't enough, by time those 44 are all here, we will have one half of our mission who have been out four transfers or less. Yes half the mission will be new missionaries."

They might give me, Sister Kwan, a brand new missionary. I'm like what the heck the Lord could trust me that much? Either way, we will see. I'll find out if I'm training on Wednesday and then on Saturday they will tell us where we are going. But dang.

Holy cow I feel so bad I'm just trying to crank this out cuz I'm not sure if I will be able to get on later and I have 2 minutes. Spiritual thought... Humility isn't thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less. I'm not sure if I've used this before, but I just really like that. Pride is the sin of comparison and it's like crazy but I don't have much time to explain.

Love

Sister Kwan

M-I-S-S-I-(ippi)-O-N-A-R-Y

This week's shout out goes to dinosaurs! Only they aren't real, so it actually goes to Katherine Almostmarried Phillips! And no, the date isn't until August 17, but I figured I would forget since I have no concept of time anymore. I figured we should all take this moment and spend some time to just think. Think of how awesome Sister Kwan is because she basically orchestrated the whole thing. Naw I'm just kidding. Katherine is like 6 feet of awesome and motherliness and he's a cool guy. They're going to be awesome even though I'm still like eh 19 is too young. But yay for marriage! Sort of

This week was AWESOME. Like all the other weeks. I'm trying so hard to keep these things short but I swear it's near impossible.

Our recent convert got more custody! Yay! The day before we just decided to show up at her house with scriptures, and we knock on the door and she is like "OH MY GOSH. I WAS LITERALLY JUST READING MY SCRIPTURES AND PRAYING AND I GOT SAID AMEN AND LITERALLY THE DOORBELL RANG AND I WAS GOING TO ASK YOU FOR SCRIPTURES AND OH MY GOSH YOU HAVE THOSE TOO" and no, she wasn't yelling. But she was excited and you can't capture that well in fonts. So anyways, tender mercies yo.

We went to a relief society activity with out investigator, Glendoris (the recycling superhero), and it was like this swap exchange thing. Either way, I left with this thing that heats scented wax so you don't need a candle? We used it and it smells nice but I was like "yo where's the fire" and it's just a dinky little lightbulb. What concerns me though, is that the lightbulb gets hot enough to melt wax. That's definitely fire hazard status but whatever.

We had to clean the apartment at some point, and I couldn't tell you when because again, no concept of time. I was vacuuming and I was like "this vacuum sucks" hahhaaha I just got my own joke. Anyways, I figured I'd try and fix it and I see all this hair stuck in it. And so I sat there like "alright let's get the scissors out" and I sat there for like 20 minutes giving a haircut to this vacuum. Honestly, you could've made a wig out of all that hair. And this is pretty gross and stuff, but I felt the need to share this. There should be like a vacuum awareness month because that hair was probably sitting there for decades. Nasty.

And then there was ward council. One of my wards is super great at missionary work, and the other one... it's kind of frustrating. We were sitting in ward council and we spent 10 minutes discussing fruit. Not like, all the different kinds of fruits, or the flavors. It was a discussion about how the pioneers didn't have fruit. And sure, maybe we are having a linger longer this Sunday and we're having pioneer food, but I'm pretty sure this discussion only needed a "yes. let's get 2 trays of fruit" and not "pioneers didn't have fruit, why are we getting fruit? That's the theme!" "what if someone wants fruit? then what" and ugh. Apparently this isn't even the worst that's happened, but honestly. Make good use of your time, because it's just stupid fruit.

But the best part of my week was exchanges! Typically this is when two sister training leaders meet with two sister missionaries and they swap so training happens and what not. BUT it's kind of hilarious because there was one sister training leader with a new missionary (like me) and then me and my companion. And the swapping ended up having me with the new sister, who I totally met at the MTC and she's way cool. But I was like "dude. I get to do exchanges with this totally awesome sister who knows just as much as I do? This is going to be beyond fantastic." And it was. It was hilarious, like beyond anything haha. Her name is Sister Tsan and she's from Hong Kong and she's English speaking, but we came out of the MTC together and we had talked before. Our first lesson was a foreign exhange student and Sister Tsan is teaching in broken Mandarin, and she looks at me randomly and I'm like "This might seem like a dumb question but... do you pray in Chinese or English?" Turns out, he was trying to pray in English, and l was like "hey man, it's alright because God understands everything." Which is totally true. He understands semi-conscious Sister Kwan in the morning talk, why not Chinese? Anyways, that was fun.

The next day was just a lot of driving around and trying to find people. We hit basically their whole less active list and there were a bunch of slammed doors. One woman was like "I'm not a fan of Mormons" so holler to all the people that are fans. Our transfer ended at 4:15 and it was 4:10 and I was like "okay. let's do this last house and go" So we're looking for this lady and we get to the house, and her son Jason is home. We talk to him for a little and he's way smart. He's totally covered and tattoos and probably could've killed us if he wanted to, but no, we had a nice discussion about the apostasy. He like knows something is wrong with everything, and he told us he believes in Jesus AND the law of Moses. Which, I'm not sure how that works, but maybe it does. We were like "well here, this is the Restoration pamphlet and things will probably make a lot more sense after you read it. When can we come back and answer your questions?" and he says "well I do want to meet up, but I was out with my buddy and we were both on parole and he broke his while I was with him and the cops told me to sit tight and wait to see if I get arrested too." Totally met an ex-con, best moment of the day haha. He was so nice and genuine though, I really hope he got out.

This week's thought is on love. Because I'm getting married too! Haha just kidding. Like you have no idea how much I'm kidding. But no, the kind of love that makes you want to do nice things for other people. Ultimately, we are all God's children. Sure, you fight with your siblings. But if it came down to it, you'd still fight the bully that picked on them. That's how we need to treat everyone around us. If you go in to talk to someone with the mentality that you are going to convert them, you won't get anywhere. But if you go in wanting to befriend them and love them, that's where the magic is. The gospel will naturally come over time, and even if it doesn't, why not make a couple more friends? Friends are pretty cool if you ask me.

Anyways, I hope everyone is having a fantabulous summer! Stay strong!

Love,

Sister Kwan

Chilean like a Villain

Ignore the completely irrelevant subject, I'm hilarious. 

Anyways, this week's shout out goes to 'Murica. Word. 

Oh and I have more than an hour for e-mails now and I'd sure love to hear from everyone! Letters are cool too, but e-mails are faster. Yay for spending large blocks of time on e-mails! But seriously, I'd love to hear from everyone!

Sorry this one is super long... The weather has been normal and it's great but soooo much has happened haha

"Despicable Me 2" came out this week, kudos to them on their advertising. They like synced everything to come out at the same time, it's genius. But anyways, I bought a box of Reese's Puffs (shout out to dorm 2101) and I got a minion key chain. Definitely one of the best days ever. So then I put it on my backpack. Duh that's where it goes. So then our recent convert sees it and goes "I LOVE DESPICABLE ME WHERE DID YOU GET THAT" and I was like "ISNT IT GREAT I GOT IT FROM A CEREAL BOX" and really it was just great. So she has a court date coming up, so we were like alright let's go get her one, get her baby one, I want the Mexican one, and Sister Slaughter wants one. We go to the store and literally they're all gone. It's like all the boxes with the toys inside were translated or something. The extent missionaries will go for their recent converts, let me tell you. We tried about 5 grocery stores until we found one that had them, but they were all honey nut cheerios. Yes, we did buy 4 boxes of honey nut cheerios that day. But the Lord will provide, even if it's just to find a toy haha

I got to grill this week! Kind of on accident/it was a misteak (haha get it). Our ward mission leader invited us over to his house for dinner on July 4th, and so we were helping cut things for our burgers. Then his wife is like "oh we should start the grill!" She hits the switches and leaves us out their with the burgers, and neither of us has grilled before. It got like way smokey, and I'm trying to flip the stupid patties that are somehow stuck to the grill now. Their 12 year old daughter runs out like "It's not supposed to be this smokey, what'd you do!" And we were like "uh. it was your mom." Anyways, she salvaged the cancer from the grill and it ended up being alright.

For July 4th we got to go to a parade! It was super fun. I got a coupon for free butter. And then they gave me a foam cow key chain. What is it with this week and key chains. Anyways, we were out "creating a presence" as my ward mission leader put it, and we were talking to members. We let all the kids have the candy, but the floats were pretty cool. Lots of fancy cars and what not, lots of stores, trains. I think my favorite was this kid who totally looked miserable cuz he was in this full body pig suit hahahaha. Or this episcopalian church that had like a burning theme. They had people dressed in charcoal bags and they had a girl on top of the float singing. And like the float was a grill. She was literally burning, in almost every sense of the word. It was still like 106 so she didn't even need a fire. Not that there was one. But my point is, people think Mormons are weird. And maybe we are, but at least we aren't crazy. I think it would have been way cool if we had gotten our own float and gotten members to hand out pass along cards and candy and stuff, it would've been so effective! And I don't know, maybe our float could be a giant Book of Mormon and we can hand out jello. We have a year to hash this out haha

And today we were going to go to Trader Joe's and the post office and Kohl's, but then we decided to go to Target first and forget half of those places. We were at Target, and the cashier just saw our tags and she goes, "Oh my goodness. I have a son and you guys minister to people right? Is there any way you can go see him? He's a great boy, he's just a little lost and I want you guys to talk to him." And we were like "We totally would, but we aren't over his area. We will give you the number for the elders, and they will be in contact with him soon!" Can you imagine what would happen if we had decided to go somewhere else? Or even if we had decided to go later? Either way, it was not a coincidence that we were at Target, at that time, in that checkout lane.

We have a new investigator. Her name's Annelise and she is 13. Her dad's a member and so is her step-mom. She is golden. She is so ready to get baptized and stuff buuuuuuut there are custody issues. Her mom's in Idaho and she has 100% custody and she's way Catholic... hopefully we get that worked out, because she is so awesome.

We are also teaching this guy named Baun, and he sort of fell away from the church for awhile, but now he wants to relearn everything and come back! He is so sweet. And so receptive, and he is so nice. I'm not that great at all the lessons yet, and we're basically practicing on him haha but he is really patient with us. Or me at least, my companion is awesome at it :)

Then there's Glendoris. She's kind of basically deaf so we have to yell. The other day, we went to her house and knocked on the door and rang the doorbell, and no one answered, but then the phone rang and she picked it up. Awkward. But she's a funny woman. Probably not intentionally. I just think it's really funny that she's got like 20 bajillion bottles on her driveway. No joke. But what's even funnier is that she doesn't drink, but she has these like cans of beer and bottles of wine. Apparently she can't bear the thought that they don't get recycled, but my companion says she is a hoarder. She could probably get like $100 for taking all those to. Where ever they say they'll pay you for recycling and that's a lot at 5 cents a piece. But she's really nice.

Overall, I just really like everyone here. Everyone's so nice. Like the person in charge of our dinners went out of town so we had no idea who was feeding us, but sooo many people offered to help. And one family went and burned us a whole bunch of Christian rock. It's interesting stuff actually, but it's so much better than David Archuleta allllll the time. Speaking of music, I acquired some music! Of course I bought a Taylor Swift CD. But there's also a Matchbox 20 CD and Sister Slaughter bought a Jonas Brothers CD. We got one song off Taylor Swift, 2 off the Matchbox 20, and 4 off the Jo Bros haha. I'm going to say it's worth it. Anything to hear Taylor's voice again... ;)

This week's thought: 12-step. It's the church's addiction recovery program, and it is so fantastic. We got to go, and it was so great. It should really be called the 12-steps to the atonement, because that's what it's centered on. You learn so much about yourself AND the atonement, and who doesn't want to learn more about either of those? If you get the chance to go to one, I strongly recommend it. The Spirit in that room was stronger than anything I've ever felt. I get chills typing about it right now. But this week's lesson was on hope. I love this topic so much, probably because a fair amount of my life was void of it. My favorite part was when we were reading in Psalms 23. It talks about leaning on Christ, and it says "walking through the shadows of death." The mediator pointed out that you can't have shadows without light. SO COOL RIGHT?? I had never thought about it, but really there's always hope. I figured somedays would be like looking for a silver lining on a day without clouds. But no, actually it's more like how you hear a word for the first time. It's everywhere after you've seen it once, you just have to pay attention. That's hope. It's a light in a dark place, it's a rope in a stormy sea, it's your bed after a long day of work. It's so awesome :)

I hope everyone's doing great!

Love,

Sister Kwan

Save Me, San Francisco

If heat could kill, I would be dead. But seriously, it's been like triple digits here. And the bay has been about 50. Which is where I got the subject from, with no reference to the awesome song by Train. I love it here though, and it'd be weird if I was somewhere else. I think. Anyways, it's been hot. But I figure I can get my tanlines going. Heat makes it sink in more, right? And no one tell me otherwise haha I can't use google. This week I had to be a momentary spider slayer and it was kind of cool because I leaped and used the bed as a spring board and crushed the spider with my shoe. That probably sounds kind of lame but it's actually really cool. And my companion thinks there's a mouse in the house, and I wouldn't be surprised. But she's super scared of them and I mean. I've never had to deal with them so it's like mice? Mice are cute. At least for now.

So I'm learning that where we are is apparently the richest part of the district. Like, 5 million dollar homes. Which kind of explains why we haven't had much success tracting. More on that later. But I was at this investigators home, and I asked to use the bathroom so they were like sure. And I walked in, and it's a bidet. Like those super fancy french toilets with like heated toilet seats and no need for toilet paper. It was an interesting experience. If I'm rich, I'm not sure it's the best investment. I will however, invest in chickens. Half the ward here has their own chicken coop and it's actually really cool. They always give us eggs and there were GREEN EGGS. Like legit Sam I am and green eggs and ham type stuff. Not on the inside, just the outside. And apparently these eggs are healthier too! Way cool. And turkeys roam free here. And I held the cutest little puppy everrrrr and if I can figure out how to send pictures, I will because I just bought a camera cord hahaha

This week was not nearly as successful. We did a lot of street contacting and tracting in spite of it being the hottest week of the year, and we got some pass along cards out and thought we had an investigator but we didn't. She totally told us to come back at 4 on Sunday and then they totally weren't there. But she was nice and hopefully we planted some seeds. We didn't get any door slams though, people are really nice. Like a lot of people were like "It's too hot for you to be outside!" or "We aren't interested, but it's really respectable what you're doing." So not really discouraging, but they still wouldn't take the awesome pass along cards we have. Sometimes I wish missionaries had the power to like momentarily remove agency and convert everyone, but I think that's contrary to everything we teach. I'm hoping that the lack of people opening doors is because it's summer and everyone's on vacation. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's it :)

We hit a lot of less actives this week, and a fair amount of them came to church! It was exciting. We are teaching this family that has the CUTEST puppy EVER. I just sat there and held it. We watched "The Testaments" with them, which is a fantastic video. If you haven't watched it, I would highly recommend it. It's about an hour long. I was almost crying at the end, but I've learned how to control it haha. The spirit was so strong. The only issue is that the dad's hip was bothering him, the wife fell asleep, and the daughter was distracted by the puppy. The spirit was there, and I really hope they felt it, but I'm not sure. You never know with people. But they are all so wonderful. They are all SO nice here. I'm not sure why they are, or what I did, but it's great. It's funny though, because one of the wards is a lot wealthier than the other, and you can totally see the difference in the people. I mean, everyone's nice and they're all living the gospel to the best of their ability, but the not so wealthy ward is so much more laid back haha. They are both great though.

I'm attaching pictures because it's working! There's a picture of the puppy (just look at the puppy. it was hot and I was tired and we had to leave or else we'd break curfew) and the girl we baptized and green eggs and speckled eggs and me and my companion with the mission president and his wife!

This weeks thought:

Humility isn't thinking less of yourself. It's thinking of yourself less.

Love you all!

Sister Kwan