Happy New Year

HAPPY NEW YEARS!

2012 is done in less than 12 hours! I can't believe it. Last New Years Eve feels like it was last week-Caitie and I were just running around DC, dancing in some weird club downtown. This year I'll be holed up in our little Dachney apartment, reading Jesus the Christ underneath my giant Orthodox, carpet icon. Life, man.

Anywho, this past week was X-cellent. I loved getting to talk to you guys. Sorry it was at 1 am. Haha. I wish I could've gotten to see Isaac and Caitie and James. Oh, well. There's always Mothers Day, right? I'm glad everything's going well in Virginia. You all look happy and healthy :)

All the Christmas activities kind of threw off missionary work for a bit. We didn't have as many lessons as I would've like, but we had some interesting experiences. We dropped by a less active family last week, which turned out to be a trip. We knocked on their door and this man that I looked like he should've been carving wooden puppets opened the door and invited us in. We asked if his wife was there (since we're not allowed to meet with men by themselves) and he pointed to the bed where she was sleeping. We started whispering so as not to wake her up, but it was too late. She woke up, came over to us and just burried her face in my jacket and started crying. She kept saying, "You came to me! You came to me!" We calmed her down and brought her into the other room, which was filled with cats and clothes and littler boxes. We started talking and trying to figure out what was making her so hysterical, but she kept interrupting us with giant fits of crying. At a couple points she came up to Sister Moffatt and I, grabbed out hands and just stared us down. It was pretty strange. As she talked, her husband would pop in with tiny blurbs like "I used to be active!" "I love talking to missionaries! "Is Elder so-and-so still there?" "When is family home evening?!" Whenever he did, his wife would turn to threaten him then turn back to us. I ended up saying, "Tee-huh!" (silence!) to quiet them down. Sister Moffatt and I felt like the grown ups in the room. She bounced back and forth between saying she'd come back to church and saying that she "just couldn't" and crying. When we walked out of their building I just stopped and stood there in the snow wondering what the heck just happened. Haha.

THEN there's Vladimir. We stopped by his house a couple nights ago. He invited us right in, so we went inside. He showed us to his living room, which was lit by a lamp that switched back and forth between red and blue lights. I felt like I was in a 60s movie the entire time. Then he proceeded to turn on the TV. OH EM GEE, FAMILY. I saw TV for the first time in 5 months! Granted, the entire time we were trying to tell him it was forbidden and to turn it off. He just kept saying, "Hold on, we'll see, we'll see." I ended up seeing So You Think You Can Dance, Sarah Chalke's (from Scrubs) new show, Discovery channel, and 10 seconds of Lord of Dogtown! Anywho, after all that we talked about the Book of Mormon and church. He's a smart cookie, but not all the way there sometimes, like and absent-minded professor. We invited him to church and told him to read the intro to the Book of Mormon; he said he would. Then he gave us his nephew's number and told us to call him, which we were not opposed to. Then, on our way out he stopped his neighbors and told them, "I've got Mormons here if you want to talk to them!" They pretty much slammed the door in his face, but it was a nice effort. We'll see how the next meeting goes...

We also had zone conference this week, which meant I got to see all my favorite people in the world (minus you guys). Sister Moffatt, Elder McClure, Elder Astle, and I all got together and caught up on our missions, then I spent a good 10 minutes doing my old impressions of the MTC district, then Elder Astle tried to poke my sides and I started wigging out just like old times. haha. I was doing SO GOOD for 3 months! Now I'm paranoid all over again. That's all beside the point, though. Zone conference was pretty great this time around. President Sartori gave us a letter to read called "Covenanting with the Lord," which outlines how to 'harvest' with the Lord and how to include him in the missionary work process. Essentially you make a deal with God at the beginning of every month and tell him what you're willing to do to make that deal go through, then you work your tail off until it happens. It's exhausting, but it's awesome. I think it'll be a big game changer. President Sartori wants our area to become a stake by this June, so a game changer is pretty necessary at this point...

Well, family. I think that's all I got for this week. It's time to go lock ourselves down until 2013. I love you all! I hope you've all made your New Year's resolutions (GOOD ones)! Remember to include Heavenly Father in them. He knows what you need better than anyone else, and he'll put everything you need in your path if you let Him.

LOVE YOU! BE GREAT!

-Sister Sine