Fireflies Make Me Happy!

Querida Familia,

Congrats to my dear cousin Corianne! I would have loved to have been there. The reception looked so beautiful, the colors, the dresses, the food, the good company and her dress looked fabulous. Uncle Roger and Aunt Julianne know how to throw a party. It looked wonderful. Congrats and I love you!

Momma, I thought that you'd have "more time" when you weren't in school. Boy, was I wrong. Crazy. I'm glad that you did get to go kayaking. Oh the Warf, calamari, aquarium, the sea lions- Oh yeah, I can see it all now. Maybe I'll head over there after the mission to experience the high life again :). That was fun that Dan and Claire got to come as well. Dan- you have got the single worst ankle tan lines I have ever seen in my life. Awesome. Yea for Baby Bridger's blessing! That sure looked cute and fun. Don't worry Sarah, someday when I am rich and famous and have piles of money sitting around, I will take you to Cancun and Jonathan can babysit. I wish I was there to paint your toe nails. I hope that the conference in Mexico went well and that Jonathan impressed all sorts of Science Bigwigs while he was there (as always :D). I got the loveliest little letter from Katie a couple of days ago. It totally made my day! What is Tacos up to!? Tell that brat to write me someday so I can hear what he is up to!

The work is really hard, but I do love it. All of our progressing investigators cancelled appointments last week. Sigh. But we did knock into a bunch more awesome people. I found out that my companion from the MTC Hermana Ivie has made it to Peru. Also, there was another Hermana in our district here who was also going to my same mission who got her visa in on Thursday and on Saturday morning she was gone. It has been really hard for both Hermana Rane and I here. God truly has blessed us in several wonderful ways though.

 We went on exchanges last week. I was with Hermana Storts, who had spent 6 months of her mission in the Bella Vista ward. She showed me around the town and told me of some really great places to knock. She also introduced me to some wonderful ward members. It was really cool seeing the area from her point of view. She knew every place we went and all her former investigators. Plus she spoke really great Spanish. I learned so much from her in just one day wow.

 
Some little perk that I had not anticipated about this area is that there are FIREFLIES! I love them so much and they just make me so happy. The problem is that they really start coming out when I am supposed to be in our apartment planning for the next day. But they do add a bit of variety to the day. We also got Severe Thunderstorm and Flash flood warnings on Thursday. They even went so far as to have a Tornado warning. I got real excited because it is on my bucket list to see a real tornado, but after raining really hard for 5 minutes it stopped. Bummer.

Sorry this one is kind of short, but I do love being a missionary. I can feel the prayers from everyone. Thanks a million. Love you all and again congrats to Corianne!

con amor

Hermana Christensen