June 7, 2010

What do you call a person who doesn't know the Star Spangle Banner? Not American.

This past week in district meeting we had the Star Spangle Banner as a closing song. The good thing is that we are all Americans, except for my halfie friend and companion Sister Fitzsimmons. But to my horror, everyone started grabbing at the hymn books to find the song. I yelled, "No you do not need to open the Hymn book for this song!" Like my name is Shaniqua from Oakland. The elders just looked at me and just made excuses for it, they just did it out of habit. We all had a good laugh and in the end we all put our hands over our hearts, especially during the prayer when Elder Robinson thanked Heavenly Father for America and every thing about her. It was funny, but not sacrilegious. These poor Elders miss the mother land :).

Well, one of our investigators has decided to get baptized. We are so excited for her. She is so happy now and has a sort of a peace about her. The only hard part is she always feeds us and makes food for four. We end up shoveling our faces so she will not think that her excellent cooking is bad. Now we are meeting with her twice a week, and twice a week we have to shovel our faces. But I'm not going to complain about good food, since what the Lord giveth, he also taketh away. She is so good to us, really. For Easter she had us over and said, "Today I am your family." We had a great meal and a great lesson about the Resurrection.

I have been reading the Hymns a lot lately. I really miss poetry, and I really miss singing hymns in English. I have been reading the song, "Jesus The Very Thought of Thee" on page 141 a lot. I'll share my favorite verse:

O hope of every contrite heart,
O joy of all the meek,
To those who fall how kind thou art,
How good to those who seek.

Okay one more verse I love,

Jesus the very thought of thee,
With sweetness fills my breast,
Far sweeter great thy face to see,
And in thy presence rest.

I just love the Hymns and there are a lot more I read often. What I love about poetry is that something new always pops out and it just gets better and better the more I read it. I have been memorizing them so I can think about them in the trams or just sometime during the day. I feel such a peace when I read and think about them and also hum the tune in my head.

We talked to the Elders in our district this week about our concern that we don't feel they have confidence in us as missionaries. They are so wonderful and afterward I felt such a weight lifted from my shoulders and freedom to feel their confidence in us and to be the missionary I want to be. Sister Fitzsimmons and I are not looking forward to this transfer ending because we have such a good time together and with our dear Elders. But Sister Fitzsimmons didn't get my joke when I said to everyone, "I'm really glad that we are learning to work together because this is going to help your wifies, this will help Sister Fitzsimmon’s husband, and it will help my colleagues."

We went group contacting in a park last Saturday. Elder Pashce and I were going around and talking to people and here are our favorite quotes from the day:

-What church does the devil go to?
-Christ was a communist
-Man is God

We still haven't figured out what church the devil goes to, other than his own church.

Well I will be sending some pictures today, they will be great. I love you and thank you for your emails. Just to let you know, if you write me I will write you, but if you don't this is all you get! My email is kristen.dillender@myldsmail.net

I also cannot and don't check my regular email, or my blog site. Thank you Lynny for putting this up for me. So if you comment on anything, I won't see it till July 2011. Thanks everyone for the support and love!

s ljubavlju,

Sister Dillender