Just Eat It

Hello, All!

I don't usually take pictures of flowers but this
looks like the one from Tangled, so
how could I not?

It looks like it's that time of week again, where I get to spend a bit of time figuring out what exactly I want to share with everyone...lucky for you guys, this one should have some good stuff in it...!

Had to take a picture that
Sister Hood has never taken before

First letter wedding invitation I get is while
I'm on my mission! How ironic...(as part of our
service hours, we helped them set up for
the wedding reception)

EATING WHAT? I'll start with the title: we all know of two different types of "Eating It." This email has both. The first, and less entertaining of the two, was Saturday. Sister Hood and I got special permission to leave the house early, to attend our ward (congregation) breakfast! Pancakes, fruit, 20 lbs of bacon -- lots of good stuff we don't usually get. And of course, talking with the friends who came, who weren't members of our church!

On Pioneer Day (July 24th, it's a Utah thing) our
Mission President gave the Chico missionaries
permission to go to a baseball game! It was so
weird to be at a sporting event, but just fun to be
there. We left before it ended: still 9 p.m. back
in our apartment!

Not many empty dinner days in July.
That's pretty normal for around here.

Real live Ratatouille! Sometimes people
get good ideas from movies.

Okay, here's the more entertaining "eating it." I used to have a little joke, where with every 100 bad ideas I had, I'd get one good one. Thankfully since the mission, those numbers have changed a bit, but that doesn't mean I'm always coming up with good ideas. So here's my worst one yet!

Linda texted us, letting us know she'd be late for our service appointment with her (we always do yard work, or work on a house, for her), but she wanted us to get started without her, by cutting "suckers" on her apricot tree. We have no idea what these are, so when we got there we thought maybe she meant cutting off the dead branches from the tree.

Hood thought the peach tree was the apricot tree, and I trusted her, so I started trimming.

Linda showed up and just laughed at us, asking what the heck we were doing! She took us to the other tree and told us to cut off the suckers while she changed. We figured it was dead branches again. We figured with how the tree grew, Sister Hood was too short. I was figuring out how to cut these branches with the long pruners.

I am the dog food chef again for the
weekend! Love Kaia!

BRIGHT IDEAS. My next train of thought was jumping...genius. I'd jump up, grab a branch with the pruners, and my weight would break off the branches as I came down. We got to a branch that was a bit thicker than the others so of course: Challenge Accepted! You can see where this is heading.

I jumped up and caught the branch, but it didn't immediately break. I hung there for half a second, long enough for my legs to swing out a little bit, and THEN the branch broke. It was almost slow motion: I knew I had botched it.

Sorensons! Some of my favorite ward members.
Had to get a pic because 1) his BYU shirt, and
2) she looks like she could be in my family on
the Downey side. She acts the same as family
members on that side, and she has freckled
skin...then of course the flag shirt made it feel
like she was family! :)

Suddenly I was on my back, staring up at the tree, with the clean broken branch almost taunting me. I started cracking up, and Sister Hood was already almost rolling on the ground laughing at me. Moral of the story: missionaries aren't always magically smart. Wishful thinking!

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT. So aside from doing dumb things, I also learned a few new things, to feed my spiritual appetite more this week! First, I mentioned last time that I started week 11 early. I want to point out that every Greenie (new missionary) can start week 11 early, because it's really just a change in attitude. But once you make that switch, you see so many amazing miracles and personal growth!

I also wanted to share a wonderful experience involving "comp unity," which is thinking on the same plane as your companion, so you truly work together. This was a result of inspiration and it was very impactful.

Yes, that's a dead chicken in the road
(note from Mom: really, Teresa?!)

FORGIVING YOURSELF. We've had this family of investigators for awhile, but we haven't been able to teach them since they just had a new baby. We went Saturday, though, and that morning Sister Hood felt that we should share a video called "Reclaimed" with them. (It's a "Mormon Message" -- you should check it out!)

Tiwi broke on us so alas, we had to
unplug him. Clearly heartbroken,
Sister Hood almost couldn't do it!
Kidding. Tiwi is never to be
unplugged, so we were disobedient,
only because the Tiwi company and
our mission office car overseer
told us to :)

When we got there, Erica (the mom) was asleep with the newborn, so we just taught Reed. After he finished watching the video and we asked him about it, he just said, "I feel like I needed to see this."

Then he told us about things that he's done in the past, which have put him in a kind of negative state of mind. When he ever gets hurt or really sick, he doesn't think, "God give me strength," but instead he thinks "I probably deserve this," which breaks my heart. He's still beating himself up over old sins, that he's done his best to fix and change himself, so he doesn't ever do those things again, but he can't forgive himself.

Service Day: windows with
2 clean panels of the 6!

I asked him if we could read a story from the Book of Mormon with him, and Sister Hood, without me specifying the story, flipped open to Alma the Younger. We read with him, and one of his first questions after was, "Why did you read this with me? Are you saying I should be in a coma or something for stuff I've done?" He wasn't confronting in his tone; just accepting, and looking for a confirmation that yes, he deserves to suffer, which then broke my heart even more.

There are times when I struggle with
simple things...Hood got a kick out of it

We talked to him about repentance, and the spirit told me to mention baptism. The logical part of me argued against it, because he's not there yet but of course, never argue with a prompting so I voiced baptism and immediately the rest of what I was supposed to say came to mind. It was so cool how I had to take that first step before Heavenly Father gave me the rest! But before I even finished the question of "Do you want to come to a baptism next weekend?" Reed said yes! It is amazing to see the gospel work in people's lives and soften people, as well as give them hope! Definitely a learning moment for me.

Window on the left is cleaned,
right is what it looked like before

I want to end with a quote from an article my adopted Grandma, Peanut, sent me!

The water marks were so stuck
on there, we literally used a sander
to get some of it off! It's dumb but
it works--it's not dumb

"INSTRUMENTS." The metaphor is nearly perfect as a description of our part in the work of salvation. There are dozens of varieties of surgical instruments, each with a specific purpose: everything from retractors to scalpels to surgical scissors. But they all have at least one thing in common. It is an absolute imperative that surgical instruments be clean. It is unthinkable that a surgeon trying to heal someone who was sick or injured would afflict them with additional problems by the use of instruments that were not pure.

There is another way in which all instruments are similar. None of them ever gets credit for their spectacular service in a medical procedure. Can you imagine the instruments, after a successful surgery, boasting about how well they performed?"

Have to get our service picture each time,
for Linda. Clearly, I wanted the photo taken

This was an eye opener for me! I hope all of you guys can strive to be pure, (I'm working on it), just so you can also fulfil your purposes in your own way, even by just extending a hand of friendship or giving someone a few kind words.

I'll catch up with everyone next week!

Sister Whitesell

We got a free car wash! And it was
colored foam. So exciting for
missionaries!

teresa.whitesell@myldsmail.net

244 B West 20th St.
Chico, CA 95928