Thursday, October 20, 2011

Week One in Woodridge


Dearest familia,

This first week has been great!  Items of business first, funny items of note second, and then the good stories.

Mom - can you send me some homemade jam possibly??  Please??   I forgot to tell you that while I was in the MTC I ran 2 miles!  Without stopping! It was awesome.  I also ran a 1.5 miles another day with some stairs in the middle.  That was a crazy day...

Alicia and Alan - we live really close to a Menards.  It makes me laugh and think of you every time we drive by.

We also live near Robinhood Way.  There is also a Galahad Road and many other various Robinhood and King Arthur associated street names.  I also saw a Janes Avenue the other day, and obviously thought of Jane.  Another amusing street is Shady Lane.  And my favorite, Cheese Road.  (Sister Westrup, if you are reading my blog, you will have to pass this info on to Rebekah.  I immediately thought of her when I saw it.)  Really though, who named these streets??  I always have loved funny street names, and Illinois is certainly a good place to find some great ones!  

Amy - the other day I was thinking about what snack foods I wanted to buy when preparation day came, and I got a craving for fruit leathers.  That night when we got home, we checked the mail.  There was a letter for me from you.  With a fruit leather inside.  Beautiful.     Also I LOVED the girls paintings and notes!  They crack me up.

People in Illinois REALLY get into Halloween.  I have never seen so many elaborately decorated houses in my life!  I can't even imagine what Christmas will be like. 

The Work:  My second day we started tracting, and Sister Brown seems to forget sometimes that I am new, so at our first door she was thinking that I knew exactly what was going on and what I was doing, so she just didn't say anything.  After a few awkward seconds of the person who answered the door waiting for us to talk, I had to speak up and I gave my first door approach.  Luckily that was just a stop by of someone that they had already met before I got there and not a totally random door approach, but it was still a little nerve racking.  I really like tracting though, and most people are really nice to us.  

We started teaching two new people this week and they are AWESOME!  Michelle and Cierra.  Michelle has three kids and has TONS of questions.  She is one of those people that is already living most of the gospel standards, she just doesn't realize she is.  Cierra is a senior at Bolingbrook High School.  We taught her the Restoration on Tuesday and when we asked her to pray to ask God if it was true she said, "I'm pretty sure He'll say 'yes'. "  AHH!!!!  So exciting!  He WILL say yes Cierra!  He WILL!  

The other day I glanced at the map and saw that there was a Poplar Ln, so of course I said, "Sister Brown!  We have to tract on Poplar!"  And it was the COOLEST street EVER!  That's where we found Cierra :)  And another man that we are meeting with next week.  And some other really nice people.  And a lady named Judy that said she would like to come to church some time.  Umm.... AWESOME!  That is totally okay with me.  The street where we found Michelle is called Lexington and that came about because of what we call "map miracles".  We had dinner Friday night with a family and as our lesson afterward we talked to them about prayer and how Heavenly Father WILL answer our prayers.  We gave them an area of the map to choose from and then asked them to pick two streets for us to tract and then to pray for us and those streets as we would go to work on them the next day at a specific time.  It was a really great street and we talked to so many people!!  It was awesome :)

We had Zone Conference yesterday and that was really great.  We learned lots of great stuff and about having greater faith and expecting miracles.  Elder Ellis of the Seventy came to teach us.  It was also really fun because all of the missionaries from my MTC district that came to Chicago were there too!  It was fun to see them all.

  LOVE YOU!!!!!!!

Sister Hatch






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