It really has been a beautiful week. Tiring! But beautiful. I really don't even know where to begin! We have 5 hours shifts of giving tours as Sister Missionaries. Sister Thomas and I have been at the Joseph Smith family farm for most of the week and then this coming week starting Wednesday we'll move down to Fayette and have 7 hour shifts at the Peter Whitmer farm. Friday and Saturday we had over 3,000 people come through the JS farm alone- that's each day we had that many. Sunday quite a bit slower and I expect today to be slower too since there's no pageant tonight, but we expect it to pick up again tomorrow since the show will be on every night from Tuesday to Saturday. In a lot of ways it's sad to give tours like this since we stand at a station for hours rather than getting to know a family as we take them through the sites, but it has been SO fun to see so many people from all over the world. There have been more Spanish bus tours than I expected! And there are only 5 Sisters who speak Spanish so they've kind of assigned me a radio whenever I'm on the grounds in case I need to translate. Normally someone in the group speaks English well enough, though. It's been nice to use the language. Some of the most memorable people from other places in the world were from Tahiti, French-speaking Canada, the Philippines, Sweden, and practically all of the Spanish speaking countries. I don't think I've met anyone from Nicaragua or Cuba yet this week...but the other Spanish speaking countries I have. SO fun. And terrifying :)
Another cool thing about being here for a few weeks is that we get to live with a bunch of other people! We live with 2 other sets of Sisters: Meister, McManama, Earl and Wall. They are really wonderful in their own ways which has been fun to observe. One of my favorite things is to look around at all of our suitcases draped across the floor. Everyone has a different style and different habits. I'm still learning to be satisfied with who I am and where I've come from. Sometimes I'm a little disheveled and weird. That's alright, you know? Sometimes you forget that living with the same people for extended periods of time.
On that note, I've been thinking a lot about personal choices. There's no avoiding the fact that our choices create our environments- they make life good or bad. Sometimes I think it's easy to get stuck on what we've personally decided though and then transfer it to all of those around us. On the mission where so much of our lifestyle is uniform, the little things come out more: eating habits, the way we teach, the way we study, narrowed music and clothing choices. Isn't it strange that human nature seems to lend itself to judgement? We all seem to want to justify ourselves by either assigning priority to our own personal way of doing things or by becoming completely apathetic. AKA If no one cares what anyone does about anything then no one can justifiably correct us. Truth is it should be somewhere in between. That's one of the trickiest aspects of law! Can we really impose ourselves on other people? How about when they want to hurt someone? What about when they want to hurt themselves? What if they wear clothes we don't like? Or no clothes at all? It's just been interesting to see how small scale that same syndrome goes.
We were recently talking with the Henrietta Sisters (McManama and Meister) about Literature vs. literature. (Big L vs. little l) Modern day prophets have counseled us to be careful about what we watch and listen to, etc. We are taught correct principles and then we're left to govern ourselves. It's easy to put lines on media and call it appropriate or not appropriate, but how edifying is it? We talked about how pointless it would be to watch Dora the Explorer all the time even though it's safe. Those lines would keep us from material that would make us bigger and better. Anyways there's a whole lot more along those lines but I don't really have time so...that's it for today :) I hope I didn't confuse anyone.
Random!
-Every once in a while someone will come through with a son about my age and when I ask if they have any questions one of the parents will ask: "Can you marry my son?" Hello awkward. It's really terrible. For everyone.
-There are Anti-mormons who sit outside the pageant every night yelling things. Most of the things they yell are pretty funny if you ask me. I just hope they don't give anyone a hernia. Haters gon hate.
-I'm sorry I'm not sending pictures this week! I forgot my camera :( Next week!
-This week I was lucky enough to see Chelsea Cordell, Kevin O'Keefe, Baydon Hilton and his family and Hermana Santa Cruz from the MTC! It was great! I have some seriously amazing people in my life. So grateful!
Ok that's it for this week! Next week we will have the results of transfer calls! Wooo! Love love
Sister Raines
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