Letter from 9-9-13

Helloooo friends and fam! This week I:

Hung out with a tarantula. Her name is Molly... she is cute and cuddly :) 

I just found out I'm getting booted off my library computer :( Go Buckeyes! Hope everyone is having a good week. Sorry this is short :( Love you all and I love hearing from you.

-Sister Welling

LATER :)

Okay long story short I got some laptop time. Hope you enjoy the pictures from the other email! Happy 23rd* birthday to my momma on Thursday, hope it's an awesome one! You make 23* look pretty young. Everyone be nice to her.

This week I started Donut Olympics with my companions, where we make brackets and face off donuts from different donut shops up against each other for taste. It's the most delicious idea we've had. Takes me back to high school days when I'd do that with Ben Ross and Job :)

This week our neighbor (the Bishop) and his family needed help loading a couch and a bed into their truck because their son/daughter in law are moving. I had the awesome privilege of getting to tie the knots on the ropes that were holding the stuff into the bed of the truck. I tied a mean follow-through figure 8 and a solid safety knot to make sure that stuff was gonna get to Boston without budging. All that knowledge I gained at Camp Firewalker is paying off :) Thanks Nanc' :) Tying eagle-scout-worthy knots makes me feel like a studly missionary.

This week my companions and I visited a field of purple flowers called Northern Blazing Stars, that ONLY grow in the that ONE field in Maine, and then in Australia. Those are the only two places in the world! Weird, huh? 

This week I saw a guy wearing an Ohio State shirt at the beach, first one I have seen since being here! I was pretty pumped to give him an "O-H!" and get an "I-O!" in response. Happy day. Go Buckeyes :) 

Ok I promise I'm doing missionary work as well. This week we had an awesome lesson with Patrick about the Plan of Salvation, we had been preparing for it all week because we feel like it's really important for him. I am grateful that God presented a plan that allowed us to have free agency in this life- being able to choose things for ourselves presents a lot of sadness and trials, but it's also the only way we can be truly happy. 

We had a lesson with the Hastings family, whose daughter is preparing to go on a mission right now. She bore an awesome testimony about how the gospel has blessed her life and how much it would mean to her to have her family baptized. They definitely need to do it for themselves and not for their daughter, though. They come to all of the ward activities and call themselves Brother and Sister Hastings, but they haven't quite committed to baptism yet, which is fine. I really admire that they want to know it's really true and do it for themselves, not Haley. They are such a cool family, I admire them alot for how close and happy they are. Their 14 year old son Tyler is a cross country runner, so we get to talk running alot :) 

"In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea, with a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me. As He died to make men Holy, let us live to make men free, while God is marching on!" I'm not sure why that made me cry on Sunday when we sang it, but it's pretty powerful. 

Let us live to make men free.

-Sister Welling