November 20, 2008

Hi,

So I just wrote a really long email, and it got lost, so I'll try again, but this will probably be shorter because I'm almost out of time. Sorry! This week we have pday on Thursday because we had zone conference yesterday, with Elders Robert C. Oaks and Gerald Causse. They are in the area presidency and are touring our mission right now. It was really good!Mom, how was your birthday? How was yours, Gizmo? How's Rosie handling Obama being president?We had our first Sunday in the branch last week. Everyone is wonderful! We have about 50 active members who are great! Last week was the primary program. There are 5 kids in the primary, and all of them speak better than me! Oh well!We teach english class on Thursday nights. Sister Jones and I teach the beginners class and have about 15 students who are awesome! We also go to tai chi every week, and play basketball every week. A bunch of nonmembers do both of those activities at the church building, and the branch president asked the missionaries to go to talk to them. It's pretty fun!I only have a few minutes left, so I'll just share one quick experience. Friday night we had tons of appointments scheduled, and every single one of them fell through. It was super frustrating, because we had so many people we wanted to teach. All of our back up plans didn't go through either. So we were standing there trying to figure out what to do, and all of the sudden my companion said that we needed to go to this certain part of town and do house. So we get up there, and no one wants to talk to us! It was kinda frustrating, because it was cold, and we were going on 6 hours of working hard with absolutely no success. We had one house left on the street before it was time to go home. We knocked on the door, and a wonderful woman named Joanna answered. She had a little boy with her, and we shared a message about the family and gave her the Proclamation. Before we had the chance to ask if we could come back, she asked us! We came back the next day and taught her a lesson, and she again asked us if we could come back, before we had the chance. It was awesome!I'm out of time, but I love you all. I'll write more next week that hopefully doesn't get lost.

Sorella Hawkey