hiiiiiiiiiiiiiii everyone,
as you might have surmised (is that a word in english? am i inventing things? my brain gets confused sometimes.) from the subject of this email, this week was full of challenges for my little missionary mind. it seems like all forces, human and nature, were against us this week. so many lessons fell through (which is doubly discouraging when you're on a bike because you pedal your little heart out to get all the way to the other end of you sector for this lesson that you're excited about and prepared for, and then you get there and either they're not there, or they tell you they can't do a lesson that day. guhhhh lessons in patience and humility...), so many people didn't want to listen to us, so many unexpected bumps in the road (this may be interpreted metaphorically as well as literally), and SO MANY UNINVITED CREATURES IN OUR HOUSE.
seriously, can i just tell you about THE MOST horrifying and traumatizing experience of my life thus far? i think that really though, this might be on my top 5 list. so one night, i was dutifully folding my laundry, trying to be all organized and cleanly and stuff, and out of the corner of my eye i see a black thing on our white ceiling. i look up. HUGE SPIDER. HUGE. obviously screaming ensues. soeur chapman, who was getting ready to take a shower, comes out and is like soeur hansen what's your problem and then i whimper out something incomprehensible while pointing to the ceiling, and she's like sigh. ok i'm coming back in fifteen minutes. can you handle that? (i shake my head no. she ignores me and shuts the bathroom door. what a mean companion. not really, i really do love her.) anyway, so she goes back into the bathroom and shuts the door, and THROUGH THE BATHROOM DOOR tells me: "soeur hansen?" me: whimper! soeur chapman: "soeurhansen, be careful, because that spider is pregnant and if you mess with her she'll protect her babies." WHAT??!!!! anyway, so i'm immobilized by fear watching this spider on the ceiling (directly above my bed, mind you), and then suddenly it starts to move. and pulsate. and my horror deepens. and then i see LITTLE BABY SPIDERS START POURING OUT OF HER FROM THE CEILING. THIS SPIDER WAS GIVING BIRTH TO OTHER SPIDERS IN OUR HOUSE. IN MY ROOM. ABOVE MY BED. WHERE I SLEEP. obviously my screaming increased in intensity and pitch, and was no longer in french but in english. then our neighbor was like "what the heck is happening?!!" and starts yelling at me in tahitian. and obviously i do not understand tahitian, nor does she understand english. so we're panicking together all the while this spider is creating a nursery on my pillow. anyway, to make this horrifying story short, our neighbor (who is a member by the way) came and got the spider and took it away and i enacted a baby spider massacre with the bug spray. seriously. trauma.
also our house might be haunted because weird noises happen at night.
other than that, things are going ok. some weeks are hard, but i have high hopes for this week. soeur chapman (who yes, is a tahitian) and i are working hard trying to get members involved in missionary work and we have goals to find lots of new investigators this week. sometimes when you feel like the majority of your investigators are people who just want to talk about jesus and not actually do anything about it, it gets a little discouraging. but we're not giving up, duh. we've got work to do and i know tthat the Lord is on our side, even when it seems like no one else is. i hope you enjoyed my spider story. because I DIDN'T. maybe in 5 years i will. anyway, i gotta go but i love you all!!
love,
soeur hansen
