Letter from 7-25-13

Holy crow, that's right! My birthday is coming up! Yikes, I'm going to be 20!
20! Leaving the teenage years behind. Shoot, now I won't have an excuse to be a
weirdo anymore. :\ That'll be this transfer, too! Yep, tomorrow is the beginning
of a new transfer, and I actually just found out that I am being transferred
again. So no more trail center. :( I'm going full pros about 20 minutes south of
Omaha in the smallest area in the mission. I actually went there for transfers
one week. My new companion, Sister Jasper (No, not the Twilight character) will
actually be going home after this next transfer, so, in missionary terms, I'll
be "killing" her. She might still be the Sister Training Leader too, so that
will be a new adventure.

Ooh, I'm running out of time, okay, so the cool story I didn't get to write
about last time. So Sister Harrison and I were just walking down the street,
doing our usual thing. One house we passed had this really beaten up old truck
in the driveway. The front of the truck was all smashed and the windshield was
all cracked. We both commented on it, then kept walking. Then I felt a little
bit of a tug towards the house, which sometimes happens, so as we were walking
away from it, I told Sister Harrison we should knock on the door. So we went
back and did so. This woman answered who didn't really seem interested. Her name
was Nina. Sister Harrison started working her magic (I swear, every other person
she talks to becomes an investigator!). So I'm standing there listening when I
see something in the corner of my eye. At first I thought it was just a cotton
fluff from a cottonwood tree, but there weren't any cottonwood trees or fluff
around, so I looked and saw that it was like a little orb of light. It quickly
but gracefully moved from my right side and went around behind me and to my
left. I didn't want to turn around, so I looked back at the woman thinking
passively "oh, maybe it was an orb. Mom's seen orbs before, too. Maybe there's a
spirit here to help us." Other than that, I didn't think much of it. Then a few
seconds later, I felt a light pressure on my left shoulder, like a hand was
there. I think I kept a pretty good poker face, but inside I was thinking "AH!
Oh my gosh! There really is someone here!" Cue mental freak-out. Anyway, so I
touched my shoulder to make sure it wasn't just a bug or something, but there
was nothing there. After a second the pressure lifted/faded. At that point I
just had to look behind me, but there was no one there. So I turned back to the
conversation, and this woman who hadn't seemed open at all at first was now
working with Sister Harrison to make a return appointment. Sister Harrison asked
if Thursday would work for her, and she said (paraphrasing) "No, Thursday won't
work, that's the day of my nephew's funeral. He was killed in a car accident.
That truck on the driveway was the one he died in."

Now, this all might just be in my head, maybe I'm nuts, but I'm personally
thinking "coincidence?
I think NOT!" I was just thinking over and over "no way, no way, no way! This is
crazy!" Perhaps her nephew wanted us to be able to help her? To let her know
he's okay? I unfortunately, though, didn't say anything 'cause I was afraid she
would think I was crazy. Well, crazIER. But our appointment with her is on
Tuesday, and I'll have left the area by then. :(

Okay, so that was my crazy story from last week, so now it's time for crazy
stories from this week. :)

So once again, Sister Harrison and I were walking down the street, and the sky
was kind of stormy looking, but not raining or anything (now that I think of it,
the clouds were spinning and going in opposite directions. Not a good sign in
tornado alley. Eh, whatever, no tornado popped up, so we're good. :) ). Then
about a mile ahead of us we saw this AWESOME flash of lightning! As you can
guess, the thunder was pretty loud. We were going to be inside soon anyway,
though, since we were walking to an appointment, so no big deal. Then a few
minutes later I saw in my peripheral vision a flash of light and sparks flying
about ten feet away. We both heard a loud electric sizzling sound, then BOOM!
The ground shook it was so loud! We both screamed (Sis. Harrison screaming like
"AH! OH MY GOSH! WE NEARLY GOT STRUCK BY LIGHTNING!" While I was screaming like
"AWESOME! WE NEARLY GOT STRUCK BY LIGHTNING! SO COOL!" We then ran the rest of
the way to our appointment, and the second we got under cover God dumped a
bucket of ice water (marble/golf sized hail and a waterfall). So that was our
awesome NDE of the week, but no worries, we made it out alive. :)

Then for pioneer day here, I actually got to sing in a concert! That was really
fun. All of the local missionaries put on a concert in the park near the Mormon
Trail Center, and it was a pretty big success! Then before the concert, we had a
bit of time to kill after practice was over and we were waiting for people to
come, and there was some equipment to play on, so we acted like 5 year olds for
a bit. There was a merry-go-round that we played on, and me being me I went
flying off multiple times. That's what you get for trying to surf when Sister
Winterton is spinning you. :)