Temple Week

Well, as you may have noticed, my email is a little late this week - that's because WE GOT TO GO TO THE TEMPLE TODAY! Yeah! The picture is of my companion and I and our District leader and his companion who gave us a ride to the temple this morning :) Sorry that I forgot to let everyone know last week...it wasn't on our calendar so I didn't find out officially until it was too late to let everyone know by email. Hope y'all didn't worry too much :)

BUT it has been 10 days since my last update, therefore a lot of things have happened.
For instance. the first adventure starts with seafood. we went to a member's house and she served a lovely white pasta with crab meat and shrimp in it. I don't really like seafood, but I'm willing to try anything. I start eating it, it's not too bad, but about 1/2 way in I just stop. My body won't let me eat any more, and I don't feel so hot. So i eat some bread, ask to take the rest of my meal home, and we share our message and leave. When we get to the car I'm REALLY not feeling the best. I figure it's just nausea and I'll be OK with some fresh air. We drive to our next appointment. She's not home. As we're leaving the house I cough and...well...it's not looking so good. I tell my companion we should go home. Apparently, I have lost a lot of color and I barely make the drive back home. I run into the apartment and proceed to vomit that nights dinner for a good 20-30 minutes. So, adventure #1 can be renamed - the food poisoning adventure.

Adventure #2
I had another bike mishap. Oh yeah, the fun never stops for us sister missionaries and our bikes! Sister Jo and I were just leisurely riding along, down the sidewalk and then we came upon some railroad tracks. Now, we've biked across these before, and while they're a little gravelly they're not bad. Over the tracks we go and keep riding. About 2 minutes later I feel like I'm biking through sand. "this is weird" i thought to myself. Now, it was REALLY windy and I was riding into the wind, so I figured that it was just a combination of the wind resistance, Tongan food, and my lack of being in shape. As we bike up a small hill, I fall way far behind my companion. When I finally catch up to her at the stoplight she says "you doing OK there companion??" and I was like "no! I feel like I'm biking in sand" and she goes "oh....your back tire is totally flat" We cross the street and take a look, low and behold my back tire is full of thorns. AND so is my front tire. Yup, big, nasty, jackal headed thorns. and, silly me, I pulled one out of my front tire to see what it was. Then i hear the lovely "hisssssss" of all the air escaping from my tire and it proceeds to go totally flat as well. Needless to say that was depressing. Add to that the fact that I was riding another sister's bike, and that made for a sad situation. We weren't that far from our next appointment so we just walked our bikes over there. Which, in case any of you are interested, it is not really any easier pushing a bike with flat tires than it is riding one. We got to our appointment after a lovely, squeaky, 30 minute walk and then had an AWESOME lesson with Jxxxx.  We then left her house, walked around the corner and proceeded to make a bunch of phone calls to try and find someone who could come and rescue us. We were about an hour's walk away from home. Finally after many phone calls and much frustration, some of the Spanish speaking elders who live not too far from us picked us up, loaded our poor bikes on their bike rack, and drove us home to get our car :) thus ends adventure #2.

Adventure #3 starts the next day when my companion wakes up and is really, really sick. she's got some kind of flu and is coughing and sneezing and has a sore throat. so, she sleeps in. I clean and study and we plan and stay in that day while she recovers. When we call our district leader to ask for permission to stay in that day, he asks if there's anything he can do for us. I mention that my bike tires are still full of holes, and if he and his companion could come over and show me how to take the tires off and patch them that would be great. So, they do and help us. Turns out that there were 7 holes in total between the 2 tires. 4 in the back one and 3 in the front one. many more thorns and a giant splinter were pulled out of the rubber and the inner tubes, after lots of work with green goo, chalk and patches they're holding air and doing fine! Hopefully, I'll be getting my own bike from my other area sometime soon so I don't have to worry about hurting other peoples things. For now things are going well. Sister Jo is still sick and has been on and off for the whole week, but we're working through it, so, i guess until sister Jo fully recovers this adventure is yet to be finished....I'll have to update y'all again next week! haha

Adventure #4
And then, well, we had to call the paramedics at one of our lessons because our investigators mother, who is elderly and has dementia, fell down a step and couldn't get up. They came over and took her to the hospital. Turns out she fractured her pelvis :(

The normal adventures of missionary work are good. Our investigators are doing OK, reading and progressing, and we were able to teach a first lesson to a new investigator yesterday. We knocked on her door trying to track down a former investigator and then asked if we could come in and share a message with her - and she said yes!! awesome!! So we'll see how that goes.

I love you all, thank you for your prayers and your letters!

Shout out to Kelsey Moss! I got your package this week and will be sending you a letter soon :)



Have a wonderful week!!
Hna Hensley