Plan B...or C or D...

Happy P-day familia mia!

I hope every one of you kneels down each night with your (eternal) companion and prays before diligently planning your day out like Harry and I do. Last night I couldn’t help but think, “those who can’t wed, plan!” and laugh at how true that is. (mom: name that movie) You can make a plan for each half hour of your day, and a back-up plan as well, but why is it that what you ACTUALLY end up doing never really goes according to plan A OR plan B? I guess some things you just can’t plan for.

For example: On Sunday, we planned to have eleven investigators in church. Haha. That was plan A. Since we were feeling so great about that, we decided to go knocking doors before church started and picked a street we both felt good about. As soon as we turned down that street, we both started oohing and ahhing like we’d just walked into Disneyland. HOUSES. With YARDS. Haha it was actually really really pretty. And so we were remembering those far off days when we used to have grass in front of a house and a driveway where we could put the car that we actually owned. (or at least, my dad owned. ) And then, to our further amazement, we noticed something…strange…on the side of the road. I’ve seen cats and possums (yes mom, possums!) and all sorts of mangy dogs, but this was a new one: PEACOCKS. Yeah. About twelve of them! It was the coolest thing ever. We drove further and found more! All over the place. Who would have thought. We got some crazy pictures. So that was our not-according-to-plan-experience #1 for the day.

Experience #2: remember our plan for eleven investigators? Nobody showed up! So I was sitting up on stand by the piano, waiting to play the closing hymn, when a guy in black jeans and a turquoise shirt walked in. I looked at him and then did a double-take. It was Jose Gonzalez- one of the investigators that I didn’t really think would come! I think my face just about broke from smiling so big – and so he smiled back and kinda shrugged his shoulders at me like “what am I doing here?” haha. He is my favorite investigator that I’ve ever had. (don’t tell the rest.) He teases a lot and he’s very smart, but has been put off by religions that take money from the people and give it to their pastors. So he’s not very trusting, but he told us later that he’s been to lots of churches, but when he walked into our chapel, he felt something different. Definitely didn’t plan on that.

Unplanned Experience #3: and I’m not sure that this one counts because it happened before Sunday but it was pretty darn unplanned. Last p-day, in an effort to buy shirts that actually allow you to keep your sanity in this Texas heat, we PLANNED to go to a thrift store (don’t judge too harshly, we only get $130 a month!) with some of the other hermanas who live near us to buy some really cute shirts. Two hours later, we walked out of the thrift store. The hermanas didn’t come when planned, so Harry and I just walked around collecting everything we thought might possibly fit us (sarah- they had really cute stuff and really CHEAP. It’s like the reject store for charlotte russe and stuff). When the time came to try everything on, we asked to be shown to a fitting room. PLANS CHANGEDwhen the store worker told us there WASN’T A fitting room. (we’re not in Utah anymore Harry) haha! Oops. So we found a nice corner in the bed sheet section, took a mirror from the mirror section, and tried our shirts on over our lovely missionary proselyting clothes. Talk about companion unity- we had to depend on each other to tell us whether something was cute/ made us look fat or not. As if people didn’t already think we were weird enough. But I’m happy to report that I bought some stuff that I’m pretty happy about and seeing as each shirt was about two dollars to five dollars, I didn’t spend much money at all either. And I’m glad, because the other day I got asked if I was a menonite! OUCH. Hermana Harry and I just looked at each other and then I said, we’ve got to buy some new clothes! Haha the guy actually laughed pretty hard. He was an unplanned experience as well. In fact, he’ll be unplanned-experience #4

Number 4: We contacted a referral and set up an appointment, when we got there, he wasn’t available but his wife was and she invited us in. As we started the lesson she started saying how she and her husband have really been wanting to come to our church. Then she already knew the Joseph Smith story and said she knew it was true and felt like this church was “calling” to her. I told her I knew it was. Haha. No, her name isn’t Israel, it’s Lucia, but we’re going back tonight and I’m way excited. Anyways, the unplanned part of this story is that as we left, the sun had gone down. Usually we’re told not to contact after dark, but we were pretty stoked about the awesome lesson we had just had and so we decided to contact the two guys drinking on the back of their truck across the street. That’s where we got called menonites. But they were actually really friendly, funny, not-interested-in-religion drunk guys. And they were little short of amazed that we weren’t scared to talk to them. As they were asking me if I was scared, I told them no, but then my mind went off on all the reasons why I probably SHOULD be scared, but my naïve, growing-up-in-Utah mind hadn’t thought of any of them before we contacted. I think next time I’ll think that through.

Anyways, the moral of the story is, plan to be planning as you go along.

May you all plan to write me back LOOOONG letters with lots of encouraging compliments, and may you all follow through with your plans. I’ll be planning on checking the mailbox lots this week! Haha I love you all and hope everyone is doing well. Talk to you soon,

Becca