Quick Email

Good Monday Morning!

This e-mail might be a little short because we're going to Kingwood in about twenty minutes to "play" with President Moldenhauer. In other words, we're giving up our one day in the week that we have to do what we want in order to drive an hour to a chapel where we will be divided up into groups and forced to play sports with elders two years younger than us that are going to be trying not to get the sisters on their teams. haha. but i'm not self conscious about my athleticity.

Anyways we also had a really cool experience where we saw this lady sitting outside her apartment and so we stopped and talked to her and it turns out she's a member but hasn't gone in over fifteen years and she was really really sick so we were able to get her a priesthood blessing. she said she knew she needed to come back to church but was worried she wouldnt know anyone there but once we showed up out of nowhere she realized she would at least know us. so i hope she comes becuase she didn't come yesterday...but it was a neat experience meeting her. ONe thing I noticed is that she had totally forgotten how to pray. she was talking during our prayer and whispering under her breath. Sad. It's crazy how fast we lose our spiritual progress if we slack off. Don't slack off! okay i'm done preaching.

okay i'm totally out of time so whether i want to write more or not it's not really a choice anymore. i love you all. hope you enjoy the snow. we're sweating here in houston. seriously. it's nasty. and i got forty seven mosquito bites last night. counted them. hermana harry was FREAKING out. she said she's only ever had about ten in her whole life before. we put her face mask all over our legs to "soak out the poison." i dunno. i just do what she says so that i don't cause problems. haha no it was fun and now they don't itch as much. enjoy the snow. that's the moral of the story. love you all

miss you!

Becca

New Monday P-Day!

hello!

how are we all feeling on a monday morning? I"m not going to lie, i think i'm in missionary shock. Gotta get out there and contact! what am I doing in a library? but I"m sure come Wednesday as I'm knocking doors i'll feel a lot better. haha. So the big news is that our p-day got changed to monday. That's really only because the church came out with this pretty sweet way of reporting our numbers/writing our mission president so we actually go to a new website ( i know, uncharted territory venturing from myldsmail!) and are able to enter our numbers and e-mail him through that site. He wanted to change the p-day so that we're reporting our numbers as soon as the week ends. I'm kinda bummed because it was nice to break the week up between sundays and p-days and now we'll kindof have the weekend effect but maybe that will acutally be better in the long run. I guess it doesn't really matter. But hey "it must be Monday, oh what a dumb day... can't drag my bu** out of bed... wish that I could sleep in, and wake up on the week end..." doesn't really apply any more. (shania is my girl!)

so all this excitement actually begins way before Hercules' time, many eons ago...at zone conference last friday. And guess who was there? My beautiful cousin Cherelle, also known here in Texas as Hermana Jones! President arranged it so that she and I could sit by eachother during lunch afterwards and it was so fun to catch up and share in our missionary-gooberishness together. So there we were, chatting away, and I started telling her a story and everything was going great, I was actually communicating like a normal civilian, and all of a sudden - I called her HERMANA! what? I know. way embarassing. Sarah quit judging me! She didn't even flinch though (felt normal to her) but I just about died when I realized what I had done! I was apologizing and blushing and blubbering and everything. gross. gross. GROSS. And then I just had these words go through my head - "what's to become of me, what's to BECOME of me. what am I fit for?" No longer a gutter snipe OR a duchess at an embassy ball. somewhere in between. so now i think I've officially reached that point in my mission where I don't want to come home. Not because I don't miss my life and the people in it from before...but because I'm afraid of what kind of weirdo I've become. ew. I still can't believe I did that. And she was nice about it, but I can just SEE myself calling one of my actual blood hermanas "hermana." would not go over well. I'd be the butt of family mexican missionary jokes for the rest of my life.

Other houston news: Wicked is officially here in Houston! talk about rude. I want to go so bad! I'm acutally here, in a city big enough to attract shows like that, but I can't go! waht's the point of living in houston when wicked comes if you can't go? So I told Harry we shouldn't eat for a month so that we can save up enough money to buy tickets and then when we get there we can look at each other and say, "I feel...WICKED." hahaha. she said no. can you believe that?

So last night we were eating Sunday dinner at the Ward mission leader's home and his pregnant daughter and her husband were there with us. She's our age and lives in our area too but she's less active so we know her pretty well and she's way fun! Anyways she and Harry get along like ... well, like Ron Weasley and Harry Potter, because they both LOVE to talk so we get into some pretty crazy convos. Last night we got doing stupid human tricks and next thing I know, Harry's going into some yoga stance in front of everyone in a SKIRT. whoa there. haha the best part is, she had to kinda tuck her skirt in between her legs to start it and Elder Elkins says, "there you go Harry, gird up those loins." hahahahhahah best line of the week! I was laughing soooo hard. So hard in fact, that I had to run in to the bathroom (don't worry, nobody was in there) so that I wouldn't have an accident.

By way of investigator updates, this week we had a health fair at the church and ANGELICA CAME! I was in the gym looking at this giant snake that "friends of the forest" brought with all the little kids and all of a sudden I felt this light tap on my shoulder and someone said really soft, "hermana." I turned around and saw her and just immediately gave her this huge hug! I think I took her by surprise. But she is offically pregnant with a GIRL. haha she thought it was a boy. but it's a nina! (that's spanish for...the nino) And we have an appointment with her and our relief society president tomorrow afternoon. But I was so happy that she came. I told Hermana Harry I felt like a sixteen year old boy on his first date! (spence...you'll be able to commiserate soon.) Baby steps.

So I've been really worried about what to do to help Angelica because her husband doesn't want to meet with us at all. I was kinda mentioning it to a returned missionary in the ward and I swear God sent the "tender mercy" stork with a special delivery for me because this particular guy is very in tune and he just started teaching me in the way that he would teach her and he showed me a few scriptures that backed up what I was wanting to say to her - it was like he was reading my mind! I don't have a very good mastery over the scriptures but it's funny how answers come in unexpected ways. The interesting thing is, we actually used those scriptures the next day on a woman that it had never occured to me to use them on and I know she felt the spirit. We're learning!

Anyways i'm running out of time but i could go on forever (that's literal, and you all know it.) I love you I miss you and i hope you're all doing well. I got NO mail this week! i hope you all feel horrible. haha jk i know it's on the way. thanks for everything.

love, Becca

Jyze Pro!

Dear people who have my same genetic pool (and the few of you who read this who don't, but wish you did):

Hello. My name is Hermana Rebecca Tingey and I'd like to introduce you to my new friend, jyze pro. It's the newest and grooviest way for missionaries to exercise in tight living conditions with or without an excercising-enthusiast for a companion. Complete with water-slide! In other words, do you think they could hire me when I get back to advertize for this awesome yo yo thing? haha where did you buy this? I actually really really like it. When I first took it out of the bag I was a pretty big doubter. Especially since I did what the paper said and couldn't get it to spin AT ALL. ouch. But then I played around with it for a while and finally got the hang of it and all of a sudden I was working out and barely even trying! haha Hermana Harry is totally jealous and I think she probably secretly uses it when i'm in the shower. (the only ten minutes we missionaries ever have to ourselves - what we do with them is our only secret!) No, I'm just kidding. I'm an incredibly gracious companion (is that how you spell gracious? gracias.) and let her use it whenever she wants. But i'm not going to lie, we kinda looked like the monkey-model-men on zoolander for a while while we tried to figure it out. but THANK YOU thank you thank you for it! and my arms thank you ask well.

okay now on to the important stuff: I loved talking to you guys on Sunday! I just wish we could have talked longer. But that's okay. You were probably bored of hearing my corny- weirdo- missionary stories in the first five minutes! But as a result, this e-mail is going to be pretty bummer. Not much has happened since Sunday. Aside from about fifty people contacted...and one dinner with the kid I saw in the bathroom. haha. nice. I don't know why but I feel like I know him really well...

We had a really good lesson with our investigator Angelica. or really bad if you're Hermana Harry. haha. She has been doing awesome but just won't come to church because she doesn't want to do something that will put a rift in between her and her husband. So yesterday we went to give her what I call the "do or die" lesson. We talked to her really seriously about spiritual progression and then asked how we can help her come to church. It was awesome because I didn't really know how to say what I wanted to say but once we got talking it all just kinda came out in the perfect way and she understood very clearly what we were trying to communicate. She said she'd talk to her hsuband and we're going to try to do a lesson with them and a couple from the ward, but other than that, if she doesn't come to church we can't keep coming to visit her. ugh! I love/hate lessons like that. I always walk out with a huge burden lifted off my chest - it's just good to get some stuff out on the table. But at the same time, I have really loved visiting her and I know she has a testimony! But we'll have to see. Hopefully her husband will see how much she wants to go and he'll take her. But hermana Harry was pretty distraught about it. It's weird being in a companionship because we both deal with things like that so differently. I think she was hoping to hang on to it a bit longer but I just felt like, hermana, she's just not that into us! that's what my mom taught me. so we'll see how into us she really is.

But you know what that means? Back to the streets. We've been knocking doors and trying old investigators from the area book so i'm sure we'll have some crazy stories for next week.

Take care this week and don't let any mexican men give you besos! I learned that the hard way! haha ugh. i'm still shuddering about it. sorry this e-mail is kinda lame. Better luck next time! haha love love love you all!

muah

love Becca