MY APOLOGIES!

For those of you who follow this blog...this is Sarah. I'm so sorry I haven't kept it up to date! Here are her past emails all in a row. I'll be better from now on!

Hello Tingey Clan!

Can you believe it is september twentieth already? what? That is so crazy. We are one month away from my one year mark (but who's counting, right?) haha. Okay Since nobody seems to be online to chat with me today maybe this e-mail will actually make some sense.

We had a crazy week. Partly because of an adventure we took one day, but mostly because we're missionaries in ghettho-houston texas, teaching mexicans about the gospel. So here's the adventure: Hermana Keele had a doctor's appointment in Beaumont for her allergies, which coincided perfectly with Elder Rindflesch's appointment with the same doctor and since that doctor lives an hour away, we decided to carpool. To make a long story short, what should have been a three hour jaunt to the allergy doctor turned into an all day boredom fest in a doctor's waiting room and an emergency check in to the nearest (baptist) hospital. Yeah. Elder R. had some test done on his heart that came back irregular so they checked him into the hospital and he ended up staying overnight. Not exactly the way you want to spend a day on the mission. Especially when there is some hick texan mormon in the waiting room with you who starts talking about the kid that he's not sure is his and the vaults where they hide all the secret mormon stuff in salt lake in from of a room full of patients. Greeeeaaaat. Now they really think we are normal! He was pretty weird. And I think the elders were about ready to punch him out. But Hermana Keele and I decided that while we were waiting, we might as well kill time at the nearby goodwill store, and we made a few quality purchases. (a spanish club tee-shirt. it doesn't get any better.) Anyways. That was a really far distance for us to drive. and we did nothing all day. I hate that. So we were glad to get home.

Not to be outdone, the next day held an even bigger adventure for us cloverleaf sisters. We met Greg. Greg is a Texan baptist who speaks english and wears a wifebeater and has Jesus in his heart and that's ALL you need. We tried to talk some sense into him but he just went off for about an hour, making no sense and confusing himself and us, and at the end of that hour, he asked if he could pray with us. So then he grabbed both of our hands and prayed to "Father Jesus Lord" that we would realize that there is no such thing as prophets and that if America were a body, "let Houston be the heart of that body, and let her vital signs be STRONG." hhahahaha! what does that even mean? at this point I was squeezing Hermana Keele's hand pretty hard and we were both doing our best not to burst out laughing. As we left, he asked if he could come to our church, because he believes we should all unite as Christians against the Israelis because, don't know if ya'll know this or not but them'siz havin' nine kids a-piece and they can come right in and infiltrate this country - be it legally or not- and vote for non-christian ideas. So somebody sound the alarm! And just like the jews that moses saved from the egyptians, we shouldn't stay in one place - we should continually be moving and CONQUER CONQUER CONQUER! (too bad i can't describe the hand signals that came into play at this point... he was really getting into it.) So the moral of the story is ... onward christian soldiers!... oh yeah. He also gave us a cd of his pastor preaching and his paster (who -zippy and unexpected twist - also turns out to be named greg) but pastor greg says you can go online and take a quiz about yourself to find out what your spiritual gifts are. They don't want anyone to be "hindered." so i think ya'll should take advantage of that steal-of-a-deal.

So now we come to Wednesday night correlation meeting where we walk in and our ward mission leader has something on each cheek and behind his ears, strapped on with medical tape. I whispered to Hermana Keele "What's wrong with Hermano Avalos?" and she just shook her head and then wrote on her planner "Mexicans think taping magnents to their face will cure them of whatever ails them." hahahahhahahaha and it's true! They really do have little "cures" that are so strange. The best part of the story is, the next night we were at hermana guerreros house and she heard Hermana Keele say that she has athsma and she is at this very moment making a mask for keele to wear that has MAGNENTS in it so that she will cure herself of her athsma. pretty sweet. i laughed pretty hard.

As for the spiritual side of missionary work, we have a man named Rafael with a baptismal date for October 2nd. He was invited to church by his friend, one of our recent converts. He loves it! We've only taught him once but we're seeing him again tonight so more on him later.

We also met a woman named Teresa who we're working with - she has always seen LDS commercials and wanted to call and ask for the Book of Mormon and she said "there' s just something about you guys." and also told us that she thinks you meet people for a reason and right after she met us she met some lutherans and did not feel at all the same with them. She said, "you guys are amazing." so that's a good start.

Pretty good week eh? Every day is an adventure out here in the clover leaf! Pray for us! and for Greg.

love you guys! hope all is well.

Becca

You might be from Cloverleaf if:

Hey everyone! Hope you all had a great labor day.

I don't even know where to start. I really just have one word on my mind today: Cloverleaf. This area is ridikalus! You haven't seen ghetto until you've seen Cloverleaf. The first day out tracting my companion pulled onto a street, parked the car and said, "Welcome to Cloverleaf!" and pointed her arm towards block after block after block after BLOCK of trailers. (with crazy texas jungle/ drainage ditches in between) I've never seen anything like this. I didn't even know that people LIVE this way! I literally fear for my life on a daily basis - in a crazy "im-on-a-mission" way. hahaha I'm not exaggerating! All I can say is:

You might be from Cloverleaf if:

You introduce yourself as "bandana rudy" and your next trailer over neighbor is "toeless pete."

You commonly see Patrol cars swarm with cops pulling their guns out and arresting your neighbor.

You have an old rusty truck with no tires in your front yard with a Bob Dole sticker on the back bumper.

Your porch is so littered in rusted tools and junk that visitors have to stand to the side of the porch and knock on the trailer door from down below.

You've got a GINORMOUS dog on a chain with way too much slack sitting under your trailer, gnawing on a bone that is bigger than my whole arm, and growling hideously at anyone that even looks in that direction.

Your neighbor has a sign on their front door that says "we ain't gote no cigarrets. dunnut disterb Randy - hes sleepun."

You commonly substitute tire jacks when extra cinderblocks to hold up your trailer aren't available.

the list goes on! Every day since I've been here, somebody pulls over and tells us that two "nice white girls" like us shouldn't be there. And all the members tell us to go directly home as soon as it even starts to get dark. I have developed a terrible fear of dogs. I never thought I'd say that. I love dogs! But like hermana Keele says, "Dogs in Utah are cute, cuddly PETS. The Dogs in cloverleaf are there to keep people off the property or to fight!" And that is true. Every single house has a huge ole dog. Mostly pit bulls. But they are MEAN. I'm telling you. It's frightening.

But the craziest part of all this is that these people are so open to the gospel! We've had amazing miracles every day. For instance, Sunday night we were out knocking trailers and this crazy big dog was following us with a broken chain dangling from his collar. (amazingly, he was actually pretty nice.) But then we met this little girl that was yellin at the dog "where you goin dawg? You'z fixin ta get yerself run over!" and so we stopped and talked to her. ( I guess Hermana Keele already knew her) Her name is Stephanie and she said right off the bat , "I'm gunna take ya'll to meet my mama." So we followed her to her apartment to talk to her "mama" and her "mama" turned out to be this HUGE white lady who laughed but then just said "well, I've met y'all before and I'm still not interested in bein' mormon." So then Stephanie asked if she could help us and her "mama" said sure so she went in front of us, knocking all the doors of her apartment complex and then yelling "hey! them'sall is church people! So ya gotta lissen to 'em, ya hear?" hahaa but she actually introduced us to Bandana Rudy (yes, every one of those points I wrote is based on an actual experience) and turns out he knows one of our recent converts and has been meaning to talk to missionaries. He was such a cool guy! He's an investigator for the english elders though, so that's a bummer. but he's awesome. We ended up talking to him for about half an hour until his drunk mexican neighbor walked past with the dog that had been following us earlier and stephanie started going crazy trying to get this guy to let the dog go. "no es tu dawg! lettem go y'hear me? no en tu casa!" haha spanglish to last a lifetime! but he took the dog inside his "casa" anyways and we made stephanie pinkie promise that she wouldn't go in after him because that guy was WAY too drunk for a little seven year old to go talk to. And then we headed for a member's home because the sun had gone down. I'm telling you. This area will change your life. I have so many more stories to write about! Like listening to a hispanic man play an accordion on his front porch before he went to perform at his baptist church, talking to a pantomime christian dancer who dances "for Jesus" but who (zippy and unexpected twist) is an "inactive" gang member who flies his gang's "flag" (bandana) to this day, learning about Mexican home remedies for Hermana Keele's weird dry spot on her foot... there is no end. This place is craziness. We're crazy people! But the church is true even in cloverleaf! (believe it or not.)

I love you all! I love Salt Lake City! I love my clean apartment...oh wait. Cockroach swarms come running out of our sink drain every time we turn on the light. The church BETTER be true! hahaha Take care

Love Becca

Cloverleaf!

Good Afternoon to the great void, and welcome to CLOVERLEAF! That is right, I've been transferred. After seven quick months in Broadway 2 Central I've now switched zones and everything and I'm working with Hermana Keele in Cloverleaf. And might I add, I couldn't be happier...thank goodness! But seriously. If President had come to me and asked me personally where I would like to go and who I would like to work with...this would have been it. So somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good. Hermana Warner is going to freak out! hahaha the only way this situation could get any better would be if she were here with us. Hermana Keele is from California, and this is her fourth transfer but her first transfer away from her trainer. She's hilarious, and a really good singer. Really sarcastic. pretty blunt too, and of course she's gorgeous. So that's good, because I'll be sitting across from her for hours at a time each morning. The area seems pretty cool but of course i've only been here a couple hours now. I do know that we have a walmart in the area so that's a good sign. We have a cute apartment with actual feminine touches here and there, as opposed to the apartment I flushed into after Elders. So that's a nice change. And it's pouring hot rain right now and I'm dead dog tired from staying up late last night to pack (seven months, you'd be suprised the nooks and crannies your stuff gets stuck in) so I'm sorry if this e-mail is subpar. Oh yeah, mom: it's a bike area. for the most part. Aside from the fact that we drive a malibu. (the first thing Hermana Keele said when I got it was, "tingey - it's just me, you , and the bu." haha) But I think we only have poquito miles. so bikes it is.

As for my last week in Broadway 2: It was a good one. Since it was the fifth sunday of the month, they had the ward missionaries do the program. So our Ward Mission Leader had all the recent converts either speak or give a testimony. Can you say pay day for Hermana Tingey? Oh my word. I was sitting in a little choir seat behind the piano trying desperately not to bawl like a baby. (i succeeded by the way! not one tear hit my cheeks. all in the eyes. So that means I have YET to bawl like a baby on the mission.) Claudia told the cutest story in her testimony of how one day she and her daughter Mariana were getting off the bus and her daughter stopped her and said, "Mom, this is my favorite spot right here." and her mom asked why and she said, "because right here is where we met the misioneras." Claudia isn't really open about her feelings but she was saying how she knew the church was true and that she has gone through so many changes since meeting us and she's so happy now. It was so good to hear it out loud, even though we've seen it in her all along. Then, as if that weren't enough, Noel gets up and gives a talk on the Holy Ghost that made him sound like he's been a member for twenty years! The ward was way impressed. Then, the bishop annouces that I'll be giving my testimony, along with Elder Ferguson, who was also being transferred (we found out sat. night.) So that was exciting! But it was fun to see some of the hermanas out in the congregation getting a little teary-eyed and realizing that they actually DO know who I am. haha no it was really hard to leave that ward. So many good experiences and it feels so unfinished to just get up and leave one day like that. But it was overall a really great experience.

We also had a woman come with us to church who was baptized in honduras but hasn't been in over fifteen years and she was here going through a divorce and feeling really alone and depressed and prayed asking God if he would help her and she opened the newspaper and found an ad for the finding faith in christ dvd, called the number, and the church sent us her information. Here's the catch, her phone got shut off like the day later so by the time we got the number it was disconnected, and she had been living at her friend's house but said not to meet her there because she wasn't a member of the church. So we finally decided to just chance the friend's house and they said she had moved out (the friend's kids opened the door) but that their mom wasn't home and they didn't know where she was. great. Well three weeks later we had gone by about five times and still coulnd't get any more info until FINALLY we found the friend, who gave us her new number and we FOUND her this past week and taught her and she came to church! She said she couldn't believe we had found her...she had been calling her friend and asking if we had come by. I can't believe we didn't give up, since she was a member and all. I thought she was long gone. But it was a really tender experience to meet with her. She said she had been going to her friend's church with her and thought about "accepting Christ" there, only she was worried because she just "didn't feel it in her heart" but when we walked in her apartment she said she felt something she hadn't felt in fifteen years. If that doesn't make the church true I don't know what will.

So I miss Hermana Warner but she's going to be great. spreading those little wings. She sang me all sorts of break up songs this morning. "waht about us, waht about everything we've been through..." haha but she's in a threesome! with my old companion hermana hansen and hermana cannon, who i came out to the field with and would love to serve with some day. So they'll have a party. seriously. This was a crazy transfer for the whole mission: 48 of 53 companionships changed, ten whitewashes. ahhh! We even got a new AP. So that's the thing. This transfer rocked our little missionary worlds. But that's alright. We'll be back at it proselyting by six, right? Anyways, I love you all, write me letters to my new address! take care!

Love Becca

NEW TRANSFER MEANS NEW ADDRESS!

Hi all! For those of you writing Becca, here is her new address! I've also updated it on the right hand side there...

Hermana Tingey
12800 Woodforest #2216
Houston, TX 77015

Birthday!

Hello Family!

So I'm just sittin here in my trendy new brown skirt. That's right, I said brown. Nope, it's not a black skirt from downeast. That's the thing mom, you WROTE about a black skirt but it never made its way into the package. . . guess you decided to give it to Jessica! hahah jk. But that was pretty funny. I was confused. But THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH for the Birthday package! It got here the day BEFORE my birthday but I was really patient and I opened it on my birthday right after our morning run. It was perfect! Everything is so cute and fit well so it was a success. I'm the trendiest sista out here now. haha thank you thank you. (LOVE the shirt. big points!) It was all nice and lightweight...perfect. And so fun to hear from everyone. So here's how the day went down: In the morning, when we got back from our run, there was a Tupperware on our porch with a big bow on it, full of candy and ramen noodles from the elders. They left a message on our phone singing a terribly off-key rendition of happy birthday. Then we opened the box from ya'll and played around for a while taking pictures, etc. We baked the cake during planning so that that night we'd be able to come back and blow out the candles and eat it! I got lots of calls from the other missionaries and lots of letters that day so it was awesome. We took the cake to district meeting the next day and everyone loved it. Hermana Warner was teasing me and she told some of the elders that I was turning 24 but they totally believed her and so then when I told them she had lied they were like, "yeahhh suuuuure Hermana Tingey." hahah so I guess I've got an old (fat) face! Anyways. It was memorabe. Oh yeah, President and Sister M. called and sang as well. Cute.

Speaking of President: We had some serious fire and brimstone from him this week! He called a "specialized training meeting" with the two spanish zones and then called us all to repentance! I've never seen him like that. He basically just said that the numbers in the Spanish areas have never been so low and he accounts it to our slacking off with the language. The rule is that you're supposed to speak only Spanish the second you set foot outside your apartment and any time you're on the phone, which we definitely weren't following. So we were feeling pretty guilty. Not fun. Anyways the moral of the story is that we are now speaking a LOT more Spanish than we were before so hopefully we'll see the numbers go up. We also cracked down on our Spanish study and a few other things that were getting slack. Next time we have a meeting like that I want to be able to sit there and listen, knowing that I'm not the one who needed the talk.

Anyways, next week is transfers so we're all getting nervous. NOBODY in our zone changed last time so we're all going to mix around this time we think. I hope I stay but. . . let's be realistic.

We met a cool kid on the street this past week. His name is Victor and he was just walking down the street that we were knocking so I talked to him and turns out he's totally interested. (he looked like a thug...I really didn't want to contact him because I was judging and profiling him but it just goes to show you not to judge a book by it's cover, or an investigator by his bling) But he asked if he could come to our church! (YES please do) We got him a ride with a family that lives near by that has a kid his age and they were chatting it up all through church yesterday. We love setting people up like that. We';re going to be queens of line- ups when we get back. We like to call it "man dates" because we're trying to line people up with potential friends. haha anyways, he's a cool kid.

We've met a lot of new people this week and knocked just about every door in this area that I haven't already knocked. (not true, there's LOTS more) but we're excited to see who starts to progress. Noel got the Priesthood last week and told us that every day is better and better. He has three names ready to take to the temple. Atta boy. He's amazing.

I'm doing great! really not wanting to leave my little home here on bellfort. Hope everyone is doing okay and loving the new school year! hahahaha i wish you all lots of long hours of homework. I"ve done my share. Love you! thanks again for the birthday stuff. You're the best!

Love,

Becca

I'm baking like a toasted cheeser its so hot here!

Holy cow! can you believe it's already August sixteenth? ahhh that's a little scary for me. haha how's everyone doing? I want to hear all about powell, and i'm assuming I will. So I'm sorry if this email is a little scanty and a little crazy, because i'm way distracted wanting to chat with ya'll. haha disclaimer. So this week Hermana Warner got a package in the mail. She's been asking her mom for a watch since she left the MTC and she just got it. Us poor missionaries are so at your mercy out there in the real world. it's hard for us sometimes. But in true mom flavor, her mom sent not just a watch, but a package full of goodies and cute things and fun stuff and gadgets and gizmos aplenty. So it was like Christmas for us! I never even noticed but I guess she snuck in a little Birthday present for me as well so that Hermana Warner could give me something. Isn't she cute? The best part is, we were doing our nightly planning and I was looking at our calender and noticing that Hermana Case's birthday is coming up on August 24th so I asked Warner what we should do and then I started saying we should sing a Jacks Mannequin concert for her cause she loves them and so I started singing some Jack's and all of a sudden warner throws down her pen and goes "i can't take it anymore!" so I started apologizing and telling her i'd stop singing that worldly stuff and recommit myself to signing mo tab but then she was like, "My mom sent you a birthday present!" and she ran and got it and made me open it! haha but it's really cute earrings. Little diamond studs with this cute design around them. so sweet. haha warner's hilarious. We had a pretty average week. Just dealing with stuff way beyond our maturity level... helping people commit to making changes with eternal significance in their lives. we're kindof a big deal. haha no but it was a good week. We had our temple trip! so that was probably the highlight. After the session, we had a meeting with all of us inside the temple and the temple president spoke to us which was really interesting. we were able to ask whatever we wanted. but at one point, while answering a question about sealings he made this lovely little comment: "for example, there are some sweet sisters who never have an opportunity come along to be sealed to anyone in this life." WHAT?haha warner and I started cracking up because i jsut said "ouch" out loud right then. You just can't say that to a group of sister missionaries - talk about SWEET SISTERS. if anyone qualifies for that group it's us. so I started laughing and then i said, "well it's nice to know we have something to look forward to when we go home." and that made the elders behind me laugh and then everyone started laughing and it was a funny moment. so i'm funny even in the temple. Other than that, i'm chatting now. everything else was boring. We have a baptism this saturday for our sleeping in church friend! i guess we believe in dreams as well as visions healings... etc. haha! but her name is jesenia so pray for her! Sorry this is so lame. hope everyone is doing well and ENJOY the end of your summer! we're counting down the days because we've heard that august is the hottest month. we're on the downhill slope! love Becca