Life in Lincoln

Dear Family and Friends,

There are definitely some strange things about Lincoln. For one, we went to church yesterday and everything people told us was true. We fill up all the way back to the stage, two babies were blessed, two baby births were announced, and three new families were read into the ward. Kind of weird, plus it was loud with lots of kids running here there and everywhere since many of them were sitting in the gym and thought it was play time. But the ward is really enthusiastic and full of young people and old people who each have their pluses (young people mingle and refer people, old people are home during the day and can go with you to appointments sans kiddies). Other weird things? There are multitudes of wild peacocks residing outside our apartments. Apparently nobody really knows where they come from but they are wandering around all the time. The Spanish Elders have discovered that if you catch one and call animal services they pay you somewhere between $20-50 dollars which brings up frightening possibilities since we already have discovered that the previous tenants of our apartment did indeed catch one and keep it in the apartment for some period of time (we have feathers to prove it). Oh the possibilties when you house 8 Elders together. Another thing, EVERYONE around here is doing some serious decorating for Halloween. And I mean serious, there are giant spiders and that spider web stuff, mummies, inflatable haunted castles and caves, monsters, graveyards, the works. Is it because there are so many young families? Because I simply do not remember seeing this degree of Halloween decoration growing up. Also one of the main roads here is named Ferrari Ranch Road. Has anyone ever seen a Ferrari Ranch? I am curious what that might entail.

Well this week I got lost fewer times, but I still got lost plenty. We had a good week though. We got to meet a few more of our investigators (and drop a few). We had some excellent lessons, and we really do have some excellent fellowshippers in this ward. That is really exciting as a missionary. We also were able to meet and begin teaching an entire family! Okay so not entire because three of their five sons are younger than 8, but they were present for the lesson. They took the lessons a few years back in Roseville, but then with the move to Lincoln and other things in their life they stopped. But they say everything keeps pointing them back to this church and they seem very serious so I am excited. Also this was a referral from the Bishop, yay Bishop! And last, but not least, we got rear ended on Saturday. We were just sitting completely stopped in traffic waiting for the light to change when the SUV behind us hit us. We're both fine and actually the only damage is possibly a scratch--we're not that familiar with the car so we don't know if it was there already or not--so we were pretty lucky. But the odds of not getting into another accident are in my favor now, right? I'll hope so.

Also note to Elder Sorensen: it is officially the Church's new housing policy for North America to have all missionaries living in members' houses, so prepare yourself for the future. We still have not heard anything about us getting into a house, which was supposed to be resolved by this point, but we'll just hang out in a half unpacked apartment until we do hear.

Love,
Sister L. Sorensen

PS I've been trying to teach Sister Kawasaki American jokes but she just insists they are all stupid. And, when I asked her what she would say if I called her a cheesu-no-atama so simply could not comprehend it. Anne did you teach us made up words? Sister K does not get why calling someone a "cheesehead" would be either funny or offensive, or why you would call anyone that in the first place. We continue to work on teaching her how to see "would" or "wood" instead of "ood" and teaching her the mission song. In fact I had to tell her we could not listen to any music in the car until she had it learned, which she was displeased with but it has provided the proper incentive.