Smiling is My Favorite!

I love life. I love all of the fun and exciting things that come with living. I also love all of the boring and monotonous things I get to do. I even love don't mind waking up at six thirty every morning. I don't so much love it when bad things happen to me. Like when I rip my favorite jeans, or someone is mean to me, or I do something really embarrassing (all the time, I've learned to live with it).

Even though bad things happen sometimes, I'm still happy.

Even when this happens to my week-old bread. 

I'm learning not to let those things bother me so much. Things happen, and life is sometimes really hard to handle. In those times, I channel someone who is such a great influence.

Buddy the Elf.

The "Glutens"

My companion is gluten intolerant. Sometimes people forget about that, or they don't understand what that entails. Which is fine, unless they're feeding us dinner.

Recently we ate dinner with the sweetest elderly couple. They missed the memo about the gluten-free thing. So they made us lasagna. Which is totally alright with me, I love lasagna.

For those of you who don't know, lasagna is chock-full of gluten.

(Fudge is Gluten-free)

Sister Snyder didn't want to offend. She knew that this dinner was prepared especially for us, so she ate it. Though, after the second piece, she was sore afraid for the well being of her intestine. (She tried to refuse the second piece, but the sweet sister was persitent, and Sister Snyder was polite.) We finished our lasagna, and the kind woman went to get us dessert. I saw her from the kitchen scooping ice cream and heaved a sigh of relief.

She came out with the ice cream, topped with two chewy, chocolate-chip cookies. More gluten.

Sister Snyder, not able to handle more gluten, passed me her cookie under the table as non-chalantly as possible.

Lost in the Meadows

Lost in the Meadows; that should be the title of my month. There's an apartment complex here called the Meadows, and it's kind of like Pan's Labyrinth without all the scary guys. We get lost there - a lot.

And getting lost kind of stinks. But getting lost in the Meadows is kind of the best.

A few weeks ago, we were lost in the Meadows, and we were wandering around the complex trying to find someone's apartment. We stopped a nice looking man and asked him to help us decipher the "map". We got to talking, and we set up an appointment to come back and talk to him about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Guys. That wasn't a coincidence that we ran into this man.

God Knows That I Love Cookies

I'm going to tell you all a story about cookies. I love cookies, and I firmly believe that God knows that.

*Preface*
As missionaries, we are fed dinner by members of our church, which is so wonderful! It's such a blessing to us, because it allows us more time to focus on our work. And we get to eat with the great people that live here. I love, love, love being fed by members.

A few days ago I was going about my business as a missionary. It wasn't a bad day. It wasn't an abnormal day. But it was long. And I wanted a cookie.

Because someone else was feeding me dinner, I didn't have control over whether or not I got a cookie. I stopped thinking about it, and continued with my work. It was Sunday, so I had six hours of church, then two hours of meetings after. I was so tired and hungry by dinner time.