I LOVE this ward... I must be getting transferred soon.... NOOOOOO 1.20.14

This week was a great one! I'm not entirely sure what we did, but I know that we had a good time doing it!

This week we had dinner with members almost EVERY night. It was a dream come true! We have met some of the funniest people ever. I really love the members of our ward. They are such great, caring, loving people. Plus they are all pretty good chefs.

We also had a great Relief Society activity! It was called "Speed Friendshipping." It sounds daunting and a little bit overwhelming, but it was great fun!

This week we were walking around and literally ran into this lady. We have had the chance to teach her twice. She is great!!

We also visited this sister in our ward and her granddaughter has the most toys I have EVER seen. It's like Santa was shook down for everything he got. Wait, NO. It was like Santa gave her WALMART for Christmas. But I'm pretty sure she has more toys than Walmart. We have been over before, but this time she just focused on showing us all of her lalaLoopsies. I WANT ONE. I want one reaaaaal bad. So if anyone would like to send me one that would be great.      

I also discovered the most glorious thing. My camera has Photoshop. Now for fun I turn myself, and all those around me, into what I lovingly call "aliens." Some of them are real creepy. Really we just look like we should belong in a pageant... I've always wanted to be in a pageant. A high glitz one. 

Recently I've been studying the 13th Article of Faith and boy, I love it! Everything that we believe and everything that we need to do in our lives is in there. When we seek after the things listed in the article we recognize our divine nature and live up to our individual worth. We should Heavenly Father that we truly appreciate who we are. I LOVE it. 

I am so grateful to be out here in Florida serving God. I have been so blessed. Miracles are real and they happen every.single. day. We just have to have the eyes to see them. 

I hope everyone has a great week!

love,

Sister Perkes

This. Week. 1.13.14

I'm just going to start this off with probably some good news for everyone. This email is going to be rather short. I am very hungry. I didn't bring any snacks. Emailing takes about 2 hours, which is significantly longer than the time I should go without food. BUT I love you all very much so I shall now proceed to wax eloquent and tell you of my doings this week. 

I'm not even sure what we did this week. My key indicators indicate that we did a lot of things, but I don't seem to be able to remember any of them. 

Last night we had dinner at a family's house and it was like being home. There were people all over the place and we had a good southern meal. I should have known it was going to be fantastic when the pater famailia opened the door and he had on a FSU Seminoles bandanna wrapped around his head like the karate kid. It perfectly accentuated his long hair and fantastic goatee. This family just has great facial hair. His son-in-law has the beard of all beards. It is of epic proportions. People aspire to have Brother Leckie's beard. 

This week I experienced my first torrential downpour in Jacksonville. Boy, oh boy, was it raining. Right as we got out of the library. It wasn't very fun. Especially since we had contacting and tracting planned for the rest of the night. We squished through 2 neighborhoods. 

We also went to visit a man this week. He is a less active in our ward and we have been trying to meet with him since before Christmas. Last week he just told us to give up on him, so that meant one thing. Surprise attack. We went over there one day and had an interesting gospel discussion that ended with me rather confused. Right before we were going to leave he was like, "wait! When you first called me I got you some stocking and some candy and nuts! Let me go get it." So we stand there for a bit (we are outside) and then he reappears with these stocking. They aren't just your regular Joe stockings. They are singing Peanuts stockings. SINGING. Expensive SINGING stockings. Then he starts to laden us with candy and entire bags of nuts. He gives us about 2 grocery bags full of candy and it weighs purt near 10000 pounds (he also gave us fruitcake. I hear that stuff is pretty dense, so that probably added to the weight). ALL of this candy was from World Market, so it was all foreign. There is a whole BOX of British chocolates. I about died. Here is the kicker, my friends. Sister Jeromchek and I are sacrificing sugar for the month of January. Yes. This was the worst idea ever. I wish I could go back, but it's just too late. Plus it's a very, very serious sacrifice. So now we have a plethora of delicious, foreign, sugary confections waiting for us to eat them come February. Hurry. Please.

Well. That is all that I can extract from the depths of my brains. I hope everyone has a dandy week!  

love you and miss you,

Sister Perkes    

Hello Mother. Hello Father. Here I am in Florida. 1.7.14

So guess what ya'll. We moved!... AGAIN. I refuse to ever move again. They can try and transfer me, but I won't move. I just won't. They can't make me. I will just stay right here forever. I don't even care. I'm tired of moving. But by the time next transfers come I will probably be okay with moving. I've got six weeks to prepare myself. (Yes, transfers happened. I'm staying in Mandarin! WOOOHOO)

This week was really great! It was also really awkward... I have realized that a mission has made me such an awkward person but, as my companion constantly reminds me, if it's awkward then we are doing it right. I am doing a whole lot of right then.

So our new apartment is in our first complex. It's lovely and on the second floor. The stairs are at the most unbecomingly steep degree. They are like a death trap. Surprisingly no one has ate it yet. I can feel it coming though... Plus they are squeaky and pretty sketchy. 

Our new apartment is just dandy. It over looks this giant pond that all these ducks hang out in. It is quite entertaining to watch. I think they have a little West Side Story going on in this pond. You know, rival packs... flocks? Herds? Gaggles? Wait. No. They aren't geese. Well. A large group of ducks. But the downside of this is that we hear obnoxious duck noises all day long. They aren't just your normal duck quacks either. They are diabolical. They are like unto no duck quack that has been heard before. It's the perfect mixture of terrifying and obnoxious. I bet they spent years genetically perfecting this quack just to annoy me. They have found success.

Our apartment also has quite the interesting neighbor (we have no idea where this person actually lives, but we know it to be near by). EVERY morning this neighbor plays their music. Quite loudly. So loudly in fact that the ceiling, and everything else, rattles. It's wonderful. All his song is super bass-ey and it's mostly rap and dubstep. It's really a great background to our studies as we are trying to feel the Spirit. It usually lasts for about half an hour and then we are left to our peace. 

But it doesn't smell and that's all that matters.

This week we had a movie night for Family Home Evening. It was wonderful and we watched the long Restoration movie. It was a good activity and everyone there really enjoyed it. Brother Bishop/Branson came and so did Sister Hairel, so I had a great time.

This week we had dinner at Sister Hairel's and it was magical beyond belief. This lady CRACKS ME UP. She is just so sweet and so funny. She also sang with us in our musical number that we did at the baptism this week. We sang "I Will" by Hilary Weeks. It turned our really well especially since we had practiced it 3 times all together. 

So awkward story time. Last night we went to see a referral and when he opened the door this cute little dog ran out. We talked to the guy for a little bit and he wasn't interested so he shut the door and we turned around to leave. We got half way to the car and realized that this dog was still running around the driveway. They had forgotten their puffball! I know that dogs are okay outside, but this dog really wanted to go inside. It was pretty cold outside and I know that I wanted to go inside. This seems like a situation that shouldn't be that awkward. But it WAS and I will tell you why. 1)The guy wasn't interested and obviously didn't want us to come back 2)This really grumpy looking scary dude who was our referral's boss had shown up and gone in right before they shut the door. We had NO idea what to do with this dog. We tried to just leave it, but the blasted thing followed us to our car and looked like he wanted to get in. We sat there. We sat there and we festered in awkwardness. We like partly ran back and forth between the door and our car multiple times. We couldn't decide if we wanted to knock on the door or just leave it be. We decided to leave. Well the dog wasn't having that. He sat in front of our car so we couldn't move without hitting him. We sat there for about 2 minutes until the door opened and the guy's boss left and the dog ran inside. It was really awkward pulling away because that whole adventure took about 5 minutes and we should have been long gone by then. Awkward. Story of my life. 

That was only a taste of the awkwardness that permeated my week. 

Have a great week y'all! Try not to be awkward. I can't. 

love,

Sister Perkes