lovaliss's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tony and his big black butt I have only 3 minutes left on this computer...damn it. Missionaries still say damn and hell...I do, it keeps me young and sparky. Joseph Smith said he'd rather me cuss up a stream and have a good heart than be a long smooth faced hypocrite...it's true! Paraphrased of course. But really. Church History as my reference. I have a hypochrondriac compnaion. I locked myself in the closet and wrote down the list of her open medications to have evidence, it would make it funnier and more legitamate. I forgot the list. My plan is deflated. However there are migraine pills, acid reliever pills, Tums along with that, allergy pills, and lots of medications that I was going to look up on-line today and now I don' have the names. She has over 10 medications on her shelf. I really hated her. Until today. Had a change of heart, we'll leave it at that. Since I did I feel happier inside. I hate resenting a person so much, it makes my insides ugly and really deflates my entire personality. Now I'm little miss chipper chatter box blah blah blah chirp chirp chirp chat chat chat listen to me listen to me listen to me... I often mentally write my diaryland entries during the week, just waiting for my P-day when I can run to the library and type as fast as my little fingers will go. A lot happens every day and really nothing at all happens at the same time. The thing I realized the most about missions, being a complete week in the field, is that a person really doesn't have to change into some weirdo that's completely different from who they were...my theory: it's the people who already don't know who they are or have a tendenancy to adapt to their surroundings that are so influenced and molded by their mission, a new companion every six weeks, keep that up for a year and a half and by the end of it they'll be this collaboration of all the dumb companions they had. Not all are dumb :/ We do Tae Boa and Pilates every night in our movie theatre. Sometimes I feel like I'm not really on a mission. Sometimes it just feels like I moved somewhere and am suddenly with a whole bunch of people that I have nothing in common with. Sometimes I hate it. Sometimes I like it. Church smells of poverty. We live in a low-calss neighborhood. I've pinpointed it to these smells: kitty litter, greasy hair, musty sweaters, elmers glue scent from sweaty chubby flesh. There are a lot of jeans at church, cross necklaces, sweat pants, plastic grocery bags, and loud talking during sacrament meeting. It is kind of refreshing to see that the Gospel can still be the Gospel without the unwritten cultural rules being enforced by mean stares or hushed embarassed whispers to silence the offender into submission. There was a woman reading the newspaper during sacrament meeting and I thought of Chris Aullmun. She also pulled out her cross stitching, I wished it to magically turn into knitting needles. Tony moved here 38 days ago from St. Louis. He is a big black man with a big black butt that shifts from side to side when he walks. I love this big guy, I really do. Last week Tony had a dream. He saw a wagon train of people going across the desert and the sand was white. In the dream he saw a man's face and then it flashed to a sign of "Brigham Young University" and he knew the man's face he saw was Brigham's. He woke up and said, "that means something". He looked up Mormon church in the yellow pages, nothing. He thought, "I know they go by another name..." He was sitting there watching a football game, St. Louis Rams game and "Saints" popped into his mind, "Latter Day Saints!" he says out loud ot himself. He looks up the elders, gives them a call, came to church on Sunday where I met him and is going to be baptized on Sunday. This man is like a sponge. He soaks this up. He understands the Gospel better than some people that have been members there whole lives. All of this in a week. He came into the center and I took him on a tour. He kept hitting his heart with his hand and saying to me, "Sister Skinner this is DEEP! This is DEEP! This is for real! I can hold this book in my hands! I can see the pictures of these people! This happened...THIS HAPPENED!" I watch him as he looks at the exhibits and talks about Desert Storm. He shakes his head from time to time in a happy disbelief saying, "Oh my GOODness! Jesus Christ!" (He often uses this phrase :) And then always turns to me and says, "This is what I've been looking for..." I can't quite explain the type of happiness I feel in that moment. As I see his face light up at everything. He is like a child at Christmas and he is so at peace. I see the tears in his eyes when I tell him about my grandma that was in the Martin handcart company and what she wrote in her journal. We stand before the replica of the Salt Lake temple and he says, "It makes you want to get there, we've got to get there...it's the only place...the only place." And my insides feel so full I'm not sure how to handle it. I get to watch him go in the water this Sunday, Tony and his big black butt. He has given me hope for my mission. There are actually people in this world that BELIEVE THIS! Having known nothing about it previously! That's a miracle!!!!! 1:23 p.m. - 2005-08-31 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||