For starters I OWE y'all an apology and an explanation. It was brought to my attention that I had been too severe in my email last week about my red firework emotion. I will offer a backstory and an apology. Most of the time when I write my group emails I like to take quiet time Sunday night before bed and begin to draft, than I look over it the next day and send it home and to mission friends... well that has not been my reality as of lately. Last week I pretty hastily wrote it in the car while talking with Sister See. Then I encountered spotty Wi-Fi, a faulty charger that caused my tablet to die which resulted in me sending my group email right at the end of pday without really being able to look over and reread it. So I apologize if I sounded way too firey and upset. I guess "distracted" is a good way to describe my pday last week, if I offended anyone I am deeply sorry. I'm not perfect but ask for your forgiveness.
And so I want to propose a rewrite:
RED: the color of my frustration as we helped a family in need clean up their house in preparation for a last minute move. Their home was very cluttered and they were to the point that they said to box things up and tape it shut which meant dumping junk drawers into boxes and taping up trying to label it something like "misc" every time. Those of you who know me know I like things organized so it pained me to do that. However it was only made worse after we cleaned out a fridge that hadn't been cleaned in years (tally that up to dirty fridge number 7 that I have cleaned while out here) as I was scrubbing who knows what off one of the fridge shelves I looked out the window and what did I see? The husband of the home climbing into the dumpster to go after some hot sauce his wife had told us to throw out. He stayed out there for 20 minutes and proceeded to dumpster dive and pull things out he wanted to save. I looked at the chaos around me and saw how he had a child in the back room with the stomach flu, another running rampant in nothing but a diaper, a frazzled wife, and rooms still full of stuff waiting to be packed up. And they were supposed to be on the road headed for their new home in an hour. And I watched him still standing in a dumpster after hot sauce... I was so frustrated, not only by my low tolerance for packrats which I need to work on. But also priorities. Hot sauce over helping your family get packed up, hot sauce over helping a child who is sick. I looked down to see myself scrubbing the shelf way too hard and knew I needed to look beyond what I could see and just accept that people are different and that they have different needs and priorities. It does cause me to wonder what hot sauce I dig out of the dumpster of my life when there are so many things and people's needs swirling around me.
Hopefully that is better. That's more of what I wanted to say. Sorry you got the rough draft and the version that wasn't super thought out or reread or considerate. I'll do better in the future. It won't happen again.
Alright next item of business... HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO MY PARENTS!!!!! WOOOOO YOU HAVE BEEN MARRIED OVER HALF OF YOUR LIVES!!! AHHHHH!!!!! 25 years!!! That is SUCH a long time but I am oh so very grateful because I get to be here and a part of the Hall family and I wouldn't want it any other way so thank you. Thank you for being imperfectly perfect you. I love y'all to the moon and back and want to quickly share 5 things I've learned from your relationship:
1- You can work with distance: dad's travels has tried you two but you've made it work, accepted reality and kept trucking along. People would always sympathize and say "Oh that must be so hard having your dad gone so much" well I never knew it was that hard because you always showed the "come what may and love it attitude"
2- You can balance schedules: you can reschedule, alter, accommodate and reschedule again to suit the needs of our family. I've needed that skill a lot as a missionary and I've seen the way you have done it with our family
3- You can compromise: let's be honest, you are different. SO different. But it works. Marjorie Pay Hinkley once said: "Early on I realized it would be better if we worked harder at getting accustomed to one another than constantly trying to change each other—which I discovered was impossible. … There must be a little give and take, and a great deal of flexibility, to make a happy home.”
You understand that it takes a little if not a lot of give and take. And I have been privileged to be a part of a "happy snappy clappy happy" home... most of the time;)
4- You can have the gospel at the heart: what is one of the things I miss most about home? Family scripture study and family prayer. I miss reading the Book of Mormon at night together and listening to Mom rant about how "vile of sinners the sons of Mosiah and Alma the Younger were yet they changed" Though I was often bitter about prayer before school seeing my dad stand at the wall and pray into the intercom system is a fond memory I'll never forget. Prayer and scripture study are important to you both and I've seen it, felt it, and love it.
5- You can love no matter what: I never doubted and always knew I was loved. And that you also love each other. I know it hasn't been easy, no one said it would be. There's no such thing as picture perfect... but I picture a perfect family in the future, in the eternities and I'm glad it's with you both... and Bridger of course.
Ok enough fluffy heart-warming stuff let me tell you about the redneck gangster.
So during a lesson with a recent convert this week all of the sudden her non- member husband came in and began to listen to us read the Book of Mormon with her. We were reading 2 Nephi 2, classic. We began discussing how everything that happens for us ultimately is for a reason. That no matter what we've gone through it leads us to where we are now. And at that moment he pipes in and tells us all about his past medical E.R. history, crashing his bike in fourth grade and having a compound femur fracture and blood spraying everywhere... (sorry for the gore, but it is my reality, Happy Halloween, tis the season;) and then about when he was in a motorcycle crash coming back from a church softball game and broke all sorts of ribs and vertebraes. And he related all that to playing football how these things happen there's an opponent in front of you and you can crash into it and get taken down or you can sidestep, and what was the word he used???? Oh yeah "juke em!!!" And I LOVE THAT, I want to juke my trials and prove to the Lord, myself, and others that I can get through them and make touchdowns in life. (Tis' the season also for football references, gotta love it!!!! Go Vols! Pronounced vahls don't you dare say it voles... you WILL get thrown out of the state, just sayin :) Ok back to this guy. So if his stories stopped here it would still be entertaining, but this is the south, there are no pauses for your input. You have to create pauses to be able to get words in, sometimes interrupting as they take a breat. But this wasn't about to happen with this guy, and you know what? Sometimes, sometimes it honestly irritates me to no end... but this time with this guy... it was totally ok I was loving everything he said. I was: completely entertained, completely agreeing with everything he said, completely feeling christlike love for this guy. So when he started talking about how he taught himself how to restore old motorcycles and said he was "basically a redneck gangster" I just ate that right up! Haha! I love that so much! So many times I have looked around me and wondered how to classify people in beat up trucks and cowboy boots blasting hardcore rap. Or the gangster people who still have a thick accent. Ah man I am living in a world of redneck gangsters and I love it. It's the best. And the cherry on top of this whole thing is this is the first time this guy has ever really talked to the missionaries so we know what that means... he is being prepared!!!! And we'll be there when he is ready to accept this amazing gospel that is for any person redneck gangster or not!
And finally a tragedy happened. I lost my scriptures this week. Oh my goodness it makes me sick thinking about it. I love my beaten up, weather worn, marked to death little maroon quad. And not being able to find them was THE worst. But when an investigator texted saying I left my Bible on her porch, oh goodness the relief that flooded over me was so real. I was on pins and needles all that night then most of the next day until we finally made it back there to go get them. She wasn't there when we knocked on the door but there my scriptures sat waiting on a metal purple chair on a cluttered Tennessean porch.
It was one of the most beautiful sights I have seen on my mission. That feeling though... of immense loss, and then ecstatic joy is something I want to address. I don't ever want to feel that loss ever again. I know I physically lost my scriptures (and I would've been fine if they were never found... eventually;) But as I've thought more about it, I don't ever want to lose the way I feel about scriptures. The love I have and lessons I have learned, I don't want to neglect those lessons on a porch in Tennessee and never come back and find them. I don't want that feeling again. But I do want that feeling of relief and joy that came from picking them up and holding them close. I want to, for the rest of my life, pick them up and hold their pages and teachings close to my heart. Because they are precious, like Elder Nelson's conversation with the African king "more precious than rubies or diamomds" I agree wholeheartedly with that.So I want y'all to go on a hunt for your scriptures whether it be physically digging them out from under the junk pile on your nightstand, or by opening them and hunting for a lesson, a verse, a chapter that speaks to you. For me this week it was Mosiah 14. That's one of my alltime favs, Abinadi quoting Isaiah about the Atonement of Jesus Christ, SO powerful. I love it so much. I promise there are Mosiah 14's out there for each one of you, so go find your scriptures pick them up and hold them close. I've never ever EVER regretted studying my scriptures and neither will you.
Alright that's it folks, have a blessed week!
Love y'all to the moon and back!
Love,
Hermana Hall
P.S.
I was informed by a son of an investigator this week that a dab (the dance move pose thing) is "a structure that holds my coolness" what a redneck gangster
Some Local History
Conference Notes:
Lots of "food for thought"
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