CALLED TO SERVE

Hello friends! :) I am currently serving as a missionary for the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the Nebraska Omaha Mission. I'll be emailing home every week for the 18 months that I'm in the Cornhusker state; my amazing mom will be the one posting them on this here blog. Interested in church history? Come on down to the Mormon Trail Center at Historic Winter Quarters and I might just be there to give you a tour!

"As we lose ourselves in the service of others, we discover our own lives and our own happiness." - Dieter F. Uchtdorf


Wednesday, December 30, 2015

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas December 28, 2015

...Except it's not a dream, it's real life! We weren't supposed to get
any snow but we got about a foot on Christmas Eve! I shoveled my first
driveway. :) We had quite the adventure that day. I always wanted one
of those crazy mission stories and well, here is one! The weather was
awful and we got the text saying our cars were grounded but we were
already on our way to the trail center! Luckily Sister Strong is from
Utah and she knows how to drive in snow! We were fine all the way
there until we started going down a hill to pick up some other sisters
in their apartment. We thought we could make it slowly down but we hit
the curb and ended up turning completely around and slid down the hill
backwards! It was the scariest/funniest thing of my life because it
was in slow motion and the whole time there was a lady standing
outside in her front yard looking at us with a look of horror on her
face! It was priceless. We slid to a stop next to the curb so we
decided to just leave the car there and walked the rest of the way
with the sisters because the trail center was only a block away. About
an hour into our shift, we got a phone call saying that someone had
hit our car! We drove with the Crandall's over to where our car was,
but before we got there ANOTHER car had hit the car that hit us! But
wait, it gets better. We were going to park at the top of the hill and
Elder Crandall started putting the breaks on but we slid down and hit
yet another car that was parked. Luckily no one got hurt that was
involved but we kept slipping and sliding all over that hill; it was a
scene. It took about two hours to move all the cars down to a safe
spot and we were blessed to have all the neighbors and some other
missionaries come out and help us with their snow blowers and shovels!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas! Holidays are really fun on the
mission and I'm happy we got to go caroling a few times last week. We
went Monday with the Van Haaften's, Tuesday with the zone, Thursday
with the trail center sisters! Christmas Eve we had a wonderful dinner
and program put on by the senior couples. They are the best! It's like
having a million grandparents and I love them all so much. Christmas
was so much fun! We opened gifts and had brunch with the Ellis' and
got to facetime our families!!! That was the best gift ever. :) We
also spent the day with the Van Haaftens, Bennetts, Cardys, and
Andersons, playing games and eating food!

There's another family in our branch, the Hettingers, that has 11 kids
and we were over at their house last night for dinner! Everyone was in
the kitchen at once helping with the food and it was so crazy and loud
but it was a party! They are such fun to be around. I think I have
almost all their names memorized haha still working on it. They
measured us on the height wall and we got to write our names! Even
though all the kids are younger than me, like half of them are taller.
But it's okay they already called me on a mission and I didn't even
have to grow a foot or two! ;)

The other day I took this awesome family on tour and they took three
Book of Mormons! Books of Mormon? Books of Mormons? Copies of the Book
of Mormon! That was so exciting.

Well, I love you all and Happy New Year!!

Love,
Sister Irwin







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