Avocados, Oranges and Country Music

Dear Family,

I love you!! How was the cruise? I love the pictures! Dolphins are awesome ha-ha.  How was your birthday mom? What did you guys do? How was the 4th of July?!  Thank for sending the cables, I will try it next week.

 Mom!!!!! There are like four women in my ward from Holland!  Do you know any cool phrases in Dutch that I could show off? Ha-ha.

 And YES SEND MUSIC. We can listen to anything that brings our thoughts back to the work and Jesus Christ, which is mostly hymns and country/acoustic.  I never thought in a million years that I would be listening to Christian Country in the car but here I am!  So feel free to send music! By the way, the CD "The Work" is really great. I love you! :) 

This week:

-I am getting bolder! I knew that I was kind of shy before I came on my mission but holy cow did being here make me realize it.  But, I am getting more confident and bold in talking to people every day, which is a huge blessing :)

-I am sick!  I have a pretty bad cold that I got on July 3rd; I'm mostly just been kind of in a fog.  But I am slowly getting better! It just isn't fun.

-On the 4th of July Sister Stoker and I wanted to make Rice Crispy treats and deliver them to the people that were teaching BUT we couldn't find Rice Crispy’s anywhere!  So we made them out of honey nut cheerios.  Then we used Sister Stoker's blue and red marshmallows so they looked really funny but they still tasted yummy! :) 

-A lot of people here have fruit trees in their backyards so guess what that means!?  We get LOTS of fruit :) especially avocados!  A lot of people have avocado trees here so we have like 4 avocados in our kitchen right now.  Some of the ward gave us oranges also, and these are the good oranges!  The oranges that we have in Florida are mainly for their juice but these are the kind that you can peel and eat. They are really good :)

-I met a Jehovah's Witness!!! Apparently they are really common in California, so I was kind of excited to get to talk with them a little about what they believe.  Everyone was really surprised that I had never met one before ha-ha.  That's one of my favorite parts about missionary work though, being able to talk to so many different people and learn about all kinds of different beliefs.  It's really cool!

-Each week we write a letter to the mission president talking about what we did this week and what we have been studying, so I am going to send that to you so that you can know what I'm up to! :)

Afterward from Erin's Mom- She asked us not to include any information about people she is teaching because she doesn't want them to come across themselves on the internet, so we won't be sharing those things in the blog. That's what was in the letter to the mission president.