Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas everyone!! And good morning! This has been a very strange and very crazy week, so here we gooooo!

Monday

Last Monday was just a very chill pday. We talked to friends and wrote emails in the morning, and went shopping in the afternoon, and called our family when we got home! 

Literally nothing special. 

We were going to have a member meal, and we had one planned for every night this week! Unfortunately this one cancelled due to illness. Understandable; I don't want to be sick lol.

That was about it! We called our families that evening tho!

Tuesday!

We had DC [District Council]! Always fun, especially when the APs [Assistants to the President] are in your district.

Funny story here, they had gotten out a bRAND NEW piece of chalk to write on the board with, and it got to us, and I was writing, and it sNApPeD!! 😶😱 Everyone else was so sad, and I was just awkward because apparently I press a little hard with my writing utensils lol.

Also, quote of the day:

"That's exceedingly hype" -Elder Madsen (AP)

We went to lunch afterwards at Panda Express, and that was pretty good! I got to use chopsticks, and I always love that. My egg roll was delicious!

The members that were going to have us over that night cancelled as well, also due to sickness. There was another member who asked if she could bring us some leftover soup from another member's party that she'd had. We thanked her and said sure! So she brought that by that day.

Wednesday!

We went to Walmart to get my cute sick comp some stuff that Sister Barker (mission nurse) asked us to get her. And we had a call with our friend Adriene! Adriene was baptized the week before I got here, and she's incredible.

We were supposed to have a member meal this night as well, but unfortunately because of the supposed blizzard everyone was freaking out about, they cancelled. The mom did bring us some soup though! Very good soup, might I add. She brought it earlier in the day so she could beat the blizzard.

She did in fact beat the blizzard. As a matter of fact, it didn't come until the next morning. And even then, it wasn't bad 😆.

Thursday!

This is the blizzard day. It was really fun! We went out and took pictures in the apartment front lawn! As you may have noticed because that's now my Facebook profile picture, haha.

We also had a roleplay with the Brookefield sisters! They're so cute! We did the roleplay, and followed through on a DC invite as we did so! It was awesome!

We went to Walmart again after lunch because we wanted to pick up some actually good markers so we couldddddd...

WEEKLY PLAN!! my favorite thing lol. Although this whiteboard doesn't have gridlines, so I was mildly suffering lol. Oh well, it turned out at least half decent.

We had dinner with the Shurillas that night! They're AWESOME!! They had all their kids in town for Christmas, so we got to meet them. They have a super fun family, and we definitely enjoyed being there.

Sister Goetz is from Arizona, so she had me drive there in the recently blizzard affected roads. With the training I recieved from my darling Sister Olsen on how snow driving works, I feel a lot more calm driving in snow. Especially when I realize I'm the one that has to keep a level head. 😆 

We got there safely, and arrived home safely as well! The only trouble we had was making a single turn, and it wasn't even the turn, it was slowing down in the sludge ice to MAKE the turn. The brakes wigged out on us for a minute there, but because I'm now the resident pro at driving in snow, we managed just fine! 😎

Friday!

The only actually exciting thing that happened this day (other than us watching VeggieTales during lunch) was that we had a dinner.

Unfortunately, they were out of town and wanted to reschedule for the next day. (The next day being Christmas Eve, and entirely booked.) We told them we couldn't, so they said they were on the calendar for the next week, and they'd just have us over then.

We were bummed, and right about then Sister Hohneke (aka, a literal queen) reached out to us to make sure we had Christmas Eve plans. We told her that yes, we were booked, and that we'd even had to tell our current dinner plans for the day the same thing. (My attempt at being subtle.) Didn't work. I was sad.

Sister Goetz told me that was way too subtle, and if I wanted to meet them, since she was already offering to have us over, and clearly wanted us to, to just straight out tell her we don't have plans tonight.

Any of you who know me well, know that I HATE, H A T E , asking people for things I think might even mildly inconvenience them. (I also hate saying no... what a conundrum I'm in lol) I was trying to get up the courage to type the message out, and Sister Goetz was rather concerned for my sanity, as it appeared to be crumbling. (Spoiler, it was)

I finally managed to type out a message I was semi comfy with, and Sister Goetz gave it the comp stamp of approval, and we sent it.

To cut me reliving my suffering short, they said they'd LOVE to have us over, and we had the BEST time with them. They took us to this restaurant that was quite good, vibes with Zupas but like... fancier, and also... more rustic, and more menu options. I got a turkey cranberry wrap and some good old mac n cheese. All very good!

After that we went to the cutest little... like... boutique mall. Idk what you'd call it. It's just a bunch of little boutiques all in one building. It was awesome! Sister Goetz and I bought matching charms! I'll include a picture. 

After that we went back to their house and played a dice game. Can't remember what it was called, but it was fun! I won too, so that was also fun 😆 I didn't know what I was doing. I guess that's why they call it beginners luck lol.

After that I got to drive home! Woot woot! I love driving! Especially at night!

Then we finished our VeggieTales after 9:00 lol.

Saturday! Christmas Eve!

We had a member lunch which was pretty fun, but BOY if I wasn't stuffed. We had like a five course meal, and I really couldn't fit any more in my stomach. We were celebrating the member's bday, as well as Christmas Eve with her family, and we had the best time!

We were there a while, but we mostly just chilled while the fam did their stuff. It was fun though!

That night we went to the Hunzaker's for dinner! Luckily they had tacos, so we didn't actually kill ourselves because we were still full from earlier. They're super sweet, and as he is the ward choir director, he invited us to join the choir for Christmas Sunday the next day lol. We said sure!

We went home and watched "The Star of Christmas" VeggieTales 😂

Sunday! Christmas day!

We got up and headed to church! It was definitely a good sacrament meeting! It was pretty much exclusively music, with a final speaker talking about the origins of the song "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day". It was awesome and definitely flew by! We did pretty well in our choir too lol. There were some awesome songs!!

After church we said Merry Christmas to a bunch of people and hung around a bit. The amount of people who brought gifts for the missionaries was unreal! We thanked them all! The members are so amazingly kind to the missionaries!! President and Sister Hansen even got us something! They gave us each our favorite cereal which was awesome! I had forgotten we filled out a paper of favorites, so I was like, "wOW! This is even one of my most favorite cereals, I-" She's all, "I know; you told me on that paper." Cut to me, "oh. Right 😆"

We then stuck around for Parkway's ward! 😂 As Elder Shipley informed me later, "You sound like a Utah missionary". But we'll get to that. 🤣

Their ward was EPIC! It's a lot smaller than our ward, but I'm used to that. The coolest part about their ward was that for the songs that the congregation sang, we were accompanied by a line of violinists. Apparently they're all from the same 3 families that just all play violin. There were also 2 cellists. 

They also had a bunch of musical numbers in theirs which I greatly appreciated. They had a ward choir as well, and all 4 of the Elders in the ward were in it. The choir was AWESOME!

After church we talked to some members and non members alike from their ward. After that we went into the gym to film my musical number for Facebook. Elder Shipley filmed one too; you should give that one some love as well! (He's the first comment on my post lol).

That's about all I have time to write about as we're presently at a member meal for Boxing Day with just about everyone else in the ward, so pictures to come soon; titles whenever I get to it!

Merry Christmas! I love you all! Goodbyeeeeeeeeee ❤️😁

We can do this!
¡Sí se puede! 
Peb Yeej Ua Tau!

Love
Sister Lovell

Link to the photos:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/hH8UuZNVov71FYot7

Link to the blog:
https://sisterhannahlovellwisconsin.blogspot.com/