and wishing you the Happiest of New Years!
12/31/2013
Thank you so much to everyone who sent me a letter, card,
package, or carrier pigeon for Christmas. My walls are covered with Chrismas
cards, and under our tree was full of packages. I so appreciate you thinking of
me this season!
Last week and this week are tough for missionary work. It's
not generally socially acceptable to drop by casually on people on Christmas
Eve, Christmas, New Years Eve, and New Years Day. And the majority of what we
do these days is casual drop-ins and drive-bys (where we slow down and try to
see if the cars are in the driveway and the lights are on in the house and then
if not we awkwardly pretend we were just turning around or something so they
neighbors don't call the cops on us for driving slowly by the house on the
daily). This means that those days end up being very unproductive; we do a lot
of organization things at the apartment like planning and filling out records
and post-it-ing referrals to the giant maps on our walls so we can figure out
where things are and what work to do when. It's so weird, haven't not been on
the internet (besides email) or watched tv or listened to the radio, I totally
wouldn't even know it was Christmas or New Years unless my companions told me.
It sure doesn't feel like it. But we did our best to make it look like it by
buying out the holiday decorations aisle of the dollar store and spending way
too much money on a live Christmas tree for our living room. Whatever. Walking
in the house at the end of the day to it smelling like pine needles and
gingerbread men (I constantly have some sort of cookie in the oven. Stress
coping, you see.) makes it well worth-it.
I got to talk to my cute family on Christmas. (When we're
missionaries, our contact with home is limited so that we stay focused. We
email weekly, and skype twice a year, on Christmas and Mothers Day). I pretty
much went into panic mode for the 2 hours preceding the skype call, so by the
time I saw them I was all hyperventilated out and didn't even remember what I
wanted to tell them in the call anyway. (It's a lot of pressure when you
haven't seen them in 9 months and you only have limited time to tell them about
everything). It's okay. I spent the 2 hours following the call lying on the
floor doing a play-by-play of the skype session, just to recap everything that
was said and grumble about everything I should have said that I thought of
right after it ended
Something weird to think about: My mothers day call home
will be my very last one, because my mission ends in October, before the next
call, which would be Christmas.
My girls are good, they're still fresh enough that they're
pumped up about being out here and working, so I don't have to push/encourage
them much, which is nice. But they are rather homesick, because they haven't
seen their families since September and now they're starting to realize what a
long time it's going to be before they see them again. My technique when
homesickness strikes is the act of distraction. This can take many forms: baked
goods, lessons with crazy people, this-one-time-on-my-mission stories, a new cd
we haven't gotten sick of yet, or stickers. We're working together well and
they're very patient with me despite the fact that I sometimes pretend we're
superheros and put googly eyes on the contents of our fridge.
I've been in the WA-TAC 31 weeks, for a total of 41 weeks on
my mission. And I'm happy to report: the church is true here too.
-Sister McQuivey
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