Hola a todos <Hello everyone>!
I am not very happy right now. Why you may ask? What can make a missionary in sunny southern California with a baptism planned and a birthday coming up unhappy? Well, I’ll answer it plainly to you all: bed bugs. Bed FREAKING bugs.
Those of you who know me, KNOW that there are a lot of things I can do. I can deal with snakes, scary movies, creepy men, and angry Catholics. But what I cannot do are bugs. They crawl and they bite and they make life as miserable as possible aaaaand they’re tiny little pieces of crap. Ugh. I hate bugs.
So when I was told that people get bed bugs commonly in this area, I laughed. Then I prayed. Reeeeeeeealy prayed that I would not have to deal with that on my mission. I’ve already had way too many encounters with maggots and fleas in these last 9 months that I thought returning to a first world country guaranteed me a lack of bug problems.
At 7:06 am Saturday morning I found the marks of a bed bug on my throat and let’s just say there was a lot of crying. Maybe a little bit of begging to move out too. Guys, really. I just can’t with bugs like that. They are honestly my worst nightmare.
I have bites that look like I was bitten by a vampire with two too many fangs and I’m just calling that my Halloween costume this year. Plus I’m pretty sure I’ve lost like all my tan already. But that’s beside the point.
We spent the day cleaning the deal out of our house and the worst was cleaning our mattresses. Lucky me I had the worst one. With an infestation bad enough we threw away my whole bed and I got nice new things. Woohoo. Hooray. A new bed for me, but at what cost?
We actually don’t know exactly where they came from, and that’s because we went to a lot of appointments in an area called Muscoy which isn’t the best area and I think we sat on a few too many dirty couches. God must really need me prepped for something because I doubt he would put me through that for any other reason.
The other girls in my apartment were less dramatic about it, but just they wait until God makes them face their worst fear. Mine just happens to be bug infestations. And it doesn’t help that they suck your blood. And change color. And are basically INVISIBLE until they bite you. Yeah, look ’em up. They nasty.
But besides that, we had a really good week. We have a little girl we’ve been teaching preparing for baptism. It’s awesome, she’s SO cool. I can’t say a lot about my investigators here because of Internet rules changing with all the new things in my mission, but she’s cool. She does flag twirling at her middle school and her two older brothers were baptized a few weeks ago and she’s a violin rock star. Hoping I’m allowed to post a photo when she gets baptized, but we’ll see. 😋
Then we had Hermana Nez’s 1-month mark on her mission party. We ate gluten-free cake and ice cream and got Chinese food. I’ll include pictures of our cute celebrations in my email that includes all the pictures. But she’s cute. She’s an English missionary right now who lives with us and is being trained by Sister Bradshaw. Which weird enough, Bradshaw and I went to school together since the 8th grade. It’s weird seeing her in the mission jaja. We’re teaching Sister Nez Spanish so that maybe one day President can change her to be an Hermana and teach in Spanish.
Today we went to the McDonald’s museum which is in the location of the first ever McDonalds store. Pretty chill, got lots of fun pictures and we donated toys to the museum so that we could have our picture displayed in the museum. I also bought a pin! (duh).
No plans so far for birthday celebrations, but I promise you we’ll have some sick tacos.
Thank you all so much for your love and your kindness with all that has been going on lately. I can feel your love here in San B. and I’m sending love back.
Gotta go fumigate my house (literally),
Hermana Thelin
My companion, Hermana Oliver and I with the golden arches.
Me and a giant hamburger in classic Mads pose.
Not the real mystery machine, but Hermana Nez and I still wanted a pic.
I am a small person and fit into the jail cell with the Hamburgler. Lots of spiders were there. Lots.
Hamburger fish merry go round. Need I say more?
This display case is full of preserved real McDonald’s food from the 70’s or something like that. Didn’t even smell bad. The fries didn’t even look an hour old.
Our fortunes from the cumplemes <month> celebration. Mine: You have a charming way with words (true 😉); H. Nez: People are naturally attracted to you; H. Bradshaw: You will be a winner; H. Oliver: From a past misfortune good luck will come to you.
This is the email grimace dude. Really creepy. It felt like Disneyland all over again. So, they got some hilarious shots of me with this guy. This is me apprehensively approaching him.
Then I stand awkwardly bc I’m scared he will come to life and eat me.
Then here I am trying to look natural but still sketched out by his freakish tallness.