I have arrived!

I have arrived!! I said that this morning when I scored a goal in zone sports. Well, here I am! It's been a crazy week, hopefully I can type everything! We woke up at 3:45 am to leave from the MTC. It was so fun to be able to call home from the airport. My bags were over weight, but they let me slide :) Good thing! It was a really short flight. President and Sister Ellsworth and also the AP's met us at the luggage claim to welcome us, they are really nice!  President Ellsworth invited me and sister Larson to ride with them in his car. Nervous. It was good. We went straight to the temple and the visitors center! It was even prettier than I imagined! The weather was awesome too! We took some pictures and had a short testimony meeting in the VC. After that we went to a church next to the mission office where we had REAL LIVE FOOD. Not processed. I was in heaven! Seriously I wanted to cry... no joke. We did paper work and got to work! We went on splits that night so we had to hurry and pack an over-night bag. I went with sister Mckee- who is now sister Larson's trainer and sister Avila. They were really nice! They cancelled our dinner appointment because they said they had too many dinner appointments that week and they didn't want to go. Later Sister Mckee said she had gained 35 lbs on her mission... I was fine going without dinner. We went straight to a lesson. The investigators name was Lydia and her boyfriend (excommunicated member). Lydia had soooo many questions and she was getting really loud and frustrated. Finally I just raised my hand and said, can I just bare my testimony to you? She stopped and I just explained that we don't need to eat an entire cake to know if it tastes good, just like the scriptures.. we don't need to know everything. She just kinda looked at me like, "awh, that's cute, she's new" that's ok... It calmed that lady down for about 10 seconds. It was in english too so it was easier. the rest of the night was in spanish which was really hard since i had been up so early that morning.. my brain wanted to explode. We went looking for people and we found someone working on a car and he asked what my name was and i said "huh? oh.. um Sara".. Shoot. We then went to FHE and I was completely exhausted. All I could thing about was going to sleep. It was good though. We went back to sister mckee's apt, planned and I was asleep in about ten seconds. 

I found out who my trainer was in the mtc because the President linked us together on Mormon.org before I even got there. Her name is sister fors! She's really nice. And very organized and EXACTLY obedient.Which is good. She's from LA!

 We have a car, which is nice.. except we don't have it this week because some elders needed to borrow it for some reason. Bikes it is :) Fine with me. We had our first lesson in spanish with a new investigator named Dalia for the first time. I was nervous, but I invited her to baptism... in spanish! She didn't understand the question exactly, but she said needs more time! Cool/scary experience.
 We live on the other side of an old couples house, it's like a separate apt. It's super.... 60's. But it's good :) It really is little mexico around here!
I love the VC! it's like going to the temple after a stressful day! I took a couple on a tour the other night and asked the boyfriend to be baptized if he came to know if these things were true. He said he would! Awesome! 
We are in the Lihonna 1st ward. It was hard going to church and listening to only spanish all day! I can understand almost everything but it's really hard to say what I want to say. Everyone kisses me on the cheek. The members feed us every night. Usually it's pretty good, but they like to put nuts in everything :/.
President Cosgrave and his wife (my branch president from the mtc) came and surprised us the other day! They were visiting there daughter, that was fun. 
Everyone is so confused when i say that i'm sister cottrell from kaysville. Aumberly was soooooooooooo loved in her mission! Everyone was so excited that I was coming because of her. So thanks Aumberly!! :) 
Does anyone know some good gospel spanish music?? Probably not, but it would be nice to listen to in the car. 

EVERYONE- Send letters to this address:
525 E Main St
Mesa, Arizona
85204

It will get to me soooo much faster :)

Anyway, everything is great..  The only thing is spanish that i struggle with, but i'm sure it will come. Pray for me :)

Love you all! Write me!
Seek for the Eternal (SFTE)
Love,
Sister Cottrell or Sister Cocroach (mexicans can pronounce my name)

WElcome home Stink

Hello!

 

This week has been slower than the first week I got to the MTC... Well.. not really, but pretty close! It's been a good one though.

 

Friday we had what is called "in-field orientation" it lasted from 8:15 am to 9:45 pm. They had a bunch of slides and talked to us pretty much the entire time. It was fine though, good info for the field. We got our travel plans too! So exciting. We leave tuesday morning at 5 am and our flight leaves around 8:30 i believe. So look for a call between 6:30 and 7:30 i would imagine. I'll say, good morning!!!! :) You can go back to bed after :) I'm excited to call and see how everything is going with sam being home and everything. Please take pictures and send them to me. Especially with the family and cory and kelcie when they come tonight!

 

Saturday we had our last classes with all of our district there. I never imagined that it would be so hard to say goodbye to our district! We really became a family and we were all best friends. I'm sure that's how my whole mission will be like. Meeting people you love and then saying goodbye. I guess that's how all of life is though, right? That's why heaven will be so great, i'm sure :) I had a friend that was leaving for the LA VC the day sam was coming home, so I copied the advice sam gave me that the sisters had written for me at the LA VC and gave it to her. She loved it. I'm sure she will see a lot of the sisters that wrote on the paper, kinda cool.

We had a really good testimony meeting with our district, everyone was crying... pretty dramatic. But it was really good.

 

Sunday in sacrament meeting I knew I was going to get called up to give a talk in spanish and guess what? I did! I actually wan't nervous at all thoguh. It was on obedience and I just told an experience and bore my testimony and my 5 min was up! So there ya go, not so bad after all. During the sacrament a poor elder fell of the stage while giving the bread to the elders passing the sacrement. Bless his heart. We went to the departure devotional with our district and elder erickson in our district got called to bare his testimony in front of everyone. Scccary. He did good though. Sunday night we all sang "god be with you till we meet again" and cried and said our goodbyes.

 

Monday we did service in the morning and cleaned the showers. I swear you could make 50 wigs from all the hair we pulled out of the drains... probably wont miss that when I leave on tuesday. We taught our last lessons to our teachers. It was kinda funny because hmo sanchez was playing an investigator names Juaquin. He is a hard investigator and loves his bible and not excited about the church. It has taken him a lot to progress, but this time we went in there and he was all teary eyed and and excited for some reason. During our lesson, he was not just crying, but like hysterically crying.. we didn't know what to do except take advantage of it.. "will you pray every day juaquin?" yes yes yes, i'll pray! "will you read the book of mormon every day?" yes, of course i will. "will you be baptized in 3 weeks?" yes i will, yes yes. haha awesome! Later we found out that he was happy and sad that it was our last lesson teaching him. He could see how much the gift of tongues has blessed us but he was sad to leave. We decided to cheer him up by putting a woopie-cushion on his chair when he walked back in the classroom. It was pretty funny/immature.

 

Tuesday was two months in the mtc! We woke up bright and early to drop Hma marcum off at the bus. Hma Larson wasn't too sad, but I will miss her! We got packed (mostly) because I wanted to send things home with sam the next day so my suitcase wouldn't be over 50 lbs. What a blessing! On my very last tuesday night devotional we had Elder Holland come!!!! It was soooo awesome! We had been packing all day so we hadn't even heard of any apostles coming that night. Such a good devotional for my last one! I wrote about 5 pages of notes. Everything he said was so inspired! Something I loved that he said was that we are Gods investigators. Everytime we want someone to pray harder or to read more or to study more, God wants US to do that. Something cool that he said too was that chapter one of the book of mormon is exactly the story of Joseph Smith and it tells all the investigators what we believe.. in the very first chapters. We believe in prophets, prayers, visions, records, the spirit, dreams and most importantly, revelation! Everyone read 1st nephi 1 and think of joseph smiths life, it's soooo cool! I literally saw light around Elder Holland. I know he is a prophet of God. He pounded the pulpit and said "we expect so much of all of you, and we don't apologize!" He said that we don't have the right to compromise this work and everyone thinks missionaries are perfect, so don't let them down! It was good to hear. He also expressed his love for us. We all needed to hear it. It was awesome.

 

Wednesday! Such a good day!!! Long one too. We almost missed our bus to SLC because we got the times mixed up.. but after not being in a car since december.. we weren't going to miss that bus!!! So we made it and left for salt lake. I was all excited to be in a car until i got super car sick! I guess not being in a car for that long will do that to ya. We were only there for a couple hours and we had sisters take us around and kind of just get a feel of what we will be doing at a visitor center. It was really good. We drove back and it was almost time for sam to come! It was soooooooo awesome seeing him! He looked so good. I got to talk to one of my best friends! It was such a blessing. It was so fun talking to him in spanish too! Mom and dad recorded it. I loved that mom and dad ran in the mtc even though they weren't supposed to! I just laughed and hugged them. Somehow i didn't think it was that weird! I thought it would be kind of sad, but i was just happy!! It was the best feeling ever! I'm glad he is home safe and doing well! I'm excited to hear about his homecoming and everything. I am so proud of him and he is such a good example to me for my mission and in life in general! Love him! Thanks for the package too mom and dad!! Everything was just what i needed!!!!!!!! thank you thank you thank you!!

 

Thursday

Long day!! we got new sisters last night so we made their beds and got them candy and showed them around and made them feel welcome. We had our first TRC with volunteers for VC training. It's weird having a district with just sisters. We get a lot more done though, i wont lie. Our trc experience went really well.. but.. it was in english. Monday is in spanish. Yikes.

 

This is my last p-day here so next time you hear from me i'll be in sunny AZ!!! Can't wait! love you all. Hope everything is going well for everyone!

 

Seek for the eternal :)

 

Love, Hma Cottrell

Hola otra vez! 2-23-12

This week has been a good one! Our mexico elders got their new temporary travel plans last night they are going to colorado springs.... ENGLISH speaking. I felt really bad for them, they have been working so hard to learn spanish the last 9 weeks. There is a reason though and i'm sure they will love it. We got some new elders last week, they seem pretty nice.

 

I made our companionship do a companionship inventory on saturday... it was very much needed. Hermana Marcum and Larson hadn't been getting along very well. They are both super opinionated so sometimes they clash when we are planning lessions and what not. So I interviewed them both and then we had the inventory. Pretty intense.. i was like the ref. in the middle. It was a little awkward at times but it turned out well. Everyone ended up happy so i guess i did my job for now.

 

My 8th sunday at the mtc was a good one, as always! The president of the mtc spoke to us, president brown. We sang called to serve for the 100th time but we sang it like the 2000 strippling warriors marching and coming over the hill to fight, soft, medium and loud and then we stood up for the last verse. I loved it. It's cool too because there really is 2000 of us in that room. I was worried the temple walk would be closed again because it had snowed all morning but we got to go :) it was nice to take a walk outside of the mtc. We had fun throwing snowballs at eachother and having a photoshoot with our district. We had a departure meeting with a member of our branch presidency. He said that we are one of the best districts that has ever come through this branch! That was really good to hear. I had my accountability interview with the president too and he had some really really nice things to say too! Hma larson got called to speak in sacrament so that means either me or hma marcum are most likely speaking this week! yikes.

 

Something cool that i heard this week was that 'one of the only things we can give to heavenly father that he doesn't already have is our will.' I'll go where YOU want me to go dear Lord, not where I want. I also learned a lot about the prelife. It's so amazing to think about. It gives me a lot of confidence reading in abraham 3 about the noble and great ones. We choose our circumstances according to our obedience- just like in heaven we were obedient so we are here, we must have done something right because we were blessed to know the gospel too! On earth we chooseour circumstances after this life accourding obedience on the earth. Someone related this to my mission. According to my obedience in the mtc will be what my circumstances will be in the field- kinda makes sense.

 

Our district - except for hma larson and i leave next week, so it's hard to stay focused! Everyone can't stop talking about the field. Next wednesday I will start my visitors center training though, and i'm sooooooooooo excited! We leave for temple square at 8 in the morning and get back around 12 30 and do a few things just in time for sam to come at 3!!! it's gonna be a great day!

 

Tuesday night we had elder wilson from the 70 come speak to us, it was really good! Aunt tracy sent me a letter saying that they had had dinner with him the week before because he was there for stake conference. I felt all cool knowing who was going to speak before anyone else because it's always this big, fat secret here... not sure why. Elder Wison talked about the book of mormon and how we need to be a mentor for people while they are reading it and help them understand it. The book of mormon is one of the 20 books that have changed america, kinda cool! Elder wilson is a very very smart man. Graduated from harvard and has many many accomplishments. I just had the impression during that devotional that God needs his servents to be educated.

After the devotional our district came together and bore testimony of what we learned. It basically just turned into a 'goodbye' testimony meeting. Sad.

 

We got a new investigator Juaquin. I felt the spirit so strong that i just needed to be bold with him. All he wanted to do was argue about the the book of mormon because he loves the bible so much. I was bold and just told him how it was. We committed him to baptism. Awesome.

 

Hma marcum taught at the trc yesterday. We taught our favorite volunteer, hma gonzolas. She's this cute little mexican lady and she's the sweetest lady you'll ever meeet in your life. We taught about revelation through prayer and the book of mormon. We decided to experiment and trust in the spirit. 1st we had her think of a question or a problem she has been struggling with. Next we told her to pick a number 1 through (however many pages are in the spanish book of mormon) Then we told here to pick, left or right (on the page) the last step was to pick a number according to however many verses there were on the page. We found her verse. We had her read the verse before and after her scripture she picked as well as the one that she picked. As she read it, she started to cry. We didn't understand all of her spanish, but one thing is for sure, she recieved revelation through the book of mormon. Yep... I cried too. I was so cool!

 

I met with president hacking to talk about the meeting with sam next week. We didn't figure anything out so he decided to just call dad right then and there! He was on speakerphone so i was like, 'oh hey dad!!' Everyone was so jealous. that was fun. We got to 'host' the new sisters coming into the mtc again this week. When I was waiting for a sister to come through so i could take her around, i ran into one of cory's old companions! That was really fun too! That was a good day.

My scheldule is way different next week, so my p-day is on friday.. so no letter on thrusday.. but hopefully friday :)

 

Anyway, my time is up, but I love you all and hope you had a fantastico semana!!!

Tenga fe in Jesucristo y su expiasion :)

Seek for the eternal!

 

Love,

Hma Cottrell

(partial) Handwritten note 2-16-12

Mom & Dad,
Thank you for the packages! They made my day so awesome! I didn't expect my Valentines day to be as good as it was! I was literally jumping for joy when I saw that I got new clothes! Best package ever!!!! Ahhh..... it was everything I needed, thank you thank you thank you! I got 5 packages on Valentines day! I was feelin the love!
.......Our district got to Host this week- where we take the new missionaries around, I got a girl going to Russia and a girl going to Virginia and on the Arkansas, I think that's right. They were all scared to death! The first girl I picked up, I gave her a valentines package when we went to her new room. she seemed to like that.
The language is much better this week for sure! I'm feeling  better too.
So, last Thursday was when I got a blessing. It was a really cool experience. I really really didn't want to ask for a blessing because the other Hermanas had needed one recently so I didn't want it to seem like I was just jumping on the banwagon. So we were packing up to leave the classroom and go to bed and my heart started pounding. I knew I needed a blessing- really bad. But I sat and watched all the elders walk out the door without saying anything. I wanted to cry. I prayed so hard and said, " Heavenly Father, please, please, please make them come back! Please!" Right as I lifted my head, an elder popped his head in the door and said, " are you sure you're good?" I said" ok, can I have a blessing I guess?" They said absolutely! They gave me a blessing and it was almost like dad giving me a blessing- before they started, they said- who do you want to give it- I said I don't care, the priesthood is the same- that was reaffirmed because he used the same wording and phrasing that dad would use or someone that gives me blessings often- it's because it's not wording or phrasing from them, it's from Heavenly Father! I literally felt a weight lifted off my shoulders and I have felt so good ever since!

Feb 14, 2012 Valentine Photos- MTC

From the Elders

Ally Harris- I graduated with her- she went to Texas- Spanish speaking a couple weeks ago.

Not sure. 

Elders stole my camera

Sister Shropell

Cory's package- the card says inside, " you know, I usually have such a hard time
finding the right valentine's day card for you" I was laughing pretty hard.

Waiting in line  for the devotional

Devotional line

Skillz

Elder Kener fell asleep on his notebook

Fruit rollup hearts

Handmade from Mexico

Back stretches? I dunno... Hma Marcum said she knew what she was doing but I couldn't stop laughing

Laughing really hard with Hermana Marcum

Hermana Ferguson

2 more emails and then I'm off to AZ

Hello!!

Happy late Valentines day!!! I hope everyone had a good one. Mine was soooooooo fun. Probably the funnest day in the mtc so far. This week has been a good week :) I wasn't feeling well still so after a stubborn couple days, i finally asked for a blessing. It was just what i needed. It was one of the most spiritual experiences that i''ve had here. I wish i had time to tell all of you! On the devotional on tuesday we had Don R Clark from the 70 speak to us. He talked about love because it was valentines day. but he also said to include your family in your mission D&C 100:1 and share your spiritual experiences. I can probably do a little better with that. He said something like, if you serve the lord with all your might, you have the right to call upon the powers of heaven to help your family with whatever they are going through. I will use that right :) I pray for you guys.  I wrote in my journal about how my testimony has grown in the mtc: I feel like a blindfold was taken from my life and I can see almost every tender mercy that the Lord gives me. I have learned to more fully trust in the Lord even when it's hard. I''ve learned that Heavenly Father is here. Scriptures that i''ve read over and over mean completely different things to me now. I have a stronger testimony of the eternities. The stories in the scriptures are more applicable to me than they ever have been before. The biggest way my testimony has grown in the mtc i think is that heavenly father knows me. I think I''ve always known that.. but it takes on a whole new meaning when it is being tested. Especially with the miracle of learning a language. I couldn''t do it if I didn''t know he knows me. I''ve also learned more fully that we are never safe. There are so many strong people in the church that have fallen, satan is good at what he does. I''ve learned that charity never faileth. I don''t think i have realized that I have had so many charity opportunities, but i have acted on all of them that i''ve seen and I can see the difference that it has made in my happiness. I have more energy when i serve, i have more confidence, and i have love for those that... are somewhat hard to love sometimes. Like i said, i knew these things before but its never been tested this much. I have a testimony of prayer. I''ve learned that even Christ prayed more earnestly when he was in agony (luke 22:44) and we do that too. I''ve tried to pray more earnestly even when I am not in ''agony" and just have a conversation with Heavenly Father. A lot of times I just sit there and say, ''Heavenly Father, do you KNOW how much i love you?'' We have so much control with our relationship with Him, He has become my best friend in a literal sense. I have grown a testimony of testimonies. My patriarcle blessing says, ''learn from the lives of good men and woman'' I have written down so many ''gems'' that people have said while i''ve been here in my study journal that has really opened my eyes.

Valentines day was awesome! Us hermanas had the brilliant idea of decorating envelopes with all of our elders names on them and filling them with personal notes, quotes talks and fun things along with a bag of candy. We set them out the night before so they would get them when they walked in. They were sooooooo embarrased because they didn''t do anything for us. Men.... They loved it though. Later in the day i had gotten a package from mom with a bunch of cookies and things to share. We thought it would be fun to put more valentines things on their desks with cookies. They walked in and was like, really hermanas??? So while we were on the computers for language study, they whipped up some candy and made special designes of valentines things on our desks with hearts stuck on the wall shaped from fruit roleups. it was pretty funny. I got pictures that i will send today. We were hyped up on candy all day. When we saw or elders we apologized and said that we didn't mean to make you feel like you had to do something for us, we just wanted to do something nice! Well... right before we went back to our rooms, our district leader was passing out mail and he gave us all an envelope with letters from all the elders and a XXL shirt from the bookstore that they had all signed. They had to "one up" us. We had gotten mad at them earlier because a few weeks ago they had all boughten that same shirt for all the elders and didn't tell us about it, so we gave them a hard time about excluding the hermanas. That was so thoughtfull of them.  We really are a family now. I can't believe they leave in a week and a half! Some of our elders are being temporaraly reassigned. They were going to go to mexico- connor ogdens mission- but they aren't giving visas to mexico right now for some reason. We will find out soon where they are going. I also got a few other packages and i was beaming alllllll day! I have the best family and friends in the world!! Thank you thank you thank you everybody!!

Sunday we had Mary N cook talk to us for relief society. She showed the mormon message about the little leage football player getting struck by lightning. She talked about how important the priesthood is and how we always need to be ready and worthy to act and we need to SANCTIFY ourselves. Right after that mormon message ended.. she stopped and said, there has been an emergency so we will end now. One of the sisters in the audience had like a seizure or something. Mary N Cook's husband got up and imediately gave her a blessing the ambulance came and everything. Talk about CRAZY timing! The lightnight struck and he was ready to use his priesthood. So awesome slash NUTTTS.

 

Anyway.. love you all! Write me letters! My address will be changing soon so I'll be sure to send that.. probably next week!

Me caya bien

 

Mucho amor,

Hermana Cott cott

6 weeks down

Hola!

It's been a crazy week it feels like. Last Thursday my companions and I went and did cealings for the first time ever. It was definitely one of my favorite experiences in the temple. The spirit was so strong. We didn't get to go to the temple this week though :( i'll get to that later.

We got a new district in our zone this week. They are really nice Elders. No hermanas though! Sad.. maybe next week. I took them on a tour and they seemed really excited, but I could sense that it was about to set in on how long they're actually going to be here. I felt bad, i've been there. They all got up in sacrement on sunday and cried through their whole testimonies. They'll be fine.

This week has been really frusterating with the language! I'm losing my confidence.. hopefully it'll come back so i wont be in trouble when I get to arizona! 'Don't demand things of yourself that are unreasonable, but demand of yourself improvement.' I just keep telling myself that. I think what's been bothering me is I met with my zone resource teacher and I asked him to be honest about how he thinks i'm doing, he said that I'm about in the middle.. about where most missionaries are. I hate being average. It's driving me nuts. Hopefully I can pick it up this week.

I have been so exhausted this week. We were in 'TALL' and I was trying to repeat the sentence in spanish back from what was coming up on the screen and I kept falling asleep in the middle of the sentence. It was terrible. My back has about a million knots in it i'm pretty sure. I've been in a lot of pain this week with my back. It's more annoying than painful though.

I interviewed the sisters in my zone on saturday before we met with the branch president on sunday. I said a little prayer that the sisters would be open and honest about what their feeling and how i could help them. Be careful what you pray for. I found out some things that were very eye opening. We are taking care of it though and it makes me feel good that they feel comfortable telling me things, so it was a good thing.

Sunday number 6, check! We had mission conference with the whole mtc because it was fast sunday. We fasted for a good 26 hours. I was fine without food but i was soooooooooo dehydrated. It was pretty bad because I got up the next day for my workout class in the morning and I didn't feel good at all. It's hard to keep hydrated here. I bore my testimony in sacrement in spanish for the first time! I was pretty excited. I started out saying, 'yo se mi espanol es mui mal, pero tengo un testimonio asi ustedes tambienuhhhhhh' I know my spanish is pretty bad, but i have a testimony like you guys tooowahhh! We watched 'mountain of the lord' for films. that was pretty fun learning about the salt lake temple. It's crazy what they went through to build that.

Monday I talked to a guy about meeting with sam, he ran into me in the hall and said, hey i just got off the phone with your dad! He said your brother is going to come see you. Someone needs to call the mtc back and say exactly what time you will actually be at the mtc so he can inform security. He didn't say anything to me about temple square though. So yeah, dad or someone, will you call and work out the details? I can go talk to him again, but i don't know what time you guys are planning on coming for sure so it'd be easier if you just called porfavor :)

At the devotional on tuesday we had the first counselor of the presiding bishopric come talk to us. His wife spoke first and said 'after you have partaken of the tree of life, don't complain about the taste.' I really like that because we ask for all these blessings from god, like a job or being on a mission and then we say, oh the work load is too much or something like that.

Brother edgley talked to us about never being intimitated by anyone on your mission because you have the authority of god on your side. I related this to my district after and taught that we should also never be intimidated about the language. Heavenly father taught us spanish in the prelife, we are just being reminded so we shouldn't be intimidated. I was mostly talking to myself.

Mother, you have motherly instincts like i've never heard of before. You said, i've been thinking about you a lot today, i hope you're ok. Welll.. I woke up yesterday not feeling the best, as usual. But i kept going and tried to brush it off. I was getting frustrated with the language and just not having a very good day. We went in to teach trino, one of our investigators who is really one of our teachers and we were teaching about the law of chasity and the word of wisdom. Right in the middle of it, within 5 seconds my body felt like it was 1000 degrees. My ears felt like they were on fire and i was dizy and nausiated. Without even noticing or controling myself, tears started coming out of my face! I literally couldn't stop. The lesson kept going though and I didn't know what to do. I thought about making it seem like i was just feeling the spirit, but what was i going to do? cry while saying, 'you can't have sexual relationships before marriage?' finally i looked at hma larson and said, you need to end this lesson please, like.. now. I swear like an eternity later they said the prayer. I thought I wasn't going to make it. It was a miracle that i didn't pass out. We said amen and i got up and said to my poor/awkward teacher, 'i'm really sorry, i just really REAlly don't feel good. I went in the bathroom and splashed some cold water on my face and came out right when my whole district was taking a water brake. They were all like.. what the?? What happened in the lesson? Lets just say I was sleeping for most of the day and this morning. I have had a fever that just keeps coming and going. I'm not really sure what's wrong with me. I might get a blessing tonight though if i'm still not feeling well. It's a good thing today is p-day. I felt bad for my companions though, we didn't get to go to the temple this morning. Anyway... all will be well.

Thank you for all your letters! It's the best when I get letters! Keep writing! Love you all!

Love, Hma Cottrell