My New Companion is Divine

Sister Divine (in the red sweater) and her first companion, Sister Beckes

Friday, February 21, 2014

I have been on my mission now for 7 months (counting from July 22, 2013).  I have not had a transfer yet but have a new companion.  I have met Sister (Kendra) Divine at mission activities and zone conferences and am looking forward to being her companion.  She is from South Jordan, Utah and has been here since April 2013.  She is serving a one-year mission so will soon be going home.  I was surprised to hear that she is 70 years old.  She has a lot of energy.  She has three children, a set of twins (boy and girl) and a daughter who was adopted just a short while before she found out she was having the twins, so they are only 7 months apart.  They are now 41 years old (the twins' birthday was yesterday so they are all 41 for a few months).

Sister Divine is delightful, friendly, and very outgoing.  She has a great sense of humor and sees the good in everything and everybody (once she got over the disappointment of having to move for one month and then end her mission two weeks early).  She actually reminds me very much of my Grandma Savage as I remember her at about that age.  We are already sisters in the gospel and sisters at heart.  We are going to have a great time together.  Although I loved the time I spent with Sister Boone, we do more together than Sister Boone and I did so that has been fun.  We shop together, study together, plan more and talk more about our goals.  This will be great for us both.  And it has been so good to come back to a ward where I have already become acquainted with many of the active sisters and some of the less active sisters who are willing to have us visit with them.  The new Relief Society Presidents in both wards are very eager to put us to work.

We started right out having fun.  Two of the senior couples helped Sister Divine pack her car in Silver Spring and drove down with her to help unload it.  Then they took us out for a late lunch/early dinner.  Elder Sieg had heard about a popular seafood restaurant on Broomes Island in Southern Maryland called Stoney's Seafood House.  We drove an hour down there only to find out that the restaurant was closed for the season.  We looked on our phones to try and find another seafood restaurant since they kind of had their hearts set on some crab cakes.  All of the ones we found were also closed.  So we drove back towards Waldorf and looked for a seafood restaurant along the way.  We ended up in Waldorf at the Olive Garden and ate salmon instead.  It was so fun hanging out with the Siegs and Duttons.  Sister Dutton also has a very fun sense of humor and made us laugh a lot. 

On Tuesday, even though Sister Divine isn't really settled in yet, we went out and visited a couple of the less active sisters in White Plains 2nd Ward that I have been wanting to see since we were moved to Lexington Park.  They were both home and we had a good visit with Sister Bennion and a short visit with Sister Buckler as she was getting ready to leave when we arrived.  We will visit them again in a couple weeks.

Wednesday, the 19th, we drove to the Visitor's Center and attended the mission transfer meeting.  Several of the couples are leaving this transfer and they each bore there testimonies along with the young sisters and elders who are going home.  Sister Divine will not be here for the next transfer meeting so I thought she should also bear her testimony but she didn't want to.  She did get to say goodbye to a lot of friends young and old though that she won't see again before she goes home next month.  After the transfer meeting we attended a session at the temple and then drove home in decent traffic.  We arrived home about 4:30 just in time for our meeting with Sister Michela, 2nd Ward RS President.  She was late but we got to spend a couple hours talking about how we can help the sisters in 2nd Ward.

Sister Divine is driving this week, and then we will take turns a week at a time instead of a month at a time.  I think I will like that.  Sister Divine is not in any hurry when she drives so our trip was not stressful at all.  I am amazed when I realize how much more comfortable I am driving around town.  I have a pretty good idea of where we need to go and can help Sister Divine become familiar with the area.  In my experience, you learn your way around a lot better when you have to drive and pay attention to the street signs.

Sister Divine has a bucket list that she has been working on during their P-days, so we decided that we will take a couple of trips to D.C. to see some sights.  We drove to the Branch Ave. Metro station on Thursday, (not the scariest Metro station but also not the safest).  We rode the Metro to L'Enfant Plaza and walked a short distance to visit the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian.  Sister Divine had heard that they serve some good food at the Mitsitam Café inside the Museum.  It won the RAMMY Award (Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington) in 2012.  It is cafeteria style and serves food at different stations that are representative of the foods that are common to the Indian nations in different parts of the Americas (Canada, Alaska, South and Central America, Mexico, and the United States).  Although it is very casual, it is not a low budget diner.  We paid $10 for a small cup of soup and an even smaller portion of quinoa salad in the South America section, but it was delicious food and worth the experience.  We have been trying to find the salad recipe on the internet without luck, but I found out that they printed a cookbook of some of the restaurant recipes, and ordered a copy.  I am hoping that the quinoa recipe is included, but if not, I have a nice souvenir of our visit that was less expensive than the trinkets available in the museum shops.  Here are some pictures from the Museum.

This sculpture was crafted by a man from St. George.  It is called Allies in War and depicts the Oneida nation that helped the colonists during the Revolutionary War.

This little girl stands on the back side of the above sculpture.

This coat looked like it was made from a combination of animals

Coat made from fish skin

I am unsure of what animal provided the skins for this coat

Clothing from animal hides

Plains Indian clothing

 Ceremonial clothes South America

As we read about the various beliefs of the Indian people, I could see that their beliefs parallel Christian values in many ways.  I could feel their great reverence for the earth and the universe.

I find this quote most interesting.  The Creator of the Universe that this tribe honors is Ellam Yua, very similar to the name Elohim, the Hebrew name for God.

Picture of three different boats on the main floor taken from the third floor balcony.

A mural depicting the creation.

Thursday night we attended White Plains 2nd Ward's Relief Society meeting.  Sister Hayes taught a class on how to make sourdough bread.  She gave everyone some starter to take home besides the bread dough that they made during the demonstration.  We didn't get the email about bringing supplies to make bread for ourselves so we just observed.  I did take a sample of the starter home though.  I don't know if I will have the time it takes to take care of sourdough but we shall see.  This starter doesn't have any flour in it, only sugar, water and instant potato flakes.  It has to be fed more regularly though, but she said that it makes a lighter bread that rises more.  I think everyone had a fun time.

Over in the corner, Sister Divine, Sister Michela, and I tied a fleece blanket.  They did more of it than I did.  I mostly had fun taking pictures and watching the sisters make bread.

This dear sister needed a couple extra hands.  She had not had previous experience with kneading bread so we helped her out a little bit.

 The cinnamon rolls that she made for sampling were delicious!—and not too fat, so great for that.

Today, Friday, the 21st, we had planned another day of visiting and running a couple errands.  Just as we were starting to get ready to go out we received a callout from the APs about the tornado watch that was in effect in the region including St. Charles County where we live and Calvert County where Heidi lives.  We were told to go to the nearest chapel until 5:00 p.m. when the watch was expected to end.  It didn't really look that bad where we are except for heavy rain and wind, but we decided that we didn't want to be known as the missionaries who disregarded the instructions and ended up getting caught out in the storm.  When we called the elders in our district to see if they had received the same instructions, Elder Ekberg told us that they were actually with President Cooke in a training meeting in DC and that none of the elders in our area would be at the church.  I called Heidi to make sure she was safe.  We canceled our appointments and waited.  We weren't even sure that the church would be unlocked, so we chose to wait it out in our third-story apartment with the large patio doors in the living room.  (We weren't hanging out right by the windows, however.)  Maybe not the ideal place to survive a tornado, but we somehow felt we were okay, and we were.  The area with the greatest possibility of a tornado touching down was further south of us in Lexington Park Ward and Patuxent Ward boundaries and the southern part of Calvert.  The storm was moving very swiftly (about 60 miles an hour) so it pushed on out to sea much sooner than the 5:00 deadline that they National Weather Service had set for the tornado watch.  They lifted the watch at about 1:30 or so.  One thing about the weather here, if you don't like it, just wait a while and it will change.  After the watch was lifted, we went out and ran a couple of errands in only light wind and showers.  At least we had more time to study and catch up on our journal and letter writing.  Sister Divine baked a delicious chocolate cake in the morning to celebrate her twins' birthday and she frosted it this evening with caramel filling and fluffy chocolate frosting.  After dinner, we each enjoyed a piece of cake for them.  Now we need to spend some time preparing a 5-minute talk to share at a missionary meeting in Lexington Park this Sunday evening.