Goin' to America!

Family Dearest!!!!

It was so great hearing from you!!! I'm happy to know that things are going well! I sure love you guys lots. So, we just got our flight itineraries for new york, but it's still kinda hard to believe that we are "goin to america!!!!!!" Can you tell that I might be a little excited about this? Definitely never thought I'd be getting on another plane before I was heading non-stop to SLC. hehe.

Soeur Smart is seriously awesome for letting me tag along. She is going for the Women in the World Conference and will be receiving the Woman of Courage award from Diane Von Ferstenburg. The Award evening will be held at the United Nations on Friday night. Talk about the experience of a lifetime in the middle of an experience of a lifetime (ie serving a mission haha)!! Do I sound as spoiled as I feel? I think I'll just forward the conference agenda so you can look through it yourselves. But, needless to say, we are both pretty excited! Should be quite the adventure.

But, I think I am just as excited about the rendezvous we just had with Marie Laure (we had to fix a few rendezvous today because we are leaving for the rest of the week.....AND we have a p-day TO-DO list that seems, somehow, to be getting longer. So, I'm sorry, but you might need to be a little patient with my spacy and lame email today)!!

First off, we committed her to read quite a bit last week and when we asked her how it went, she had read it all AND more THREE TIMES to make sure that she understood. (k just fyi, i have never given anyone joseph smith history to read, but a recent convert member who taught with us said that she had had the same problem--not being able to understand the book of mormon-- but that it helped her to read the joseph smith history....go figure. Until college, I always thought it was so confusing, but again, very clear that i'm no scriptorian ha.

Anyway, so we felt good about it and the member printed off the joseph smith history for her, and marie laure LOVED it!! She would not stop talking about it and really believes that joseph smith was a prophet of God. She still has a ways to go (she was raised by parents who flat out told her they didn't love her and refused to teach her about God or Christ, and now she wants to have a relationship with God, but has a hard time believing that he could love her and that she is good enough), but she has totally been feeling the spirit and is starting to recognize it, and she is learning how to pray and committed to pray about being baptized this week. She is just such a sincerely good and humble person. Through and through. She's just incredible. And I am excited for her to come to understand how much Heavenly Father loves her. More than anything, I am excited for that. It will be incredible!!

Okay well, my mind is totally blanking on the other news i had to share. "The prophet" (remember the crazy chanting guy) has either a) gone off on a healing mission to save people's shakras in the name of christ b) gone to morocco to pick up the bride who has been promised to him since he was 5 or c) decided to go to a different church. So, church has been a little less "exciting" lately. Not many stories there. (But, did i ever mention that one day after church i turned around to see him with his hands on either side of this handicapped member's head chanting and humming? yeah.....that didn't go down so well!!!! still rather amusing though.) Well, I'm not sure why i wrote that....huh.

Okay, so obviously my brain is NOT functioning super well. So, before I start raconting n'importe quoi, I'm just gonna put a sock in it, spare you, and say that things are goin' great and that I love you!!!! You're wonderful and I don't know what I'd do without ya.

love,
jordo
xoxo