Still Loving Newport! (01/26/2015)

Hi Mom!

Yes, I am liking the ocean more but it still makes me nervous. The ocean is nice just to take pictures of and walk on the beach, but definitely not going in it now or in the future unless on a boat (but not as a missionary) :) It's pretty to look at, but not to touch because of obvious reasons like getting 'eaten' :)

We do "walk week" or "walk day" stuff to contact more people on the streets, and to be seen and save on gas and miles. We usually have certain people we are seeing each day who are in specific areas, so we plan finding places and times for walking/tracting based on our appointments. We don't do much tracting (walking) at all since many people here know LDS members and they kind of just ask us questions. Plus, we do a lot of service so  they come to us and members are a bit helpful in the finding too. We do have a good size teaching pool, but we are trying to find more people since we baptized the ones we had in our teaching pool. We also do a good amount of work with 'less active' members, but that's typical. There are some great people out here. I absolutely LOVE the area and the Newport Ward!
The Hatfield Marine Science Center was fun. We built houses out of Legos and sent tsunamis after them. Mine totally stayed standing! Yay me, maybe I have a future as an architect... HA yeah right :)

A gingerbread lighthouse and ocean!!

The college placement test went pretty well. I did well on 2 out of the 3 sections - Sentence structure and Reading comprehension were great, but the math was ... sydu5sdlf7dfkui#@*!!!. It took me about 2 and a half hours to take and then we did lunch. We went to this small cafe that gets a rating of "meh ok". But THEN!!! We went to this place across the street called Sweet and it had this huge counter and on the far left was tons of chocolates and in the center was cookies and fudge and then the last two sections of counter had ice cream!!! I got a Red Velvet truffle and a Raspberry Velvet truffle and some ice cream (one scoop cake batter and the other marionberry pie). Super delicious :D. That ice cream was super good and it did indeed have small pie chunks in it :) I was going to get some fudge but Sister Chalfant got a whole pound of it of various flavors so I didn't want to go over board. Sugar high week is coming!! 

Yay free time at lunch! #missionfun. I built the Medford Temple and Portland Temple out of Pass-Along cards and then.....it turned into a 'bridge' because I'm clumsy and the top fell down. They were built on a 'sure foundation' - my study journal filled with notes from all scriptures, the life of Christ, General Conference, Stake Conference and Hang Man ;)

                           

A member treated us to breakfast at La Mason, a French restaurant. I had the traditional Eggs Benedict, my new fave, and our breakfast came with an appetizer of bananas and cream with brown sugar on top. It was delicious!

Minute To Win It is a game show and we are doing a smaller version of it for a fun Ward activity this Saturday.

It is Sister Burrell that cooks and plays the ukelele. She is a 'ginger' and gingers can do anything :)

The (National College Championship) football game was an atrocity. I am 'hurting' for The (Oregon) Ducks - they played so bad. Bro Phillips and Elder Deal (senior missionary) explained football things to me so I knew enough what was going on. It was entertaining, but also sad to watch....poor "Ducks".

We were given permission to watch a local production of the play "Shrek" since 22 of the 65 people in the cast are LDS members and are in the Newport Ward :) But, unfortunately, we didn't have an investigator to go with us, so we couldn't attend the play. However, the Director of the play (who is LDS) recorded it, so she might give us a copy for after our missions ;D Next year we think the play will be The Little Mermaid and we all want to come back for that.

This is a funny sign that we passed while out walking. Super great restaurant that we will go to when I come back to visit, since it is more pricey than my missionary budget will allow. Of course that's only if you would come to Newport with me after my mission :)

Love you bunches of baby elephants!

xoxoxoxoxooooooooo

Kiana