My daughter Courtney's weekly letter home:

 

Hello Beautiful People!!!! How are you all today?

 

So this week:

 

We had Specialized Training in Ann Arbor - all about the Priesthood and stewardships and planning. It was pretty awesome, learned lots, and President used the words, "Pancakin' Awesome."

We stopped by one of our less-actives to help her with her fire wood. She said that we were going to split and stack it. So I thought we were going to be using a wood splitter like we used at Sister Sibley's, but no, she pulls out two axes. I really like chopping wood with an ax. It is quite fun. It's a good work out and really satisfying to swing an ax and behead wood. The whole time I kept repeating, "Off with her head!" from Alice in Wonderland.

Obituary

Fall Iz Dead

Fall Iz Dead was born in September and died on November 16, 2014. He is proceeded in death by: Dea D. Leeves, Sog E. Pumpkins, and Cor N. Fields. He left behind: Snow Iz Kold, Ice Iz Slippery, and Karr Iz Frozen. We mourn the loss of the beautiful Fall Iz Dead.    

To teach Travis we always sit on his back porch, because we never have another female to go inside with, but lately it has been getting colder so we decided to have lessons in his dad's deer blind. It's this wooden shed thing with three gun holes and a tarp on the top. It is not the warmest thing, nor is it the biggest. But Travis, Sister Lee, Warren, and I all cram into it and teach the gospel. Also with Travis we always do trivia questions after the closing prayer. So far the categories have been: superheroes, video games, nature, the Book of Mormon, horror, conflict, nuclear physics (courtesy of Warren), comedy, Mormons, war, zombies, t.v. shows, the Restoration, and general. At the last lesson we had Warren brought licorice, so we all sat in the deer blind with Sister Lee's flashlight (it gets dark around 5:30 and Travis lives in the middle of nowhere, literally) umbrellas in the gun slots (it was also raining/snowing/sleeting) cross-legged on the floor (legs falling asleep) holding "For the Strength of Youth" pamphlets, eating licorice, and trying to think of questions about zombies. It has been possibly one of the best lessons I have ever had. :)

I got to see my first live possum!!!!! For about three seconds before Sister Lee hit it. I have seen dead possums a lot, but this is the first live one. We were driving down the road and this huge, ugly rat thing starts shuffling across the road. We couldn't stop and there was a car in the other lane, so we just hit it. I wanted to go back and take a picture, but Sister Lee said that if was still alive we would have to hit it again and she couldn't do that. It made a really loud crunching noise when we hit it, I didn't know that possums were that big! It was pretty cool.

We got to meet the Sheriff of Waterloo and the Chief of Police in Manchester. It takes forever to get around our area and we have limited miles, so we always pack a lunch/dinner and eat it in random parks/on the side of the road. And this week the police all decided to come see us! So the mission rule is that Sisters can't knock on new doors after dark because of safety reasons. And because it gets dark at 5:30 we have to get creative. We either have to stop by members, get appointments, stop by less-actives, etc. But stop-byes get really old and we don't have a lot of appointments so when the police stop by our car and ask us what we are doing we call it reverse tracting. The people come to you!  No one has been interested yet though....

Gun season started on Saturday. We have seen various deer hanging from trees, gutted and hollow. Bit gross. There are also a lot of empty cars parked on the side of the road and deer blinds everywhere. So our car doesn't stand out as much now.

Brother Olsen wasn't at church yesterday because he was in Salt Lake singing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir - Music in the Spoken Word. He is so awesome :)

Brother F. gave us some venison sausage from a deer that his son got bow hunting. It is pretty good. Also we went to stop by Brother F's house one night and it was pitch black with only Sister Lee's flashlight. We get out of the car and I hear something in the general direction of the porch. Then this rooster starts crowing from a pine tree somewhere in the distance. And there is also this grey cat that keeps twisting around our legs and disappearing into the darkness. Then we see this huge machine thing in the middle of Brother F's lawn that looks like a portal from a sci-fi movie. It was weird. So we finally get up on the porch, which was an old dentists/barber's chair sitting on it, surrounded by a pile of hair - creepy, and we see Brother F's dog, Cheesebag, who is on a leash and eating a squirrel. Sister Lee was the first one up and she didn't' see the squirrel because she was trying not to step on the dog poop/pee/vomit. So now she is stuck between the door and the dog who is cracking the squirrel's leg bones in half, dragging it's guts all over the porch. At the same time the cat jumps up on the porch railing and onto my shoulder, freaking me out. I am laughing hysterically while Sister Lee is screaming hysterically, and then she jumps over the dog and we run to the car. It was pretty exciting.  

All in all, a pretty fun week. :) I hope you all have a fantastic week as well (perhaps with less dead animals and police stop-byes)!!!!  You are all wonderful and I love you!

Expect Miracles!!!!!

Fairfarren,

Sister Ockerman