OUR FOURTH OF JULY

Hello Everybody! Your favorite Sister Missionary here :) How is y'alls lives? Looked pretty good from the email :) an earthquake huh? That's pretty crazy! Second coming is coming peeps! That's nuts! We haven't had any earthquakes but we have had those good old flash flood warnings. Fun times. Don't worry mom, I'm a staying safe :) Any way, we have been getting a lot of rain and lots of thunder and lightning ... at like 3 in the morning. So that's fun. So let me just tell you 'bout my week. Well, let me actually tell you about my 4th of July first I guess. 4th of July was...how shall I say? A bit lame. haha! It was a beautiful day and we had no scheduled lessons so all we had to do was go tracting and let me tell you, no one is home when it is 4th of July weekend and the sun is shining and there is a lake not that far away. So needless to say we didn't have an extremely productive day. Now that's not to say that good things did not happen. Good things did happen! In fact we got to OTM a lady with her little daughter (who looked like a mini me of Brave. So cute!) and she said that she would be open to having missionaries stop by and talk to her more :) It was kind of cool the way it happened because I had made a goal that morning to OTM everyone I possibly could, even if all I could do was just say hello. So when I saw this lady, even though I was actually really not in the mood to OTM anyone right at that moment, I knew what we had to do. So we started talking to her and low and behold we were able to get her name, phone number and address and an ok to have the Elders go by! Miracles! Just sayin'. Any way, so 4th of July was a lot of trying hard to contact people and for the most part not succeeding, but still trying :) As far as celebration goes, President Loveland gave us permission to stay out until 10 to watch fireworks as long as we were with members or investigators or less actives. So Lauren organized a little picnic deal to go out by the lake and watch fireworks with her and Kassidy and Shannon. So that's great and everything but they were a little late picking us up and then we decided to go by steak and shake to get the food and that took flippin' ETERNITY! No joke! Seriously, there was one car ahead of us in the drive through and it was a good 20 minutes before we even got to order our food and then another 20 or 30 minutes until they gave us our food. And then they didn't give us all of it! We were missing several of the drinks that we had ordered. Let's just say that steak and shake was riding the struggle bus! Any way, so we finally got our food and then started driving out to the lake and got stuck in traffic big time. bumper to bumper. Ok. We were all dying at the irony of it all! What a way to spend your 4th of July! Any way so then Lauren got distracted and almost rammed the car in front of her and we all started yelling and she slammed on the breaks and Kassidy, who happened to be holding 8 drinks in her lab stacked on top of one another, got drenched! So then she started yelling and laughing and we were all just having a gay old time. To top off the experience Lauren decided to roll down all the windows and BLAST Silent Night. We got some looks! And there were some people that cheered us on too. It was pretty hysterical! Any way, we finally got to the park and out to the lake in time to see the grand finale which lasted about 2 minutes. ...and then we got back in the car and almost couldn't get out of the ditch that we had parked in and then got stuck in traffic again. :) ...Best 4th of July ever! :D haha It was good times. Memories were made fo sho. So that was my fourth of July :) I should be able to get a letter out to you this week with other details of my week :) I love you all so much! Have an incredible week! Make some memories! Share the gospel! Sister Cryer P.S. Pictures So, this first picture is of me and Sister Gerard after de-flooding the Bretts driveway after a flippin' typhoon on Thursday. So, the Bretts have a very flood prone area right by the steps to their front door. The garage is also right there and the water gets under the garage door when it rains a lot and floods their basement. So when we arrived at the house for institute Thursday night it was raining really hard and the water was forming into a pool in front of the door and starting to go into the garage too. Me and Sister Gerard offered to put sand bags in front of the garage door to try and stop some of the water from going in, and then we decided that we could go a step further. So we got snow shovels (with Sister Bretts permission after some coaxing) and started herding the water into a drain further up the drive way. So fun! It's the closest you get to a pool party on your mission pretty much! Any way, so that first picture is of me and Sister Gerard after that :) We were SOAKING WET. This second picture is of me eating some water melon last night that the Hughes had given us. It was a really good watermelon!