Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Words from Elese Hauser in the Illinois Chicago West Mission

"This is such a beautiful time of year and I have thoroughly enjoyed
being a missionary this Holiday season! I will always remember this
Christmas and it will always be my favorite because of the different
circumstances I was in. Of course my favorite part of Christmas was
talking to all of you! Except talking to Kyle, he was kind of a jerk
to me, but that's to be expected:) I feel so blessed that we got to
talk for 2 and 1/2 hours!! Although it felt like 20 minutes to me, it
was so great! After we hung up I looked out the window and it was
SNOWING! I was so pumped and it was the most beautiful white Christmas
ever:) Then a Ward member, Sister Charles, came and picked us up and
we went to her house for dinner. We had chicken and potatoes and lots
of vegetables with hummus. And she even took us next door to meet her
neighbor so we could share the Gospel with them but they told us to go
away.... But nothing could dampen our spirits for it was Christmas!
Truth be told, I think you all missed me more than I missed you! Don't
get me wrong, I did miss all of you so much but I was so distracted
with all the craziness going on I hardly had time to think. And I'll
be back in less than a year!
Well because I didn't have enough going on, I also got really sick the
day after Christmas. My throat hurt so bad and I got a pretty high
fever, I haven't been that sick in a long time! So Thursday and Friday
were pretty low key as I tried to recover. But I still have a pretty
bad and cough and cold. I blame it on the fact that 4 girls were
living in a 1 bedroom apartment and out of those 4, 3 of us got sick!
And Saturday a member came and picked us up and helped us move! So we
are no longer homeless and we are in our area! We live with the
Smotzer family. They are an older retired couple with a 6 bedroom
house, so we have the whole basement to ourselves. We'll be here until
the 11th of January when we can move into our apartment. They have a
daughter in her 30's who has down syndrome and her name is Michelle!!
She is so cute and every time I see her I think of one of my favorite
people ever, Michelle LeFevre! So we are doing a car share with the
Elders and we'll have the car for 5 days and then they'll have it for
5 days and so on. So we will always be relying on the members for
rides a lot. But it feels so good to finally be in Oswego. We have big
plans for this week and I'm so excited to go back to teaching! On New
Years Eve we have to be in by 4:00pm unless we have a dinner
appointment so there won't be any staying up until midnight or
sparkling apple cider or much of anything going on here. But I don't
really even care, when your focus is on The Lord and His work, all of
those other "worldly" things pale in comparison. Well I hope you all
have a great Christmas break! I love you all so much!!!!"

No comments:

Post a Comment