December 2 letter

Hello family!!!!!
I bet you're wondering what the heck my subject is all about. Just wait, you will see! I want to start off this e-mail by saying I hope Carly had a wonderful birthday and that she will be receiving a card in the mail hopefully soon. I can't make any promises, however, since she refuses to write me a handwritten letter and Mom refuses to give me her mailing address, no matter how many times I ask. So for now, I have to rely on Uncle Van and Aunt Vanessa. I hope Thanksgiving was AMAZING!!!! I'm so sorry about my stupid tape. Something's wrong with my tape recorder. Maybe I need a new one or I need to switch the batteries. Who knows. This this last week has been really great! You know, lots of spiritual missionary stuff! It would be better if people would write me I think...no...I'm pretty sure it would be better if people would write me. Mail is like Christmas every time you get a letter. I appreciate those who are true to their word and wrote me like they said they would. Thank you, you are angels, and Heavenly Father will bless you for giving me hope for mail every day. Without that hope, I'm a dead fish and good for nothing. Speaking of nothing, that last paragraph was really random and means absolutely nothing to me. Oh my gosh I have a hilarious story to tell you! We were sitting, waiting for the devotional to start on Thursday morning, and I was telling my companions and another girl in the branch on the other side of our building about the time I met President Eyring. When he read my nametag and said, "Shumway...I know a lot of Shumways," and like an idiot I said, "ME TOO!" Right after I said this, an elder sitting in front of us turns around and says, "Shumway...you look exactly like a girl I knew named Cara Shumway from Wickenburg Arizona." When he said Cara Shumway I was thinking, no flippin way! You know someone that has my exact name? WEIRD!!!! Then when he said Wickenburg my mind when HOLD UP and my mouth went, "That's me!!!" Then the recognition settled in. MORTY?! Okay, I went to EFY with this kid 6 years ago in Flagstaff. Not only that, he was in my group, but even more crazy is we were EFY crushes!!! Mom, do you remember the guy I came home with a crush on when I was 15? That's him. His name's Morty, so you can go to one of my scrapbooks and look at some EFY pics. He's in some of them. Really awkward first meeting after 6 years of not seeing or talking. So, how's Rachel doing? Is she staying strong? Have you gotten her in contact with Sorren yet? I hope she's doing well. Would you please tell her I said hello and I miss seeing her smiling face at church? Thanks you're great! =) So our new teacher, Hermano Gruber is super cool! The other day someone said something that reminded me of Hairspray and we both started singing "Good Morning Baltimore". It was so funny cuz the whole class was like, "AGH! Stop!!!" Then I apologized for being so worldly. That always happens to me, someone says something that reminds me of a song and then I'll start singing it. But it's never a missionary appropriate song! Why can't I ever do that with a righteous song? AGH! Then we have this game called Trashketball where we hang our little trash bucket on the thingies that hold pictures on the chalkboard and we have tape balls that we play with for vocab games. Our religious subject last night was Repentance and he was giving us the choice between doing Repentance or Trashketball and he said, "so, we can Trashketball now and Repentance later." It made us laugh pretty hard. He's a really funny guy! He's trying out for the BYU football team next season. So let me share you something spiritual after all this worldly stuff. Something that I think would help anyone keep commandments. Okay, we sometimes feel as though if a commandment is small or doesn't seem like that big of a deal, we think it's not that big of a deal. However, every commandment leads to the same thing. The Celestial Kingdom. That's what having an eternal perspective means in my opinion. Obedience with exactness. They're always telling that to us missionaries. I would like to end this e-mail, as a tribute to Marjorie Pay Hinckley and Joseph B. Wirthlin."I want to live my life so that when I wake up Satan says, "Oh no! She's up!"--Marjorie Hinckley"Come what may and love it."--Joseph B. Wirthlin I love you all I hope everyone's happy and healthy. Have a good week! Adios!
hermana shumway