Taking on Tacoma: {insert something fun here}

HEY EVERYONE!

You are hearing from a new TWENTY ONE YEAR OLD. Can you believe it? I'm legally able to drink now! (But I'll just stick to water and chocolate milk. (; )

I had a pretty great birthday week! I don't remember much, (I think I say that every week...), but I do remember that it was good!

We had an ice cream party on Monday with the zone and played chair soccer. While we were playing sports, one of the members that works for the church came in and asked us to come meet this guy. So we went out and he introduced us to Tracy, a man in his 50's that lives in Montesano. He's been doing a lot of family history and just recently found out he's related to.... JOSEPH SMITH! He feel's like he's on a journey or a mission, and felt drawn to come to our church (and it happened to be on a day when a former stake president AND us missionaries were there) to see what he could find out. We haven't met with him yet, but he seems pretty awesome!

I have no recollection of Tuesday... so.... sorry.... We probably just did lots of missionary work.

On Wednesday, we had Zone Meeting. Sister Rosenvall and I had to give a training on increasing our faith. That's what I talked about in my email last week. It turned out pretty good. We had a lesson with one of our investigators that night. And then we met with our bishops.

On Thursday we weekly planned and then had a good night of knocking doors in beautiful weather, meeting a lady named Corina who wants to be baptized (we'll meet with her tonight so updates next week!) and visiting some members of the ward.

On Friday, we did service at the food bank. I really enjoy working there. We just have a bunch of older people from the community who come every week and are so nice to us. They always joke about how they're making coffee for the girls (us). They call it the nectar of life, and we tell them that water is better!

Also, on Friday we went and did service for another lady named Robin. She needed help mowing her lawn... I've never mowed a lawn before but I've wanted to my whole mission for the experience! So I jumped on that opportunity!

....

It turns out I stink at lawn mowing. So, I definitely won't be quitting my day job. It kept stopping and then I'd try to restart it, and then this 70 year old lady would come over and restart it for me. Eventually she said the grass was probably still too damp and had me pull weeds instead. :( We were there to help but we probably just made the job take longer than it needed. She did say though that she enjoys the company. Her husband passed away a little while ago... I'm pretty good at talking. So, I guess that's service....

That night we had a lesson with Michelle! She is so awesome! She is addicted to Mormon messages and she really wants to be baptized, she just has a few things she needs to work out. She remembered it was my birthday on Sunday and brought me flowers and cupcakes! :)

On Saturday we got more sun! :D I LOVE THE SUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Sorry, that's probably way too many exclamation points.)

We had a meeting with the stake president, mission president, missionaries, and ward mission leaders so that we could work better together.

Then we had a break for a little while before the Adult Session of Stake Conference. It was a good meeting, but holy cow, sitting for 2 hours was a struggle that night. Sister Rosenvall and I were very squirmy. Don't know why. (It could potentially be because we always have an ice cream party with President and Sister Blatter after Stake Conference and we were starving to death.)

It FINALLY ended and we had a fun ice cream party with the zone and P. Blatter. I really enjoyed it.

On Sunday I turned TWENTY ONE. WOW I'm so old.

Sister Rosenvall woke up early to decorate the apartment with a bunch of sticky notes saying Happy Birthday! She also drew all over the mirror and the windows with dry erase markers.

Also, we had stake conference, so another blessing was only TWO HOURS of church and ZERO meetings. We normally get to church around 7:30 am and leave at 2:30 pm. So, getting out by 12:30 was niiiiiiicccceeeeeeeeeee.

After church, the Nielsens threw a birthday lunch for me. :) Sister Nielsen is Philippino, so she made some Philippino pot stickers and noodles and lumpia. :) She ALSO remembered that I love sweet rice so she made that for dessert and put candles in it. :) The Ocean Shore elders were there because they had to be in Olympia that night, to save miles they decided to just work in Elma after Stake conference until they needed to head to Olympia. They didn't have lunch so we invited them.

We had a musical fireside in Olympia that night so we went there. We had to be there to practice by 5. Our musical firesides are really fun. I love them, you can always feel the spirit really strong there, even when we're just practicing.

Before practice, Sister Taylor and Sister Skousen came up to me with a birthday bag that had balloons tied to it. Inside she had a bunch of mini bottles of sparkling cider that had the labels covered up with things like "Belfair beer" and "Winlock Wine" and "Elma Liquor" It was funny. They also put Nutella and candy and a giant pen and a bubble gun inside. It was super sweet of them!

Sister Stirling and Sister Bird ran up to me yelling "Happy Birthday!!!" and then throughout the night said it at least a million times. They made sure EVERYONE knew it was my birthday. Because of them, all the missionaries that were there made me get in front of them all (during practice) so they could sing happy birthday to me. By some miracle, I managed to keep my face under control and my face DIDN'T turn red. I wish I knew how I did that, because later President and Sister Blatter sang happy birthday to me again and my face DID turn red. And President thought that was funny.

I got to see a few of my favorite members from Olympia that came. (not Sister Holdaway!) but Silem and Yani from the Oly 1st ward were there!

It was a fun night!

After Conference call, Sister Rosenvall and I had a small birthday party with the two of us. We drank sparkling cider out of champagne glasses, ate a champagne flavored truffle that Krista sent me, blew ginormous bubbles with the bubble gun (and sang "Sweet Sweet Nightingale from Cinderella") and then sucked helium out of one of my balloons and talked in a southern accent. It was way fun! We know how to party like a 21 year old! :)

And so, that was my week.

I'm trying to finish the Book of Mormon by the end of the week, so I'll share a scripture that I read this morning.

"Behold, I say unto you that whoso believeth in Christ, doubting nothing, whatsoever he shall ask the Father in the name of Christ it shall be granted him; and this promise is unto all, even unto the ends of the earth." Mormon 9:21

Thanks for all the birthday wishes! I love you all!

Love,

Sister Warburton

Our zone.

Some Snickers that Brother Shultz got us. :)

Harmony. She got baptized one year ago on her birthday April 16 so since her birthday is almost the best day ever, we made her a gift and visited her. She's a cutie.

Birthday stuff.

Silem.

Yani.

Sister Krebbs. She's going home this week.

Birthday party.

Bubbles!

Tshirt from Elder Webb.

Blowing out candles at night.

A picture of me right before it's not my birthday anymore. :)

Our matching neon shirts.

My studies.
I forgot to tell this story in my email...I decided to try that Clean Care stuff for my contacts and I just assumed that it was like regular contact solution (BOY did I think wrong). In the morning, I put one contact in my eye but it felt kind of dry, so I got the other one and poured some of the Clean Care into it and stuck it STRAIGHT into my eye. Bad idea!! My eye caught on fire and I quickly took my contact out of my eye and washed it out with water. I had to wear my old glasses for most of the day because my eye was sooooooooo red. It was on Wednesday when I gave the training so I told the missionaries that this was the ONLY time they would see me wearing my glasses. So....that's why I had my blanket over my head.