When bed bugs attack!

Possibly the craziest week of my mission! The struggles we have been experiencing have been really BUGGING me ;)

So....you know that cute little nursery rhyme about bed bugs?? ...............It is not just a cute little poem! IT IS REAL!!

Fact: There is such things as bed bugs! :(

Evidence: My bitten, bleeding, itchy blood-sucked scalp and neck :(

So I have had to sleep on an older, elder infested mattress and according to our fumigator, old, elder infested mattresses can be the home to BED BUGS (ewwww). Zoology lesson of the day: Bed bugs only come out at night so that is why you rarely actually see them. They bite your head and neck and suck your blood (essentially they have buffet on your noggin) and then once they are all full and happy, they crawl back into your warm, cozy mattress and go to BED as you are waking up confused and itchy! Thankfully they aren't like lice where they stay and reproduce in your head and spread around to everyone (eww eww eww), so I guess I can count my blessings in that way! But with fumigation happening, we have officially been kicked out of the flat for a week! The treatment is a slow working one, so if I sleep in our flat, I will become bug bait again. So we are staying in Chorley with the sister missionaries here and commuting on the bus into Wigan everyday until our house is bug free!

The end? ....I wish!

So before the bed bugs were discovered, our fridge/freezer broke and we lost all our food.....then a day later we discovered bed bugs....and then the day we were in the middle of all our chaos of moving house (tons of phone calls to landlords, mission, fumigators, repairmen etc.) our electricity suddenly broke (power down).

Lesson learned?? Just laugh! And then laugh some more! When life gives you bed bugs....just laugh!!! So life is good! We are alive (a little itchy) and happy! Missionary life is still great and terribly amusing!

Highlights begin now!

Bad missionary handbook rules:

So we realized that we have been breaking a major rule our whole missions. The handbook instructs us that we are not to participate in any swimming activities! Pretty sure I have been swimming in rain puddles for the last year!

Lame joke over. Now on to the rest!

Culture Shock: How Not to eat perogies!

Was on exchange and was informed that I was eating my perogies wrong! How do Eastern Europeans eat perogies?? ....With.....jam and fruit?! Woah! What?! We have been frying ours in oil and onion and bacon my whole life, with a giant dollop of sour cream on the side!

So I tried this out! Actually not bad at all! But extremely weird since I have been eating mine obesity style my whole life! I think I will keep trying it though because it was actually quite nice.

Scriptural Joke of the Week:

We had a mission talent show. I was sitting with my two favourite, silliest, sarcastic sisters from the MTC. The three of us were just full of bad jokes and heckling the whole time. Best quote of the night.

Sister G: I have no talent! This is why I just sit and laugh at those who do.

Me: You do have talents (said in a emphasized, fake, Molly mormon, teary-eyed voice), God AND President Preston said so!

Sister G: Well, where in Moroni 7 does it talk about the spiritual gift of being WEIRD because that is the only talent I'm pretty sure I have!

The list of names I have been called by random elders in the last week ever since I did my rap at the mission talent show:

I shall forevermore be known as:

- Slim Shady

- Wiz Khalifa

- Eminem

- 50 Cent

- The not ugly and gross version of Nicki Minaj

- Sista Hizzle Martin Mizzle Eh?!  (tons of missionaries are arguing on what my rapper name will be! If anyone back home has input/ideas, feel free! It is currently the heated topic of the EMM at the moment!)

-  and the list goes on

Best conversation of the week:

District Leader: "Well anyways, I've got to go and call the other sisters, goodnight slim shady!"

*Phone call ends*

5 seconds later the phone rang and it was our district leader again

-Me (confused): "Did you forget something?"

-District Leader (awkward): "Ummmm so I just freaked out because I called you slim shady and realized you might not even know who that is! That must have sounded really weird/awkward.....Do you know who slim shady is?"

-Me (entertained): "Duh! I played college ball! What baller doesn't know who slim shady is?!"

So I have officially received a phone call, where the caller's sole purpose in calling was to double check that I knew who Slim Shady was! Life never ceases to amaze and entertain me!

Ginger moment of the week:

One of my favourite sisters is a ginger and everybody loves her! She does NOT fit the classic stereotype that society has created about gingers! She is one of the happiest, loveliest, sweet sisters ever! Definitely not capable of having a temper! And no doubt she has a wonderful soul! I would kick anyone who dared to kick her!

So we were playing the umm and ahh game (a game where a person is assigned an extremely random topic-- e.g. elephant ears-- and has to talk about it for a minute straight without mumbling "ummm or ahhh"! It is really hard to do!). I gave her the topic of ginger racism! Her closing remarks of the topic were hilarious!

"And I would like to just finish by saying: Don't judge a ginger by it's colour!"

Amen amen amen!!!

My new dorky creation of the week: more miraculous than my (literal) epiphany light bulb:

So last transfer my thing was to pick up our old burnt out light bulb and hold it over my head every time I thought of something smart (or.....more often than not....really incredibly, shockingly dumb). But that idea has burned out! (har har! knee slap!)

My new annoying entertainment!?

Making paper trumpets and making royal announcements about everything!!

I threatened to use my trumpet to motivate Sister P to start talking to people on the bus. I said if she didn't do it on her own, that I would come on the bus with my trumpet and announce:

"Boooo booo boooooooooo Sister Pongi has come to convert you! Booo Booo Boooooo Baptism for youuuuu!!"

It worked. She is a great missionary and will turn into a bus contacting machine very soon :)

Pants on the ground:

Fact about missionary life! Your perspective on everything changes so much! Little things that never bothered you or that you never noticed suddenly are so obvious, annoying, or hilarious to you.

I was on exchange and my companion and I were walking behind a man who had his trousers soooooooooooo low to the ground. His pants were just hanging out! We are sister missionaries, therefore we are awkward, therefore we find things like this absolutely hilarious and horrifying all at once! I joked and pretended to dig through my handbag for a law of chastity pamphlet and use it to cover his offending underpants. Then I dared my companion to stop him and try and teach him the law of chastity (all about having self-respect and dressing to impress!). Well I got the both of us giggling pretty hard and then he turned around and totally caught us laughing at him. He kinda laughed (thank goodness) and then pulled up his trousers! Oh the memories!

As soon as he turned the corner, I could not help but reference the 1st song that came to my head the second I saw him:

"Pants on the ground, pants on the ground, looking like a FOOL with your pants on the ground!!"

- I've never really been an American Idol fan, but I'm grateful that I remembered one of it's classic auditions at the right moment! It made for great laughs!!

Well! The end! Finished! Over! That's it folks! Farewell!

That was my week! Though bug bitten and a bit tired, I am happy and healthy! Missionary work is the best! That is a fact!

Hope the time goes quickly for you and slowly for me!
Sister Martin, signing out!!