Dear Family,
The chiggers are out. I had a bandaid on my leg and they congregated there. My leg swelled up pretty bad around them. I took benedryl so it's not swollen anymore, but the bites are still healing. My companion ot really bad bites. We counted and she's got over 60 bites.
We're preparing for pageant! It starts next week! I can't believe it's already that time of year! I LOVE the Nauvoo Pageant.
The other night we had a really nice training in Carthage. For the first part the six of us young sisters went to a really pretty lake and had tinfoil dinners that we cooked earlier in the oven. It was a lot of fun, and the training was wonderful.
I have a funny/sad story. This last week we had a tornado warning in Carthage (it's not that uncommon, but sometimes you still note it). Well, I had a tour in the film we show at the beginning, and while they were in there, the weather completely changed and it started pouring and there was lightning and thunder. Well, this tour had tons of little kids in it. Somebody mentioned that we had a tornado warning. Well, of course some of the kids got scared, so I tried really hard to make it better by what I said in my tour. One particular little boy (age 7) just sobbed for the first couple rooms of the jail. It was so sad. But, it ended up being really neat. The focus of that tour was how Heavenly Father can help us not be scared. At one part we all sang "I Am A Child of God" together. The Spirit ended up being pretty strong (you know, with the strength of children). Anyway, it was sad, humorous, and touching all at the same time.
This Sunday (the 27th) was the 166th anniversary of the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum in Carthage. We had a commemoration program at Carthage (it's annual). We sang a song called "Joseph the Seer" (I think) from the old hymn book. It was really neat. Then we as Carthage sisters gave a tour together through the jail with all the young sister missionaries (minus one companionship who was absent for illness). It was a neat day.
Well, I love you dearly! Have a good week! Happy July 4th to everybody!
Love,
Sister Westwood