Sarah's June 6th email

Dear Family

SCHOOL IS OUT!!!! good news for you, bad news for me! Half the population of Boston is students and they are all going home! Nonetheless, we have a baptism coming up on Saturday. Her name is Maggie and she is awesome!!!!! will send pics.

So on Wednesdays we volunteer at a food pantry and while I was rushing around with rotten tomatoes in my hand, I happened to look outside to see that is was raining and blowing like no one's business. I dropped the rotted tomats and opened my phone to see that the mission had txted us saying we were all on tornado watch.

Tornado watch? In Massachusetts?

We work with two other companionships on that shift and they opened their phones to see the same text.

Tornado watch? What does that mean? do we have to go home? Does the train work? Can we even go outside?

We looked around the food pantry and decided that we had enough food and water to manage ourselves for a month.

Then the Elders got another txt from their zone leaders telling them to go home and sit in the basement, keep away from windows, and to call them when they get there.

They were like "Dang, guess we'll cancel our appointments"

We still hadn't gotten any txts.

The Elders lived down in Roslindale, which was super far away, so we gave them our key to the church so they could camp out there if the T wasn't working. They left.

Since we hadn't gotten any texts, we decided we'd finish our shift.

We were getting kind of annoyed at our zone leaders. we could be getting sucked up by a tornado right then! we could be swirling around in a vortex! It would have been their fault for not telling us to go home and board the windows! Those characters!

We finish up our shift and it looked torrential outside. We had to get all the way up to Revere (right next to the harbor) for an appointment and we were just about to step outside when we got a text.

Yes! It was the zone leaders! They did care about us! The text said: Tornado. Go home until further notice.

Hmmm. Slightly less loving than the other zone leaders. But still, now we had permission to avoid death. Turned out the T was working just fine, so we cancelled out appointment and we made it home fairly quickly. Then the sky had a seizure!

Family, it was the COOLEST lightning storm I had ever seen! The lightning overlapped and split and made crazy shapes, I swear I saw one that made the mark of the Z like in Zorro. It lasted like ten minutes! It was the most awesome ten minutes of my life! we watched from our basement as we boarded up the windows and doors and huddled in a mass.

Anyway, the next day was cheerful and sunny and not a cloud to be seen. we went out to work (even thought our ZLs didn't give any further notice, thank you!).

Anyway, that was my tornado experience. It wasn't bad in Boston, but out in my first area, it hit hard. it even killed some people. We wanted to get together a crew to help with damage, but president wanted us to stay here.

On another note, it is Sister Stevens' birthday tomorrow. Yay! Since today was p-day, I woke her up early, put a cardboard crown decorated with tinfoil and stickers on her head and sent her on a treasure hunt to find her present. I think she liked the hunt better than the gift, but I didn't have money for the gift, so the hunt was really kind of the present. but she loved it! yay! Than I made her pudding waffles! today we are going to walk around Boston for a bit and visit our favorite places.

Anyway, one more thing to share before we go: I had to give a training on the Book of Mormon on Friday, so as I was studying it, in Preach My Gospel it says that we have to have investigators pray with faith in Christ, sincerity of heart, and real intent, if the Book of Mormon is true, like in Moroni 10:3-5. But it also said, that we should periodically do the same to strengthen our testimony of the Book of Mormon. So the night before I knelt down and asked again if the Book of Mormon was true, feeling a little silly, because I had recieved this answer already. But It turned out to be a really amazing experience. Not only did I recieve a very distinct answer that it was true, but I recieved revelation on how to use the Book of Mormon better in my missionary work.

So that was pretty cool. turns out the church is true! Just as I always knew! aren't we so lucky!

Anyway, I love you all! Have a great week! enjoy no school!

Sister Dixon