July 15

It's been crazy nice weather this past week! It hasn't rained once and it's been warm (well, warm for Scotland).  It's funny when we'll ask someone how they're doing and they'll say, "Oh, it's roasting!" and it will only be like 19 degrees and cloudy.  People are definitely used to the cold around here. 

 Last week was a lot of fun! For P-day we went and played football on the beach.  We even had a former investigator join us.  It felt so good to be active and running around.  We all got super sunburnt though because for some reason no one thinks to wear sunscreen in Scotland (probably because you usually don't need to).  The beach was pretty packed because all the schools just got out for summer holiday but it was still really fun!

 Oh, and me and Sister Birch had our first knickerbocker glory this week, which is also a tradition here.  Think Harry Potter book 2 (?) when Harry goes with the Dursley's to the zoo and they get ice cream.  Dudley gets a knickerbocker glory and then gets scared by the snake so Harry gets to finish it.  Anyway, that's what I first thought of when I heard the name.  But I thought it would be this big thing of ice cream, but actually there's very little ice cream in it.  At least the one we had.  It was ice cream, jelly (jell-o in the states), digestive biscuits bits (kind of like cookies, but REALLY good), sprinkles, whipped cream, and a bunch of different colored sauces.  It was really colorful and almost didn't look real.  But it was so good.

 Me and Sister Passey were able to play a musical number in church this Sunday which was a lot of fun.  The mission president was able to borrow a violin from someone in Edinburgh and bring it down so Sister Passey played the violin and I played my viola.  We played "I Need Thee Every Hour" with some improv in it.  It turned out really well I thought and it was funny because after we were done you could hear an audible gasp from the congregation.  And someone started to clap which was funny.  But I was so grateful for that opportunity to play.  Actually I was wondering if I would even be able to because right after I got here the pegs on my viola expanded so they were completely stuck and I couldn't tune at all.  I think it happened because of the change in climate/humidity and elevation. I was really worried but we were able to take it to a music shop here in town and they fixed it for free.  I was so grateful for that! 

 We are teaching this sweet old lady who is so hilarious and fun to teach.  She is in her 80's.  She has a lot of health problems and she lives alone but she is so kind and is my favorite person to teach.  When we taught her the Gospel of Jesus Christ yesterday we laid out pieces of paper with all the steps on it.  We had one that said "You" and one that said "Heaven" and laid them on the floor and talked about what steps we need to take in order to get from one to the other.  We asked her what she thought about how we can get from here to heaven.  She said "well you could try to swim but I don't know if that would work too well." She says things like this all the time out of nowhere and it's so funny but I love teaching her because she is so sweet and it's easy to have the spirit in the lessons. 

 That's it for this week, love you and miss you all!

Sister Jackson