January 6, 2014 - Franklin Park, IL

Hollllaaaaa! For all of y'all that are wondering....yes, I am still alive. 
Let me just throw this out there, things aren't half bad when
you don't watch the news and you don't have Momma Mortensen (aka
Lorie) blowing things WAYYY outta proportion :) Who knew negative
degree weather and a mini blizzard could be so much fun! Ha, we've
been driving around in terrible weather all week...which led me to
think, 'gee, Mommy never let me have this much fun in the snow back
home'...and my train of thought led me to Kevin from Home Alone 1,
when he's watching the naughty movie, and yells something like,
'better come out and stop me!' Haha....siggghhh...yeah, it's been good
out here.

We have been using it to our advantage though, so it's all good! If
anyone has half a soul, chances are that they'll take pity on the two
shaking white girls trying to ramble something in Spanish. Haha, we've
been practicing our violent shivering and sad/cold faces. Let me share
with you an AWESOME story of what happened on Saturday. All of our
appointments fell through and thus we were left with a decent amount
of knocking. We got at it for about 2 hours, and I think we had maybe
one potential person that we found in that time. Not much considering
how many Hispanics we talked to int hat time. So we knocked. And
knocked. And knocked. Finally, we reached the time that we had planned
on ending at and were about to leave....but little did Hermana Pearson
know that I had prayed earlier that afternoon that we'd have at least
one cool experience and find someone legit. So I told her to give me
one more door to knock. We go around the corner to this mini apartment
complex. The door was locked, but was jammed a weird way- so I was
able to break us in :) We started the ground floor and worked our way
up. There was nothing, minus the loud Mexi music playing on the top
floor. Bingo #Wefoundyou. The man opened the door and H.Pearson
started doing her thing. He basically told us we were crazy for
walking around in the snow. Ha, and before she could say anything in
response, I jumped her to it and told him that we were representatives
of The Lord and were out trudging in the snow because we knew our
message would change his and his families life. He let us right in,
offered us posole and let us teach him and his family. How awesome is
that? #miracleshappen #wehaveamewfamilytoteach
#gladwelookedhalfhomelesswhenweknockedhisdoor.

Other than that.....we've been shoveling A LOT of snow. That pretty
much sums up our week. Knocking and shoveling. I think it would be a
great idea to add 'hours of snow shoveled' to our list of key
indicators (weekly numbers we report such as lessons taught, people at
church, etc)...with the standard of excellence set at 10 hours. Done.
We actually want to invest in shovels to carry around with us. If
there's one thing that impresses Hispanics, especially the men....it's
the white girls in skirts, speaking Spanish, shoveling snow like total
bosses.

How's everyone's Book of Mormon reading coming along? You didn't give
up already, did you? I'm just cruising along. So good! Try reading la
Santa Biblia at the same time though. Let's just say that the Bible
makes me appreciate the Book of Mormon so much more! The book is true.
I know it. Hope you do too!!!
Try and stay warm :)
Love you!
Hermana Mortensen

One of our investigators was out of town all last week during the storm. We kept that

driveway looking realllll nice #killthemwithkindness #orservice....I wish I would have gottenanother picture of what it looked like two days later. Let's just say I'm gonna come home    with some realllllyyyyy nice arms. Haha.