"Pardon"

Dear Mom,

We're emailing at the church for the long weekend, but this is going to be short because Sister Leavey has been having some health problems and I'm pretty sure it's irregular pseudotumour cerrebri (which she has a history of, this isn't just me playing House), so we're going to go to the hospital pretty quick.

Good thing my week has been pretty boring. We worked pretty hard but didn't really see much success. It was pretty frustrating for the first part of the week. But then at the end of the week we got a bunch of referrals that fell into our lap and a ton of really great less-active lessons, so it was like the Lord was testing us to see if we'd be faithful without seeing immediate results.

One interesting thing that happened this week is we were on our way to a lesson (which fell through), and President Leavitt called. We were like, um, what? So I answered the phone and he said, "Sister Olson, we're conducting a survey of the sisters to see which speak French the best," and I thought, "OH MY GOSH I WANT TO SERVE FRENCH SPEAKING SO BAD!!!" Then he said, "...so I'm going to put you on the phone with Elder Morin and we'll see whether or not you can understand him." And I thought, "Are you kidding me, my ability to serve French speaking is going to be determined by my ability to understand a Quebecois accent over a staticky cell phone connection RIGHT NOW?"

Apparently President could hear the consternation in my voice when I responded, because he said, "Don't worry Sister Olson, it's not a pass/fail sort of thing; you won't be sent to Outer Slovenia if you don't do well," to which I replied, "No, I'll just keep serving in Newfoundland." He thought that was pretty funny. Then I had a conversation with Elder Morin. I was pretty nervous and so it wasn't my best French, but it was definitely a pretty good conversation. I think I understood everything and responded well, although I said "Pardon" in a French accent a lot and hoped it was an acceptable way to ask him to repeat himself. A lot. Haha. And now I won't know anything about it until maybe one transfer I'll get an email saying, "Hi, you're getting transferred French speaking! And since there are no French sisters in the mission right now, that means you're training! And since there are no French sister areas, you're opening a new area!" And then I'll be like, just kidding, I don't want to serve French speaking, I just want to keep being a junior companion in Newfoundland please.

I really want to serve French speaking, if you couldn't tell. Haha.

Other than that, not much has happened. We had another visit with Tina, and apparently Russell's read like half the Book of Mormon! She says it's a miracle! But then they didn't come to church. And she had "The Watchtower" in her apartment. So...yeah.

We also had a really great lesson with Annie. And then Sister Leavey left halfway through and we could hear her throwing up in the washroom, so I finished off the lesson and went to check on her. And apparently she also had a nosebleed and blacked out. You know what's not fun? Walking in to check on your companion and finding her unconscious in a pool of blood. And it took until this morning to get her to admit that she wasn't "fine." So we're going to go to the hospital now. Love you all.

Sister Olson