A Talk

Another week gone! It's totally crazy, I'm telling you! It's almost 10pm, so I'll be brief. It's been extremely hot and humid... the Philadelphian summer has officially begun. The most exciting/involved thing that happened all week: I got a call ?Tues or Mon? night from the person in the singles ward who assigns talks. Yep, I was asked to give a talk in the singles ward and that confused me a bit b/c I had just gotten a visiting teaching assignment for my family ward. I told whoever was on the phone (I think his name is Bro. Johnson) that I wouldn't be able to make it since it was my Mom's b-day celebration, but he was desperate, and I ended up saying yes anyway.

I called a friend of mine to make sure she could give me a ride to church, and she said she could, and Mom said she could pick me up after the sacrament meeting in the singles ward was over so that I could come home for the celebration.

I wrote my talk, and my English was beautiful... eloquent with advanced vocabulary. I worked on it all week. My friend called me on Thurs evening saying she couldn't take me to church after all because she had a family function to go to she didn't know about, so I had to rearrange everything rides wise. Then on Sat. I read my talk to my parents to get some feedback. My Dad's comment: very well written; however, he had also zoned out while I was reading it. I presented it to my sister Laura and she told me I had lost her after the second paragraph. She helped me realize, that this was good stuff for an English paper, but not so good if you wanted to keep people's attention during a talk. We rewrote the entire thing in more colloquial language, and I felt better about it even though it was a little shorter than before.

Sun. Morning Dad told me that he was going to the Philly wards today anyway, and he could take me at 10am. There was one small problem... I had told a friend of mine we could take her and that we would pick her up at 1. I called her and she was a really good sport about being ready three hours earlier than planned. We both attended Sunday school and Relief Society in one of the family wards meeting in the building; we had a wait after that, and luckily I had brought some apples, oreos and sandwiches, so Camille (my amazing friend who got up to come with me) and I just chatted and snacked for a while.

Finally the time came. Overall it went pretty well. I discussed the first section of Elder Wirthlin's talk Concern for the One about how some people are lost because they are different. It was a really good topic for me since I've had lots of experience with being different... my German experiences came in really handy.

Dad and I made it home for a treasure hunt for Mom... she got the cutest outfit from my Grandma. I love it on her!! Eric, Rene' and family came over for a delicious meal of this fahita type stuff, then we topped it off with shortcake, strawberries and ice cream :-).....

Anyway, it's really late like I mentioned before, so I bid you adieu till next week!

Love,

Margaret