Roberta's 2006 Summary

January: I finally got a job in Spokane!! It was a good job, HR Block, and I was able to keep pioneering. Got lots of snow. Um... nothing else really exciting happened. Sorry, January was a bit of a wash.

February: Happy Valentine's Day!! Just kidding.
In February I got involved in the Russian group here for about a month. It was fun. I learned how to count ordinally and numerically, (adeen, dva, tree, chetiree, pyat, shest, syem, vosyem, and that's all that stuck), I discovered the best coffee stands throughout Spokane, I learned how to say "Daniel was old"-- "Daneel bueel staree"--and I also found out that "The Russians are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!" is pretty much a Russian-group must-watch. Good times, good times.

March: I filed my taxes!!!! Actually that was a month of little events, nothing major. Jonathan had a concert, so for about a week out of March I was deaf. But it was a good deaf, really. I got a Bible study, which lasted a few months, so that was a chance to hone my teaching skills (badly in need of hone-ment). Oh, and my bad "car"ma struck again when my parked car got hit by a random driver in the parking lot of Northwest Beauty, where I had just started working. Woo hoo!

April: This was the month of awesome calls out in service! From Danica the Serbian baptist who almost made me cry telling me about fleeing Croatia, to April, the mormon girl who asked outright for a study, it was an eventful month. The Special Assembly Day was of course motivating and faith-strengthening, with one of the best illustrations I've ever heard: If
you're sinking and someone throws you a life preserver, and it happens to hit you, are you going to get offended that they hit you and it hurt? Or are you going to accept the life preserver, knowing that their motive was not to hurt you but to save your life? In the same way, counsel that we receive can be painful, but it is necessary to save our lives, and we should never refuse it on the basis of our wounded pride.

May: Wow, I really haven't had much of a social year have I? May proceeded the way March and April did, the only major adjustment being that I got transferred to Spokane Valley for work, which made service that much more interesting (will she get off work and cut through half an hour of traffic to get to the service group by three-thirty? Tune in next week, same bat time, same bat channel!)

June: This month I went to North Dakota for a beautiful wedding, got to stay there long enough to miss everyone that much more when I had to return home, and then two weeks later I moved out of where I had been living and into my Uncle Frank and Aunt Sarah's house, assuming my current role as tenant, Chester pamperer and dishwasher unloader.

July: District Convention!!! Following an amazing campaign to distribute invitations, we went to Kennewick and listened for three days to goosebump-raising talks, ignoring the 100+ degree desert heat. A week later, Saje and Zane came for a visit, and the families merged for a week of laughter, song, and the occasional bout of cage-fighting.

August: Work, service, and more work and more service. The only really exciting thing happened right at the end of the month, when I went camping with a group from Idaho, we went up to Priest Lake and I saw my first wild bear up-close! It probably wasn't a very accurate experience, since the yearling "teenage" bear was using the outdoor shower right by the lake, and he was more scared of us than we would ever be of him. Cute little fella, actually. Reminded me of Baloo.

September: Utah unassigned!!! Mormon jokes!!! British jokes!!! Mormon British jokes!!! Jessy and Nina in the flesh for the first time in three years!!! This was definitely one of the best months of the year for me. Of course, Steve and Adam passed muster as acceptable other-halves for two of my favorite cousins. And hitting it hard in some of the most difficult territory out there was exhausting, but rewarding (we felt like literally we were muddling through the territory of the Prince of the Royal Realm of Persia--right out of the Daniel book!). What a month. The words "dolphin bed jumping,""dinosaur onesie" and "I wasn't cheating!!!!" will live on in infamy forevermore!

October: DEFINITELY the trip out to see the girls in New York makes the list for best of 2006. Spending the first week-and-a-half of the KN37 tract campaign in Brooklyn, seeing the new printery for the first time, familiarizing myself with the subway system and not getting lost, and watching Bleak House and The West Wing were highlights. I had a blast, girls! And is not Mr. Guppy the creepiest character you've ever had the privilege of watching?

November: Hmm. Not a good month. Car break-ins are never fun. Chalk one up to bad "car"ma again!

December: Much better. In saying farewell to Emily and Hilary before their departure to the eastern shores of New York, we were able to grace nearly every major late-night restaurant in the booming urban metropolis of Spokane. Which was like six! Wow!