Mission Call!

Seeing as I've posted this on about every other social media outlet, it's time this news hit the blogsphere. 

Wednesday, April 10, I received my LDS mission call in the mail! Well, my parents received it in the mail. I anxiously went about my day, trying and failing to pay attention in class, and waiting for the minutes to tick by so it could be 4 and I could open this beauty:

Never ever have I been more impatient.

Before we move on with the post, I just have to share a series of memes.

So yeah, there's that. I love them. 

4 o'clock came, even though it seemed a million years away.

Thank you to all my friends and family who came!! Props to Andrew who told me he couldn't come, then 5 minutes before I opened it showed up and surprised me big time.

Opening my call was probably the most surreal and crazy moment! My thoughts were literally flying in a million different directions, I don't think I've ever been more scatterbrained. Before I knew it, I had a knife in hand, and was ripping open the famous big white envelope that I had waited a month for. 

Drum roll please...

SAN FERNANDO, CALIFORNIA!!!

English speaking, leaving July 17th for the Provo MTC. 

WOW. First off, I freaked out and so did the girl video taping me, who is my neighbor, friend, and relief society president! She happens to be serving in San Fernando as well, crazy right??Unfortunately she's speaking Spanish, but it was still a crazy moment! 

I was SO surprised. It definitely took a minute for it to set in. I had to translate the words I read into actual thoughts and a place in my mind about where I would be. I was in the middle of hugging people when it hit me, and I burst into tears! I couldn't help it. 

I'm just going to dump a bunch of other pictures, I love them all so much. I'd be lying if I told you I didn't stare at them and watch my video at least twice a day. They make me so happy and excited!

It's my favorite to answer the same questions over, and over, and over again. That's not sarcastic though, I really do LOVE talking about my call, and everything associated with it (:

The main one I love is every single person asks:

"Are you ______?" You can fill in the blank with basically anything...excited, nervous, worried, happy, etc. My answer is always yes! I have so many emotions about it all.

I really am SO extremely excited to serve in San Fernando, that's the main emotion I feel. The more I think about it, the more I feel like it is the perfect mission! I'm in love with it already, and I feel so blessed to go there. Big big thanks to the man upstairs. 

After opening it, I went with the fam to Brick Oven Pizza. 

After that, I went with my roomies to Sammy's for shakes.

After that, I had some visitors over.

Then FINALLY I was able to just sit in my room, read my call again, read every detail of my packet, Google pictures, read other people's blogs who served in San Fernando, start my own mission blog, and everything else I've been waiting to do until I got my call. I stayed up til 5 AM, but it was totally worth it. 

There she is, in all her beauty.

The rest of the week has been pretty dull, especially in comparison to opening my call! It's just been the usual, work and school. 

I went home for church simply for the fact that I would be able to talk about my call more, because that's my new favorite activity to do. 

Facts about my mission:

• It is getting split and the new boundaries will be in effect July 1st. I'll be one of the first missionaries to serve with the new boundaries!
• The bottom half of my mission (where all the people are!) is Los Angeles
• North Hollywood, quite a few recording studios, Magic Mountain, and Six Flags is in my mission
• One of my good friends from high school and the only missionary I'm writing is serving in San Fernando English speaking as well! So crazy.
  Speaking of that, here was his response to me telling him about my call: 
• My good friend Alise's grandparents are serving in San Fernando. They are in charge of housing for the missionaries. They'll be some of the very first people I meet when I get to San Fernando!
• Another kid that I don't know super well but I went to high school with is serving there.

Total number of people I know serving in San Fernando: 6, including me.

Alright, let's move on from mission call (sadly) and talk about yesterday. 

We had a great FHE drawing with chalk. Everybody traced each other and we created a family mural! I had a work meeting, so I was a few minutes late and I was already drawn...see how they drew me here:

This video is great too:

Aaaand then my phone died.

I made Genevieve use her phone to take some more pictures though. We got lot's of great ones! This one is my favorite:

 I've got a great family. (:

Today, I had to go into the bank because my debit card wasn't working.

Turns out, they put a hold on it because of a lot of recent 'suspicious activity.' The activity was actually just me online shopping a bunch, because now that I know where I'm going on my mission, I know exactly what to buy! 

It felt like a shopaholic intervention though. They went through each purchase I'd made and the amount to verify that it was from me. Whoops!

My Tuesday work shift is basically the greatest. We've made it a tradition to go after our shift each week to a legendary BYU place and get food. This has topped off my Freshman experience! So far we've gone to The Chocolate, the Awful Waffle, and tonight was the Roll-up. Each place has lived up to their reputations! SO amazing. I have to say, the Roll-up has been my favorite yet.

It was a quaint cozy place with AMAZING music! Each artist that we heard was to die for. I literally was in heaven, eating my crepe and listening to them serenade me. All though I am a die hard Wall fan, the Roll-up might be better, or at least tied.

Side note, I LOVE MY COWORKERS. Seriously though. I would take a bullet for each of them. I'm the luckiest girl in the world. Makes me sad to think about leaving them in 6 days!

After the work festivities, I came home to study.

And by study, I mean I actually snuggled with Jean (yes, she let me! And she liked it. We're improving, people). We talked and talked. I sure do love that girl. 

Then I decided my 'studying' should be moved to the kitchen, so I could focus. But Genevieve came, and I sure do love that girl too.

She's pretty convincing. "Tessa you only have one week left with me! Come sit with me! Stay up later!" And the list goes on.

As I was going to go to bed, she had a random urge to eat a giant spoonful of powdered sugar. Of course, she pulled me into it. What started as eating a bit of sugar, turned into this wonderful mess:

I can't even blame the craziness on Genevieve. It was me who first blew some powder sugar on her face!

We looked like Grandmas.

We cleaned up our wintery mess, showered, and here I am in bed, trying for the life of me to finish up this post.

Also, some great news: today was my last day of classes until 2015, holla!!

IMPORTANT INFORMATION:

As I mentioned, I started a blog solely dedicated to my mission and all things related to it! Once I'm out in the field, my letters home will be posted on it. For now, it's still really rough and I've got a lot of re-designing to do, but here it is nonetheless:

>>sistertessabishop.blogspot.com<<

Stop by that blog every once in a while to check it out! Right now there's only one post up of one of my journal entries, but I plan to post a lot more on it soon.

Also, I have a mormon.org profile. It's pretty great. Here's the link:

>>My mission.org profile<<

Thanks for reading, peace out.

April Fools and Pranking

Another week has passed. Another round of new stories and pictures coming your way! 

First off: April 1st. The day where it is clearly evident just how gullible I am. I fall for every fake marriage proposal, every joke--you name it.

This year, my gullibility (is that a word?) got taken to a whole new level. 

Let me explain: for the past 4 weeks, I have consistently had dreams every night about opening my mission call. I've gotten everything from New Jersey to Paraguay to a three-week mission in India...don't ask me how my brain thought up that last one. So random! Any who, on March 31st, I had a dream that I opened my call, but never saw where to because I woke up before reading it! I woke up super disoriented, looked on my phone, and low and behold, I saw this:

There was a part of me that said, "Oh! That's where I got called to! Holy cow!!!" And I freaked out inside a little bit. Then after a minute, I realized I hadn't gotten my call...and it was April Fools. Yep. Even I was convinced (for a short time, in my defense) that I had gotten my mission call. You did good, Dad.

Not only did he prank me, but a few others as well. Aunts, Uncles, friends, even siblings--can't tell you how many times in the past week I've been asked if I really got my call there. Trust me, people. You would KNOW if I got my call. I'll be obnoxious and post all over Facebook about it (:

The only prank I played was in collaboration with my roommies. Our good friends Riley and Mark left some Oreos at our house, so we filled them with toothpaste and returned them. They didn't even see it coming!

For FHE Monday, we went to a performance in the HFAC of Kamorah's Hill. Jean and Kyle were performing in it! They did awesome. It was a great performance!

Tuesday was a normal day. School and work.

Dupree got a guys number, so here she is swooning.
After work, some coworkers and I went to 'The Chocolate.' It was fun! It's such a cute little place, reminds me of my favorite little restaurant, Food for Thought!

Corbin is loaded.
Guess who came to visit?

This guy!
First he spent the day with Corbie...

Then he spent the day with me...

We got dinner and went shopping, it was great!

So Brian, Shani, and I are all in the same book of Mormon class. Recently, it's become their goal to hook me up with this guy in our class. They made me sit next to him, then kept texting me during class:

He's funny. Luckily I've got at least a year and a half to learn how to 'take control' or else I may never get married (;

 Love getting snapchats from my cute family in California. Love and miss them always!

 BRIAN GOT HIS CALL!!
The lucky bum. We've had a competition from the get go to see who's call would get here first. He turned his in a week after me, and yes, he got his a week before me. But I'm happy for him!

FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA! Speaking Spanish, just like every single person in his family who has served a mission. He's carrying on the tradition!

Funny story:
Brian has a million brothers and sisters. Right after opening it, they realized they forgot to call one sister while he was opening it. So they called her, and he opened it again, and we all cheered and acted like it was the first time. He could barely fight off laughing the whole time, it was great.

A few of his siblings

 Classic Brian face.

Congrats Brian!! He's going to do so great.

After his call opening, we had some fun outside.
Dan and Taylor bought a giant Frosty the snowman cut out at DI, so we went around to people's kitchen windows with it scaring them.

And we may have taped a giant butcher knife on his hand. He looked pretty creepy.

Dan got tied up...it's a long story.

Friday morning, I stepped on my straightener...

Doesn't look too bad here...or maybe it does...either way, trust me. It's painful. I spent the first half of the day limping around campus, and it got to a point where I could barely walk! Of course this would happen on a super busy day too...had class 11-3, mentored Mia with Tanner from 3-5, then had work 5-10. Luckily I got some burn cream on it after a few hours and that helped quite a bit.

Tanner, Mia, and I made sugar cookies and decorated them. It's always a good time with that cute little girl!

Work was fun, I was in charge of the concert. All the bands were amazing! Someone couldn't show up for one of their shifts though, so I got pulled into taking it. Luckily they were on cash register, and because of my foot, I got to sit on a chair the whole time, which is normally forbidden. Almost worth burning my foot for (;

I got home from work just as all my roommies were leaving for Nickelcade. Perfect timing! So I joined in.

I realize I spelled Nickelcade wrong on the picture...my bad.

We had fun playing laser tag and a bunch of arcade games!

Then had even more fun playing with our dumb little prizes. Honestly I was just happy to be off of my foot. Standing was killer!

We got home and decided to prank Dan and Taylor's dorm because they were all out of town for conference! 

The only problem was that both their doors were locked. This didn't stop us though. First we tried unhinging their door--that didn't work. Then we unscrewed and took apart a little air vent, which is trickier than it sounds. And by we, I mean Brain...I'm not that talented.

Once we got the vent popped open, Shani climbed through it, ripping her shirt in the process, and let us in. Here you can catch the end of her shimmying through!

We had gone to Walmart to buy fish to fill every container they had with water and one fish, but Walmart was out of fish...so we walked around trying to think of something else to use when I saw a worker with a shopping cart stuffed full of collapsed cardboard boxes. Here's our convo:

Me: "Can we have some of those boxes?"

Worker: "Uhh...Yeah I guess you can have one..."

Me: "Can we take the whole cart out to our car and keep them all?"

Worker: "I don't see why not..."

So off we were with about a hundred boxes! Genevieve also snagged a bunch of newspaper, and we stole more newspaper from the recycling bins outside our dorms.

Next, we crumpled away and stuffed every inch of cupboard space with newspaper, like so:

So. Much. Crumpling. Our hands were disgusting afterwords! Covered in black ink.

 We had so much newspaper that we even moved on to the bathroom and literally filled the whole bathroom, both showers and all, from floor to ceiling with newspaper!

 In the process...

Then at the end, you can barely see the light on at the top of the bathroom!

Remember all those boxes we got? We put them back together, and created a giant wall of boxes in their kitchen.

Here's a video of it all:

I'm proud of ourselves! The boys don't even suspect us for doing it, and they have no idea how the prankers got in their locked dorm. We are good. (:

Saturday was General conference, loved it!

It was also Brian's birthday, so we celebrated a bit in between sessions. Big week for Brian!

I hadn't heard anything about my call being assigned, but decided I would ask just to make sure. It took him a whole 23 hours to respond, but...

 MY CALL GOT ASSIGNED! Almost a week ago now. Holy smokes!!

You know what that means...my call should get here tomorrow. Hopefully!! I'm getting more and more impatient as it gets closer. It has been a month since I turned them in, and I'm definitely ready for it to be over. Either way, the next blog post will be about my call. Wow!! Stay tuned (:

Sunday night, me and Jean went to a family dinner at my Uncle Randy and Aunt Cherri's place! It was fun to have Jean come along, and definitely great to have a fantastic meal that I didn't have to make or clean up!

Here's Alaina and her little guy, Oliver. Cute series of pictures!

Typical scene: Jayci taking a picture of herself making a weird face, Libby being sassy, my cute Grandma Williams just smiling away, and my parents doting on a baby. My mom loves babies. 

If you noticed the last pictures are not the best color/quality...I got lazy and didn't edit them. It's bugging me big time cause I like my pictures vibrant and clear, but it's not bugging me enough to do something about it. (:

Last night for FHE we played Skunk, or Scum, whichever you want to call it! It's just a pool game, but it was very fun. I had treat and made some yummy cake batter fudge, which is made from a box cake mix and is super easy and delicious! Recipe found >>here<< if you'd like it.

Today's been normal. Thought there was a chance my call would come, so I was a little disappointed that it's not! But it'll come, soon enough. And I'll freak out. Can't wait (: Thanks for reading!