Hello everybody! (If anyone has any good ideas for a greeting, please share. I feel like I say this every week.)
As you can see by this week's scripture, it has been cold; and, as such, the work has been pretty slow. I'd expected that when I learned I'd be coming to SDRCM (South Dakota Rapid City Mission), but I didn't realize just how frustrating it is to be a missionary with nothing to do. This has led me to be even more grateful than I was before to be Sister N's companion, because even though we're struggling with finding people to teach and our appointments keep falling through, we're still happy!
On Tuesday it was pleasantly warm outside--around 30 degrees? We mostly drove around trying to visit members and potential investigators other missionaries had found through tracting efforts. And we found Thandi M, who was baptized 3 years ago and then seemingly fell off the charts. She's from South Africa, and was taught by, guess who, the Br.s! It turns out she works on Sundays, but we're going to start visiting her every week. : ) She can speak English, Spanish, Zulu, and is working on Russian--hopefully she'll teach us something cool!
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Tricia's plates are the same as our plates at home! I love it so much!
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We also switched Sister Nielson to our Designated Driver so that
she can get really comfortable with navigating Jamestown. It's weird to
overcome my habit of checking for the keys every time we leave the
apartment. I love being able to look out the window and take pictures
again!
Sister Nielson was finally able to Skype her
family on the 1st, and it was super fun to be the one on the sidelines.
They're way cute, and I definitely want to go to one of her family
reunions some day. (Her parents were on a cruise during Christmas, but
they promised to take her next year so it's all good.) Our appointment
with Karen & Richard fell through (noticing a pattern?) which was super sad,
but we went through our potentials list and found another couple we can
try next week, so that balanced out pretty well. Also, we became super
good friends with Liz and Tom, a couple that lives across the street
from our church. They fed us Lefsa and gave us leftover steak and soup,
and we made plans to call them in 10 years and tell them about how life
is going. : )
Saturday morning, we looked out the window and saw a howling mess. It is now officially a North Dakota winter--definitely colder than -30* with windchill. It's strange to see how the snow will act and blow like sand when it's so cold and it can't stick to anything. All of our appointments fell through (bleh), and we couldn't tract, so we visited potential investigators and members and basically used about 30 miles. But! Our crazy was not wasted, because we found the Wan. family. The missionaries had tracted into them in April, right when their mom had been diagnosed with cancer. She passed away in October, and we're going to meet with them and talk about the Plan of Salvation. It's amazing how as missionaries we're able to be there exactly when we need to.
Sunday was also very cold, but fortunately they didn't cancel church. : ) That would've been exciting, and apparently it happens sometimes. Our appointments fell through again, as was almost by then 100% predicted. Slightly frustrating. But Tori stayed strong, and we got to visit her and Darryl! We've been worried about Darryl since we haven't met for about a month, but while he kept the TV on, he listened and prayed with us, so all is not lost. : ) Heavenly Father will definitely take care of him.
After Tori's we had an amazing experience with a potential investigator. It was really cold yesterday, but we'd gotten out of our lesson with Tori early and we had a few minutes. We were right by the trailer park we'd tracted last week, and there was one gentleman we never could seem to catch at home. Driving by we saw his car was home, so we stopped and knocked on his door. And we learned his name is Brian, and he told us about what it's like to be homeless in North Dakota, and he's SO ready for the Gospel! The Spirit kept us warm for about 10 minutes, and then we really had to go warm up so we scheduled an appointment for Saturday. It was so great! Feeling the Spirit on a doorstep is pretty amazing.
Afterwards, we went to the amazing Pet. family's home and they warmed us up with homemade hot chocolate. : ) We'll be spending our 3rd P-day this month with them, ice skating!
* * * * *
Training is inspired and I miss it already. Every day this week (and the last 12 weeks), we've learned about what we needed to learn about for exactly that time. The amount of time we had always worked out perfectly with the amount of material we needed to go over. And now it's over. During my first 12 weeks out, I've gained a STRONG testimony of the power that comes from 12-Week Training. We had an amazing experience each night this week as we watched the District and received inspiration for each of our investigators--we're now much closer to directing the investigator to teach 50% (a goal from President Anderson)! I'm definitely going to miss that extra hour of study each day, but I'll do my best to keep the booklet in my daily studies. :)
Thanks for all of the prayers and emails and letters. We can all do hard things, but it's much easier with the amazing support group I have back home. : )
Love,
Sister Fin
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