Hello everybody!
I hope you've had a wonderful week. : )
Last Monday we drove out to Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse. It was so rainy that we couldn't even see Mount
Rushmore because of the clouds. A worker at the Crazy Horse entrance
gate gave us a free pass into the site, which was super sweet of him, so
we got to go look at the museum and take pictures. And one great thing
about going to tourist hotspots in the rain is that it's easy to get
pictures without people in the background. : )
Tuesday morning was a little sad. We did have an
awesome lesson with Robert--so when we went over to visit him we found
him smoking! He'd just told us he'd quit. Apparently it's one of the
only things the staff lets him do to relieve his boredom while at the
facility, which totally doesn't make sense since smoking is not very healthy. But he put his cigar out, and like usual we three sang a hymn, this time Joseph Smith's First Prayer to
the tune of Come Thou Fount, which really invited the Spirit. We helped
Robert understand that we're given the Word of Wisdom so that we can
feel the Spirit more strongly in our lives, and then we downloaded the
Gospel Library App onto his smartphone so he'll have something to listen
to when he's bored. That was our last lesson as a trio. We then drove
to Rapid City, dropped off Sister D at the Mission Office, and
drove back for our dinner appointment with the Branch President's
family.
Sister D and I rocking our Sturgis T's. She's always playing the guitar, I sure miss her.
Wednesday
morning was pretty quiet without Sister D; fortunately we kept
super busy with several appointments and long drives. In fact, we're so
busy that we tried and failed to fit all of our weekly planning into our
hour-long drive to Montana!
So Montana was awesome.
There's a ranching family just on the edge of Belle Fourche's Ward
boundaries (somehow) that lives in Montana, and we had to drive through
Wyoming to get there, so now I've been in North Dakota, South Dakota,
Minnesota, Wyoming, and Montana on my mission. Terri is an active member
of the Church, she even teaches online seminary, they just can't come
to church during spring calving and rodeo season. They invited us to
stay and watch them practice roping, and we figured it would be good to
spend time with Terri's sons & husband, so we stayed through our
Ward Missionary Coordination meeting to watch. : D They have a really
nice arena they built themselves, and it was really cool to watch Tanner
practice roping, bulldogging, and then team roping the calves--I took
some awesome videos on my camera. Then Terri fed us scrambled eggs and
strawberries for dinner, we sang a hymn, and she sent us home with a bag
of groceries. It was a great end to the day. : ) Hopefully we can get
out to visit them at least once a month.
Terri pulled a couple luxury seating chairs out of the barn. And
Sister S turned their herder into a lapdog. : ) She's a dog
whisperer, I think.
Sister O had us over
for lunch ("dinner" in South Dakota) Thursday afternoon. She's an
amazing retired sister whose family just moved her to Belle Fourche off
of her ranch in Montana after the doctors said she can't handle living
there anymore. She's been feeling pretty lonely, so we want to visit
every week. And guess what! One of her nonmember daughters came over and
ate with us, and she told us a lot of awesome ranching stories and
we're going to help her gather her Mom's (Sister O's) memories for
the sake of family history records. We also performed several musical
numbers while they were prepping the food--since Sister S is
awesome and can sight read super well, they really enjoyed listening to
us. I love music. : ) We also went on exchanges with the Sister Training
Leader and her companion, so I went off to Rapid City for the day with
Sister G. Funny enough, our dinner appointment was with Tami S,
the recent convert I met at Meghan F's branding party a couple weeks
ago. So it was fun to reconnect with them. It was nice to go tracting
again, since this transfer we haven't had time to find any people
besides talking with them at Walmart or the like. It always helps me
feel like a "missionary" when I've knocked doors for an hour or two.
When
we switched back on Friday we got the bad news that our investigator Ty
was no longer being allowed to be baptized Saturday. Sister S
and Sister M had just had an awesome lesson with him, and our
District Leader was there for his baptismal interview when Ty's staff
came in and chewed them out and basically said that he's not allowed to
make his own decisions (which we've been told the opposite by his
grandma), and it was just really bad. So I think some prayers for Ty
would be super helpful. He's not very happy about it. On the happy side,
I got to do role plays in the district meeting in Rapid, which was
super fun. : )
And the it was Saturday, and we
spent basically all day helping the Young Women run their yard/bake
sale at the Church. I guess Rummage Sales are a common thing on
Saturdays in South Dakota, and especially today since it was the
city-wide sale, so the Branch members all brought in items to sell and
the money went towards the young women Girls' Camp fund--they raised
about $600! I gave them $.50 for a couple of Mandy's baked goods, and it
was super amazing. And after that we helped Sister R start to
pack up her kitchen. We drove over to help fix up the trailer she'll be
moving to, but we basically just became more and more discouraged as we
realized how trashed the trailer's previous tenants had left it. It's
looking like she might need to convince the landlord to get a new
one--it will probably save him money and time in the end. But! They used
to teach the people who lived there, and when they moved out in a hurry
they forgot to bring their Sunday School manuals, which were pretty fun
treasures to find. : )
We were late at the trailer, so we were
then late to Bree's baby shower. Although most of their friends ended up
cancelling, Sister S helped make it fun for all of them with a
mini cake fight. : ) Jackie came with us (actually about all day Jackie
was with us), and I'm hoping she took some photos.
Of course the scripture study manuals survive the trashing!
I hope you've all had a great week. Even though Sister S's time is almost up, I'm looking forward to the opportunities we'll have this week to serve the people of Sturgis and Belle Fourche. I love and pray for you!
Love,
Sister F
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