Hey everyone!
Sorry I'm late this week--we
had a busy Monday and there's lots of news for the next email, but I
needed to make sure we got last week in so here's a quick update.
I
can't remember everything we did on Tuesday, but we had a lovely dinner
with President Hanhardt's family, and an awesome lesson with Jackie
afterwards as we began to read out of Preach My Gospel for mission
preparation. She's doing super great! Wednesday morning we helped out at
the Food Pantry, we had a good lesson with Thomas & Carla, and then
we went to a super fancy restaurant for dinner with the P's in
Lead called the Roundhouse. Sister P's mother just moved into
their home, so when she met us the week previous she wanted to take us
out to eat and this is where we went. The building was a restored train
roundhouse, and the combination of old brick, varnished mahogany, and
chandeliers was impressive and beautiful. And like we're always doing to
ourselves, we somehow scheduled a second dinner appointment at 6:00, so
as soon as we finished there we hurried to Belle Fourche for dinner
with the As. Good thing she's an amazing cook, or it would've
been hard to eat again. : ) We got to meet with the Young Women for a
special presentation on missionary work--they had us tell all about why
we're on missions, what we've learned, and what we did (and wish we'd
done) to prepare. It was really neat to think about and share my
personal experiences again, as well as to hear Sister S's. Most
of the girls attending actually want to serve missions, so we're super
excited for them.
A Thursday highlight was our
lesson with Sister Cr--we've tried to get in with her all transfer,
and this last week we finally did. Sister J, an amazing woman,
let us meet in her home to work on family history. It was awesome to
help Sister Cr research, although her line is done down to the
1100's at some point, so it will be a lot of work to find more people.
We can do it, though. : ) We also had our first lesson with Caitlin, an
amazing young mother in the area who has strong faith but is held back
by hard experiences she's had. I think that as we help her find friends
in the Ward she'll be strengthened by their experiences and will be able
to come back to Church--she has super cute kids, too.
Friday
morning we drove back up to Sturgis to help at the food pantry, and we
had a little time afterwards to see Robert so we stopped by the hospital
and had an awesome discussion on faith. He really understands
the importance of faith in his life, and he's excited to continue
building it through the daily things--prayer, reading scriptures, and
also coming to church when he's able.
District Meeting was pretty awesome. Elder W prepared an excellent discussion on God's love. We thought about why God does love us, and in reverse, why we love Him.
For myself, I realized that God loves us in part because of our
potential--He knows who we can become, and He wants to help us get
there. And now on this earth we're rediscovering the love we already had
for our Father who has always loved us first. This talk https://www.lds.org/general-
Sister Springer gave us each a sixth of the pan. I had to throw some of mine away. : (
Saturday
morning we were, for no explained reason, super duper antsy. We were so
worried about what was going to happen next transfer, and we were
pretty sure I was going to be just covering Sturgis and we'd have new
missionaries in Belle Fourche, so we stayed in the apartment to prepare
it for a new set of missionaries--we cleaned, we went through the area
book, and we made it so that the new missionaries would have an easy
time figuring out what to do. There was also a winter storm warning that
it was gonna' snow a lot, so we drove up to Sturgis as soon as we could
to avoid the storm. And then we stayed inside.
Sunday
morning Sister S jumped out of bed, looked out the window, then
beckoned for me to come see. And it sure had snowed! We had about 8
inches, and it was still coming down. All the trees with their new
Spring leaves were weighted down pretty bad.
I went outside first thing and shoveled our driveway before it got
too hard to shovel later. I also saved the flattened lilac bush seen in
the upper right-hand corner. It's actually been one of my lifelong
dreams to be snowed in because of crazy weather. The snow didn't get as
deep as I would've liked, but it was still super fun.
At
about 9:00 we got the phone call announcing a Stake-wide cancellation
of Church. This was Sister S's last Sunday in the field, and
Church was cancelled?! So sad! And we weren't really supposed to drive
anywhere, so we studied and wrote in our journals and did only a few
missionary errands until it was finally time to go to the Hs for
lunch and Mother's Day Skyping.
They fed us a
good meal with famous homemade bread, and then we had an hour to talk
with our families. It was so fun! I got to see everyone and hear about
what they're up to, and they got to look out the window and see the
snow. It was a little weird to see how my style of conversing has
changed since Christmas--I found myself directing the conversation more,
which actually makes since considering I've been a missionary for a
while. : ) They checked my Dakotan accent, but so far I don't think I've
picked up anything.
It was refreshing to hear from them all again.
On our way back to our apartment we took the scenic route, which our 4WD
jeep did awesome with. I guess this boosted our confidence a lot,
because we decided it would be a good idea to drive up to Lead through
Vanocker Canyon (we'd never gone that way before). So up we went, and
about 15 miles in we got super duper stuck in the snow. The snow was
really wet and packed around our tires, which kept spinning out. I tried
putting branches down for traction, but I don't have a leatherman and
the young saplings were too hard to tear out, so I only got a few twigs.
We'd already removed our snow shovel and kitty litter, so we tried
putting towels under the tires which only moved us a couple inches. The
snow was getting hard to look through, and it was starting to get dark
out. That's when it sank in that we had got ourselves into a real
pickle. We climbed back into the Jeep, said a prayer for either greater
knowledge or help, then got back out of the car to look at the situation
again. It had only been 3 minutes when a gentleman with a truck, plow,
and towrope drove right up to where we were and offered assistance. We
were so grateful! I steered the car while he towed us out of the
snowbank, and then he flipped it around for us and we drove back out of
the canyon, feeling thankful for the help and sufficiently humbled to
not go out again that night.
This is a picture of the miraculous rescue truck. : )
So
we stayed in the rest of the night, and I began to realize the meaning
of the word "stir-crazy" (when you're stuck inside because of the
weather and you want to do something and you can't go outside).
To solve that, we served each other; Sister S cut my hair, I
baked her cookies. It was a wonderful exchange.
So that's how our week went.
* * * * *
The
training from District Meeting this week really sunk in. I even
decorated my planner with my thoughts from it. It was so wonderful to be
reminded that, especially as missionaries, since we love our Savior
it's our job to "feed his sheep"--he showed His apostles that He can get
fish (or money or whatever else it is that distracts us from helping
others). What He needs is people who will dedicate themselves to feeding
his sheep, to sharing the Gospel, to serving and lifting and comforting
and doing whatever we can to help our fellow brothers and sisters here.
So after my missionary service is ends, I'm not going to go back to my
fishing boat (whatever job I end up with) and forget the service I've
done--I'm going to keep helping others and doing the work of the Lord,
because that's where true purpose and happiness is found.
Well, I hope you're all having a wonderful time. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help.
Love,
Sister F 
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