Hey everyone!
We've had another awesome week here; I hope yours went just as well.
About
the delay--since Monday was Memorial Day, our Preparation Day was
pushed back. And then Tuesday was Zone Conference, so now we're having
it today (Wednesday). Hope none of you were too worried. : )
* * * * *
So
Monday night Sister C invited Robert to be baptized on June 27th,
and he was so excited (He actually said in the middle of our lesson that
he wanted to be baptized.)! And we were super excited too. The Spirit
was pretty strong. Jackie was able to be there as well, which was pretty
cool.
We also got to go to Branch Family Home
Evening. We were celebrating Brenda's birthday, so her awesome neighbor
made us all a huge dinner. Carla gave us a lesson on Jesus Christ, and
we finished up with cake and ice cream. It was pretty fun. : )
Tuesday we found a new member to come visiting with
us--Sister T, one of the Young Women leaders. I don't know why I
hadn't thought to ask her before, but as we were sitting trying to think
of who we could bring her name came to mind. And she totally loved it!
We're going to try to go teaching with her every week. It was also just
crazy busy--we started out the day driving to Belle to volunteer at the
museum, then we drove back to Sturgis for 12-Week Training call, then we
had lessons and dinner and training. I love being a missionary!
After
helping out at the food pantry Wednesday morning, we drove to Lead for
lunch with Sister W. It was super fun to see her meet Sister
C--she loved her so much right off the bat. That's actually been one
really fun part of this transfer, seeing people meet Sister C.
She's such an awesome Sister! Anyway, we had a lunch of her family's
famous homemade noodles, then we helped vacuum and mop her floors (we
like to swap meals for service with her), then we drove back to Sturgis
for more lessons. We drove through Spearfish on the way to Belle so we
could meet with Justine, the cashier we met at Walmart last week. It was
a pretty awesome first lesson. She had her roommate and her fiance
there, and we had a good chat about their past religious
experiences--I'm pretty excited for us to hand them over to the Elders.
She seems like she'll love learning about the Gospel. : ) And then we
drove back home for dinner and a lesson with the O. They're doing so
great. : )
Thursday morning we had the parrot
sanctuary, our lesson with Caitlin (we forgot to bring a member so
we're hoping to get that going next week), lunch with Sister O (She
had her granddaughter McKenzie over so we could chat, and it was a
sweet missionary hour. Sister O is so cool!), and then we got to do
our studies. Right when we were finishing up companionship study, we got
a phone call from a Sister from . . . not here, asking if we could help
with her mother's funeral service the next day. Since she's from out of
town, we, the missionaries, were her best resource. We said yes, of
course. So we also had to drive to Sturgis to pick up my music binder.
After Ward Coordination I spent about an hour brushing up on the
accompaniment to "I Know That My Redeemer Lives," then we got home and
had to do training and go to bed. Somehow planning got pushed out of the
day. By then we were really wishing we could just sit down and get
things straightened out.
The sunset after Ward Coordination was super pretty. : )
Friday
morning we drove to a funeral home in Spearfish (they didn't want to
use our chapel in Belle Fourche). I ended up accompanying for Becky (?)
singing the violin part changed to a vocal solo. It went super high in
the beginning, but she graduated from BYU with vocal performance so she
sounded good anyway. It was fun to talk with her since she actually took
lessons from the professor I was working with, and she also served a
mission in Ukraine. Pretty cool, eh? The Sister in charge hired a
Methodist pastor to conduct since all the Priesthood holders in our Ward
were gong for a temple trip, and it was pretty interesting to listen to
his sermon. Sister C explained it well--it was like watching an
actor in a play. Emotional and cool, but not really inviting the Spirit.
But we got to help with the music, and afterwards the pastor stayed to
chat. He asked us about how we teach the Word of Wisdom, and then he
encouraged (me specifically) to keep serving people with music. We
counted it as a Contact For Potential. : ) And then the rest of the day
we planned. It was glorious!
The red-toned lighting made Sister C really sleepy.
On
our way back from the funeral we stopped to have a spur-of-the-moment
visit with Sister S. Right when we got there she burst into tears
and invited us in--she's just had a health scare with her cat, who was
fortunately going to be okay. I'm glad we were there to help. : ) Sister
C is also a cat lover so she's doing super good in this area.
I'm running out of time so I'll skip Saturday.
Sunday
we were at Church in Sturgis, which was amazing. President H was
gone traveling, but we had some awesome talks on family history that
super motivated me to get going on mine. One speaker said "President
Monson has time for family history and he's the prophet. I don't
think I know anyone busier than him!" That really helped me realize that
we as missionaries should be doing ours too, especially since we're
given an hour every week for familysearch.org.
'Cause the Prophet is not only a full-time servant, but a lifetime
servant. So we can make it work too. : ) We got to have a lesson with
Robert, which went really well, and we drove out to meet with the
P. They fed us homemade pie afterwards. : ) And then we had a
lesson scheduled with Bill from the previous week, so we drove back to
Belle for that. We were hoping to help both him and Robert understand
the importance of commitments, and it went very well. Hopefully they'll
both come to church next week!
And then it was
Memorial Day! We had planned to spend all morning helping Sister
S dig a trench. However, about 10 minutes before we were headed
out we got a text that it was cancelled due to the inclement weather. I
actually thought it would be fun in the rain, but I guess probably not
very effective. Anyway, that meant we got to have a normal morning of
studies, which was nice.
We had a nice dinner
with Brenda after trying and failing to meet with our other investigator
in Sturgis (she set it up and then cancelled all within the same hour),
and then we drove to Rapid City for a New Missionary Training which
actually was more like a Training for Trainers and Leadership. Sister
C, bless her heart, was super patient as we sat in a semicircle with
the Assistants and President & Sister Anderson talking about the
functions behind setting up a good district meeting.
TUESDAY:
Zone Conference. My best one yet. Let me give you all the factors: I
actually had a lot of concerns/questions for my area since we're working
on getting two areas put together. Sister C and I have been
studying the study guide for two weeks. President and Sister Anderson
gave their last Zone Conference in Rapid City, the place they served
most of the mission (they're stationed in Bismarck now). We also have
amazing Zone Leaderships and we had an awesome District training
prepared. So all of these things and more = best Zone Conference ever. I
loved learning about teaching with the Spirit, about using silence to
let Him teach after we've testified. I loved hearing President and
Sister Anderson's trainings on Sacrifice & the importance of family,
as well as their advice for us for post-mission life. I cried in my
interview with President Anderson. I'm going to miss them, we all love
them so much! And they have to leave their mission too, which is such a
hard thing to face. We were all pretty spiritually, physically, and
emotionally exhausted after Tuesday.
So yep, a
lot has happened in a week and a half. It's been so great to be working
on getting organized. I'm really excited for what we have coming next
week!
Love,
Sister F 
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