Hello all!
It's been great week. Lots has happened. And we're all happy. Sound familiar? Good. : )
I'm not sure if I gave the update last week, so I'll just say it again--because Rally (75th Annual in Sturgis this year) gets so crazy, they pull the missionaries out of town. And this was the week--Wednesday was our last day there! :'(
But, Monday. Sister Ca got a sweet panel in her hair at the hair school. It took like two hours since the dye didn't take the first time, so I ended up getting myself a trim while waiting. It was only $10! Woohoo! After all our "preparation" was done, I still was in the middle of packing up my stuff in Sturgis. So that's basically what we did all day--I packed. We finally made it over to Heritage Acres to say goodbye to some Branch friends, and I cried of course. But we got pictures and I had them write in my Bye-bye book, so at least that.
On Tuesday, the third day of the wink (see title scripture : D ), I metamorphed into a 20-year-old person. No longer a teenager. It's weird to think I'll never have that excuse again.... That morning Sister C went ninja-style and set up a scavenger hunt while I was getting ready. I found a candle (I've become hooked on those the last month or so), a new lighter, a cute note from my parents, and a Star Wars notebook! She is so awesome. : ) (Fun little nugget--we try to make sure we are doing each-other's love languages for them. I'm mostly about gifts and words of affirmation, she's mostly about hugs and spending time (which is easy because we're ALWAYS together!).) Then I opened my package from home which included but was not limited to a Wingman Leatherman with a carrying case (per special request), a candy bouquet with cubic lollipops, a super-cute new outfit that I adore, a 64-GB SD card (I put it in and forgot to bring my old one so my pictures in this email start from Tuesday morn), and candy and a notebook for Sister C! My family takes such good care of me. : ) We then went to Rapid City for our training meeting and stopped to visit Cindy on the way up. All her tubes were already out, and she was so happy to be able to talk to us! We sang her a hymn and it was great. Sister C took me to Subway for lunch afterward. : )
We met with a sister from Sturgis who really needs advice from our Branch President, so we just told her to do that. I don't know if I'll ever see her again. I hope I do. : ) Then I finished packing until we went to the Hans for our weekly Tuesday dinner. They had another couple over, which was fun. And of course they treated me to a funfetti cake and the birthday song, complete with 20 candles. It's always hard to leave an area, but the hardest part is thanking the Bishop or Branch President. I just cried when I shook President Han's hand--he does so much in this area, and I've learned so much from him! They have such an amazing family here. We got to see Rachel--I told her it was my birthday and pleaded until she sang Savior, Redeemer of My Soul with us.
Me in my beautiful new birthday outfit, credits to Mom.
And then Wednesday came. 8 I We went to the food pantry for the last time, counted out their receipts and left them with a hymn. Jackie came with us for lunch with Tommy & JoBerta in Deadwood. We met with Robert again and helped him understand how the Savior's Atonement can help him quit smoking, and then we had to drop off Jackie (:'() . Everybody needs a Jackie. She is such an amazing girl. Even though she has so many crazy things happening all the time, she always smiles and helps everyone else feel happy. I've learned a lot from her.
We then finished packing everything into our Jeep, then drove out to Newell to have dinner with Marcia. She is living by herself right now, but she's fixed up her house super cute, and she has a cute dog named Sherlock. We always have way fun discussions about crazy Kolob-ey stuff, and I always leave feeling extra glad that I'm a missionary and get to meet cool people like her. When we finally arrived in Belle Fourche, I found a nice birthday card from Brooke awaiting me. : )
On Thursday Heavenly Father showed me, once again, how merciful He is with His imperfect children. That morning we went to visit with Hannah, did a sweet lesson with a candle on how Christ is our light (Matt 11:28-30) no matter how dark it may seem, then went home to finish unpacking. I got really distracted and started to clean everything with hydrogen peroxide. If you tried it you would understand how fun it is! As soon as you pour the liquid onto a surface with calcium deposits, for example, it gets all fizzy and a chemical reaction removes the hard stuff from your pretty sink faucet and you can just wipe it right off! So...yeah, didn't get everything unpacked, and then we didn't finish Weekly Planning, and then we went to the Church and did Family History Hour and never really got a good lesson planned for the Os. *sigh* While we were sitting in their living room just trying to pull something out of thin air, they realized that we were unprepared and then Sister O pulled a scripture our herself! The parable of the 10 Virgins! And she and her husband learned a lot from it, and they're more committed to add to their oil every day. : ) So Heavenly Father helped us out with that one. We also had our first over-the-phone-because-of-
Friday was so so so awesome. We left at 8:00 a.m. to go to Rapid City for a Zone Conference/Mini Zone training Meeting/Mission Tour to meet our new Mission Presidents! We got there a little early to practice our combined musical number (Have I Done Any Good, the version I used for my missionary farewell), which went super well by the way. President and Sister Hess are amazing. I was very impressed that they started out by explaining how much President and Sister Anderson love and miss us, and then they gave each of us a page of a book so that we could write them a note. I love that the Hess's aren't worried about not being loved because we loved the other Presidency more--they're ready to just come in and love us and help us become the servants our Heavenly Father knows we can become. I think President Hess's email from this week explains a lot about how they are:
"Dear Sisters and Elders,
Sister Hess and I want to thank you all for a very successful and enjoyable round of meet the president zone conferences. It was great to finally look into all of your eyes individually, and see who you are. To make that spiritual connection was such a blessing for us.
Sister Hess and I really appreciate the trainings by the Sister Training Leaders, Zone Leaders, and Assistants, it was very beneficial to us. I know that the training was inspired and timely, as many of your letters have indicated.
One thing that stood out to me through the mission tour was a countenance of happiness among you all. I feel that it comes from your culture that we talked about, “Love and Obedience”. As King Benjamin tells us in Mosiah 2:41, that happiness is actually a “state” of being, not just an emotion to be expressed or felt but actually who we can become. Notice also that we are to consider on our “Blessed and Happy state”, not blessed or happy. So we can use these two words describing an actual state of being interchangeable. To be blessed is to be happy and to be happy is blessed, and it all stems from your obedience.
Knowing that we can use the words Blessings and Obedience interchangeable, let’s look at a couple of scriptures and replace the word Blessings with Happiness and remember that it is a state of being. D&C 130:20-21, and D&C 132:5
I know why you are happy, and remember that King Benjamin said that if we “hold out faithful to the end”, we can enjoy this state of happiness eternally.
We love you,
President and Sister Hess"
Besides getting to know our new Mission Presidency, we also had an awesome training on the importance of inviting our investigators to be baptized. To be honest, I hadn't really thought about how important it was lately, and I usually get all nervous and put off the invitation as long as possible. There is a better way, however! We learned that when we invite at the very beginning, people will know what we're here to help them do. In a way, it helps us weed out those who are interested in following Jesus Christ and those who aren't. It also helps everything come along faster. I'm not really doing the meeting justice, but I didn't bring my notes. That said, the next day we started to apply it and had an awesome first lesson with Cora, and she accepted the invitation to be baptized. : ) (Yesterday she actually dropped us, but she wouldn't have done that if she hadn't known what our purpose was. So it's sad to not see her anymore, but if she's not ready to make that promise yet, at least now we know. Hopefully we can see her again some time.)
Saturday morning we had a sweet lesson with Ashley. She's still ready to be baptized August 8th. She's SO ready. : ) We met with her after going to Brother D's baptism (the Spearfish Elders teach him); keep in mind that we've only met with her once. So we went through the 6 Baptismal Interview Questions, and the only thing she had a question on and wasn't sure about was that President Thomas S. Monson is a prophet (http://www.thomassmonson.org/
So I started to get the transfer feeling this week. I think I'm leaving Sister C. : ( That's the bitter this week. But how much better is the sweet when we have the bitter?
Thanks for the happy birthday wishes. I hope you all have a wonderful week!
Love you,
Sister F
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