Hello all. : )
I hope you're having a great summer! It's been wonderful here in South Dakota.
Real quick--if you're planning on sending a letter, do it really soon because we are getting transfer calls next Monday and we are pretty sure I'm goin'.
So, Monday! We had our District P-day: once a transfer, our whole district gets together and does some sort of fun activity. We decided we'd go up Spearfish canyon and explore Roughlock Falls. The hike ended up being not a hike at all, more like a pleasant, short walk around the black hills. It was chill.
The top view of the waterfall. See how green it is here?
After the waterfall we went to Chubby Chipmunks, a world-famous truffle shop in Deadwood. The Elders didn't get as excited about the fancy chocolates as we did, which, in hindsight, isn't that surprising. Quantity over quality I suppose. But Sister C and I enjoyed our dark chocolate and salted caramel ice cream mixes.
Our meeting in Rapid on Tuesday was good, as usual. We had a nice lesson on the phone with Robert that afternoon. We did the law of Chastity and it wasn't even awkward--being around Sister C is rubbing off on me, which is great! We had a good success with a less-active family in Spearfish. They haven't met with missionaries in many years, but when we called they said we could come over for dinner. They're a cute couple with a fun story, and they enjoyed listening to Elder Birch afterwards. Hopefully they'll come to Church soon. Also, remember Bill? We stopped meeting with him a few months ago since he didn't really seem like he was going anywhere, but Sister C and I both felt like we needed to go back, so we did, and he is now preparing to be baptized on September 5! He is so sad right now, but I know that the Gospel can bring so much happiness into our lives if we allow it.
Wednesday morning we went to help at the Tri-State museum, cleaning up the weeds from a flower bed. I don't know which Sisters got into this setup, but apparently they expect us to take care of the landscaping....we haven't really been keeping it up that well, but I guess the museum people can fix it if they want. *shrug* We had a nice Preach My Gospel discussion with Hannah and her mom--this time, we just jumped right into practicing for teaching. We read through the Restoration and, for each paragraph, switched one of the sentences into a question to practice teaching with questions. It was fun to see how many great conversations we got going talking about the basic principles of the Gospel. I really love how Hannah and her mom learn together--I want to do that with my Mom when I go home. : ) We also visited Patty at the assisted living in Belle. She's doing pretty poorly health-wise, but she enjoyed listening to us sing Amazing Grace. The Seys had us over for dinner, and then we went to the Church for Family History/Media Hour (I do family history and Sister C does Media). We got distracted by printing out a million talks from the Elders. It was Sister D's birthday and we forgot to call her! Oh well. We were also putting off going tracting all day. I kept feeling like we needed to go, especially over by the Bishop's house, but I just flat-out ignored the Spirit. That is such a bad idea, by the way. I talked with Sister C about it, and she reprimanded me for not saying anything. Apparently she'd felt so too, but also didn't want to bring anything up.
Thursday morning we did some epic tracting role plays to get her more comfortable and me more excited. And it totally worked! May I just say, Sister C could totally go into acting. : ) We had a nice visit with Caitlin--Rueben and his mom stopped in, but they didn't really come and listen. I don't really know what we're going to do with Rueben.... And then Weekly Planning! We just plowed through and got it all done until we had dinner and a lesson with the Os. I've been trying to get Brother O to watch His Grace Is Sufficient by Brad Wilcox since I first got here at Easter, so we just decided to read it out loud together. And it was super good. Also, they're amazing cooks and dinner was great as well. : ) We are so spoiled! And the best of the day is yet to come--we had half an hour after the Os were done, so we went tracting over by the Bishop's house, and the first door we knocked on the lady let us in and we talked and invited her to come to Church. : ) So sweet!
Happy Pioneer Day! We had District Meeting in Belle Fourche on Friday. We haven't done that since Sister C came, so that was a little deja vu. Elder B had a nice training on the importance of helping our investigators of the temple as a goal. He used 2 Nephi 31:14 to emphasize the point. : ) What I most learned, however, was how I want to study from Preach My Gospel every day (which I haven't been as faithful at as I've been hoping...) After our lunch hour, we went to the Relief Society's Pioneer Day Party At the Park in Spearfish. There was only about half an hour left, but it would have been weird to just go and sit not doing anything for longer than that, I think. However, it was long enough to notice that Sister Wehr, a member who is on the Stake Young Women's committee, is completely overwhelmed by her Girls' Camp responsibilities and we planned with her to go over the next day to help out.
We had a nice drive out to Alzada, Montana, for dinner. On the way there, we decided it would be a good idea to throw together a musical number for Church on Sunday since it would probably be our last normal one together (since it will be Fast Sunday this coming week). We picked up my musical binder and, in the car, picked out a nice arrangement of Be Still My Soul, which I'd never before played. The McIns fed us grilled chicken, potato salad, etc., and we had a cool short story message we read together--Sister C is good at finding that type of thing. Sister McIn will be enlisting our help this coming week to help her arrange flower bouquets for her daughter's wedding. We would totally go except it will be outside our mission boundaries.... It's so cool for me to see how strong she has kept herself in the Gospel. Her husband isn't a member, but she teaches Seminary and studies the scriptures every day. Their ranch is way out in the middle of the flatlands, but she makes the 45+ minute drive to Church as often as she can.
Hay & the Sky. I took like a bazillion pictures of it. :]
When we got back we practiced with Hannah at the Church for our musical number, and then the Rapid City Sisters arrived and we did exchanges! It was sad to say goodbye to Sister C.
Saturday morning Sister G and I went to the Church so I could practice piano some more, then we volunteered at the Museum. She just so happens to always come on exchanges when we're volunteering at the museum, because this was her second time now. We enjoyed dusting all the exhibits together--she's like me, where we just take our time looking at everything, dragging around. We took some memory pictures as well, which is convenient since I might not get another chance. Sister O fed us lunch--funny story, last time Sister O fed us was when Sister C was with Sister G on exchanges last transfer!
The John Spaulding Cabin--I had my tour of it on Independence Day.
We then went over to help Sister Wehr with everything. Her house looked like Girls' Camp decorations had just exploded into it, and we helped her pack things up into the car and write her talk and clean her kitchen, etc. Besides Girls' Camp this week, they also have family coming over and they're renting out their loft for Rally. So crazy! We're going to try to come help again on Wednesday.
When we went to the Steds, Sister Sted was in the middle of washing her dogs, so Sister G got to help with that. :) We told them we were heading to Rapid City to switch companions after our dinner and lesson, and they decided they'd just drive us up there for dinner since they needed to go anyway. So we had our lesson with Ashley in the back seat of their Explorer. I've never taught a lesson in a car before, but it is actually a surprisingly-good teaching environment. There aren't really any distractions, and the sound barrier between the front and back seats allowed everyone to have a good conversation going. They took us to Pacific Rim for dinner, which was a super cool Asian restaurant in Rapid. I got a baguette sandwich (not very authentic but delicious). I hadn't realized how much I missed Sister C until I saw her again, and then I felt like we needed to be velcro for a while.
Sunday was great. I LOVE Sundays. Our spur-of-the-moment musical number went off surprisingly well (thank you Heavenly Father), there were a bazillion less-active families there, and in Sturgis with the Steve bee crew apparently a Fin cousin was in town! We had a cool lesson with Ashley (possibly my last one with her until I leave... :( ), the Spirit was super strong and I can feel that she is just so ready to be baptized. She already has her faith as her highest priority. Her Mom's family disowned her when she wouldn't be Baptist, and her dad's family doesn't really like her being Mormon, but she knows it's right and is going to listen to her prayers.
I had a hard time praying Sunday night--I kept crying because I'm going to miss being here so much. People say that after you leave your Greenie area it's not so bad, but I feel like I love everyone here just as much. There is just so much love that grows as your spend your days serving a group of people. Charity is a gift from God, that is true, but He can only give it to us when, after we pray for help, we then go out and serve. I can testify that that is true, because as a missionary I experience it every day. As President and Sister Hess say, "This is a mission of love."
I love you all!
-Sister F
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