79 - The First and the Last

You know you don't have very much time left as a missionary when you log onto the missionary site and it says on there "You must be assigned to a proselyting area in order to report key indicators." How then are we supposed to report our three baptisms darn it! Oh well. I guess the zone leaders will take care of it.

That morning we got, surprise surprise! A transfer call! It was kind of bummer news though. Elders are coming into the area. The Elders are Elder Ashby, who is a wonderful and experienced missionary, and he's training a new missionary. It'll be good and the Lord knows what's best... but we are super sad that there's not going to be any sisters. No sisters in Williston at all... But they want to put sisters back in they say. Maybe in the spring.

Monday I was also pretty miserably sick with a nasty cold. I was very cranky at some points of the day and in the evening we just ended up staying inside and sleeping basically. I'm just glad I got sick BEFORE going home, and not during the traveling process.


However, despite sickness, I did suck it up and go play bowling with our district like we had planned as a last hurrah.





Also, don't play bowling with lady claws, because this will happen to you.

Sister Lewis broke her nail good! haha.





Packing packing and packing. It's a project. Especially when neither of you are feeling super well. But we got through it, packing in spurts Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday morning. We were going to prepare the area with tons of sticky notes with random tips as well, but we were just too exhausted and booked up with packing.

Our relief society president is a saint and she took us out to lunch and got us each a going away present. She gave each of us this same ornament to remind us of the magic of her taking us up to Grenora in her red truck of a sleigh to bring the magic to the sisters in Grenora. How nice is that! And she told us that if we brought her boxes that were addressed, that she could send home anything that we needed if our stuff was too much for our suitcases to pass the weight limit test at the airport! She is so awesome!

It was Wednesday now and we were both feeling much better than the day before. We finished up packing and we brought four boxes to our relief society president for her to send home for us. It was time for the in person goodbyes. I was hoping not to put on my coat for the rest of my mission, but this last day it was in the 30s. So on our jackets went.

We said bye to a sweet old less active lady that we hadn't seen in awhile. And we then walked two doors down to say bye to Vaasa. He was SO happy for us. Holy cow, we've never seen the man smile so much. Him and his Russian self being so Russian.

"Mission is good. But normal life better. Normal life you need to go and get good education. And find good man who take-en care of you. Because American, is no good. American vomen is too much power. European vomen, zay understand-ez zis. Find man who love-ez you and take-ez care of vomen. Have good life and excited for you for marriage. Sank you for everysing."

He was just over the moon a the thought of us settling down and having a family with a good man! So funny. What a good old man you are Vaasa.

Then we drove out to Lukenbill to say bye to the Brown family, because they are just so awesome. We will miss them.

Then we stopped by Elias and Mr. Kiwi's house to see if they were home. Mr. Kiwi was and Elias would be in a minute. So we gave each other a hard time until Elias got there and he came with his friend Cab. I call him that because this friend would often provide transportation for him.

It was almost five and we had a tradition to fulfill tonight. At the end of your mission it is customary among missionaries to burn a skirt or dress if you're a sister, or a suit coat if you are an elder. Not every missionary does this tradition, but it's a fun one if you choose to do it. We had eaten dinner with the Awesome family the night before. (This was the "All-So Awesome" family. The Awesome's I've always previously talked about are the "Crazy Awesome" family. Brother All-So Awesome and Brother Crazy Awesome are biological brothers.)

As we told them about this tradition, they immediately, being the red neck fun kinda people they are, offered to help us light em up, with gasoline and everything! Heck yeah!

So we were at Elias and Mr. Kiwi's house when we heard that we were good to come over. They were very confused as to what was going on and it was just so funny and one would try to explain and the other would be like 'stop trying to explain, you don't know what you're talking about' and it was just hilarious. We were just like, "Just follow us. Come on!" And we drove on over there, trusting that the All-to-Awesome's wouldn't mind three Africans tagging along to watch the fun!

Before we get fully into the skirt burning though, I need to tell a story.

Once upon a time, I found a skirt. It was in my mom's closet and I needed clothes to take on my mission, but I didn't have very many skirts. She had three skirts just right there that were like magic! They were all the same cut, simple, cute, and the colors were a tan, a black, and a gray. She allowed me to take them on my mission and they have been my staple skirts, but the tan one was my favorite because it fit just perfect because for some reason in was a size bigger. I loved it so much.

Then one day. I endeavored to fix my watch's thing that holds down the loose strap... with super glue... and a big drop got on my skirt... After trying a few times to get it out with just water and soap, I was dumb and tried to get it out with fingernail polish remover and it distorted the coloring in the skirt. I ruined it! SAD FACE!

So. I Decided it would be given a proper burial.

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!! Look at that!

And there it is. It's life with me began with the mission and ended with it too. Farewell skirt. Time to burn another skirt!

Sister Lewis's burned for a long time! Because it was cotton. And eventually it got a little less cool and she put it on the block.

Anyone for marshmallows?

So that was super fun and fulfilling.




Then we saw Kristen and the cute kitten that got so much bigger! Holy cow! We were instructed though to come back and get a present for us later that night.

In the mean time we went to dinner with the members that are like our grandma and grandpa of Williston. The lady that we helped by filling her pill containers last week and the man who baptized Elias. She was doin alright enough with her fractured pelvis to still go out to eat using her walker. It was SO humid in that Chinese buffet! It looked like it was raining outside, but no, it was just all the condensation on the windows. Sister Lewis, being a Louisiana girl, was in heaven.

After our last dinner as a missionary in Williston (it gets more and more real that you're going home with every 'last this' and 'last that'), we called Jaffar to see if he was alive. This was his last chance! He had NOT been responding to us, the stinker, and he hadn't even signed his baptismal record yet because he ducked out of church early for whatever reason! And surprise. He didn't pick up.

So we said goodbye real fast to our ward mission leader and his wife, and then! Jaffar called us back! YOU'RE ALIVE! So we went over to see him!

We went and slapped him for being dead. Not really, but we let him know that we were concerned about him. His work, his construction work, had him working in Minot lots those ten days on, and so he was getting home super late and yeah. But now are his four days off. So we set up a return appointment for the elders and had him sign his baptismal record, and gave him his picture, which he really appreciated.

Then, even though it was super late, we went over to see Kristen as she instructed, and she gave Sister Lewis some scotcheroos, something that Sister Lewis can actually eat that she loves, and...

She gave us both crosses that were carved IN Jerusalem! So neat! And she and her daughter that is a member and comes out with us all the time, and her son all signed the back. How nice is that!!



We got back at almost 10:30. Oops. So we basically went straight to bed.





"But many that are first shall be last; and the last first," (Mark 10:31).

We woke up at 6:30 on Thursday as per usual. But this was not a usual day. It was for both of us our last full day as a set apart missionary.

We were scrambling to get some final notes written for the elders and get numbers jotted down for us and to get our suitcases in the car. We had just over an hour to do this and I feel bad, but we kind of left the apartment a bit of a mess for the elders... Don't worry though. We wrote an apologetic sticky note as well.

At 8 o'clock, we were off! Just us and our bags, going straight for the four-hours-away place called Bismarck! Man, there's so many ways in which I've ended my mission the same way I began it. I started in Bismarck, and I never thought this would happen, but I'm flying out of Bismarck as well. Going home missionaries used to fly out of Rapid City, SD.

I also came into the mission with one day of snow on the ground and what a nice and symbolic thing to leave the same way. So cool.





We got to Bismarck a little before noon and waited for the transfer train to get there. Lunch was provided for all the missionaries that were there. It was weird, not recognizing more than half of the missionaries and talking to them saying how long we've been out and I would say, "I'm goin home." "Oh!..." Now I was that missionary that was goin home. Just crazy. And insane to think that it was in this very church that I first started, with this bags, seeing my trainer, Sister Easter, and taking a picture next to the temple for the first time, eighteen long months ago.

It was around 2 now and the transfer train was loaded up with everyone's suitcases that was being transferred. But my district leader, the punk, Elder Reynolds shook my hand and said, "Wait, you're dead now. Bye Hannah!"

And I was SO caught off guard- I screamed! AH! No! You're not supposed to call me by my first name! lol And he just ran away doing his little 'nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah!' laughing noise thing! Hahaha.

Now that all the missionaries who were goin home were gathered at the church and the transfer tvan was departing, it was time to go to the mission home with President and Sister Hess! I'd never been in the mission home before! Wow, so exciting.

We arrived, all eight of us. Elder Gruver, Elder Merritt, Elder Deeter, Sister Hawkes, Sister Paniagua, Sister Clegg, Sister Lewis, And Sister Sanderson. I didn't know the elders very well, but I know all the sisters.

All of us received a binder that has all the weekly reporting emails we sent to president, a contact list of all the missionaries that were out during the time we were out and their listed home addresses and stuff which is super nice, and some talks and official letters addressed to returned missionaries. Oh, and any mail that they held for us in this last week.



We were instructed to relax while President had final one on one interviews with people.

While president was doing interviews, those of us who were musically inclined gathered around the piano and sang hymns. My voice was still not recovered fully from being sick, but I made do, and it was really fun.

We then ate an early dinner, with lots of ham! It was very good.

While dinner was being cleaned up I had my interview. It was crazy being in presidents office and seeing the transfer board that we weren't on anymore. In my interview, I expressed to president that one of the things I had learned most on my mission is how to rely on the spirit. I commended me for that and assured me that I would use that ability the rest of my life.

And after dinner we went to the temple! Which was really cool for Sister Lewis, because this was her only time that she's gotten to go to the temple on her mission, because seriously she has served everywhere else BUT around the temple! Super cool for her to finally go. This what my fourth time going.

You can actually see the temple from the mission home's back porch view! You have to know what you're looking for, but you can see the spire just to the left of the big blue water tower.







When we came back we had dessert, cheesecake!

Then we all went downstairs and played a game with tennis balls which was just fun and also served as an object lesson. It was the game where you passed the tennis balls in a certain order, but you had five or six balls going and it was easy to get distracted. If your get distracted, you'll mess up either the sending or the receiving. Moral of the story: keep focused on what really matters.

Then President and Sister Hess gave us a 'Mom and Dad' talk. They exhorted us to keep clean. They talked about dating, about keeping good habits, about centering things on Jesus Christ, all that good stuff. And the coolest thing was that President Hess explained that it's a promise that when you are released as a missionary it is a promise that you are absolutely clean and pure. That's powerful.

President Hess then had us go around and share scriptures that defined our mission experiences. We had some really good ones. One of the elders shared the story in 1 Samuel 17:41-47 and talked about there were many goliaths on his mission and that there will be after returning home as well, but that if you are fighting together with the Lord that you don't need to fear. The other two elders shared scriptures from the famous prayer of Nephi in 2 Nephi 4, and I shared 1 Corinthians 12:9-10 and I shared my "RAPID" acronym that I talked about earlier in my blog. (Reproaches, Afflictions, Persecutions, Infirmities, Distresses.) But my favorite was Sister Clegg's:

"Nevertheless they did fast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctification of their hearts, which sanctification cometh because of their yielding their hearts unto God," (Helaman 3:35).

That really just sums up what a mission does for you. Brilliant use of this scripture.

We then went to bed. I thought I would take a picture of Hamlet one last time. We ended up going to bed about midnight because the devotional went passed eleven. We all went to sleep, sleep which was preceded with a prayer of gratitude and a request of blessed travels for the monumental journey in the morning.

75 - Miracle of General Conference

General Conference weekend. You know what that means if you are a missionary. INVITE EVERYONE! Prophets! All day every day!

It was great inviting everyone to conference! We made up little flyers with all the times on it to pass out to everyone. Sister Lewis has been sick with a cold though, and it's been getting worse throughout the week it seems, so I went on splits with Kristen's daughter to hand them all out. Very successful! And we sent out mass text reminders as well! We don't know how many people watched it. We can only do so much reminding and inviting. Not as many people showed up to the church to watch it as we hoped, but oh well I suppose. We still had people come.

There was a dumb thing that happened in passing out one invitation though. We hadn't seen this investigator in awhile, just because of life. She's an investigator that Sister Barrett and Sister Schoenfeld tracted into in a trailer park by the church.

Well, instead of the investigator coming out, her friend came out, and... yeah. When we asked about our investigator she dodged the question, and she told us 'she' was her christian friend and that she's never going to convert and that we don't need to come back and not all Mormons are Christians and blah blah blah. It was just one of those interactions that made your stomach sick.

We were really angry. Because that whole thing was really dumb. SO we went and played with kittens at Kristen's house!

And we ARE going back to that investigators house. We aren't taking just the words of her friend.

We've taught Jaffar a few times this week. It was so funny. We were going to his place to have a lesson, and both Jaffar and Brother Witt were stuck in the lobby. (They just started locking the doors of the 'African apartments' as we like to call them, which is really lame.) We walked in and wondered if it was planned - Brother Witt doesn't live there after all!

"Brother Witt! Are you here visiting Jaffar?"

They looked at each other and it finally clicked that they knew each other from church from Brother Witt giving Elias the priesthood! Super funny. Brother Witt was actually going to visit the Azonto's. Everyone thinks that Brother Witt is the bishop because our bishop has been out of town so much and seriously hasn't been on the stand for a month now.

Jaffar is still on for getting baptized on the 17th.

Someone else that is on for getting baptized: We thought it would be Zazu, but plot twist! It's Charity! We met with Orlando and Charity at the beginning of this week and she had been thinking a lot about it and she wants to be baptized before I leave! And Saturday was the day they picked to quit smoking and do the whole grapefruit juice and cinnamon mouthwash thing of the stop smoking program!

I told her that that's great that she wants to be baptized and that she wants me to be there, but that she NEEDS to stay active in the church! She says she understands. I want her to be baptized... but they need so show that they will be faithful at attending church and take their own personal initiative, not wait for the other to step up. And Satan knows it.

We were totally going to watch the afternoon session with them on Saturday, but they texted that a friend had an emergency that they needed to help out with and we tried to set up watching it with them on Sunday, but they never answered their calls or texts... But Orlando's father gave them both a blessing still on Saturday for strength so they can quit smoking. They are so up and down...

A story that I failed to mention, there's a Mexican investigator that we'd only been able to teach once because we just never managed to set up a return appointment that worked out because his work was so crazy. We were trying to meet him on Friday nights. Often he would text us that they were still working, but we kept trying.

Well. Friday came around. And we forgot to write down to try and see this Mexican investigator. When we got back to the apartment, we read a heart breaking text.

"Hi miss sanderson how u doin i hope u did have a good day today i got back 20 till 8:pm at tha house today n i was waitin 4 u! :'( "

We were crushed! But it's ok, because we were able to set up an appointment with him for the next evening! And it actually worked out, and it was a great lesson! And then he could know Sister Lewis and not just me! Or so we hoped.

We hoped he would stop texting 'miss sanderson,' but he never did. There were just too many red flags through his texts that he was too attracted to me instead of the gospel. I hate it when that happens! So. We referred him to the Spanish elders.

Elias didn't get a job, but he did get moved in with his one other roommate to a little house. Our relief society president is a saint and she was able to donate some dishes and sheets and towels to them. They were super grateful.

Elias has been frustrating us though. We wanted him to come to both sessions on Sunday, but he wasn't ready in time for the first one and he made his ride come back for him and he still wasn't ready. So he made her miss much of that session. He was ready for the last session. But it was still lame. But it's ok. The atonement is real.

You know what's super cool? President and Sister Hess coming through Williston and taking us all to lunch and Applebee's!!!

SO Awesome! And we all got to talk to President Hess about our areas and what they need and what we could use and it was awesome! Elder Reynolds put in the suggestion of having a set of sisters open and area in Ray, and have them cover the three small cities of Ray, Crosby, and Noonan. That would be GREAT! And then we were able to express that we have two much work for just one set in first ward, so we could totally use two sets of missionaries, AND that we NEED sisters!

And when we went to the church to take a picture, President and Sister Hess met our relief society president, Sister Clean, who had tears in her eyes talking about how much she appreciates having us sisters and how she will be so sad if she doesn't have her sisters to work with. President Hess told her we would be getting a set of sisters back. How cool is that! And, Sister Hess and our relief society president know a lot of the same people! 

Now to talk about general conference.

When the new apostles were called, we were sitting on the edge of our seats! Elder Rasband! Elder Stevenson! And Elder......... RENLUND! 

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! WHAT!? OH MY GOODNESS!!!! WHAAAAATT!!! AAAAHHHH!!! SO COOL!!! IS THIS EVEN REAL LIFE!!!??? OH MAAAN!!!"

I met an apostle just a month before he got called! And had a personal interview with him! What!? I am so so humbled! And the story that he gave in his testimony (Elder Runland's Testimony), he totally told that story to us in the meeting. AND the mother of that story is actually Sister Halliday, who works in the North Dakota Bismarck mission office! How insane is that! SO crazy!

I loved the emphasis this conference on mothers, and on new and old prophets, and on the holy ghost and striving to 'use' that gift of the spirit that we all receive after baptism. I LOVE CONFERENCE!!!

We are ponderizing 1 Nephi 15:11 this week. What scripture are you ponderizing?

Until next week!

74 - Signs of the Good Times

Sister Lewis's hair change!!!

Two weeks in one! Let's jump right into it.

From full poof, to halfway straightened, to straight, to cut, to the request of having it halfway braided by Tanya Azonto. 

She can now feel the breeze on her scalp for the first time in a long while!

While she was getting her hair done, I basically the whole time bottle feed the baby that Tanya was watching while he sat in his car seat.

 And she was watching the cutest little not-even-two-year-old girl! She loved to dance to the music on the T.V.!

Tanya was watching a lot of kids. As per usual. She hasn't been coming to church lately... I hope she gains a testimony soon and stops listening everyone else who isn't a member of the church.

And Bruce, he doesn't have a job anymore. His job pouring concrete has ended, as it's only a seasonal job, and he's right back to his unreasonable expectations of the church giving him a job. Oh no, he's not going to revert back to this without me setting him boldly straight. But he still doesn't understand, no matter how clear and bold you are. So there's that. All we can really do is pray that things will work out.

So, updates on the people that we have already been working with.

We saw Charity and Orlando last week a couple times. They are really in a position where we are relying lots on the Holy Ghost to let us know what to teach them. Every time we've brought something up about the need to stop smoking they agree that it's something they want and they talk about quitting, but it never actually happens. 

As I was thinking, I realized we hadn't talked about family in awhile, and that's something they really gravitate towards. So we read The Family Proclamation together. It was a good lesson, but something still seemed a little off with them, especially at the end, a little bit of unintentional contention between them dampened the spirit. We committed them to if they haven't already, start reading from the Book of Mormon.

We thought about the next lesson we would share. Sister Lewis came up having a lesson on the ten virgins. She even had a clay little lamp with a string wick that we could use as a visual. 

When we got to the lesson, Orlando and Charity were just coming home from spending the evening together by the Missouri river, their feet all muddy, especially Charity's and with collected driftwood in the back of their jeep. Good night of just fun we figured.

We ride up the elevator together and we start the lesson, and they expressed to us that the reason they were actually down at the river was for the intent of reading their scriptures! They wanted to made it an event, combining it with one of their favorite things - nature - so that it wouldn't feel like a chore or assignment as scripture reading often can. And Charity remembered that I loved the book of Alma, which was flattering, so she opened up to Alma and found Chapter Five, one of the greatest chapters ever, and thought it was beautiful!

She also had a profound experience. Her head was really hurting on the way down to the river. A debilitating migraine was coming on. She asked Orlando to pray over her, that she had faith that he could stop the pain. He put his hands on the sides of her head and began to pray and her pain in her head subsided. She truly had an experience of the healing power of the priesthood, we pointed out to them. (Orlando is a member and is ordained a Priest. He just hasn't been active in church in his young adult years.)

Our lesson on the ten virgins went well. There wasn't contention this time. And Sister Lewis even felt inspired to give them the lamp that she had as a reminder to continue to fill their lamps with oil. I was so touched and proud of them for making it a point the read their scriptures that as I expressed my pride in them, Charity said, "aw, you have tears in your eyes." And indeed I did.

When I hugged Charity at the end of the lesson, the tears flowed, "I'm just so proud of you!"

"Aw, you're going to make me cry!"

It was a great moment. They promised they would be at church. But. They weren't. Charity wants to progress. But Orlando... we feel he's afraid. He knows that he needs to step up to the plate and get his act together and he's just afraid to do it. That's why it's so up and down with them. One day, he'll come to his full senses and humble himself and start being fully active again.

Vaasa! Our Russian investigator. There is a member who I will call Brother Brown. The browns are the members who live in Lukenbill who had all the Africans over for dinner and are ward missionaries (Brother Brown is the assistant ward mission leader) and Brother Brown is African and Sister Brown is White, so their kids are brown! Hence the name I give them.

Anyway, Brother Brown can speak Russian! So cool! So he has been a great fellowshipper. And we finally recived the Russian Book of Mormon from the mission office, so we gave that to Vaasa and he has read the first twenty chapters! We had a lesson with Vaasa that we asked him all the baptismal questions. He was doin good, though showed a little hesitation when we explained about no tea and coffee, but when we asked the last question, 'are you ready to make the commitment to be baptized, his concerns gushed out of him, that he felt like it was all about baptism and that we have so many rules and he doesn't understand why this is the only true church. Sister Lewis opened her mouth and everything that she said was full of the Holy Ghost. It was full of comfort and love and neither of us knew how she did it, but the room was just filled with love as opposed to the concern that filled it before. Sister Lewis doesn't cry often, and she was moved to tears as we drove home. It was really something.

I haven't talked about this investigator yet, but we have worked with her before. 

I will call her Kristen, because she has a lot of crosses in her house. 

She collects them. 

She is the mother of a recent convert of a little over a year who is super active and awesome and comes out with us all the time. 

And has a guinea pig.

We just haven't really known how to help Kristen, so we've been doing service for her, cleaning her house... and playing with the cute kittens. It's been good for her.

We saw Michelle again in Grenora, and her two step sons! Love those kids. Taught them the plan of salvation and they loved it.

We went and saw Korwa, who is now back from her week and a half trip to Utah with her husband, and we hadn't had dinner yet when we saw her and neither had she, so we all cooked dinner together!

And I got pictures of all her gorgeous Cambodian pictures on the wall which I've been wanting the excuse to capture for a long time!

Speaking of meals...

I forgot to mention last week that we ate with Brother Jolly again!

Doesn't that steak and red snapper on top of dirty rice look like it belongs in a cook book?

Grizzly shaved lol so he's not as grizzlyish anymore, but that's ok. He has been helping out Elias a lot with finding a job! But Grizzly is also super paranoid about whether Elias is legal or not. So silly. And it more seems like Elias is his 'project.' But, yeah. And Grizzly's fed us a lot lately, gluten free hamburgers and pizza! But he's also gotten super defensive since we had the Law of Chasity lesson. He is justifying porn as 'self medication' because of his past. Which is not cool. And just yeah. He's justifying a lot. But now he's off in Dickinson going to trucking school. Hope he does well.

Elias has been frustrating too. Awesome, but frustrating. We couldn't get a hold of him for the longest time! And then, miracles happened and we were able to see bishop for a brief second and know what time he is free and then we finally saw Elias and he was free too and we were like, "Ok! You are having your worthiness interview for the priesthood in an hour!" And on Sunday he received the priesthood from Brother Witt! Yay! He's been awesome coming to lessons with us. But he's also been really unreasonably needy with rides and blah blah blah and that's been frustrating.

New investigator time!

We have five new investigators as of this past two weeks! Wow! That's the most we've found ever since Sister Lewis and I became companions! Heavenly Father is really blessing us. Four of them are African, Three are specifically from Liberia. 

The one who's not from Liberia I will call Zazu.

One of the Liberians is super prepared because he was going to the church and meeting with the missionaries in Australia, but didn't have the chance to get baptized before he came here, so we will surely see him baptized before we leave the mission field! He has crazy facial hair, so I will call him Jaffar. He actually lived in Phoenix, Arizona for two years before he moved here!

The other two Liberians are both named Precious and they both live on the same floor, and we met them both at the Azonto's, who also live on the same floor! 

And the other investigator is deaf! I will call her Memory, because she has distant memories of a babysitter singing her a melody about the ocean and her mom having a conversation with the neighbor outside as she cried before she went completely deaf at age 3 due to contracting meningitis. Memory is the mother of a less active who lives in Grenora, who we actually first met right before we went a few weeks ago the second time we went to Grenora. I will call this less active family the Far family. We met her briefly before our lesson with Michelle, but we had our lesson with Michelle in like, five minutes from us knocking on the door! I was so bummed, I wanted to talk with her more--she was deaf! I felt such a connection to her and was so sad she lived all the way in Grenora.

Well. Something SUPER COOL. There are two less active families who know the church is true and they both lived in Grenora so it was hard to make it to church. One family is Memory's daughter's family and the other family just moved here to Williston! I will call them the Far family and the Near family respectively. Both of the families have kids that are baptism age or almost to age eight and they both wanted to have their kids take the lessons, and the Far family is willing to drive down on the weekends to receive the lessons! And being as I know sign language, they bring Memory down too! Sister Lewis teaches the many kids while I interpret for Memory! We had our first lesson and dinner last Saturday and we are going to teach all the lessons over the span of all the Saturdays till the end of the transfer! It's an amazing experience! 

And we've talked to people in the ward, and we can have the resources available (people who know a little and have degrees in deaf communications and people who have a desire to learn from scratch) an interpreter or two trained to translate church for her for when I'm gone! Heavenly Father loves all of His children so much!

And last thing to talk about because it's all I have time for. This Sunday was AWESOME! We gave our final testimonies in sacrament meeting, seeing as for both of us it's our last fast Sunday as missionaries. Zazu also bore his testimony (first time at church)! 

And a less active family came, a family who we've taught a couple times and they've fed us once and Sister Nelson, I'll call her, would tell us outright that they had no excuse for not coming to church. We call them to repentance to no avail. They never came to church though they said all the time they would. We knew it had to be from the members that they would start coming to church again. We sent her visiting teacher on a mission. It worked.

The Nelson kids for some reason just adore us, the sisters, or well, me since I'm the only one they know. I'm excited to see two of the young boys were getting up (I think because they saw us get up partly). One of them just talked about pumpkins and how they had fun and the pumpkin patch and how he is thankful that God let him have fun. And then! Sister Nelson got up and bore her testimony, saying that it was her second time ever bearing her testimony in church and that Heavenly Father has placed all the members of the ward in her life this past week and it was an undeniable sign to her and they will make an increased effort to be much better at coming to church! YAY! It was amazing!

And when Zazu was in gospel principles sitting next to us, he made a comment, "It feels like there is a bubbling volcano inside of me. I leaned over and explained, "that burning feeling is the spirit. Hymn number two. The spirit of God like a fire is burning." "Yes. Thank you God." He was amazed at church. He has been to many churches, but never has felt the spirit like this.

As for how I am personally, I'm definitely mentally preparing to go home for better or worse. I'm trying to still stay consecrated, but I do find myself singing per say, the opening line to Lion king when I see the sun looking cool when I resisted the urge before. It's just little things like that. So I know it's not 'good' but I don't think it's bad, idk. That's where I'm at. I'm glad that we are companions for our last transfer of our missions to support each other. 

So that's all for this entry! Until next week!