54 - Districts, Dinners, and Transfers

We went out to eat with the person who heads 1st international bank and trust, aka, Sister Edwards dad. 

All approved by President of course.

And here are a couple of not very good photos of our district.

Well, first thing's first, transfer calls happened this morning. (They were not on Saturday like usual, which was a little lame, but anyways!) 

These are the changes. Sister Edwards is going to Fargo, North Dakota, which was my trainer, Sister Easter's, first area. 

Sister Schoenfeld is going to Schadran, Nebraska, or however you spell that. And what's happening with the other two who live in the apartment?.....

SISTER BARRETT AND I ARE GOING TO BE COMPANIONS! 

I'M SO EXCITED! 

And she's going to be Sister Training leader, only over one set of Sisters, which are the sisters in Minot two hours away. 

I've always served closely with the Sister Training leader, but I've never been her companion! 

As Sister Training leader's companion, you are left entertain yourself at least twice during the week while the Sister Training leader has phone calls with the Zone leaders and with the other sisters that she's over. 

I'm pretty good at entertaining myself and supporting my companion. 

And Sister Barrett is SO stinkin' cute and she and I get along fabulously and I am so so so excited to be her companion come Thursday when our companions take off for their new areas. 

A more awesome picture of our awesome district. :)

We are going to be combining our areas, but we will meet as a district sometime this week and make solid decisions on whose area should be whose. 

There are going to be two sets of elders and now just one set of Sisters... but I don't want to cover area in all three wards and attend nine hours of church if I don't have to! 

So we will see what happens there. 

I really enjoyed my time with this district.

The weather was so nice at the beginning of the week! 

We had a super awesome day of warm refreshing rain on Wednesday! 

It got a bit cold after that... but that's ok. It still warmed up in the afternoons. 

We went to Ray to work again this week. 

We taught three lessons and there are some people who we haven't really been able to teach, but we figured we could always make them Mother's Day cookies!

The sugar cookies tasted almost exactly like the sugar cookies my mom makes for our annual Christmas caroling party.

Oh, and Williston Band Day happened this Saturday, and, such a teenage forgetful boy thing to do, Sister Boone's son needed to be at the school in Ray to go and perform in the band day and Sister Boone had NO idea about it until that very morning! So plans changed last minute and we went to the Band day to watch him perform. He plays percussion. But they performed early... But we saw him afterward, so that was good and important, to at least show that his mom went to support him.

Happy Mother's Day everyone! We went back to Williston for church, which was super good and I'll totally talk about more Sunday churches later when I have time, just know that tons of people came to church and it was great, and then we went right back up to Ray. 

We face-timed our families, and it was so great. My family is awesome.

And then....

The awesome Mother's Day BBQ we've been planning! Again, hosted at the Boone's house in Ray. 

It was SUCH a great turnout! 

Three less active families, some active families in Williston, two less active individuals, and a couple nonmembers came, as well as the Bishop and his family, so they had the chance to meet everyone! It was super good.

We also met two new less actives this week that aren't on the ward list because their records are in Idaho/Utah respectively because they travel back and forth because they are oil field workers, and we committed the one to come to church on his week here, which is the 24th, and the other one we invited to church and he came! And he has been reading his scriptures and wants to meet with us very much and wants to become worthy to receive his patriarchal blessing and exercise the priesthood and things like that, so we are seeing him in Ray tomorrow! Thank goodness for awesome members who give us rides!

I met two other less actives this week who we have teaching records for, but I've never met, and one of those less actives also came to church on Mother's Day! It was a great day! It was just great and I'm out of time otherwise I would go into more detail.

Boone Family

A shout out to the Boone's! 

I'm so grateful to them for everything! 

For letting us stay at their house, for their girls coming out on splits with us, for having awesome BBQs, and just being so awesome! 

Thank you thank you! 

Till next week!

53 - The Sabbath is a Delight

It's May now and spring is here! 

Look at all them dandelion flowers! 

And that weeping willow is getting its leaves back fast! 

Did you know that weeping willows loose their leaves here? 

It just doesn't get cold enough in Arizona! 

They look like ghost trees with their leaves off, their little wisps still hanging down and blowing gently in the wind. 

Should have taken a picture of one before leaves came back, sorry.

It's been really nice recently though, and we even went to a park and studies outside today because the sun was shining.

Aw, Thanks, Sisters Barret and Schoenfeld

Oh, also, when we came back from Ray last week, we opened up our closet doors and mine looked like this:

Sister Barret and Sister Schoenfeld are so nice!

Sister Edwards spent a good portion of time recovering from sickness this week. 

We spent basically two whole days inside. 

During that time I wrote some letters of appreciation to three Sisters who are leaving for home at the end of this transfer. 

Sister Springer, Sister Dennison, and Sister Sumsion are all ending their missions May 9th. 

They are all great sisters.

They next day we stayed in, I figured out using the ward list, a map and our GPS all the less actives in our area and made an organized list so we can track them down and bring them back to the fold. It was awesome, but I feel that the reason that it got done so fast was because my companion was so sick. 

It's never fun to be sick.

The good news is, she was better come the weekend; therefore, for church, yay!

Speaking of church, there are some awesome things that have happened in church that I have just not had time to mention yet.

My very first Sunday, the Bismarck Temple President and his wife came and spoke and the wife was telling a story. The Temple was understaffed that day, and no one seemed to be coming in anyway, until this African man walked in. He was a regular. He came and did baptism's very often at the temple. He had a family name- his grandmother. He wanted to have his grandmother's baptismal ordinance done. Well, only females are to be baptized for females and males for males in harmony with the truth of gender being a huge part of our divine nature, and there were no females there, except for her, the temple president's wife. She hadn't done baptism's in awhile! She usually helped others with doing baptisms if anything. She got dressed in white and her husband as well and her husband baptized her for this African man's grandmother, and how wonderful of an experience that was.

This was in Bismarck. He was African and he was a regular. I couldn't get the question out of my mind. Was is the man who was baptized in December of 2013? Who had such a dynamite testimony and brought all of his friend and acquaintances to church and just wanted to share the gospel with everybody? Was it him? I love him? Is it him?

I asked the temple president and his wife afterward and they confirmed my suspicions!

It was Daniel! Oh! I love him soooo much! Seriously, he is the reason for like, so many of the baptisms in Bismarck! And I was able to see him baptize his friend, his first baptism that he performed, and it was sooooo cool! Plus hearing the baptismal prayer in a Liberian accent is just super cool too.

And there's another story... but darn, I'll have to tell it next week.

Back to the present.

This week was actually stake conference for the Minot Stake.

We all stayed with the Minot sisters, who live in a member's modified attic. It was cramped, but it was fun, and the most like a 'sleepover' I've ever experienced on my mission for better or worse. haha. That moment when the lights are out and people just decide to keep making comments because we all know that no one reeeeally wants to sleep. haha.

This really does mark that I've been on my mission for a year because stake conference was my first Sunday in Bismarck, and that was the Stake Conference where it was announced that the stake was splitting into the Bismarck and Minot stakes. So Here I am again, back in Minot, only this time conference was held at a big center which was part of the Holiday Inn instead of at a sports stadium.

Stake Conference at the Holiday Inn

They even had it on their big electronic activities board which I find humorous, but awesome.

Conference was great. It had an emphasis on Temples and the importance of Sabbath Day observance, giving the sabbath to the Savior. It was pretty crazy- Sister Edwards was actually asked on the fly to give her testimony! When she walked up, they whispered to her that they would like her to speak about the first vision and recited Joseph Smith's experience and that she had two minutes. She began, trying to catch her breath that her nerves robbed from her:

"I saw a pillar of light... exactly over my head... above the brightness of the sun..... which descended gradually until it fell upon me. ....When the light... rested upon me, ..I saw two personages...... whose brightness and glory defy all description.... standing above me in the air. ....One of them.... spake unto me, calling me by name.... and said, "This is my Beloved Son, hear him!""

Her testimony was powerful and touched many. It turns out President fed them four names the day before of missionaries who could bare there testimony about the missionary purpose.

But something that I will always remember about this stake conference is seeing this little boy.

Kyle has Spina Bifida, just like Marshall my brother, :)

This little eight, soon to be nine, year old boy has Spina Bifida and reminds me a lot of my brother Marshall. I saw him before conference started and went up to him to say hi. After sitting back down, I became pretty emotional, just with the similarities causing my heart to miss Marshall very much. After a member that I knew well asked me if something was wrong, I could not hold back the tears. But I eventually calmed down (and the priesthood blessing that my companion suggested I should get probably helped) and things are a'okay. Plus I get to see Marshall and the rest of my family this upcoming Sunday on the Skype call home for Mother's Day! So that will be really nice.

After we got back home, we had a lesson with Dude watching "On the Lord's Errand," a documentary about Thomas S. Monson, the prophet on the earth today. It's wonderful! You need to watch it!

https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2009-09-01-on-the-lords-errand-the-life-of-thomas-s-monson?lang=eng

And after the lesson we had dinner, with a member who lives just outside the city and they have horses! We got a small tour of their outdoors!

Horses really are beautiful creatures.

Well, that's it for this week. Next week I will know whether or not I'm staying with Sister Edwards another transfer or not. 

She feels like she's going, but you never know! 

Till next week!

P.S. (Pic) Look at this cute little bat just hangin' out on the wall under the balcony of a member's house! So cute!

P.P.S. May the forth be with you.

52 - Giving Service

Don't have a lot of time today, so this will be a quick fast entry!

First off, this mission boundaries have officially changed and the mission home is now officially packed up and is now located in Bismarck. 72 missionaries are no longer within the original mission boundaries.

It was very sad for President and Sister Anderson to go around and say their goodbyes to them, but they will do great in their new missions.

I have been having a hard time recently, harder than I thought, with dumb Satan and natural man causing my mind to have negative thoughts and be all competitive with Sister Edwards only in my mind and I hated feeling that way and when it got to the point where I noticed I needed to express how I was feeling I became an emotional mess. But it's ok, because talking about it is like, most of the battle for me.

We cover part of the 2nd and 3rd wards in Williston

But two days later, we had exchanges. While I was with Sister Schoenfeld working in her area, it was a very productive day! We taught five lessons with basically no wiggle room in between and taught the less actives about the importance of the sacrament, committing them to come to church so they can fully partake of the atonement! It was solid and Sister Schoenfeld was pleasantly surprised to have gotten in with so many people that our day was just eaten up with lessons! And when we came back...

Sister Edwards and Sister Barrett heart attacked our rooms, and wrote compliments on hearts and awwww it was so nice!

And Sister Edwards bought me awesome blueberry candies and Lillies on top of it!

I am so bad at repaying people. That was SO nice of her! I know she says I don't need to repay her, but I want to. It was soooo nice.

Speaking of service, we did a lot of service this Saturday. We helped someone move, and we helped paint someones house. 

And we brought stuff to a BBQ thing that just kind of happened.

It was this Dude's idea.

That's right.

I'm calling him Dude.

He is a member who is returning to activity and we are going to be teaching him the missionary discussions.

He's awesome.

But we were there for way too long, like 3 1/2 hours. But it was good. We had lots of gospel conversation, and Pablo (I think that's the name I decided to give him lol) was there, our investigator, so that was really good.

In between exchanges and this day of service though, I was sick with a cold, so I spent quite a bit of time getting better. But Sister Edwards is awesome and while I was recovering she went out and taught our lessons that we had set up.

We just came back from Ray and we had a good run up there, or as good as possible. Sister Edwards's stomach has been giving her problems since Sunday, and Tuesday it was so bad that she couldn't go out and work, and then all the women in the house became either sick or busy. So we only saw one person, but it was a good visit. She fed us dinner.

And then on Monday the Boone's had a BBQ and a less active family came to that, and that was great for them!

That little boy in the Superman outfit just kills me.

He's three and part of the family who is less active. He is just SO cute!

That's all.

Hopefully Sister Edwards gets better soon.

After all...

Where there's a Will, There's a way!