Transfer calls came Tuesday night. Well, they usually do. But our district leader somehow forgot to call us (even though we are the only sisters in the entire zone! how does that happen?? oh well. elders. haha) We anxiously waited ALL night for our phone to ring. Finally at 10:29, I decided to call. It's pretty funny. We're asked to be extra polite on the phone and introduce who is speaking before saying anything else. But I was so tired of waiting, I skipped formalities and said, "Alright, who's getting transferred?" hahahaha. It was pretty funny. The elder that picked up was like, "uhhh...can we call you back?" Finally they called back to tell me I was leaving. I guess I need to pray for patience! :)
Wednesday, we had a lesson with Sister Borden, who's one of our less actives who is returning to church after 20 or so years. We didn't get to see her for about two weeks because she had an emergency and went into the hospital. We wanted to visit her, but her hospital is in in district, so we weren't able to go. :( But we were finally able to visit my last day in the area!!! She had picked up smoking a while ago and just told us that she really wanted to quit. Sister Udall and I already knew that she smoked way before she told us. On May 30, we were studying about how we could help her overcome her addiction and we both strongly felt that we needed to give something up that we were addicted to so that we could relate with her better. The only thing that I'm really addicted to is chocolate. It's something I could never "live without". haha. So both Sister Udall and I committed ourselves to never eating chocolate again for the rest of our lives. Yep. We're crazy! Anyway. We told SIster Borden about it, and she started crying. She was really touched by our sacrifice in her behalf and that we had given her even greater motivation to quit smoking. It was a moment that I will never forget. THe spirit was so strong.
I love the Centreville 2nd ward. It was harder for me to leave than it was for me to leave my home ward to go on my mission. We stopped by to say goodbye to some of our favorite members, and I was totally a mess. It was so embarrassing. I'm still trying to learn how tears are a good thing. It was really hard because I love everyone so much.
Transfers were Thursday. President usually reads off the huge long list of who is travelling to which ward and it takes forever. Everytime he said "sister _______" my heart skipped a beat because part of me thought he was reading off my name. Transfers are always stressful. Anyways. My new companion's name is Sister Courtney Lamborn and she is from Bear Lake Utah. First companion from Utah, believe it or not!!! Haha. She's the best. She is SO easy to talk to. She's been out for a little over a year and she is the oldest of four girls. She grew up on a farm, but she's not a cowgirl. She played volleyball, basketball and ran track all four years of high school. She's really easy to work with! Before transfers I prayed that I would be friends with my new companion right away, and my prayer was answered!!! SHe's so much fun! We are going to have a great time here together.
I feel pretty great about where I'm at right now on my mission. I feel great about this ward and I feel confident in myself as a missionary...which usually means that the Lord is going to mix things up a bit and give me some crazy trial to overcome. I'm just grateful that the bed bug trial is over and done with. haha. (And if I were to get them again, I would know exactly what to do to get rid of them this time!) I've also been a lot more confident in Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Ghost. I have been more committed to tracting and finding people to teach than ever before on my mission. I made the decision to treat every transfer like it's my last. I'm leaving everything I've got on the court!!! I'm not going to wait to the end of my mission to get serious about this work. It's actually really fun! I used to be really nervous about tracting BIG houses. Some rich people can be intimidating! But I've felt the fear and done it anyway! We haven't found any solid investigators quite yet, but we have some really great potentials who know members of our ward from work who said they'd be willing to meet with us in the near future! WOO!!!! But yeah. I'm leaving everything on the court because you never know what could happen. There have been a lot of missionaries from our mission who have gone home early for unexpected medical reasons. I really don't want anything to happen to me, but just in case something did happen for whatever reason, I want to be able to say that I gave the Lord my ALL up to the very end. And when nothing does go wrong, I'll still be able to say that because it will be true!!
About half of the Haymarket ward members are less active. We spend a lot of time tracking them down. We found a less active part member family who is going to have us over next Saturday morning to do service for them!!! They live on a farm with chickens and sheep and llamas. We're going to rebuild their fence! Can't wait!!! I love it when people take me up on my offers to serve them!
The Haymarket area kind of reminds me of home in that it takes at least 20 minutes to get anywhere and it's really really green. It's almost more green here. Everything is hidden by all the trees and bushes...it's crazy green everywhere! I'm grateful Sister Lamborn has a GPS, because I feel really lost all the time!
Hm. Nothing crazy exciting has happened yet. I've been crazy bold with people while contacting, and we've seen some small miracles from it. I can't wait for this area to explode! Sister Lamborn and I are GOING to have a baptism this transfer! I can feel it in my bones! OH! We've been getting really specific in our prayers lately and God has been right on top of things. Two nights ago I prayed before our daily planning session and asked taht God would lead us to a place to tract where we would find a man who would be excited to receive his own copy of the Book of Mormon, and who would want to learn more from us! And the next day we felt like we needed to go tracting in the neighborhood of one of our members, and the very first door that we knocked on was a man who rode to work every morning with our member and he was really happy to get the Book of Mormon from us!! Miracle! I'm going to be very exact in all my prayers from now on!
I love you! Keep reading the Book of Mormon!
Have a great week!!
Love,
Love,
Sister Anderson
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