The transfer is coming to an end. This week was our last full week together but it feels like we have been companions for a really long time. It helps when you get to know each other really quick.
Our P-Day fund was first playing a game of bastketball then watching our music videos. I feel like each companionship's video was a winner, just in different categories. Ours for sure was the Most Creative. Sterling's was the Best Lip Sync, K-Beach's was the Funniest because they lip synced to Wicked, and Kenai's was the Most Approved because they lip synced to a primary song. We then played Tips, the basketball game, and I won :) Never that happened with this game.
Tuesday our district helped these two ladies move out of their house and put their stuff into storage. Because there were 8 of us we just created an assembly line andmoved them out really fast. They started crying when we finished thanking us for all of our help. Tuesday we also visited a lot of people seeing who we could teach and one of the less-active members is crazy. We were talking about Jesus Christ and she kept comparing Him to Mother Teresa. She feels that He just has "tools" to allow Him to do all the things He did just as Mother Teresa had limited tools. It was a good thing we had to get going to make our dinner appointment.
Wednesday is "Farm Day" and we were able to be alone with this girl named Caroline again to talk to her about the gospel. I basically word vomited the first three lessons to her and after talking for over an hour she committed to read the Book of Mormon! She felt that we believe in a lot of the same things she believes in but there are a few differences. While we have no investigators at this moment, besides two kids whose read dad won't allow them to get baptized, we've been working with these potentials and hopefully they can become new investigators soon. While working at the farm we received a text from our zone leaders who were in Anchorage for MLC (Mission Leadership Council) asking us to give a training at zone meeting whic, mind you, is on Friday. Later we met up with them getting the notes about the training they wanted us to give. While there they told us news about some changes that were about to happen telling us that our P-Days are going to be cut meaning that they would end at 2pm. We were freaking out but then they called us not even an hour later saying they were kidding. Oh, it was revenge time to prank them back. I was tossing and turning all night thinking about how to do the training and how to prank them back.
Thursday we were to receive our transfer calls. I came up with an idea to tell the Elders that Sister Williams got the call to be sent home. She liked that idea and helped come up with the plan on how to go about this. Thursday mornings we help out at the food bank with the Sterling Elders, so we decided to tell them President called us earlier that morning chewing Sister out for something. Talking to them later they said they completely bought that, but when we called them after receiving our calls telling them the news they thought we were lying. We kept it going the entire phone call but then Sister Williams said we needed to tell them so we called them right back and told them. They were so mad at us which their anger lingered on until the next day. So transfer calls. So the whole transfer we guess on where the sisters are going in the mission. This is the first time I've done it like this but Sister Williams puts up everyone's name up on the wall and as the transfer continues we change where we think people are going. We guessed what both our calls were. Sister Williams has been in Soldotna a total of 6 months so we figured she was leaving. She got her call to go to Wasilia in the Memory Lake Ward. (For those who don't know Sarah Palin - she lives in Wasilla, so we joke that she needs to go convert her :D) I received my call to train a new missionary. I don't feel ready to train, but the more I think about it, my excitement grows. There is only one sister coming out this transfer so I am the only sister training. We head down to Anchorage tomorrow and I pick up my daughter (in the mission) on Wednesday.
Friday we had our zone meeting and we were given the best news ever. We are now having a new daily schedule !!! Normally we get up at 6:30am, exercise for 30 minutes, shower, get ready, and eat breakfast, all before 8am when studies begin. All studying is usually done by 10am (an hour each for study). Now it's better: we still arive at 6:30am, but have until 10am to exercise, shower, get ready, eat breakfast, plan, and do only personal study in any order we would like. Before, we planned at night from 9-9:30pm, but of course, no one is focused so we do it now in the mornings. You'll notice that our companionship study is not included in that. From 10am to 9pm, we can choose when to do our comp. study, and as of this next transfer, when I'm training, do 12 week for only 30 minutes each intermixed with proselyting. This is fantastic!!! But wait, there's more. For our P-Days, normally we are to follow the normal study schedule and then begin our preparation day at 10am and finish by 6pm. We now don't exercise in the morning (because we can "exercise" during recreation time), and we only study for 30 minutes of personal; no companionship study. This means we start our P-Day at 8am giving us 2 extra hours to get things done! Before we did laundry and emailing this morning we already went grocery shopping :) This is to be world wide for missionaries everywhere, but apparently this is to go in effect starting after January 25th when the missionary broadcast is announced. Though our mission president felt we needed to start this now; I am truly excited !!! I now don't feel so rushed to get ready in the mornings.
Back to Friday. Sister Williams and I spent all day Thursday planning our training for Friday. We were showing a Reality Model and how it can help us overcome our tendency to not ask for referrals (other people giving us names of people we can teach). I felt that we needed this training more than anyone else because we struggle asking for referrals. To show how this model worked, we did an example ofhow it can be applied to finding people to date. We did an activity having our zone act out dates found on Tinder applying the steps we talked about. We have a senior couple in our zone so we had Sister Smith as as the girl and all the Elders were the bad dates. It was hilarious. We had them do things that we felt matched their personalities and because of that they did their part very well.
Friday and Saturday night we were teaching Raevin the new member lessons (which are the missionary lessons taught again to re-enforce their understanding), but her brother Dominic was there, so we ended up teaching the Ten Commandments using the hand signs to keep his focus and desire to stay in the room. The next day we asked them if they remembered them and Dominic, who is not a member, knew most of them and even the correct phrasing like "do not commit adultery". Hopefully we can continue to teach him even after Sister Williams is gone.
This entry is aready too long, so I'll just end with my testimony: I know this church is the restored church of Jesus Christ, and that it is being lead by a living prophet today, Thomas S. Monson. The Book of Mormon is the word of God and we read it along side of the Bible. I love my Heavenly Father and am thankful He sent His son to be our Redeemer.
Sent from ALASKA !
Sister Shelley Willden
Our P-Day fund was first playing a game of bastketball then watching our music videos. I feel like each companionship's video was a winner, just in different categories. Ours for sure was the Most Creative. Sterling's was the Best Lip Sync, K-Beach's was the Funniest because they lip synced to Wicked, and Kenai's was the Most Approved because they lip synced to a primary song. We then played Tips, the basketball game, and I won :) Never that happened with this game.
Tuesday our district helped these two ladies move out of their house and put their stuff into storage. Because there were 8 of us we just created an assembly line andmoved them out really fast. They started crying when we finished thanking us for all of our help. Tuesday we also visited a lot of people seeing who we could teach and one of the less-active members is crazy. We were talking about Jesus Christ and she kept comparing Him to Mother Teresa. She feels that He just has "tools" to allow Him to do all the things He did just as Mother Teresa had limited tools. It was a good thing we had to get going to make our dinner appointment.
Wednesday is "Farm Day" and we were able to be alone with this girl named Caroline again to talk to her about the gospel. I basically word vomited the first three lessons to her and after talking for over an hour she committed to read the Book of Mormon! She felt that we believe in a lot of the same things she believes in but there are a few differences. While we have no investigators at this moment, besides two kids whose read dad won't allow them to get baptized, we've been working with these potentials and hopefully they can become new investigators soon. While working at the farm we received a text from our zone leaders who were in Anchorage for MLC (Mission Leadership Council) asking us to give a training at zone meeting whic, mind you, is on Friday. Later we met up with them getting the notes about the training they wanted us to give. While there they told us news about some changes that were about to happen telling us that our P-Days are going to be cut meaning that they would end at 2pm. We were freaking out but then they called us not even an hour later saying they were kidding. Oh, it was revenge time to prank them back. I was tossing and turning all night thinking about how to do the training and how to prank them back.
Thursday we were to receive our transfer calls. I came up with an idea to tell the Elders that Sister Williams got the call to be sent home. She liked that idea and helped come up with the plan on how to go about this. Thursday mornings we help out at the food bank with the Sterling Elders, so we decided to tell them President called us earlier that morning chewing Sister out for something. Talking to them later they said they completely bought that, but when we called them after receiving our calls telling them the news they thought we were lying. We kept it going the entire phone call but then Sister Williams said we needed to tell them so we called them right back and told them. They were so mad at us which their anger lingered on until the next day. So transfer calls. So the whole transfer we guess on where the sisters are going in the mission. This is the first time I've done it like this but Sister Williams puts up everyone's name up on the wall and as the transfer continues we change where we think people are going. We guessed what both our calls were. Sister Williams has been in Soldotna a total of 6 months so we figured she was leaving. She got her call to go to Wasilia in the Memory Lake Ward. (For those who don't know Sarah Palin - she lives in Wasilla, so we joke that she needs to go convert her :D) I received my call to train a new missionary. I don't feel ready to train, but the more I think about it, my excitement grows. There is only one sister coming out this transfer so I am the only sister training. We head down to Anchorage tomorrow and I pick up my daughter (in the mission) on Wednesday.
Friday we had our zone meeting and we were given the best news ever. We are now having a new daily schedule !!! Normally we get up at 6:30am, exercise for 30 minutes, shower, get ready, and eat breakfast, all before 8am when studies begin. All studying is usually done by 10am (an hour each for study). Now it's better: we still arive at 6:30am, but have until 10am to exercise, shower, get ready, eat breakfast, plan, and do only personal study in any order we would like. Before, we planned at night from 9-9:30pm, but of course, no one is focused so we do it now in the mornings. You'll notice that our companionship study is not included in that. From 10am to 9pm, we can choose when to do our comp. study, and as of this next transfer, when I'm training, do 12 week for only 30 minutes each intermixed with proselyting. This is fantastic!!! But wait, there's more. For our P-Days, normally we are to follow the normal study schedule and then begin our preparation day at 10am and finish by 6pm. We now don't exercise in the morning (because we can "exercise" during recreation time), and we only study for 30 minutes of personal; no companionship study. This means we start our P-Day at 8am giving us 2 extra hours to get things done! Before we did laundry and emailing this morning we already went grocery shopping :) This is to be world wide for missionaries everywhere, but apparently this is to go in effect starting after January 25th when the missionary broadcast is announced. Though our mission president felt we needed to start this now; I am truly excited !!! I now don't feel so rushed to get ready in the mornings.
Back to Friday. Sister Williams and I spent all day Thursday planning our training for Friday. We were showing a Reality Model and how it can help us overcome our tendency to not ask for referrals (other people giving us names of people we can teach). I felt that we needed this training more than anyone else because we struggle asking for referrals. To show how this model worked, we did an example ofhow it can be applied to finding people to date. We did an activity having our zone act out dates found on Tinder applying the steps we talked about. We have a senior couple in our zone so we had Sister Smith as as the girl and all the Elders were the bad dates. It was hilarious. We had them do things that we felt matched their personalities and because of that they did their part very well.
Friday and Saturday night we were teaching Raevin the new member lessons (which are the missionary lessons taught again to re-enforce their understanding), but her brother Dominic was there, so we ended up teaching the Ten Commandments using the hand signs to keep his focus and desire to stay in the room. The next day we asked them if they remembered them and Dominic, who is not a member, knew most of them and even the correct phrasing like "do not commit adultery". Hopefully we can continue to teach him even after Sister Williams is gone.
This entry is aready too long, so I'll just end with my testimony: I know this church is the restored church of Jesus Christ, and that it is being lead by a living prophet today, Thomas S. Monson. The Book of Mormon is the word of God and we read it along side of the Bible. I love my Heavenly Father and am thankful He sent His son to be our Redeemer.
Sent from ALASKA !
Sister Shelley Willden
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