This was a very long week. My companion went home this week due to medical challenges, so I was Emergency Transferred (ET) again; both times out of Anchorage. This is now my 7th official area on the mission, having had 12 companions, and third time "pink washing". No one can beat this record! So much has happened that this is post is going to be day by day.
Monday: Your typical P-day. We did laundry and emails at the Weaver's house. I am going to miss them so much. They were wonderful! We then went shopping before meeting up at the church. We ended up playing missionary ball, volleyball, chair soccer, and I taught an elder how to play Catch Phrase.
Tuesday: We had Zone Conference; well the first half. We are getting Facebook now for our mission and President wanted MLC to experiment with it first before he tolled it out to the other zones. We had interviews later that day. I had Sister Bowers go first and then President pulled me in and told me that she is going home and that we were to cancel all of our appointments for the rest of the evening and pack. We didn't know exactly when she would be flying home so we just had to pack up everything we could. The Huffman sisters bought us dinner that we could eat while we packed. Our District Leader, Elder Poppleton, quickly organized a funeral to happen that night. Sister Richards and Randall were down for MLC the following day so I got to talk to them. We all stood in a circle to say something about Sister Bowers and she handed people little trinkets she had collected on her mission.
Wednesday: We thought she would be leaving today but didn't find out until closer to noon that she would be flying out super early the next morning. So we basically hung out at the mission office. Sister Bowers needed to check the weight of her luggage and do some logistical things. I helped Sister Moffitt with stamping the seals for the certificates they give to returned missionaries. We left to eat lunch at McDonalds. We got the call from the STLs that I was getting transferred to trio with Sister Johnson and Sister Yeates in Eagle River. They had pink washed it a week prior and apparently the ward was super excited to have sisters back. We went back to the mission office two more times. The first time to talk to Dr. Moss (I had him look at my throat because I was starting to get a sore throat), and the second time to say goodbye to some more people for Sister Bowers.
Thursday: We needed to be at the Strawberry Chapel at 6:30am, which we were to get Sister Bowers to the airport on time. I hugged her goodbye and she said she would email me all the details when she got home. We then headed to Eagle River. Our Vehicle Coordinator, Elder Jeppson, was super nice to let up keep the Nissan rogue and replace the truck they had. When I got there Sister Johnson was on exchanges with Sister Burdick. We did studies and I feel asleep towards the end because my sore throat was turning into a sinus infection. They had me go to sleep so I slept for a good 2 and a half hours. Later we drove to Eklutna (halfway between Eagle River and Palmer) to exchange back.
Friday: Well this day my sinus infection turned into a chest cough. I felt, at times, I was hacking up a lung. After studies we went to the church to have a mini district meeting to be trained on the safeguards of Facebook prior to our Zone Conference We are to watch 33 videos on Facebook trainings and safeguards over and over again for the rest of our missions. There will be set aside time Tuesday through Friday in the morning where we are to do Facebook things. We will be trained on it more this Thursday so a lot of our questions won't be answered until then. We spent the rest of the day doing only weekly planning. We had to start from square one again in order to catch me up. I started crashing a little after lunch so they made me take another nap. We didn't even finish planning before dinner with the Betz. They made hamburgers and then pumpkin cake!! So good. Sister Betz did the lesson for us as she was doing an assignment for her online class.
Saturday: Feeling energized, but just having the symptoms of the sickness, we went zone tracking. Normally it is district tracting, but since President created a new language zone, the Chugach Zone got a lot smaller. We met up at McDonald's afterwards for an apparent zone tradition of getting ice cream. Ice cream wasn't going to help with my sickness so what did I get instead? Cookies!! Well they were 3 for a dollar, I couldn't pass that up. We all were losing our energy trying to plan our church lesson and do goals. We then had to get to our dinner, which was at a dinner group. The ward is doing this to help the members fellowship each other and to help reactivate the less actives. The one we went to even had some non-members come as well. There were a lot of people who came and then they started playing Kahoot. It was just funny to see older adults doing things like that. We visited with some people but then I started getting to the loopy stage and we finally went home. I still don't have the area book so I sit in the back of the car reading.
Sunday: I was a bit overwhelmed by the number of people who attended the Eagle River Valley ward. I hardly know anyone so it was just being surrounded by a ton of strangers. This Sunday was the primary program so there were more people who attended than normal. For Gospel Principles we were in charge of giving the lesson. The lesson was on scriptures and we asked two questions and they took up most of the time commenting. We then split up the class into groups to each read about the four standard volumes of scriptures we read in our church: The Bible, The Book of Mormon, The Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. They gave great insights and one member helped a lot with an investigator who is from Anchorage, but for some reason attends our ward. We then went to RS and the lady giving the lesson called us the night before wanting us to teach a portion of it. She ended up getting called out to attend one of her children getting set apart so she turned the time over to us. We just asked some questions, and the class did well at sharing their opinions and talking about member missionary work. We visited some people and had a good dinner with the Marchants. That night we decided to play this jelly bean game called Bean Boozled. You pick a jelly bean and it is either a good flavor or a bad flavor like canned dog food, dead fish, or moldy cheese. In order to see who was to pull from the cup we played BS. If you were caught lying or you called someone out for no reason then you pulled a jelly bean. It was a lot of fun and I ended up getting only bad ones. The taste wouldn't come out of my mouth!
It is fun to be in a trio at time because it seems like we have a sleepover every night with the way our beds are set up, but we seem to get distracted all too easy. On Sunday they found the records for one of the people they were teaching who said she was baptized when she was fifteen. It is great that we found them and can now help her to get to the temple!
Sent from ALASKA!
Sister Shelley Willden
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