Wonderful and Crazy and Awful

12-3-14

This last week has been one of the craziest of my life. Wonderful and crazy and awful. I'm getting transferred. They are completely shutting down our area because there aren't enough sisters to go around.  We're down six sisters this transfer, so three areas had to be shut down completely. Gosh. My heart is  broken. There's been a lot of crying these past few days. I'm going to Bluefield, West Virginia. Sister Pierson served her last transfers there.  Bluefield itself is going to be a blast!

Also, this week D------ our atheist and his family came back from their trip to Disney World. The whole family has just taken us in. His niece G---- did a little dance and was so excited to see us again. They got us these adorable plates as a gift from their trip, so they give them to us, and are showing us the videos they took, and I almost lost it because I knew we would have to break the news that we were both leaving. It was heartbreaking. I get choked up just thinking about it. I've never loved people like I've come to love these people out here. I also think that I'm going to leave so much of my heart in these hollers and hills that I'm going to have nothing left of my heart to come home with.

In preparation to leave, we have been getting all our records ready and leaving elaborate notes on everyone for the elders who will take over our area. Elder Signs is getting Elder Steed back and they will take half our area and Elder Markowski and his new companion will take the other half. It's actually really cool though, because the people each of them will be gaining are perfect matches. God knows what he's doing. 

Thanksgiving was AWESOME. We spent it with our favorite older lady Sister P-------, whose husband died about two years ago. Thanksgiving morning was spent playing football with all the Huntington missionaries and the 1st and 2nd Wards here. It was a blast! Since it was also my birthday, everyone made that super great too. Also this week, we got to do a booth at Marshall University. It was so fun talking to interesting people and giving out cards, but I actually got to talk to one girl who was SUPER interested.  It was great to be able to give her a Book of Mormon.  

Have you seen the new "He is the Gift" video? It's the best thing to ever hit the internet. The church is going crazy and taking over youtube for a day and putting up a billboard in Times Square.  Big things are happening. This really is the hastening of the work. I don't know if you can feel it where you're not as deep in the mission field, but this is huge. Just like Elder Nielson said, what is going on now is up there with things like the restoration. This is a BIG deal. Our mission saw 200 baptisms last year. This year, we will see 300! Can you believe that? That's multiple wards!!! West Virginia was the last place in the US to get a stake, and when you look at the map, it's the biggest black hole without a temple, so that kind of growth is amazing, and more importantly, it's changing lives.

Best conversation from this week: We go to our investigator's house and his granddaughter is there. She looks at us and she's says, "Are these Blessers? Did they come to

bless the house?"

J----- the investigator: "Well sort of. They're missionaries. They were here last week too, remember?"

Granddaughter: "What??? How many times are you gonna get this house blessed????"

Bahahahaha!  I love it here!

Huntington. . .My Happy Place!

 

I'm going to miss this girl!

 

Watch this movie--it's a huge big deal here.