CDSM Transfer 1

Week 1

Pictures at the airport.

On the train to the airport.

Welcomed by the Murdocks.

HELLOOOOO EVERYONE! I am finally in the great state of Colorado! The MTC was long (not really but 12 days in a class room from dawn til well past dusk was long) and I'm glad to be out working. Time here goes soooo much faster. The day is over in a blink. 

I got placed in Grand Junction. Not exactly what I imagined when I thought of CO. Uh yeah, it's this random desert surrounded by mesas instead of your typical rocky mountains. But you know what? It's amazing here anyway. And I know you're all wondering, what about the marijuana? Yep. That's a very real thing here and the people are proud of it. We're also very much in Broncos territory but I have seen the Chiefs logo twice already so...*thumbs up*

Something very interesting about the town is that the street names have fractions in them. Why? Well the numbered streets tell you how many miles from the Utah boarder you are, down to the fractions of miles. How cool is that? The house numbers can have halves too. It's super strange and cool. The ward (congregation) I'm serving in has surprisingly small boundaries so getting places is really easy. You only have to plan for a 5 mile drive max to get anywhere. That's nice on the one hand but filling time wisely can get tricky. For example, if we have 20 minutes until our next appointment and it's after dark, there isn't a whole lot we can do.
Tracting (door to door contacting) is different here than in most missions and I love it. President Murdock (my mission president) was inspired with this amazing idea to get more people to open their doors and hearts. It's called surveying. We knock on the door, introduce ourselves and ask if they would be kind enough to help us with our survey. The survey includes questions about religious and moral beliefs. Most people are open to that so they agree. The survey is mostly just to get to know the people and it really does help. Many times they tell us personal stories about their beliefs and by the end of the survey many are willing to hear our message. People who initially would have shut us down had we just asked if we could share a message are now open to listening to us because we got to know them first. It's so cool!
We've had two highlight dinners so far. The members of the ward feed us most nights and a lot of them go all out to make it good. My second dinner was a greenie dinner. I'll send the pictures and you'll get it. Dinner last night was really good BBQ ribs. My little KC heart was very happy. Our host said he's never seen missionaries eat them properly until then, that is, just digging in and ripping them apart rather than trying to daintily cut the meat off the bone. My companion, Sister Harshaw, is from TX so she knows how to eat BBQ properly as well. We left super happy.

I'll fill you in on more next week but I've got a bunch of emails to catch up on for now. Thank heavens we're allowed 2 hours to email. Initially at our orientation we were told that we'd only have half an hour and you'd better believe we were freaking out. Thankfully that was quickly corrected. 2 hours I think I can work with, especially from now on when I won't have 2+ weeks to catch up on.

Week 2

Hello all!

I'll be hitting my one-month-since-I-left mark this week. So yeah, that's weird. 

The work has been a bit slow this week. We've focused on contacting referrals and less active members of the ward and nobody ever seems to be home. But it's a new week and it's gonna be a good one! I can just feel it.

Friday was the ward Halloween party. A lot of our investigators and less actives that we're working with came. It was great fun! As we were walking out to our car we saw something on the car. They were McDonald's cheeseburgers and there was a note that said "Totally not drugged cheeseburgers". We spent a good 10 minutes staring at them, taking pictures and trying to figure out where they came from (we have yet to figure that out, by the way). By then they were cold and nasty so we planned on throwing them away when we got home. Unfortunately, our dumpster, where the residents of the apartment throw away their trash, was missing when we got back. So we had to put it in our trashcan in the kitchen. Our dumpster has yet to return and we're wondering if it ever will since trashcans appeared outside the apartment. We haven't got any note or call stating where we're supposed to put our trash but I guess we'll have to figure that out soon. Sorry, you probably didn't want to hear about our trash troubles. But oh well, that's what mystery we're trying to figure out as of now.

Halloween was an extra weird day because everyone was expecting trick-or-treaters when we knocked on their door and we weren't there for candy. But we made the best of the day. In the morning we had a sisters meeting with the sister companionships in our district (which covers Grand Junction for the most part) and there was a costume contest. Sister Harshaw and I could not figure out what to do so we put our hair up in childish styles and said that we were "Children of God". I know, if there had been a "You Tried" award, we would have won it.

Some of you that know about my struggle with make up may be wondering how I'm handling the rule to wear it. To answer your question: I wear mascara most days to abide by the rules and do a little bit more on Sunday. So yes, I'm surviving I suppose.

Also, there was a rumor that this is a mission that uses iPads. It's false as of now but we could get them aaaany day now. I come up with a new reason why they'd be useful on a daily basis. But ah well. Maybe we'll get them for Christmas. Which is surprisingly soon... My companion, sister Harshaw, makes sure I know that it's basically Christmas time and repeats that she loves Christmas almost hourly. We've been listening to Christmas music since I got here. My bah-humbug attitude is being tested but I love her so I just roll with it.

Alright, I need to get to answering other emails so I'll wrap up. Pictures are coming, including ones of the totally not drugged hamburgers.

Week 3

It's been a great week! And guess what? We hit standards! That's a missionary's big weekly goal. The Standards of Excellence is a goal set by the mission president to help the missionaries work hard. Our mission has 7 stats that we try to hit weekly and if we hit 4 of them, we can say that hit standards. For example, this week we had 4 less actives that we are teaching at church, 20 total lessons taught, 5 new investigators and 4 investigators on date to be baptized. So yep, that's the highlight of the week. Several miracles made it happen. First, we had a referral to visit a less active family and when we knocked on their door, the mom answered. She said she actually had a couple kids who she wanted us to teach so they can get baptized! Ahhh yeah. We can totally do that. The other miracle was that yesterday, we had to teach 5 more lessons and needed 3 more new investigators to hit standards. We surveyed for 2 hours and got two lessons and two new investigators pretty easily. That last half hour I kept praying that someone would let us teach them. We knew we could get two more lessons in later that evening but we had to get that one last investigator before dinner. I had faith that it was possible but was getting worried. 15 minutes before we had to leave, we knocked on a door, did the survey and taught a quick lesson. She seemed hesitant to let us return to teach her but she finally told us that she reads anything that talks about Christ. We told her that we could totally bring her things to read and she set up a return appointment right as the clock hit 5pm. We got in the car and breathed a loud sigh of relief. 

I went on my first exchanges this week. The Sister Training Leader switches companions with another companionship so she can observe each of the sisters in our zone. Sister Harshaw spent the day with our STL and I spent the day with her companion, Hermana Young. Our STL companionship is Spanish speaking so I was with Hispanics all day. It was actually really interesting! My head felt like it was going to explode by the end of the day though. I know a little bit of Spanish but not enough to communicate and teach lessons so occasionally Hermana Young would catch me up, ask me to talk about something and then translate it. 

Well it's officially happened. I've started dreaming about missionary life. I dreamed that I took a picture and couldn't post it on instagram. Sad day. Another one was that I looking forward to going home so I can take naps. Ha. I'm trying not to think about it but oh, naps... I'm pretty sure I've had other missionary life dreams but those are the ones I remember. 

Anyway, fun fact: missionaries here get to eat at Sonic for free. I guess a member of the church is the owner of one of the Sonic branches here so they let the missionaries in the area get free food. So after we emailed last week we got lunch there. Yep, it's cool. And because you can never hear too many food stories: On Saturday afternoon, Sister Harshaw said she was really wanting pizza for dinner and I said that would be nice. We joked about calling the family who would be feeding us and telling them to switch their plans and get us pizza. Lo and behold, when we got there, they asked if pizza was ok for dinner. Yep. That was basically a miracle. 

Update on our missing dumpster: it's still missing. But we think it was because a few days later they resurfaced our parking lot (it was sorely needed). There are large trash cans sitting on the side of the building tho so we decided that we'd just put our trash in them. They're probably for us anyway, right? We'll just go with that until someone tells us what's going on or the dumpster comes back. 

Week 4

Another great week in the books! We didn't hit standard's but we had some really great lessons. We did a survey with this sweet old lady who seems lonely. We've taught her two lessons so far and, even though she says she doesn't want to be converted, she soaks it all up and has some great questions. We're so excited to keep teaching her.

Saturday evening was a great day for not only our ward, but also the Spanish branch. A 16 year old boy, Ethan, and his father were baptized together. Ethan has been taking lessons from the elders in our ward and his father has been taking lessons from the missionaries in the Spanish branch. Ethan doesn't speak any Spanish and his step mom (who is a member) only speaks Spanish so his dad has been going with her to the Spanish branch. It's a very unique situation because the church tries very hard to keep families in the same congregation so as not to separate them but in this case, this is what was best for this family. The baptismal service was held at our building but was a joint effort between this ward and the Spanish branch. Everything during the service was translated so it took extra long but the joy felt by all who were there made the language barrier hardly a problem at all. The hymns were sung in each persons respective language which was so cool to hear. All the missionaries in our district as well as our mission president came. It was such a special experience to watch father and son come to Christ together. 

Now for our weekly report on what is wrong with our house. No, our dumpster has not returned and we've officially determined it may never come back. So we continue to use the trashcans we found. But that's not all folks. Oh no. Several weeks ago we had our shower drain fixed because the water emptied very slowly. This week we realized our front window didn't lock and had to have that repaired. Then a day later, our house key got stuck in the lock. We fussed with it for a good while before we called our housing coordinator. It took us awhile to build up the courage because we knew this would definitely label us as dumb blondes in his mind. Our house was falling apart and it was getting embarrassing. We finally called him and he gave us the number of a locksmith he knew. This is past 9pm at this point, mind you. Awksauce. So we called this locksmith and he comes over. We just know he's going to get there and pop the thing right out and wonder why in the world we called him. Thankfully (but at the same time not) that wasn't the case. He worked on that lock for a good hour. We felt so bad that it was so late and cold so when he finally finished we thanked him profusely. So yep. We're just holding our breath for the next mishap.

Week 5

It's been a pretty average week besides companion exchanges with my sister training leader, Hermana Eldridge. She is a wonderful leader and I want to grow up and be just like her on my mission. But, it was still slightly nerve wracking because I had to take over the area for the day. That included driving the car. Good news, I still remember how to drive! Probably the coolest experience that day was when Hermana Eldridge, said she felt like we needed to turn around and talk to a family she had seen. When we got back to that spot, they weren't there anymore so we knocked on a door and the person who answered said they weren't interested in helping us with the survey. Well, there's always a reason why you're where you're at so we kept looking. We then knocked on the door of a young man who readily helped us with the survey. We soon came to find out that he had read part of the Book of Mormon and he explained, accurately, how the book came to be. We're not sure how he got the book but we asked how he felt when he read it and he said he felt wonderful. We asked him how he knew all this and he said he grew up in a small town in Utah and had just picked up on it all, my guess is from friends. Turns out he has never even met with the missionaries and is willing to meet with us! You never know who is ready to learn and that's why I'm trying to get better at just talking to everyone I see. 

Problem of the week: the front two burners on our stove have decided to not work. But, unless any of you think it's a dangerous electrical problem, we probably won't report it for now because we and everyone else involved with our housing needs a break from our voices and problems. We can live with the other two burners for now.

I had a proud moment today with sister Harshaw. I came into the living room and she said "I caught a spider!", pointing to an upside down glass on the ground. I still picked it up and took it outside but all of our previous spider encounters she's just had me take care of so I was proud of her. Sorry. I'm weird. I like spiders and save them and I'm proud when my friends respect that. 

Our personal billboard for Christmas.

Week 6

You know, just when you're getting comfortable and think you have things figured out, God likes to stir the pot. Sister Harshaw and I were pretty confident that both of us were going to stay for at least another transfer (6 week period). Well, we got a phone phone call Saturday night telling us different. Sister Harshaw, my companion, trainer and mission mommy, is leaving me before my training is even finished. Neither of us were prepared for this at all. But I'm staying here which I'm happy about because there's a lot I'm looking forward to this transfer. She's not too happy because she was looking forward to the same things but I'm sure there are people she needs to meet wherever she's going. 

Aaaaanyway, Thanksgiving was great and full of food. We helped the members who fed us to make dinner and then ate. That took up a huge chunk of the day...more than we were planning for. Then we went to another members house and watched a video that a group of stakes in this area put together. We kept hearing about but hadn't seen it yet. It's called 18 Lives and is about likening scripture stories to yourself to figure out how to handle problems you have in life. It was so good. I'm going to get a copy and show it to everyone when I get home. And yep, that was my Thanksgiving. The rest of the week was pretty slow on teaching appointments because everyone was super busy or out of town.

Last week we updated our GPS and a few new "languages" were added. They are yeti, elf and squirrel. It's been a whole lot more entertaining in the car ever since. Sister Harshaw and I have become fluent in yeti. It's pretty easy. 

Grand Junction has finally been hit by snow while basically the rest of CO has already been blizzarded on (I'm a Webster so I make up words, that's how it works) for the past few weeks. It's pretty and cold. Oh and the snow is significantly more wet than mid-western snow so I can actually make snowballs and stuff. I might actually like winter a little more here. At least for a few weeks. 

Sister Harshaw and I totally had a small world experience this week. She was looking through the pictures on her camera and got to the pictures of her MTC district. I blinked and said "Is that Steven Fuller?!" and it was. Someone from my stake at home was in her district. Crazy!

District picture.

Trainers and Trainees.