CDSM Transfer 3

Week 1

Well, I'm on the other side of the state now. Highlands Ranch (Denver metro) is where I landed this transfer and let me tell you, it's different. If you were to compare neighborhoods in KC, I went from Ruskin to Shawnee. So, yeah. Different. Not better or worse. Just different. Tracting (door to door) doesn't work here, I found out. We have to be best friends with the members or we don't have anyone to teach. And thats pretty much where we're at right now. Starting from scratch and finding ways to fill our teaching pool. Other differences: not only do we not have another set of missionaries in our ward, we cover two wards by ourselves and the boundaries are way bigger than the 2x2 mile ward I was last in. We are now just a 15 minute drive from the mission office so if we need commissary, we can just go pick it up instead of waiting weeks for it to arrive. It's a dream, no joke.

My new companion is sister Broederlow. Her name is German-American but she's mostly Polynesian. I'm followup training her (meaning she's only been out 6 weeks and has another 6 weeks of training to go) but it feels like she's the one training me. She is super bold and is here to work. She says she doesn't know what she's doing but I beg to differ. You should've see her the other night at a lesson bearing hard testimony and making the family cry (in a good way). It was amazing. We're here to change Highlands Ranch for the better!

Us with sister Earl and Dave the dog who we live with.

Funny story, sister Broederlow got proposed to by a little boy (about the age of 5 or 6) the other night while we were doing a member lesson with his family. He wouldn't let it down and she told him she'd pray about it. He was pretty excited. Hopefully he's not too heart broken when she tells him the real answer.

Have a good one!

Sister Webster

Week 2

Not a whole lot to report this week. Sister Broderlow has been having trouble sleeping since she got to Colorado so some days we have to take slower than others because she's not feeling so well. The last couple of nights we've been sleeping at the mission home to see if that helps in any way. Somehow it has and she slept through the night last night. But, the mystery continues. Hopefully we'll find an answer sooner than later.

This week I met some of sister Harshaws extended family who live here in one of the wards I serve in. Super cool!

Yesterday was my first day at church since sister Broederlow wasn't feeling well last Sunday. You think 3 hours of church is long? Well, I'm going to have to get used to 5 hours of church for now since I have to go to both wards. We just miss third hour in the first ward because the second ward starts at 11.

I have to say, most of the members here are super cool and on fire to do missionary work. We will be spending a bit of time in members homes working with them to become the best member missionaries they can be. This way, we can start getting referrals from them because, well, as President Gibb (first counselor in the mission presidency) has said, "I've lived here for 22 years and I've seen one baptism come from knocking on doors. Bottom line, it doesn't work. We still tract to show our dedication but members are the key to success."

Sorry it was so short and boring today. I'll try to have a more adventurous week to write about this week.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Sister Webster

Week 3

This week two awesome miracles happened. The first one was when we went to go try a referral that a member, Natalie, had given us. We knocked on the door and the husband opened it. Before we could say anything he said, "Oh, come on in! Natalie said you might be stopping by." And yep, he just let us in. That's never happened before... We said hi to the family but the wife wasn't home so we scheduled to come back.

The next day, it was 8:30 and we weren't having much success. We were about to get in the car when sister Broederlow said, "I don't think we're supposed to leave yet. There's someone else." I agreed and felt like we needed to go check on a member across the parking lot.  So, we turned around and walked that way. Before we got the apartment, we walked up to a man who was walking his dog. We asked if he would help us with our survey and he readily helped us. Before we knew it, we had been standing there for about 15 or 20 minutes talking to him. He mentioned that he and his wife had just recently moved to the area and were still looking for a church to call home. Sister Broederlow quickly got excited and invited him to visit ours. He said he might. We plan on visiting him this week if we can.

We also had zone conference this week and won the Golden Hubcap Award which meant we had the cleanest car. We honestly weren't expecting that. I mean, our car was pretty clean but certainly not perfect. But hey, we weren't  complaining. We got subway gift cards, candy bars and 100 extra miles to our allowed weekly mileage! It was a good day.

Oh, and sister Broederlow had a doctors appointment and it was outside of the mission. Suuuuper weird. We actually got to see down town Denver. A bit reminiscent of when sister Smith and I escaped the MTC for a doctors appointment and got to walk down the street to the BYU health clinic. I don't know what I'm going to do with these companions of mine. Ha, jokes. I love them.

These past few weeks have been super warm (up to the 70s on a good day) but that has come to an end. It's now snowing like there's no tomorrow. Our car doors got frozen last night. That was fun... I'm just grateful I have a car.

OK so I really don't know how to end these emails. So, I'm just going to say goodbye. Pictures to proceed.

Sister Webster

Week 4

So as I said last week, it was snowing like crazy. It continued to do so for another day and so we had a snow day on Tuesday because there was no way our car was going to be able to plow through that snow. We actually ventured out for dinner and got stuck when we got there and on the way back. Super fun stuff. Well, a week later it's melted pretty well.

That wasn't the end of the car problems tho. Thursday was the first day since I got to Highlands Ranch that we had appointments scheduled all day so of course it would be the day that our car decided to give us a hard time. The snow was decently melted so there was a lot of water everywhere. We went through what looked like a small puddle which turned out to be a much bigger dip in the road causing us to bump pretty hard. Shortly thereafter, we heard scraping under the car. We got out and looked to find that there was most definitely something dragging. We called our zone leaders to come look at it but the car is so low to the ground that they couldn't fit under it to even look at it. So, we called a member to ask for help and he said to come to his house. The was the loudest, most obnoxious mile ever, not to mention scary because who knows what could be dragging. We got to the members house where he quickly took off the dragging part. It was some kind of cover plate or something. From there, we've just driven without it. We wouldn't normally do that except for the fact that we were scheduled to get a new car soon so there wasn't a point in getting it fixed. So far nothing has exploded so we're just eeking it out until we get our new car.

Yesterday we did Sharing Time in primary (the main lesson for the children's Sunday school). That was...interesting. Takes me back to the days when I was in primary. I didn't really like it for the last few years I was there so it gave me some appreciation to my teachers who were planning lessons for kids ages 3-11. Not easy to keep everyone's attention with the big of an age range.  

So the Broncos were in the super bowl. President and Sister Murdock learned from experience that very little work gets done on super bowl Sunday when the Broncos are in the game because all of Colorado is "busy" that day. So, they just invited the missionaries over to their house for the evening if we didn't have anything to do. Knocking doors would be highly ineffective and most members were watching it too so there was very little for us to do. Thankfully, a family volunteered to feed us and recorded the game and another family didn't care about the game so we spent some time there but after that, we went to the Murdocks. I called it the anti-super bowl party. We just sat there for a few hours talking to the other missionaries who came.

Those were the adventures of the week. Our teaching pool is...getting better. Still really slow but it's increasing.

Have a great week!

Sister Webster

Week 5

Holidays on Mondays was a bad idea. Then again, maybe not. I didn't get to email yesterday but I still get to today so I just had an extra 2 hours yesterday! We spent that time well sightseeing with the woman we live with and another set of sisters. We went to Arrowhead Golf Course, the Red Rocks Amphitheater, Lookout Mountain where Buffalo Bill is buried. It was unbelievably windy everywhere. Overall, it was a super fun-filled day!

One of the men giving a talk on Sunday quoted the priest in Princess Bride (mawage!) as well as Kip Dynamite from Napoleon Dynamite. Haha it was a great Valentines day talk about love.  It was funnier if you were there. Just thought I'd share.

In the life of missionary work: just the same old, same old. I wish I had exciting things to report but we're just teaching the same small handful of investigators, recent converts and less actives. We did a little tracting the other day and made a big mistake. We were able to do a survey with a nice man but for some reason we just left without sharing anything with him after we finished the survey. For the rest of the evening we felt awful. We knew we had to go back. We finally went back and knocked on his door, not knowing what we were going to do. I wish I could say he felt our sincerity and let us in to talk to him but it was far from that. He was a little irritated that we had gone back and said he was happy to help us with the survey but he didn't want to talk to us any further. Note to all you missionaries out there, open our mouth when the opportunity is there and the moment is right. Follow the spirit the FIRST time. Save yourself some embarrassment and dignity. Needless to say, I learned a huge lesson form that experience.

It's been a rough week because sister Broederlows health has gotten bad again so that has affected how much we've been able to do each day. There was an evening where she blacked out and doesn't remember much from the rest of the night. Everyone is stumped about what is going on at this point. We're just hoping to find answers soon so she doesn't have to keep dealing with this.

Thanks for all your support!

Sister Webster

Week 6

This week has been filled with lots of service, amazing experiences for recent converts and drum roll please...NEW INVESTIGATORS! Those are hard to come by around here, let me tell you. It's something to celebrate.

Our new investigators came as a referral at the beginning of the transfer. A member in one of our wards simply asked their neighbors to meet with us. When we showed up at their door, they let us right in, although we weren't able to stay to share a message with them at the time. Finally, after working through scheduling, we were able to meet with them. Sara and James are super open to learning. They have been thinking of taking their kids to different churches to expose them to religion and see what they like, our church being one of them. We are super excited to see where this goes!

We were able to go with Dennis and Martha (a recent convert couple) to the temple where they did baptisms for some of their ancestors, including Martha's parents. They had such a wonderful experience and Martha was so happy that by the end she was in tears. Having grown up in the church, sometimes I don't realize how important temple work is. Watching someone who has just found out about it, experiencing the joy and relief it brings, is quite an eye opener. I know we can see and live with our deceased loved ones again through this work. THAT is one of the reasons I'm on a mission. There is greater happiness than just the here and now and I want everyone to know that.

Well, transfers are tomorrow and I'm staying here in HR with Sister Broederlow. God took me literally when I said I like things changed up all the time and gave me a new companion every transfer but I think He's finally giving me a break. We'll see. Gotta expect the unexpected around here. Speaking of transfers, we stopped by the office today and got to peek in at at the new missionaries who had just gotten there not an hour before. It's so weird to think that that was me not that long ago and yet it seems like ages ago. Time is the strangest thing on a mission.

Well, toodles til next time!

Sister Webster

P.S. Shout out to two of my bestest friends! Atlanta entered the MTC and Bille got her mission call to Cali last week. Childhood friends unite in the missionary work force! AWYEAH! OK thanks for listening to my excitement. Buh-bye.