WEEK 70- quick notes from last time

Here's an explanation of all the bullets I sent last week...for mom and anyone else who wants to know

-The Manassas 1st ward now has a companionship of Sisters we're assimilating into the ward.

Sister Bil and Sister Ba  showed up, so we've been busy meeting with the Bishop and Ward Mission Leader to draw lines and make our plan of attack. It also includes them teaching the majority of single women we find and us teaching the majority of single men. We both have cars, so we're both mobile as far as that stuff goes.

-One of the sisters is from Cali!

Sister Barrus is from Menlo Park.

-We had 42 new missionaries at transfers.

Yeah, I wasn't joking

-we opened the overflow at transfers.

That's never been done before! It was crazy!!!

-A sister from Carmichael just arrived! I'm not alone from the Sac-town area!

Yeah, how crazy is that?! I saw her picture in the office a few weeks ago and thought "hey, she looks really familiar..."

-Elder Gustafson and I are working hard and having a blast!

Elder Gustafson was Elder Cannon's MTC companion, and was trained in the same zone I was in at the time. He's from Canada and we both love movies, politics and missionary work! It's perfect! It's kinda fun, I've always kinda had this feeling we'd be comps at some point, and here it happened!!! Pretty schnazzy, huh?  we saw this car and thought we should get us one!!!!

-We've spent nearly all weekend getting people settled in, supplied and organized.

We made some office runs, ran some furniture, I lent my bike, and we redid our template for our weekly reports to send to the stake president. I updated it by using the fancy cell formulas on our tables so that some of the sections quantify themselves. Not to mention distributing apartment keys, creating area books, getting to know everyone new and trying to lead with love!

-We've still found time to do missionary work!

That's been one of the most amazing parts of it all! It seems we have no time for work, so when we do, we just pray that we'll be effective in our time. The Lord has made us sooo much more efficient!

-The Lord is blessing our efforts with some very productive new friends.

You wouldn’t believe some of the amazing new people we've met!

-Our zone had 4 new areas open!

See above on getting people settled and organized.

-Most of our zone is new missionaries (out less than 3 months)

It's been a blast using that greenie fire to our advantage! We love raising them in righteousness!

-We grew! from 28 missionaries to 38!

That means we went from the 2nd smallest zone to tied for the largest...here is the SMALL group..

-We saw at least 3 HUGE miracles this week.

More proof that the Lord blesses us when we do all that we can.  One was a sister that had no voice and with a blessing was able to bless us at the musical fireside. The other two are not ours and personal so we should not share…but trust me God knows his children.

-We gave multiple priesthood blessings.

To both missionaries and people we work with. Trials, challenges and change seem to the the only thing that remain constant. Luckily, we have the atonement to help us best that.

-We had another musical fireside.

Those missionaries who had left the zone were allowed to return to sing with us!

-It was incredible.

It really went very well. The Spirit was so strong and it seemed everyone just sang their soul out!

-We gave the sisters a lot of our investigators

It's a lot easier for sisters to contact and teach single women, so we thought we'd go with that strategy.

-We found some new ones!

Some of which we again gave to the sisters. BUT, we also found some great people that Elder Gustafson and I will be able to teach.

-This is HARD and BUSY

There's no beating around the bush. I'm more exhausted than ever before on my mission.

-I love it

I've always wanted an adventure, right? What kind of adventurer would I be if I suddenly said “too much”? Or if I shied away from it? Nope, not much to do but smile!

-I can do all things with the Lord helping me

I've seen too many proofs to deny it.

-I've seen it this week

Just to add to the count.

-That's the only reason I'm not bedridden

Haha. You're laughing because you think I'm joking. I'm REALLY TIRED! :P haha

-I know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is real and true

It's our call to spread it, so spread it is what we'll do! :)