January 31, 2017

Sister Training Leader Dinner

Meet Sisar Adams!

I had food in my mouth so I did a Finnish smile!

I'm in Tampere! This past week has been the busiest week of my mission so far! It started off with me saying goodbye to Sisar Holbrook which was so hard. I traveled by train to Tampere with Sisar Pugmire who is in the same city as me but in a different ward and with a new companion. Then Sisar Adams became my new companion! She is so awesome and it is her last transfer here as a missionary so I have already learned so much from her. 

The second day we were here we had a World Wide Missionary broadcast that announced that we will be following a new schedule. 

The day after the broadcast we headed to the city of Jyväskylä for our weekly district meeting. It takes 1.5 hours to get there by train and walking after the train stop. Right after it ended we hopped onto another train and headed for the mission home in Espoo! Because half of the leadership in the mission is new now President Watson decided to hold a dinner for the Sister Training Leaders. So I got to see Sisar Burden and Sisar Carter from my MTC group there as we received some instruction on how to fulfill our new assignment. After that the Zone leaders arrived and we began our Missionary Leadership Council (MLC) meeting the next day. We discussed the new schedule for most of it and how we could help everyone adjust. Then it was back to Tampere! 

We have 7 recent converts living in our area so we have been meeting with at least one of them everyday to teach the the recent convert lessons so we've been so busy! It's a miracle that I'm already fully unpacked. On Saturday night when we were trying to figure out where we were going to go the next day we realized we only had about an hour to do missionary work before church started. So we picked a nearby area that we had never been to before and Sisar Adams started to list off street names and told me to pick one that sounded good. I picked one and then she picked a random building number. The next day on Sunday we typed the address into the GPS and we just went! We talked to about two people and then I made the comment how no one was outside. Then, someone emerged from the forest! We started to talk to him and introduced ourselves and told him that we teach people about Jesus Christ and asked if he would have time next week to learn more. He was like...''Well I have time right now.'' We told him that we were headed to church but that we would have time to teach him later that night at his home. So we did and set up a return appointment for this next Thursday.

Yesterday was our Zone Conference meeting and so there were about 40 missionaries from our zone gathered together and in the middle of the meeting someone started to knock on the door. The assistants to the President stepped out the room and were gone for a while. We were all kind of wondering what was happening and then later the assistants came running over to us saying that the man we had met and taught the day before had felt inspiration to come to the church! The assistants had given him a church tour and taught the restoration to him again and set a baptismal date with him! Then he stayed for a long time just chatting with all of the missionaries there. He ended up going to the FHE night that the young single adults have every Monday night and we are teaching him again tonight! It was just cool to see that some people are just really prepared!

We have Zone Training training next week as well as another MLC meeting at the mission home (This time we get to go to the temple too!). I think this transfer is going to be not only super busy but amazing! I have seen so many miracles this past week and it has just grown my testimony that this is truly the Lord's work and with His help we can do anything.