Week 46 - Transfer Insanity

Helllooooooo! 

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I know that I sure did, even though it was pretty different to what I would have expected on the mission. As if Thanksgiving in and of itself wasn't enough to make this email a little longer than usual, add on the incoming of 16 new missionaries, transfers, transfer plans from the devil, a family history booth, new companions, and a few solid miracles and y'all are in for an essay. If you don't read it, I don't blame ya! Well, I want to be able to do things this wonderful pday, so without any more delay, here we go!

We'll start with the 16 new missionaries, as that happened first in the week and chronological order just makes sense. So yes, 16 brand new elders and sisters straight out of the at home MTC arrived in Bismarck, and they needed places to stay for the night. There were 12 elders and only 4 sisters, so my old comps and I took two and another pair of sisters took the remaining two. The two cuties that got to spend the night with us are Sister Jensen and Sister Johnson. Another sister named Sister Jenkins was also staying with us for the night before her comps could come and pick her up the next day, so that was a fun time trying to keep names straight. But yes, so we had six sisters in our apartment that night. Honestly, it was SUCH a blast, and the two new sisters said that it was the best first night they ever could have hoped for. Aww, how sweet!

Sister Johnson is called to serve in the Netherlands Belgium mission, so it was super fun getting to talk with her about that and hearing her pray in Dutch. The other sister, Sister Jensen, basically became an instant best friend. Within 2 hours of knowing her we were geeking out about our favorite musicals, methods of folding and color coding clothes, piano music, and books. I LOVE her! We just got along really well; I was sad to see her go. The new missionaries all went down to Mt. Rushmore together for Thanksgiving, then they came back up to Bismarck for transfers to get to their assigned areas and companions. Well, I got to see Sister Jensen there again, and she told me the coolest thing. I had written her and Sister Johnson each a note and hid them in their luggage after that first night for them to find later that just gave some advice, love, and a warm welcome to the NDBM. Well, apparently on Wednesday night (the night after she left my place) she was having a really hard time, which is understandable. I had those too my first week in the field! Well, she prayed for God to give her a sign or something that she was supposed to be here and that she could do this, then she went to write in her journal and found my letter. She said that it answered all of her questions and concerns perfectly and that my letter was the most direct answer to prayer she's ever received in her life. How cool is that? 

New missionaries come in on transfers, right? Well, then that does in fact mean that transfers have happened! I wasn't expecting to get transferred at all because I'm in the office and such, but transferred I was! I'm going very, very far away from Bismarck 3rd ward over to Bismarck 2nd ward. Hahaha my new apartment is a whole five minutes away from my last one. Get this: I have now served in every ward in Dickinson and every ward in Bismarck. That is INSANE. For how huge my mission is, the fact that I've spent all but 6 weeks in Dickinson (90 minutes away from Bismarck) or Bismarck itself is pretty crazy. I absolutely ADORE my new companion though. Her name is Sister Kropf, and I'd actually spent a week with her before back in Dickinson a little while back. In case any of you have steel trap memories and remember everything written in every email I've sent, she's one the missionaries who got quarantined with Sister Astle and I for a week where we then played hide-and-go-seek in the dark like the responsible adults we are and played chess. She's a blast!

There's one super cool thing about me being transferred to the 2nd ward that I think counts as a full-blown miracle. If any of you REALLY have good memories and can think back to my very first transfer in the mission, I was teaching a woman in Bismarck named Jordin. She's the one who likes pickles with strawberry ice cream, if that helps ring any bells. Anyway, we were really good friends and she almost got baptized after I left Bismarck, but then she kinda slipped through the cracks. She also moved to Lincoln, ND which is outside of 3rd ward and 1st ward boundaries... BUT IS INSIDE 2ND WARD'S! I can teach her again! I honestly think she could be baptized by the end of the year. If all of you could pray for Jordin, that would be amazing. 

This transfer was an absolute mess though, because Sister Baird and I were both leaving, but Sister Cutler's new comps won't be here for another week, and so now she's staying with two other sisters for the week running her area alone, and I was able to get to my new area with Sister Kropf, but Sister Campbell is still here too because her transfers also are whack, so we have no idea when she's actually leaving. It's caused many headaches!

Saturday was super fun aside from packing and moving apartments. We got to run a family history booth at the mall at a vendor show! We sat there and talked to anyone and everyone about nothing but familysearch.org. It was awesome. We got to meet some pretty awesome and super interested people too! I hope they'll reach out to us and let us help them get started with their family history, because I LOVE family history! It was kind of funny, people already avoid eye contact with missionaries, right? Well, people also avoid vendors in the mall. Being both resulted in some really hilarious and awkward encounters of people going to ridiculous lengths to avoid eye contact with us. It was weird, 95% of the people walking by all miraculously had to check their phones as they walked by us! Maybe the space right in front of our table is the only place in the mall where there's signal or something so everyone's texts came through right then. 

Then there was Sunday! Oh my goodness, yesterday I felt like such a missionary! Yeah, I know, of course a missionary would feel like a missionary, but my daily life and schedule has been so completely whacked for the past long while that yesterday just felt... normal. We did our studies, planned a lesson, went to a lesson, gave out a Book of Mormon, found a new person to teach, invited people to attend church with us, and it was just great. The lady we taught, her name is Lexi, is the cutest person EVER! She lives in an assisted living facility, and one of her caretakers was there too. She's a sarcastic, sassy human being, so naturally I was sassy and sarcastic right back at her and consequently she now loves me and thinks I'm the funniest person alive lol. 

Gah! I haven't even talked about Thanksgiving yet and I've already left out SO much stuff about this week. We couldn't eat with members, so we all picked up Thanksgiving dinner from the members who signed up to feed us, took our food to the church, combined our spoils, decorated the tables, and had a missionary Thanksgiving with our food and games afterward. It honestly felt like a family dinner Thanksgiving; I loved it. On the topic of thanks, y'know the hashtag #givethanks? Well, a sister here in Bismarck, Sister Forinash, is really good at writing songs, wrote a song called give thanks, and had us film it on Tuesday. It turned out SO good! Here's the link if you want to watch it: https://youtu.be/fIBNPbFAm2s . We actually have a whole flippin YouTube channel now where some of our mission's top videos are located. It's called "Walk with Christ," so when you go and watch the "#GiveThanks" video, make sure to subscribe and turn on notifications! It's seriously way cool. 

Last paragraph! I think. So Sister Kropf and Sister Campbell are basically my favorite because they both completely nerd out with me. They like to play chess, do math, read, etc. One of Sister Campbell's favorite hobbies is decoding and creating new writing languages. She got Sister Kropf hooked on it, and then Sister Kropf created her own written language. They then wrote me three sentences in this language and said "Here you go, figure out what it says." It took me 24 hours, but it was the most fun thing ever, and now I'm addicted. So this transfer onward the three of us are going to be writing notes to each other in new written languages with no hints on what it says or how the language works, and I am SO excited. I'll attach pictures of the sentences in case any of y'all are bored and want to give it a shot.

Okay! I think I'm done! I left out a ton, but there's the highlights. I'll attach some pictures really quick then send this on out!

Sister Balls