Week 15 - Adios, Rapid City

 Hello everyone!!

I hope you're all doing well. I have quite a few things to write about today! First of all, I'm being transferred away from Rapid City to head back up north to Dickinson, North Dakota! I'm excited, but you have no idea how sad I am to be leaving Rapid City. The members here are incredible, the city is beautiful, and I have fallen in love with living here. I said goodbye to the member family who has honestly adopted us as daughters yesterday when picking up dinner from them, and that was the first (and only time) I cried about leaving. I'm also SO sad to be leaving Hope! She's getting baptized in 15 days, and now I'm going to miss it. If there's anything these past two transfers have shown me though, it's that I am very good at loving where and whom I serve, so at least I can look forward to Dickinson knowing full well that I'm going to love it every bit as much as I've loved Rapid City and Bismarck.

Alright, this week has been AMAZING in terms of the work. First up, guess who got to teach her first law of chastity lesson? I did! Hahaha it was with Hope, and we are such good friends and her testimony was so strong that it was awesome. She is heading towards baptism full force, and I could not be more proud of her!!! She has been participating in Institute, fellowshipping herself with the members and making friends, praying and reading, man I just adore her. Will you all keep her in your prayers? Even though she's so strong, her current roommates have not been making it easy on her. They treat her worse, intentionally try to embarrass her when she brings her member friends over, give her anti-mormon materials, make fun of her, etc. and it has been so hard on her. She needs some prayers of strength in her behalf! Thankfully she's moving out this week to live with her brother, but until then, she needs some extra support. 

In addition to continuing to teach Hope, WE FOUND OUR FIRST NEW PERSON TO TEACH YESTERDAY!!!! Her name is Virginia, and she is the ONLY new person we've found all transfer. She requested a missionary visit for herself online, and when we called her yesterday she was so willing to talk and get to know us. We were able to teach her a quick lesson over the phone, and we are teaching her again tomorrow morning! Finding her was an answer to my prayers for sure. At the beginning of this last week, I prayed a very sincere prayer expressing the frustrations I've had this transfer and asked for a few specific blessings, one of which was to find 1 new person to teach if I did my part. This last week, we then received 2 new referrals. When we show we're willing to work, Heavenly Father will bless us!

One of the very best parts of this week was Institute. It's one run by a couple in the stake over Zoom, and they had asked us if we would lead the discussion this last week. We prepared to share about having questions in the church, how we find answers, and how we can hold onto truth when doubts come again in the future. This "class" is way more of a discussion than a lesson, because the couple who runs it, the Pipers, felt that we would all need to have spiritually uplifting conversation with other people our age more than we would need a lecture. How true that was! It lifted Sister Barnes' and my moods tenfold. Even after the hour was up, those who had the desire and time stayed on with us for nearly 40 minutes after the closing prayer just to talk and have human interaction. The discussion was also SO much more for us than for them. Some of our classmates said things that pierced my heart and were exactly what I needed to hear. It was incredible.

Alright, onto the Facebook aspect. Grr. So, if any of you tried to stalk what I've been up to by trying to find "The Church of Jesus Christ in the Black Hills" page, I'd wager you didn't find it. Why? Because 8 of our 11 area pages got unpublished!! Our dear, sweet President Howell was so excited about these pages that he invited literally THOUSANDS of people to like ALL the pages, which made Facebook think that these pages must be spam. Yikes. So we are just waiting for them to get republished which should hopefully happen sometime this week if all goes well. Now, it just wouldn't be Facebook missionary work without yet another round of COMPLETELY contradictory guidelines. Everything we were doing previously has changed yet again. Talk about trial and error! I have noticed, however, that each successive update truly is for the better. We had two trainings this week which were super helpful: one taught us that we don't have to be so concerned with being marketing experts--we just need to rely on the Spirit just like every other aspect of missionary work. It was obvious advice, but something we had honestly forgotten amidst the barrage of instruction. The other training was from the Palo Alto page in the San Jose mission. Y'all, go check out "The Church of Jesus Christ in Palo Alto." They are sooooooo good at this! Hopefully we'll get to that level eventually. They've been doing this for almost 5 months now though, whereas we've done it for 5 weeks. 

Finally, I've been asked to help be in charge of training the missionaries called to the NDBM who haven't entered the MTC yet! I am SO excited to get to do this. We had a Zoom call with all of them on Saturday, then I put together pairings of a mentor to each future missionary to help train them up on the basics of Facebook for when they get out here. It's going to be so fun! 

Anyways, it has been a good week despite the emotional and mental exhaustion. There are ALWAYS more miracles and blessings than trials. One of my favorite scriptures is Alma 26:27. I'd encourage all of you to read it and think of how you can apply it to your lives. It has certainly given me strength in some hard times so far on my mission, and I know it can bring you each comfort and strength as well. 

I love you all! Have a great week!

Sister Balls