Week 34 - Transfer updates, baptisms, and miracles :)

 Hola amigos y familia!!

Hope you all are doing well. I would say that this week has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, but that would be an understatement. It's more like it has been a full blown emotional amusement park! I'm not going to go into details, but it was literally insane. There are a couple results that are of interest though! First and foremost of these being... SISTER ASTLE DIDN'T GET TRANSFERRED! Turns out that the only reason why she was going to get transferred in the first place is because President Howell thought she didn't want to be my companion anymore (we have no idea where he got that idea from), so when she made a comment that she wished she was staying with me, President was shocked, went to go pray, and viola! She's staying! We could not be happier. This is my first time getting to have the same area AND the same companion for more than one transfer.

With her no longer leaving, transfer day was actually a lot of fun! Mainly because Sister Booth and Sister Johnansen both ended up in Dickinson for almost the whole day. It was SO fun getting to talk with both of them! Sister Booth and I haven't been companions for almost 6 months now, but she's still one of my best friends on the mission. Then Sister Jo was my most recent companion before Sister Astle, and we were only comps for a week, but I love her sooooo much!! They're both amazing. 

Side note that many of you may not care about, but transfers are a crazy ordeal around her nowadays. It always was a little chaotic, but now it's so much worse. Something I learned on my mission is that in most missions, especially in the US, all the missionaries all go to the church by the mission home for transfers. You drop off the old comp, stay and see everyone, grab your new comp, and boom, that's transfers. That is such a weird concept for me! The NDBM is the largest mission in the US (minus Alaska) area-wise, so for us we have the transfer van (12 passenger) and a trailer for luggage. These suckers start in Fargo, swing through Bismarck, head west to Dickinson, drop off missionaries who are going to northwestern ND and Montana, pick up missionaries from these areas who are going south, and head down to Rapid City SD. They then drop off the missionaries sent south, pick up the ones leaving the south, make a second stop in Dickinson, make a second stop in Bismarck, then head East to Fargo to drop off everyone who is serving in the eastern ND/Minnesota areas. CRAZY. This is normally accomplished in a day, maybe starts the night before in some cases, but pretty lowkey. WELL. This month with our mission having twice the number of missionaries we used to, it started Tuesday and ended Thursday, with some still moving around Friday to tomorrow. 

Well that was a rant I wasn't planning on going on! I'll try to make the rest of this a bit more relevant. 

Alrighty, let's talk about Julie then, shall we? Sister Astle met Julie through Instagram, and on Friday we did a bible study with her and she was soooo sweet. We invited her to come to Ted's baptism which would be the next day, and she was all for that!

Fast forward to Ted's baptism. So Ted's work life has exploded in every sense of the word, so it was a miracle he was even able to get baptized on his planned day and time. Anyway, due to this insanity, he was running pretty late and would get there just barely on time (8:00 pm). Julie came, first of all, and she was even early, so we got to introduce her to members, take her on a tour of the church, and get to know her better. It was great. 

The baptism itself was incredible!! It was so special getting to see him follow Angela and Denise's examples and make those promises with God. You could just see how happy he was! I am so incredibly lucky that I got to see him and his family progress from that first ever barbecue to their baptisms. I of course got put as the pianist, so I was up at or near the piano the whole time we were in the chapel, and Sister Astle was down in the pews with Julie. Get this - while they were sitting together, Sister Astle of course explained everything that would be happening so Julie wouldn't feel uncomfortable or lost, but then Sister Astle took it a step further.

While sitting with her, during waiting times and breaks, she taught Julie the entire restoration! Julie was fascinated by it and it made complete sense to her. She grasped the concept of the priesthood and modern day prophets no problem. She also asked SIster Astle if she could get baptized again by the power of God (i.e. into this church!!) and said that when she moved here from Kenya in January she didn't know which church to attend, but now that she had found our church, she said that she would be going to our church every Sunday from now on! We were shook. She's going to be baptized so soon, I can feel it. 

Oh! Another thing that happened was the friendship anklets! So you know how last week we were all pretty sad to see our district get broken up, and so Elder Kinikini made a side comment that we should all get matching anklets but nothing more was really said.... until the day before transfers. So now you better believe that all 9 of us have matching friendship anklets of various colors that say BFF on them! I love these people so much. The 3 new missionaries seem pretty cool too, so it appears that we're in for another great transfer!

Last night we also got to have dinner with members! It was great... except that they were NOT happy that we had to eat outside still. Actually, they were pretty ticked off and expressed their frustrations to both the bishop and stake president, and they want to contact President Howell about it too. I mean, they were annoyed about all of the COVID rules for us missionaries since the beginning, but last night was even worse for one reason: it is now cold in nodak once more. So yeah, it's fall, but I just know that we're going to go from jacket weather to 30 below real fast, and I'm not mentally prepared for that lol. Especially because we haven't been able to get the thermostat in our apartment to work yet... that'll be fun. So yeah, the sweaters and fleece-lined leggings are officially unpacked once more and were in use yesterday!

Well, I think that's it for this week folks. Talk to y'all again next Monday!

Sister Balls