This week has been a pretty eventful week! A week full of happy times
and even with tears. But there are so many good things that are coming
in the future!
So I will start my email with what happened to Sister Nowell and I
last Monday. We ended up getting an emergency transfer. Some
background to why that happened now. When I came into the mission
there were supposed to be 2 sisters from South America coming to be
Spanish sisters. Well their visas weren't ready at that point in time
so they were just waiting to come to Oregon. Well it turns out one of
the Spanish sisters visa was ready to come to mission this Monday and
President needed to do some rearranging. So Sister Sorensen who was in
Coos Bay came to Roseburg and Sister Nowell is being sent to Eugene to
serve as a Sister Training Leader in the YSA stake up there. I am so
excited for her! When President called to tell us I will be honest, I
cried a lot. It was very hard to leave Sister Nowell. We had almost
been with each other for 12 weeks and she has become one of my very
best friends. But I am so excited to be with Sister Sorensen again!
She and I get along very well and she likes to work hard so I think it
will be a successful transfer.
So this week, we had all week to get to get Sister Nowell ready and to
say goodbye to the people in the Ward. But of course we kind of waited
until last minute to say our good byes and to pack her up. At first
she wasn't supposed to leave until Monday then the APs called and they
moved it to Sunday evening. Then they called and switched it to
Saturday evening. Then they changed it to Saturday afternoon, Sister
Nowell said if they changed it again that she was going to hurt them,
I thought it was pretty funny.
We had a great lesson this week with our investigator Elena, she is
the mom in the family that we are teaching. We decided that we wanted
to teach her while her kids were at school so there would be no
distractions. And wow. What a difference! We taught her the gospel of
Jesus Christ and she actually knew a lot about it already! It was so
awesome and she did a great job at asking a lot of questions. She was
really sad when she found out Sister Nowell was leaving, but she still
came to church on Sunday with her kids and they loved it! I love
teaching them, I truely can feel how much love my Heavenly Father has
for them.
I am on week 11 of New Missionary Training... Aka Torture. Luckily it
is only a 12 week program but guess what. My trainer left me for the
last week. So Sister Sorensen and I will be training each other for
the next week. Hopefully it goes well!
After New Missionary Training, we got a text from the Elders in our
Ward telling us to come and have lunch at the church with them as part
of saying good bye to Sister Nowell. Well when we got there the
Melrose Elders, Sister Training Leaders and Zone Leaders had bought
Sister Nowell and I Pizza (she is the Pizza Queen) and they were all
singing God Be With You Till We Meet Again. We have a video of it and
Sister Nowell and I were just awkwardly laughing the whole time. They
also bought her some Congratulations balloons, hahaha. Our zone is so
great!
This week we had Zone Conference down in Grants Pass. And as part of
our emergency transfer situation, President Russell also made me the
designated driver. Well that meant that I had to drive to Grants Pass.
Really driving isn't bad, I love driving at home. But driving a
mission vehicle brings on a whole different kind of stress level for
me. We have machines in the car called TIWIs. They tell you when you
go too fast or you stop too fast or if you break any other law. Well
you could say it was a pretty stressful drive.
In preparation for Zone Conference we had to prepare a talk on the
Holy Ghost and it has to be 15 minutes long. You would think because
we had a month to prepare these talks that they would have been
awesome. Well I have to admit even the night before I was still trying
to finish mine up. In my head I thought, he isn't going to pick on me,
he is going to choose 6 people and I am not going to be one of them.
Sister Nowell and I are getting transferred, he is not going to pick
on me. Well guess what. I was the second to last to speak. But instead
of a 15 minute talk it ended up only being a 4 minute talk. I think I
did alright and I defiantly felt the spirit. It was really an
excellent Zone Conference. When President gave his closing remarks he
said if your parents were all sitting on that back row, they would all
personally need their own box of tissues. To see all of you
missionaries grow in the short time you have been here. It has truly
been amazing. I know that my parents would have been proud of me that
day.
On Saturday we did our last Companionship study with Sister Nowell.
She has been reading in Alma and she just got to the point with the
stripping warriors. She told me that when she got to Roseburg she
really was struggling. She just got back from being home and her
companion at the time really wasn't the greatest. Then she read me
Alma 56:16-17 which reads
16 Yea, and they were depressed in body as well as in spirit, for they
had fought valiantly by day and toiled by night to maintain their
cities; and thus they had suffered great afflictions of every kind.
17 And now they were determined to conquer in this place or die;
therefore you may well suppose that this little force which I brought
with me, yea, those sons of mine, gave them great hopes and much joy.
When she read this scripture to be she said this was the scripture
that she chose to be her Roseburg scripture. She knew it was going to
be hard but she was determined to do the Lords work. And she told me
that I was her Strippling Warrior and helped her make it through those
hard months. I am so grateful for Sister Nowell and all the things
that she taught me. She will be missed.
To finish off my email I just want to say home excited I am to have
Sister Sorensen! She was my MTC companion and I love her so much. She
has already been teaching me how to love tracting and that is
something that we are going to do a lot this week. Our Mission
President gave our zone the challenge to find 4 new investigators in
each companionship this week and to challenge one person to baptism
each day. It will be hard but Sister Sorensen and I are ready to go
out and do it.
I love you all so much. I hope you have a great week. Thank for all
the things you do. And just remember, you can do hard things!!!
Love, Your Favorite Sister Missionary,
Sister Harrison 💕
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