4/8/13: My Second Transfer!

It's POURING outside. It's warmer than it's been though, which I'm so grateful for! I'm ready for spring.

I'm so stunned by the members here. They work SO hard, ALL the time. My personal insight that you shouldn't take as gospel: members in Utah are hard-core on the letter of the law, but it's really easy to forget the spirit of the law there. That wasn't something I didn't really like when I moved to Utah. In wisconsin, however, you will find members who swear, have tattoos, drink coffee, smoke. They aren't that great with the letter of the law, but MAN do they live the spirit of it! I almost want to cry as I consider how much these wonderful people sacrifice to make the work go forward. Service, service, service!!!

Jaime and Alex are still planning on getting baptized this week. Hopefully their interviews will be today. I love them so much. They really are ready for baptism :) the little things will come with time.

We did get one investigator to General Conference--Rheeda. Unfortunately, we found out that curiosity got the best of Michelle, and she's neck-deep in anti-stuff on the internet. No wonder she hasn't been talking to us. We're going over on Wednesday and hopefully she will be there so we can address her questions. At the moment, her hang-up is that the apostles are dead and no man can call himself as a prophet. So...that should be easy. I'm not super worried about her at this point. She's a smart girl. But it has been stressful.

Rheeda loved conference, though! Hopefully she can provide a strong backbone when we talk to Michelle and Erica.

We've gotten a lot of new potential investigators this week, and I'm super excited to see what comes of them. They're awesome!

We also had interviews with President on Thursday, the day after transfers. Those were fun. I might tell you a little more about them later :)

Elder Stanley was the only person in our district who got moved. Everyone else is either training, or the Assistants. But at the same time we got another set of elders, so there would have been seven sets of missionaries in our district, but our district split. Now it's West Allis Elders and Sisters with the Meskego Lake Elders. We're so small :/

We met with a referral that should be fantastic. I lvoe when members get involved in the missionary work! It's SO much more effective!

Conference. Was. Fantastic. Congratulations Cedar City! (And Rio)

My favorite talked: Monsons, Hollands, Christoffersens, Bednars, and Cardons. Then everyone else was also amazing, but those are the ones I have to pick as my favorites :) And there was a pretty cool focus on member missionary work, which I'm grateful for. Each and every individual in the church is SO important. Any little thing any of us does to reach out to another person counts :)

The work is hastening forward! I love it!!

Sister Neal

4/1/13: Easter Week

We got an investigator to come to Reciepe club. I love getting investigators involved in the activities of the church :)

Jaime just needed a friend this week, so we were more of friends that teachers, helping her cope with the difficulties of being a single mom. Plus, we got to help her move! That was lots of fun. This week we don't have very high numbers, but we had TONS of service opporunities!

It's time to use General Conference as an introduction to the church. I'm so excited. I LOVE CONFERENCE!!!!!

Pancakes. Are delicious. And tater-tot casseroles.

We came in contact with the COOLEST less-active family ever. They haven't been visited by the missionaries in something like two decades, and don't even have a BoM anymore (well, now they do, haha). But their testimonies shine! I can't wait to go see them again :)

Sometimes I REALLY wish we had a car. We could get SO much more contacting in. Without it, we can only cram in three lessons a day and can only contact 1-2 referrals in a week. Traveling takes FOREVER.

Got asked out on dates by some drunk guys.

We went to a baptism on Saturday with some of our investigators and watched The Testaments.  I love that movie. Our investigators loved it, too.

We spent Easter morning helping Jaime finish moving. We were scrambling to get it done and still have time to prepare for church.

The four missionaries in our ward all gave talks this Easter :) It was a fun time. Sister Ipson and I had like NO time to prepare our talks all week, but the elders made up the difference with some pretty awesome talks.

For Easter we had dinner at an amazing member's home. It was a great tender mercy.

I love Easter Season. The spirit of the resurrection is in the air. It's the COOLEST.

Got your packages and everything mom and dad :) thanks a lot.

That was our week. Not super crazy, but productive in a little of a different way.

Transfers this week! I've still got another full transfer with my trainer, but it's cool to see how the mission is spliting up to make room for the two new sisters and eighteen new elders. And a new senior couple :)

The Lord is Hastening!

Sister Neal

1/3 c. water

1/3 c. (heaping) sugar

1/3 c. cocoa powder

3 c. (whole) milk

=homemade hot chocolate. Yum!

3/18/13: Week...Something?

Week...something? Man time flies!

Thank goodness for my planner. I don't know how I'd even remember all that's happened in a week's time without it :)

So after I emailed you last me and my comp went to dinner with an AMAZING missionary-oriented couple who drove us all voer the place to see less actives and those we could serve. Bro. Rebarchik is so cool :)

During that little adventure, Sister Ipson lost her wallet, which means ID, SSN, debit cards, gone. Oh, and most importantly: her bus pass! So we've had to get a lot of help from the members this week, but they've been fantastic in helping us get around in any way they could :) Oh, and her temple recommend. Luckily the mission home is all of two blocks out of our area, so it's not that far to get a new one.

I LOVE DISTRICT MEETINGS. Elder Trout is the coolest. He made a spirit-filled promise that if we would knock two doors around every appointment we had, we would get one new investigator a DAY. Because of chaos and the unreliability of buses and transportation in general my comp and I haven't experienced the fullness of that blessing, but we're hoping to try again this week :) How amazing would THAT be???

This week has be pretty hard. Pretty hard in the way that we've been visiting hardly anyone and haven't been able to share the gospel much. We spend hours with our wonderful progressing investigators Jaime and Alex, but no one else, and I feel like we're wasting time but these two are important to me and I'm not sure what else we could do with our time, particularly during that time when we couldn't ride the bus indefinitely. I really hope that we get more potential investigators this week, we NEED them before I drive myself crazy!

We do actually have a potential that *seems* solid, named Ray. We haven't gotten to talk to him for more than like 5 minutes though, so who knows where that could go :/

We haven't been in contact with Rheeda and Michelle in over a week. We've dropped their baptismal dates, but I REALLY hope we can start visiting them again. Michelle has really experienced a change of heart since we met her! I don't want that to fade!

We went to the TEMPLE. AWESOME. It's really tiny, and we were literally the only ones in the session besides one woman and one man, who might have been temple workers themselves...

We were walking home late a few nights ago, and the Elder's called and gave us a less-active referral. Turned out we were standing right in front of her apartment, so we went and visited her. She's super sweet, but a really heavy smoker. She's also pretty negative about her life, but we can switch that around! Definitely dealt with that before :) BE POSITIVE MY FRIENDS. Count your blessings, not the bad things. It makes like SO MUCH more liveable.

Jaime and Alex are seriously so cute and fantastic and they've been great in keeping their commitments. We're debating pushing the baptism only so that we can get Alex all the lessons so he can be baptized the same day as his mom, but we'll ahve to see how that works out. If we push it we don't want to do it during Conference, so it would be the next week, ad we don't really want to wait THAT long. We'll see.

I got to visit with Sister Jones, our wonderful Mission Mom, this week, and she says this mission is exploding! The work is going crazy! It feels like it's dying down right now, but it WAS crazy for a while there. I'm already working on figuring out how to bring it back :) When we're busy with all sorts of people and sharing the Restoration a ton, the Spirit is DRIVING. I want that back again!

I don't know what I'm going to do when I get moved out of a bus area for the first time. It's SO different from a car area, I'll probably be in training all over again! Our weekly planning, P-days, and shopping get shafted all the time to strange hours, because we have to take advantage of opportunities to do other things, or we'd never get anything done. Since there's a fair chance I'll be training a newbie about seven weeks from today, I have a TON of stuff to work out. But both Sister Ipson and I feel like I'm going to be remaining in West Allis and she will go somewhere new, so hopefully if I train it'll be in a place I'm familiar with :) Sister Ipson has had to train WHILE opening a new area TWICE now. I don't know what I'd do!!!

At the end of this transfer, we have two new sisters coming in. I train for two transfers, but at the end of MY training, we have ELEVEN new sisters coming in. So...yeah. There's only like twenty sisters in the mission right now, and several are going home. This place is going to explode with fresh minds and new ideas. Can't wait!

I have GOT to get better and using my study time. One hour isn't enough to get ANYTHING done. I hate it.

Exchanges tomorrow, and I get to lead out with Sister Wilcox! I'm excited, because we came out at the same time and so we both have no idea what we're doing (which gives us the priviledge of doing strange things we always wanted to try without it being weird) :) We're going to go insane, basically. Do everything I haven't dared to try with Sister Ipson (she'd be mad if she heard that. She would be all for trying new crazy things, but for some reason I'm worried about it). I'm thinking contacting/finding up the wazoo and a million new investigators. We'll see what we come up with :)

So it's slow right now, but we're about to turn up the heat. The weeks FLY by. Can't wait to see where we are a week from today :)

Love you guys!

Sister Neal