February 9, 2015

Transfer to Temple Terrace

So this has been up there in the craziest weeks of my life. But it's been awesome! So my new area is called Temple Terrace, and my new companion is Sister Rudd. It's like night and day difference from Tampa 4. It's a pretty big city, I guess it's kind of a suburb of Tampa? I don't know, Tampa is like endless, part of our area is still Tampa haha. But we're in a different stake. It's right by USF campus, it's kind of like a down-towny area (at least what I've seen of it so far, we've been just walking so we haven't made it too far). But there are people on the streets EVERYWHERE! Another missionary said this is like the Disneyworld of missionary work, and it kinda is. I mean it even says temple in the name, come on!

Sister Rudd and I opened this area, and apparently they didn't know we were coming until last minute. At transfer meeting, when President announced that we were together, he was like "So you're both getting transferred, so I bet you're anxious to know where you're going. You're staying right here in Temple Terrace, but I don't think we have a place for you to live." And they didn't. They had absolutely nothing ready for us, we kind of had to do everything on our own, but it hasn't been too bad. We're staying with some other sisters, and they're kicking the elders out of their apartment for us to have, we should be moving in tonight. We're on carshare with some other sisters and it was their week, so we've just been walking. But since there are people everywhere, it's been great. I think we already have more investigators than I've ever had at once on my mission, and 2 of them have baptismal dates! Sister Rudd said that someone told her that tender mercies come with whitewashing (or in our case opening) an area. And it's SO TRUE, Heavenly Father has been blessing us so much.

Sister Rudd is super awesome, like one of the best missionaries I've seen. I'm really honored to be her companion. She's been out like 13 months, but for some reason I'm the senior companion, which I'm not too happy about haha, but oh well. 

Sisters Coleman and Rudd

The ward seems really awesome. We haven't been able to meet a ton of them yet because on Sunday we had some investigators there, so we were more focused on that. But they're really happy to have sisters, it's just been elders for awhile. So right now there are 5 elders in that ward (3 of them are office, so they don't really proselyte) and then us. Our ward mission leader was like "If we get any more missionaries, it'll be the Temple Terrace Mission!" It's really different being around so many missionaries. Our building has the mission office in it, so there are tons of missionaries there all the time.

We did get to meet some of the members at a talent show on Friday. We sang I Hope They Call Me on a Mission with some of the primary kids, it was cute (hopefully). 

Okay, so onto the miracles. The first one was this lady we met on the street, her name is R. We met her right in front of the church and I asked if she went to a church and she said she hadn't in awhile. We invited her to take a tour of our church and she LOVED it, especially all the pictures of Christ. At the end we were in the chapel and she was like "I really need to go back to church." We invited her to be baptized and she said it was a big possibility, but she's been super hesitant about setting a date. So we'll see what happens there.

The second one is, we met these 2 teenage boys on the street, and they told us they had literally just prayed for a way they could change their lives, and then they met us. They were AWESOME. We talked to them for like at least half an hour, they had so many great questions. They have more faith than almost any other teenage boys I've ever seen. One of them said they would crawl to our church if they had to. And they actually came! No one ever comes! They loved it, and we had our first actual lesson with them after church. I invited them to be baptized and they both accepted, they're so excited about it. So as long as everything goes okay with their parents, they'll get baptized on the 28th! We're meeting their families tomorrow and we're kind of nervous... Missionary work is way too much like a relationship sometimes.

One of the funniest moments of the week: There was this huge puddle (it was more like a creek) and there was no way around it. Sister Rudd just kind of walked through it, but me, being oh so prideful, thought I could jump over it. I jumped, and landed right in the middle of it. And also may have twisted my ankle in the process, it hurt for a few days. But it's okay now, and I learned my lesson :)

I've been thinking so much about this area that I forgot about Tampa 4! Leaving it was really hard. I didn't think everyone would be so sad to see me go. I miss everyone a lot, and I don't know if we'll be able to develop the same kind of relationships with the people here, I hope so. But I definitely can't complain, there's so much more work to do here. This area has had the best missionaries in the mission in the past, so it's like an honor to serve here haha. Also, I'm kind of like why am I here? But once again, not gonna complain :)

Okay, this is turning out to be way too long, I'll stop now :) I'm doing well, the ward is awesome, I love it here, the church is true, missionary work is the best, the end. :)