Week 27- Mission Tour

October 22, 2009

Helloooo everyone!
It has been one CRAZY week! First off, let me tell you that we had transfers and Sister Ferguson and I are staying together in Lititz. Yay! I love Lititz! BUT we are taking over a set of elder's area. We shared a ward with a set of elders who were serving in Ephrata but their area got closed down and now we are taking it over. I'm excited about it though because they are working with a lot of fun people and have a lot of progressing less-actives! Not so many investigators (except one who is EXTREMELY golden except for the fact that he's trying to quit smoking). We'll stay pretty busy these next couple weeks, but I'm excited for it. Bring it on!
Let me back up a little bit and tell you everything that has gone on this past weekend.....it's a lot! First of all, on Sunday, I had to give my first talk in sacrament meeting on my mission. And they asked me to do it Saturday night at 8:00 pm with church at 9:00 on Sunday. hahaha, this lady in our ward was supposed to give a talk and she forgot she had to work on Sunday. She's a little newer in the ward and doesn't have a ward list, so she called us to have us tell the bishopbric that she can't do it. Oh my, you know when you get a call like that, the talk has now fallen into your hands! hahaha. So I made my companion call the bishop :) And then of course she ratted me out and volunteered me to give it. That trickster, but she had already given a talk in this ward so I guess it was fair. I have to tell you it was a pretty scattered but it was on compassionate service so I just told a lot of stories and shared some quotes from a talk from the april general conference :)
We had our Mission Tour this past Monday up in Altoona. Altoona is in the middle of the state and all the missionaries from the east side of the mission gathered there. We got a call on Saturday night telling us that on Sunday night, we were going to be driving up to State College (where Penn State is) to stay with another set of sisters for the night. SISTER SLEEPOVER!! haha, it was a ton of fun. But Mission Tour was pretty good. One of the seventy, Elder C. Scott Grow came and visited with us. (he's from Idaho! He was on the school board when Centennial was built, so his name is on a plaque somewhere in there) He was very inspiring though. He had made some changes to our mission, we'll be having zone conferencee and interviews on a monthly basis now instead of every 6 weeks and they also changed up how elders do exchanges, which doesn't effect me too much. He also gave us this Ward Mission Plan that we have to all implement in our wards. It's a great program, I'm so excited for it because it is really going to push the members to be member missionaries! :) Ok I'm almost out of time so I gotta go now. I love you all and miss you all! Have a great week! Can't wait to hear from you again!
Love, Holly


Sorry that the last email was so cut off at the end. I only had a minute left on the computer I was on so I had to cut it off short. But I wanted to finish telling you about mission tour. I told you about some of the changes and some of the implementations we are doing into our ward (which by the way, I hope you are all being GREAT member missionaries and sharing the gospel with everyone you meet :) ) But he also was teaching us in how we need to be better at letting people know our purpose as missionaries. Sometimes as we are teaching these people, we become so close and such good friends that it's hard for us to drop them if they are not progressing. He was telling us how we can't continue to meet with them if they aren't doing anything about progressing. So we have to make that discernment quickly. If they are ready to hear the gospel, great, teach them. If they aren't yet or they can't make up their minds, drop them and wait for a time when they are ready. We can't try to convince them. That was kind of hard to hear because we love some of these people and want to work with them until they accept the gospel. But we also need to be working with those who are ready. Who knows if working with someone who's not ready is holding us back from finding someone who is ready. Oh, such hard decisions sometimes!!!!
Anyway, it was a great time there. Plus I got to see some of my MTC buddies that I haven't seen in 6 months. It was an all day event, from 9-4 then we had to drive back to Lititz that night. Which is about a 3-3 1/2 hour drive. Fun road trip though, right? :)
Well again, hope all is well. I love you all! And miss you all!!
Love, Holly