Hello again!
How is everyone doing? Well, I sure did get transferred and it turned out exactly as I was hoping and praying for! I am now in State College (home of Penn State) serving with Sister Westbrook again!!!!! It is SOOO much fun! We were both praying to serve with eachother again and the Lord answered our prayers. This is her last transfer now! Crazy huh? Two oldies serving together, but I am grateful. There is another set of sisters that serves here too and they are both pretty young in the mission. President is doing that on purpose. He wants all these newer young missionaries to gain leadership experiences quickly so he can have good leaders all throughout the mission. There are TONS of missionaries going home this upcoming transfer so the majority of the mission is fairly young. The other sisters think it's crazy but I like the way its going! haha. Well, let me tell you a little bit about State College. We serve in a family ward and a university branch......our Sundays are super busy! I don't know how missionaries do it in Utah! I was exhausted on Sunday. But everyone around her is soo sweet and kind. This place is a little bit of the best of both worlds on my mission so far. I get the countryside again and we see a little bit of Amish people again :) And we also get to be around the young single adults and work on campus. So it is a mixture of my whole mission in one area. I LOVE it! Let's see, what else can I tell you.....the work here is going great. There is a lot of great potential with the people the sisters have been working with. We were able to set one lady, Karen Rath, with a baptism date this past week. She is set to be baptized on July 24th. Pray for her please! Her's is a little bit of an interesting story. She actually investigated in the 80's but didn't get very far with it. She ended up joining many different churches over the years, I guess none of them were really fitting her needs. She joined a Mennonite church and it's the longest she's been in a church her whole life, which has been 5 years. Missionaries tracted into her about a year ago, but she wasn't ready for it then. Then the sisters stopped by a couple months ago and I guess she was just ready for it now! :) She completely believes that the church is true and she knows she wants to be baptized. She expresses one concern though of her making sure she's doing it for the right reasons. She feels although she knows it's true, she doesn't want to do it for other reasons, like for friends and socializing. But in our lessons, the spirit is amazingly strong and you can see the light in her eyes. She's great!
We also have another kid named Chuck who is supposed to get baptized this upcoming Saturday. Not sure if it's going to happen though. He's a young 20 year old boy who is engaged to a member of the ward. He was actually supposed to get baptized in May but he hadn't told his mom until the night before. So she got mad at him and told him to push it back. So he pushed it back but his mom is still not very happy about him joining the church so he's thinking about pushing it back even more. Who knows, but if you want to pray for Chuck to gain strength to move forward, that would be wonderful! :) haha, thank you!
The 4th of July was fun too! Supposedly State College has fireworks that are 2nd best in the nation. So we were super stoked to see these fireworks! Down at the Stadium they were having festivities and they had a HUGE cake that people could eat for free. We thought it would be a great idea to go contacting down there and talk to lots of people and get free cake too. But I made a mistake.......I forgot to bring my proselyting stuff with me (usually to church, I just bring a little church bag and my scriptures, etc) so I didn't have many pass-along cards or pamphlets or anything. So we had to go home so I could get that and our house is forever away from the stadium. We share the car with the other sisters and they had the car that day, so we didn't quite make it down there :( And then we went to the others sisters house to watch the fireworks because they have a big open back yard at the place they stay at and we thought it would be perfect to see them. But when they started going off, I guess we were too far away and we could only see about the top 1/3 of the fireworks over the treeline. Bummer! So it wasn't exactly what we were expecting, but I have to admit, it was a lot better then last year! I didn't get to see any fireworks last year!
Well, I am loving this area and I am so excited to be here! It's going to be a great 3 months ahead of me!! :) I love you all lots and can't wait to to hear how the reception went and everything. I'll be praying that it goes well and I will be there in spirit! Have a great week! Stay safe and happy!
Love, Holly
How is everyone doing? Well, I sure did get transferred and it turned out exactly as I was hoping and praying for! I am now in State College (home of Penn State) serving with Sister Westbrook again!!!!! It is SOOO much fun! We were both praying to serve with eachother again and the Lord answered our prayers. This is her last transfer now! Crazy huh? Two oldies serving together, but I am grateful. There is another set of sisters that serves here too and they are both pretty young in the mission. President is doing that on purpose. He wants all these newer young missionaries to gain leadership experiences quickly so he can have good leaders all throughout the mission. There are TONS of missionaries going home this upcoming transfer so the majority of the mission is fairly young. The other sisters think it's crazy but I like the way its going! haha. Well, let me tell you a little bit about State College. We serve in a family ward and a university branch......our Sundays are super busy! I don't know how missionaries do it in Utah! I was exhausted on Sunday. But everyone around her is soo sweet and kind. This place is a little bit of the best of both worlds on my mission so far. I get the countryside again and we see a little bit of Amish people again :) And we also get to be around the young single adults and work on campus. So it is a mixture of my whole mission in one area. I LOVE it! Let's see, what else can I tell you.....the work here is going great. There is a lot of great potential with the people the sisters have been working with. We were able to set one lady, Karen Rath, with a baptism date this past week. She is set to be baptized on July 24th. Pray for her please! Her's is a little bit of an interesting story. She actually investigated in the 80's but didn't get very far with it. She ended up joining many different churches over the years, I guess none of them were really fitting her needs. She joined a Mennonite church and it's the longest she's been in a church her whole life, which has been 5 years. Missionaries tracted into her about a year ago, but she wasn't ready for it then. Then the sisters stopped by a couple months ago and I guess she was just ready for it now! :) She completely believes that the church is true and she knows she wants to be baptized. She expresses one concern though of her making sure she's doing it for the right reasons. She feels although she knows it's true, she doesn't want to do it for other reasons, like for friends and socializing. But in our lessons, the spirit is amazingly strong and you can see the light in her eyes. She's great!
We also have another kid named Chuck who is supposed to get baptized this upcoming Saturday. Not sure if it's going to happen though. He's a young 20 year old boy who is engaged to a member of the ward. He was actually supposed to get baptized in May but he hadn't told his mom until the night before. So she got mad at him and told him to push it back. So he pushed it back but his mom is still not very happy about him joining the church so he's thinking about pushing it back even more. Who knows, but if you want to pray for Chuck to gain strength to move forward, that would be wonderful! :) haha, thank you!
The 4th of July was fun too! Supposedly State College has fireworks that are 2nd best in the nation. So we were super stoked to see these fireworks! Down at the Stadium they were having festivities and they had a HUGE cake that people could eat for free. We thought it would be a great idea to go contacting down there and talk to lots of people and get free cake too. But I made a mistake.......I forgot to bring my proselyting stuff with me (usually to church, I just bring a little church bag and my scriptures, etc) so I didn't have many pass-along cards or pamphlets or anything. So we had to go home so I could get that and our house is forever away from the stadium. We share the car with the other sisters and they had the car that day, so we didn't quite make it down there :( And then we went to the others sisters house to watch the fireworks because they have a big open back yard at the place they stay at and we thought it would be perfect to see them. But when they started going off, I guess we were too far away and we could only see about the top 1/3 of the fireworks over the treeline. Bummer! So it wasn't exactly what we were expecting, but I have to admit, it was a lot better then last year! I didn't get to see any fireworks last year!
Well, I am loving this area and I am so excited to be here! It's going to be a great 3 months ahead of me!! :) I love you all lots and can't wait to to hear how the reception went and everything. I'll be praying that it goes well and I will be there in spirit! Have a great week! Stay safe and happy!
Love, Holly
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