Sounds like y'all had a eventful week! Elder Jenkins, Elder Greenlaw's trainer, keeps trying to get everyone to say the correct term for the word 'you' in this culture (it says this somewhere in the missionary handbook - but I think it's for foreign missions). So I, the obedient missionary, say it occasionally. Everyone is having teeth operations and whatnot. That story of seeing President Barry's daughter in the temple was really cool!
Lets go through how my week went:
Tuesday we were on trade offs with the sister's in charge of the YSA branch in Gainesville. I spent the day with Sister Howell. Lets just say that it was interesting. She is going back to the Temple Square mission next transfer. (Tomorrow I get to spend the day with her companion Sister Hale. Sister Crowton started her training last transfer, but didn't get to finish training her as I came in. Sister Hale has 'The Box of Sunshine' full of chocolate from her mom for easter. Sister Crowton kept saying throughout the week that she needed to prepare to meet the box of sunshine again, so she's been running for the whole 30 minute work out time! - I've been working my way up to 20 min and made it this morning! :)
Wednesday we were on trade offs with the sister's in charge of the Gainesville 3rd ward. Sister Crowton evaluated Sister Houtz while I spent the day with Sister Major! We spent most of the day in my area (GV 2nd ward) and drove around in the boonies, in the rain most of the day. Needless to say, lots of singing in the car took place. Took a picture of one of the roads that we went down. This is basically what GV's boonies look like. It's pretty universal.
Thursday was Zone Meeting (not conference). It was really nice to meet all the missionaries in the Gainesville Zone! There are a lot of people from my MTC District here :) They served TONS of homemade bread and water at the end. I think I had four slices of bread (they were big slices)! The Institute Building of UF has the smell of fresh baked home made bread infused in it's walls. Since it was zone meeting, I got all of the letters addressed to the mission home - I will only get stuff from them once a month so if you send anything there, keep that in mind. My apartment also allows packages (for future reference as my birthday is coming up...).
Friday was weekly planning session! The Elders made us another cake! Enclosed is a picture of the wonderful lemon cake :) We also had a Facebook conference call as well as my 3rd week of training conference call. We didn't get out the door til 4pm! We spent the rest of the day in the ritzy Town of Tioga neighborhood. Saw a limo.
Saturday was conference!!!!!!!! We watched the first session with the G family (investigators) at the Foglemans. I love the Foglemans! Their grandma was commenting that she was listening to an automated phone that sounded like GLADOS and was freaked out. The fact that their 70 year old grandma played Portal 1 and 2 made my day.
Sunday after General Conference was a huge contrast to what the day was like just a few hours before. Sister Crowton and I went tracting and met with some really nice people. They weren't interested, but it was a good experience to 'knock their number' lower. After listening to living prophets and hearing about the wondrous plan of salvation it was very sad to hear about these wonderful people's beliefs. One was a kind of 'inactive' Catholic who didn't really have any convictions or care all that much about religion, "I had questions about that kind of stuff when I was an altar boy, but I don't really care about it anymore." We also met another nice man with a beautiful yard who was a scientist/atheist that "God is something that man made up so they could get through life." And lastly a lady in our apartment building was moving out and her boyfriend came over to help her. We had a quick conversation about what happens after we die. I don't even know how we got on the subject. "After we die, God's love will cancel out everything else and we won't need relationships anymore and we'll all just be brothers and sisters in Christ."
This was a testimony to me that this gospel is true and that we indeed need to talk to everyone to get the word of the Lord out about this wonderful plan of happiness.
Love you all!
~Sister Carlson
PS Sorry about the late email. We went to the butterfly museum at the University of Florida today.
Sunday after General Conference was a huge contrast to what the day was like just a few hours before. Sister Crowton and I went tracting and met with some really nice people. They weren't interested, but it was a good experience to 'knock their number' lower. After listening to living prophets and hearing about the wondrous plan of salvation it was very sad to hear about these wonderful people's beliefs. One was a kind of 'inactive' Catholic who didn't really have any convictions or care all that much about religion, "I had questions about that kind of stuff when I was an altar boy, but I don't really care about it anymore." We also met another nice man with a beautiful yard who was a scientist/atheist that "God is something that man made up so they could get through life." And lastly a lady in our apartment building was moving out and her boyfriend came over to help her. We had a quick conversation about what happens after we die. I don't even know how we got on the subject. "After we die, God's love will cancel out everything else and we won't need relationships anymore and we'll all just be brothers and sisters in Christ."
This was a testimony to me that this gospel is true and that we indeed need to talk to everyone to get the word of the Lord out about this wonderful plan of happiness.
Love you all!
~Sister Carlson
PS Sorry about the late email. We went to the butterfly museum at the University of Florida today.
