Hello family and friends! Happy new year! (Can you believe it's 2012?!) I miss you all but I am absolutely loving it here. So just to give you a little bit of an idea, my schedule is generally like this: up at 6:30, exercise, shower, eat, be ready for the day by 8. We have an hour of personal study, two hours of companion study (for the first two transfers while I'm training, after that it will be one hour), and an hour of site study to prepare us for giving tours at historical sites (we usually bump this to the evening because it is very dark and cold by 8:00 at night). Then we fill most days with proselyting. We are doing a lot of "finding," i.e. door contacting... which is a nice way of saying that we don't have a lot of investigators to teach in the area right now, but we WILL, we just need to find the people to teach. :) The area we proselyte in and the area we live in were combined the last few transfers, so now that it has been split again and a few recent baptisms later... it's time to increase our teaching pool. But the Lord is giving us many miracles! We are trying to follow the Spirit and are in the right places at the right times.
We are supposed to be back in our apartments by 9 PM (9:30) if we are in an appointment. Other than that, we have site meeting one evening a week, plus district meeting on weeks that we don't have zone conference or something like that. We usually have dinner at a member's house 3 or 4 nights a week, which is nice. We get to work at the sites about a half day a week, and do online chat for an hour once or twice a week. We live about an hour away from Palmyra, but even with the distance almost all of the sisters have a pretty equal amount of site time each week. There will be more site and less proselyting time once everything thaws out and pageant season starts up, but we are loving both sites and proselyting.
Saturday was my first site shift at the Joseph Smith Farm. This includes the welcome center there, the log home (where the angel Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith and told him about the gold plates), the cooper shop (one of the places Joseph hid the plates), the threshing barn, and the frame home. The property also includes the Sacred Grove and is overlooked by the Palmyra temple. What a blessing to walk where God, angels, and ancient and modern prophets have stood, and to testify of them! Tours are great. Each one is different, adjusted to the needs of the people who come. Most visitors are members, and we try to get them to share their testimonies of the things we testify of along the way. It is such an edifying experience. :) I am starting to learn the facts and I don't by any means know everything, but I was able to lead a tour by the end of the day, with Sister Chatterton filling in the technical gaps and her testimony of the things we talked about. (Usually only one missionary will take a tour instead of a companionship, especially in the summer when it gets busy, so I'm preparing and training to be able to do it on my own.)
Quick thought for the week: The scriptures are awesome. Especially the Book of Mormon. Because the priesthood has been restored to the earth, we are able to receive personal revelation through the Book of Mormon. It is "living scripture," and because of this we can receive answers to any questions we may have. There are so many other blessings we can also get from consistent reading of the scriptures. I highly recommend "The Power of Scripture" from Elder Scott this past conference for a good starting point. Consider reading it and listing all of the blessings he promises. It is amazing. We are seeing a less-active member starting on her way to a temple recommend right now, and she is gaining power by starting with the scriptures. It really does bless our lives every day.
To answer questions, we have been blessed with an extremely mild winter (it's been in the 50s multiple times this past week), although the last couple of days have been cold with wind and snow. My companion has had the flu this weekend but she is starting to feel better and we should be ready to go by tomorrow. Sister Chatterton is awesome, I love her a lot and she is exactly what I needed in a trainer. The Lord is awesome like that. :)
Time for me to go. I love you all, and wish you the best at the start of the new year! You are in my prayers every day.
With love,
