Dearest family,
Thanks so much for your email updates and snail mail. Becky and Sarah win the prize for making Sister Schank's day this week when the mailbox gets checked. :) Some fun events of the week:
-We were told we had to cancel all our Tuesday appointments and stay in because of the hurricane and then the weather was nice enough to go out. Tried to set up other appointments, which all fell though. Tracted a street in the light rain, found a new investigator named Rodney! We are meeting with him for the first time tomorrow :) Also got in touch with the Perry family, who we are really excited about! They were member referrals until the members found out that the parents were actually baptized 10 years ago in Ireland! They moved pretty shortly after and lost touch with the church, but still have strong testimonies and want their two boys baptized :) We are meeting with them for the first time tonight.
-We switched p-day to Halloween this week and played sports with other missionaries at the church building. I am still a little sore lol.
-Stake conference this weekend! It was excellent, and the theme was on preparation. Specifically preparing youth to serve missions, temporal preparation in light of Hurricane Sandy, and preparation to attend the temple/spiritual preparation by attending the temple. The Second Coming is on the way! SOOOOO much recently about missionaries, temples/family history work, and temporal preparation.
-We got to go on our Relief Society temple trip this week. We happened to schedule an ASL session. Pretty much the coolest thing ever. I learned SO MUCH being able to watch the translators and read the closed captioning. I really love the temple. :) The Lord is trying to teach me recently just to trust Him. He has provided for others in the past, and He will guide me too—I just need to be patient and listen.
-Officially transferred Melissa and Patrick over to the Buffalo ward elders. We are sad not to teach them, but the elders will do a great job and I'm so excited for their family. We got to sit by them at stake conference. :)
Other than that, it was just a busy week! We have a few investigators we are just about ready to drop, and a few more that look like they are finally starting to progress :) And a handful of inbetweeners. We are also working with a bunch of less-actives right now... in particular, we get to meet Marriah for the first time this week. She's a 15-year-old in the Orchard Park ward and is just kind of in a delicate situation right now and is responding better to sisters. We're the only sisters in the stake, so we get to start teaching her! We are also planning on going to Palmyra with Bill this week! (Last week's trip was rescheduled because of the storm.) The weather is supposed to be nice this time... well, nice for November. I couldn't believe it, today and yesterday we walked out to our car and saw little snow flurries! I'm still a little bit in denial. Excited for the holiday season, though. We have some members that have plans to take good care of us and Thanksgiving, and I am super excited to proselyte throughout the Christmas season. :)
Health update: Doing pretty well, sniffles almost gone. I've been off stomach meds for probably a month now and have been sleeping on an incline, but still feeling chest pressure and at times general or sharp pains. Dr Boyle is doing his homework this week, including talking to a GI specialist at the hospital he works at. So we will see :)
Love you all to pieces!
Sister Schank
