Letter #23: the words i longed to hear

So we got transfer calls last night (although they made us wait FOREVER! Usually get the call at 9:30 and last night it didn't come until almost 10:20! If you've been a missionary, you will understand just how painful it was to wait!).

And....

...I get to stay in my beloved Nova!
Yay!

And...

...I'M TRAINING!!
I am so excited. That was exactly what I wanted to hear last night...staying and training. :) Sister Holyan is unhappy about leaving, but she knew it was coming so luckily she got a headstart on her packing this weekend....that girl has the equivalent of a small clothing store in her closet! She's transfer training, which she's not terribly thrilled about, but I think it sounds exciting! :) She'll be just fine.

Seriously, though, I am SOO excited to train! I've been praying for my trainee for the last month or so and I've made her a planner for this transfer (thanks Sis Spjut for the idea!) and I am just super excited to meet her. Also crazy is that she's probably going to be a Spanish missionary. We have 11 sisters coming in and only 1 of them is called as an English missionary. So I might be training Spanish. Sweet! Good thing all of our prayers for the past couple weeks have been in Spanish! It means I've gotten some practice :)

I'm also super glad that I get to stay here in Nova. Last night at FHE we were playing manhunt and as we were leaving I was just looking around at everyone and thinking, Wow, I would be so sad to leave all of this. There really is a closeness in YSA that doesn't exist in family wards. I'm starting to understand why everyone who serves in Nova and says that once you leave, you never really get that piece of your heart back...

Unfortunately I don't have anything too wonderful to report from this last week, like an end of transfer baptism miracle or anything like that. On Wednesday, one of the elders who is also Navajo and actually from Sis Holyan's home ward had his birthday, so we went down to Hollywood and made Navajo tacos and ate them with some of the elders. It was fun! We made a whole stack of frybread and the chili beans that go on top. It took up a good chunk of the day, but I think the elder really appreciated it. He is a pretty quiet guy, it's his first transfer out here, and it was his first birthday away from his twin, so I think he was kinda having a hard time. So I was glad we got to do something nice for him. :)

And on Friday...Sister Holyan got in a bike accident! Yikes! We ended up biking allll the way out to the outer reaches of Fort Laud from our apartment in Plantation (about 10 miles) which was not super pleasant in itself, let me point out. One of the greatest stressors of my mission thus far has been the fact that we have monthly mileage allotments...and when we get low on miles we have to bike. So we biked out to our appointment through all kinds of sketchy streets. After our appointment we start biking alll the way back home and on the way there, we pass a bus stop with some old man in a motorized scooter just hanging out in the middle of the sidewalk. All the people at the bus stop (him included) saw us coming and were like, Old man, you gotta move, them girls is coming but he refused to move! So Sis. Holyan tries to swerve around him and somehow ends up flipping her bike over and landing spread-eagled on the pavement. Oh my, it was scary to watch my companion fly off her bike and suddenly end up on the ground! Although...I'll be honest...my initial reaction was to pull out my camera and take a picture. Unfortunately I didn't even get to take a picture because the old man starts yelling at her, Get up! Get up! So me & some other guy there pulled her up. (She was mad afterwards that I didn't get a picture of the whole ordeal) I handed out mormon.org cards to everyone there, including the annoying old man who caused the whole problem in the first place. Then, we try to get back on our bikes...and hers was broken! So we had to have one of the senior missionaries come and pick us up.
And that was our excitement for the week. Luckily, she wasn't hurt at all. Just some scratches. I was watching her closely the next couple days in case she had a concussion, but she's been fine.
But the plus side of all this....we get our miles extended this month because she's not allowed back on bike for a while. Sweeeet. :) Eh, sometimes God moves in mysterious ways.

Well, that's it for now. Luckily I was able to borrow a GPS from our branch president so hopefully I won't get too lost trying to show my new one around.

Also...I hit my 6-month-mark this Thursday. What the heck?!?! Time is flying by. I literally can't believe how fast this last transfer was! Soo crazy.

Love you all,
sister dougal