Letter #24: marchin' on

Oh my, it's March.

 

I feel like I'm having a bit of a "mid-mission crisis" as I realize I'm already 6 months in and I don't feel like I've made leaps and bounds in becoming the person God wants me to be. I know I'm changing and I just can't see it...but I definitely need to make goals for myself about what I want to become and see happen so that I can monitor my progress better. You know me and my endless cry of "I haven't done anything with my life!" I kind of feel like that about my mission, which I so know isn't true....but I still sit here and look back at the last 6 months and think, What HAVE I done?!?!? Anything? So I need to sit myself down and think about where I want to be in the next 3 months, next 6 months, etc. There's a super amazing talk called "The Fourth Missionary" by Lawrence Corbridge that talks a lot about making plans about who we want to become. It's something I will work on so that in 6 more months, I'm not sitting here freaking out about all the things I haven't done.

 

So...I'm training! And it's great! Yay!

My trainee's name is Sister Gordon. She's from Ephraim, UT...and no, she's not one of the 19-year-olds...sorry to disappoint. ;) We did get a few more of them this transfer! One of the other sisters in my apartment came in last week and she's 19! Luckily the Lord sent me a companion who is excited about getting out and working and who wants to obedient! That is exactly what I prayed for so I feel very blessed. Obviously, she was a little bit overwhelmed this week, and it probably didn't help that I worked the poor thing half to death and kept forgetting to feed her. But she's definitely up for the challenge and for the workload, which is important. The work is really taking off here in Nova and we are busy-busy-busy all the time! I love it! It is tricky, though, because we have SO many people we're working with spread out all over the stake as well as a massive amount of recent converts that we really have to be careful not to let people fall through the cracks. Lots to do and so this transfer will definitely be a lesson in priorities. We've been getting 7, 8, 11 new investigators each week for the past few weeks...so as you can imagine, the numbers start adding up.

 

Other than that...not too much to talk about, I guess. Sister Sheffield is home now in Utah...super crazy! She emailed me and also left me a package of little presents which was sweet of her. :) I feel like we were in Stuart teaching Stacey just last week. But then on the other hand it feels like a whole different life....

Sister Holyan is training also, she opened a new area down in Hialeah (Miami). That translates to: lots of Cubans! Hopefully her Spanish comes back quickly, since we didn't use it much here in Nova. Oh, speaking of Spanish, Sis Gordon is a Spanish missionary so I'm training Spanish! And everyone has been telling me my whole mission that my Spanish is really good, but I didn't believe them because I thought they were all just being nice. But...turns out...it actually is pretty good. So it's not like I'm sitting here saying, "Okay, let's do Spanish study and you can teach me all you know!" but I really am teaching her and helping her Spanish improve.

 

Should be having a handful of baptisms next week!

I'm driving now and am quickly realizing how much I DON'T like driving in South Florida. Man, I thought Utah drivers were bad!

 

Oh, one last thing! Elder Edwards, my zone leader up north, was transferred down to Ft. Laud and so he's my zone leader again! I was SO excited! Kind of random, since he goes home next month and thus will only be here for 6 weeks...but we actually had a lot of people who got transferred with only one transfer left. But anyways, I'm happy to have him down here. Elder Bjorling and Elder Edwards will probably always be some of my favorite zone leaders since I spent so much time around them and we all became really good friends.

 

Well...that's the news from Ft. Laud. Love you all!

 

Sister Dougal

 

PS- I still love getting mail.............but I have been sad recently as I haven't been getting very much.......