Heyo!

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Hello Everyone,

Last week after I e-mailed you I went and played Frisbee for an hour and a half straight - and some of it with my Mission President! I wish I got a picture of that. =) Regardless, after getting exercise I felt MUCH better about life, liberty and the pursuit of Cheetos. =) There's something about running around and pretending to be a puppy that just makes me really happy; that and I am feeling physically better, and lots of prayers being answered. Any way, the moral of the story is that I'm doing well and it’s CRAZINESS that it’s the end of the transfer already. I feel like the transfer just began! We just said goodbye to two really incredible Sisters but I know that they are wonderful and that they will be blessed as they go home, missionary or not.

We also found out yesterday that a Sister is going to be kicked from the Battalion to full proselyting because there are too many Sisters. I’m intrigued. I'll let you know what all goes down in transfer meeting tomorrow but I'm sure it'll be interesting and one sister will be missed. But as for me, I'm about 95% sure that I'm staying in Chula Vista and might possibly be staying there for my entire mission. But that's good. Lots of work to be done and people to find, teach, and baptize. I need to bring the people closer to Christ!

The work is going well, we have a bunch of pretty solid potentials, including a girl named Jackie, Megan's friend, who we're hoping to set up an appointment with, a super friendly guy named Clement, and recently we've added three solid investigators, Martha (who you've heard about) and her husband Jacob (who is AWESOME) and this other lady named Michelle, who is the happiness person I've ever met. We met her because I wanted to pet her dog - which is a fantastic way to talk to people by the way especially because I'm 100% sincere about the fact that I love dogs. She asked us, before we could even get to it, about going to church and getting a ride to church. Woohoo! Also we ran into Ricarda again and she's planning on going to church soon. She was excited about primary. She's the one who's been searching for a church.

We kind of just blew up our area though and changed tactics a bit. For the first time in my mission we have a meal calendar, which is exciting for a couple reasons, 1) Elder Ballard told us to work a lot more with members, 2) we're going to be fed, and 3) we'll be able to inspire members to be even more involved with missionary work and being less scared about inviting friends, etc., over for dinner; so far so good. We also dropped a BUNCH of non progressing investigators to give us more time to find new ones and work with members to get us investigators that already have a built in support system and real intent. Pretty cool.

Another less active family came to church and to the Battalion! WOOHOO!!! I'm really, really excited. We're meeting with them tonight to commit Sage with a firm baptismal date so his dad can work towards being able to baptize him and getting them to the Temple. That would be a dream come true. We are still working with “L” family. Also, we met some pretty cool part member families this week.... exciting? I think yes. They're part member less active so we got to be careful but I'm grateful to have them on our radar and we can let the bishop know what’s going on.

Funny story: Sister Kennington and I were on exchanges and we met this super nice old lady named Betty who said that we could come back. So we came back and she let us in, but we realized as the meeting went on that she had NO idea who we were, didn't remember us and didn't know why we were there. She has dementia. So I was going to just finish up the visit and wish her a good day and Sister Newman sets up a return appointment. Hahahaha. We had a return appointment for a lady with dementia. So we went back when we said we would, knocked on her door, wished her a wonderful day (she had no idea who we were) and went on our merry way. Heh. Too funny.

That's most of my week! Hope you all are doing. Huzzah!

Well, sure do love you all! Keep smiling! Keep sharing your funny stories with me!

LOVE,

Sister Tardiff