On the road again...

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Hey Family!

This is the last week of the transfer... wowowowow. This transfer went by SO fast, I'm not even kidding. I feel like every transfer gets faster and faster and faster. But this week was great. It was a little long, which seems like a contradiction to the fact that the transfer has gone so fast, but in the mission the days feel like weeks and weeks feel like days and it’s like a time warp, ha-ha. I love the mission. I love being here in San Diego. I love the Temple and being on the Temple grounds so much. Miracles ALWAYS happen there, and I love the gospel. =)

Some really good things that happened this week:

1) We FINALLY got in contact with Deshan. He doesn't have a baptismal date anymore but at least he's not avoiding us. *sigh of relief* He's awesome. We took some members with us and members are the key to everything, because members are normal people, missionaries are messengers of God kind of disguised as normal people, ha-ha, but people just see right through us. Members are more relatable for sure.

2) The Christian and the Muslim are both in contact with us. Finahez and Adam and we were able to talk to his roommate Amir. His roommate Amir is probably the most ready of the bunch. He has a deeply spiritual side and instead of trying to teach us about Islam he's really interested in what we believe and how he can be more deeply involved. President Clayton is meeting with him on Wednesday so that he can be cleared to be added as an investigator. =)

3) This one isn't a really good thing, but as a missionary I didn't go to church. My mission is crazy! This weekend was a regional stake conference broadcasted from Salt Lake and the Battalion center was still open so three companionships and the new site director Elder Seegmiller didn't get to go to church at all. It’s adding to the whole time warp thing, but it’s all good. Some good things happened at the Battalion that day, like taking this ADORABLE five year old and her parents through the tour. She'd never seen a movie before so she thought the whole presentation was real. It was so cute. The parents were super respectful as well. They were both Catholic but they want their daughter exposed to a lot of religions and they said that they would definitely come back. =)

4) We've seen a lot of miracles from being where we told God we would be. One of our appointments fell through and so we decided to go to the backups even though it would have been more convenient to just push lunch forward. So we parked at the Temple on Sunday and we see these five YSA's just walking around taking pictures, so I go up and ask if they have any questions about the Temple and they have TONS about temples and Mormons. The questions were all super respectful too. Long story short we are sending two of them a Book of Mormon and we are sending them with the missionaries, Steven and Noblee. =) It was so awesome. They're from Los Angeles so we also gave them the address to the LA visitor center. =D

5) People in our ward are feeding us dinner! We finally gave in and sent around a dinner calendar as a more productive and awesome way to meet members of the ward. Our first meal was DELICIOUS; authentic Philippine food, with lumpia! Yummy!

6) Also the cutest thing happened. We added an investigator named James who is Taiwanese and when we went back to give him a traditional Chinese Book of Mormon he gave us New Year presents with a dollar in it. I just love people so much, and people are SO nice.

7) I'm going to put a concerted effort into learning how to ballroom dance again at some point in my life thanks to Mark. =D

Some not so good things that happened this week:

1) It rained yesterday (which are highly diverse weather conditions in San Diego) and I was sopping wet, and kind of cold, but it was OK. =) I wore a rain jacket and everything.

2) I almost went stir crazy during weekly planning. My attention span needs to be improved upon, ha-ha. I was rocking and could not stay still for the life of me. Good thing we take breaks and have ice cream to eat.

So... yep, that's about it. =D

So that's a somewhat organized snap shot of my week. It’s been kind of a roller coaster week of ups and downs, mostly ups and I'm grateful for all the experiences that I've had. =)

I love you all so much! Thanks for being so involved in my mission and my life and being such a wonderful family. You are the best!

Love,

Sister Tardiff