Letter #11 (August 11, 2008)

This week was great..although I think I say that about every week!! ;o)

We had Zone Conference this week. Normally it is 2 zones together, but this time it was a half zone conference, which is 3 zones. It was really cool because I got to see my old companion and the sister that I came out in the field with. It was so Spiritual and SO good. So they have this thing called Pin and Patch in my mission. It is something that missionaries can earn. For the Pin you have to memorize 20 scriptures in German and also do outlines for lessons 1-3. The Patch is 20 more scriptures memorized (you have to be able to recite all 40) and outlines for lessons 4-5. For my first zone conference my mission president commited all the new missionaries to get their Pin by the next zone conference. Well I started it, but then got lost in doing other missionary things. Well, my wonderful comp encouraged me to do it and told me that it was still possible. So I started memorizing like a crazy person and managed to get it done. So the morning of Zone Conference I passed off my scriptures to my district leader and also had my outlines done....so during the meeting I got to go up and get my Pin, which looks super cool and I also got to go up and get sung to for my birthday!! The meeting was mostly centered on Jesus Christ and the atonement. It was so good. My comp and I are excited to spend one more transfer together. She goes home at the end of this transfer, which is sad because I wish I could spend my whole mission with her. We get along so well and have SO much fun. This last transfer was only 5 weeks because of a missions presidents conference this next week that our pres is going to, so we still have 7 weeks left together. The transfer ends in the beginning of October and I will be getting a new companion and hopefully staying here.

We had a baptism on Saturday for a 10 year old named Alicia. Her mom was recently baptized and Sister Welch and her old comp, then sister Welch and I and now Sister Jones and I have been teaching her. She is so cute, but very much 10 years old!! I think that she will be great though because she has her mom´s support. She is way more prepared for baptism then I was!! ;o) The whole thing was crazy because people kept calling and saying that they couldn´t come. Normally we have it after church on Sunday, but her mom wanted it on Saturday. We still had a pretty good turn out for a saturday. I ended up singing with the Elders because our Musikalischerdarbeitung (yeah...that is musical number) fell through. I also sang again on Sunday for church and have realized how excited I will be when I am able to practice everyday again. I have lost a lot of the control of my voice...meaning now you can hear in my voice that I am nervous, but that is ok!! One day I will get it back, for now I will just do what I can with what I have left!!

Sonja is doing well, but she keeps promising to come to church and then she doesn´t show up...we are working on figuring out why. She is always at our appt., but never at church. She just needs to understand how important it is!! It will be fine!! This week we have a lot planned already and I´m very excited!!

Thanks again for all the support and the emails with words of wisdom....it really does mean a lot to me!! There are many things that I want to change about myself and how I do missionary work, but it won´t happen in one day. I just need to do a little better every day and the Lord will help me!!

Sister Jones