Rapid City Week ONE!

2:30 A.M. departure

Goodbye MTC!

Okay, wow. I feel like I have so much to write about! I'll start at the beginning, and hope that my fingers can type enough to include everything.

First off, they shipped Elder E and I out of the MTC at 2:30am...TWO THIRTY AM. I was sooo tired, and since I'm already a sleep sensitive swamp beast, it made for a really long day. We spoke in Portuguese a bit on the way there, and then got bagels at the airport together, but saying goodbye to the last member of my district in the airport was really hard. They shaped the very beginning of my mission, and had such an overwhelmingly powerful influence on me.

My flights went smoothly, though I was stuck in the very farthest back seat of the plane. I was able to speak to the people sitting next to me about what I would be doing on a mission, and one woman seemed interested. I gave her a pass-along card and encouraged her to find out more. I then landed in the smallest, most outdated airport ever. They literally have paintings like the Womapoke Indians in Parks & Rec. It's pretty funny. I was B-lining it to the restroom to clean up, and potentially de-poofify my 2:30am hair, when I was mobbed by two sisters. Auuugh.

Sister H, the redhead next to me, is one of my new companions.

I clenched my bladder, and smiled and attempted to remain coherant as they spewed a ton of information about the mission. They really were quite sweet, but at that point I was starving, in zombie-mode, and really ready to sleep for about 3 days. They took me to the library (it was their p-day), and I was able to send a quick note home. Afterwards, we went to their apartment, mosied up to the mission home, and waited for quite a while until other missionaries showed up. There are a TON of new missionaries here--I think 31 or 32? It was their biggest group yet, and so chaos and disorganization ensued. I spent a large majority of that night wondering where I was supposed to be, or wondering if they would realize that I didn't have a companion or a travel partner...no big deal. Oh, and he interviewed everyone...but forgot about me until one of the APs said something...no big deal. I'm not supposed to be here, I see how it is! Haha jk, I know there's a reason why I'm here, I just have yet to discover exactly what that reason is!

Okay, so mission training....long. and boring. I'm just keeping it real. I don't know why they attempt to train missionaries who are running on 1-2 hours of sleep, because I definitely didn't retain much. I even had to stand up during the "how to drive a car and stop at stop signs and not hit pedestrians" video. It was a long night. That being said, my President Anderson and his wife are top-notch. I really like his drive and directness, and she is a really really sweet woman. All of the mission office sisters are also really sweet, and they make us feel like we have mothers and grandmothers wherever we go! It's great.

The next morning wasn't much better. We didn't get to our place to sleep until 10:30, then I had to soak my foot until 11, and Sister M (one of the senior missionaries) woke us up at 5am to get ready. Noooooo. I need my beauty sleep! Anyways, more training, more confusion on where we were supposed to be. President Anderson asked for a volunteer to do a demonstration teaching in front of the missionaries, and since all of the stateside people are megawusses, relatively new to the mission, I raised my hand. We've done TONS of role-plays in Portuguese, so this one actually went pretty well, and he commented on my "Emmy-award winning acting," whatever that means. I think there really is something to be said about learning a foreign language. Sister T and I really discovered that we had to teach simple, and concisely. It is a lot harder to do in English!

Taylor Avenue

Side note: this mission is massive. A lot of people had to drive 8-16 hours to get to their areas, and often times they go months/their whole missions without seeing the mission president. It's pretty crazy. I'm stationed in Rapid City, which is the booming metropolis of South Dakota. We have a "huge" ward for this area...it will definitely be a culture shock going from the RCSDM to a city of 9 million.

Okay, so I won't bore you with all of the awesome members and less actives that we've visited, other than saying that every single member has been incredible, has fed us incredibly well, and are striving to have missionary experiences! We had two women share Book of Mormons this week, a man invite his friends to have dinner with us, children pass out pass-along cards to their friends, and other people giving us a few referrals. I have a feeling that we will be able to work really well with these members!

 

Sisters Colvin, SB,SH

I'm in a trio with Sister H, and Sister B. SH is from Colorado, just turned 20, is a firey redhead, has been out for 6 months, and is my trainer. SB is from Gilbert, Arizona (shoutout to my district Elders!), is 22, 4'11", and reminds me a little bit of a squeaky toy. She's so cute, and she strives to find positives in every situation. She laughs a lot, and makes this adorable squeaky voice sometimes that cracks SH and I up. We laugh a lot, which is good, because there have been some weird situations so far! I love both of my companions a lot, and feel incredibly blessed to have another set of awesome, hardworking, obedient, and loving companions. Trios are hard, but so far we've worked really well together and our personalities seem to be meshing well. BLESSINGS!

Sooooo.....we're pretty much opening the area. This area used to be covered only by the APs, but they are gone ALL the time, and haven't been able to hit a lot of the areas. We're the first sister missionaries here in about 10 years, and I tell you what.....the members LOVE us. We share the area with the APs now, and I don't mean to sound biased or snooty or anything, but they're way more open with the sisters than they are with the elders....and we're the ones getting referrals. Yesssssssss. I'm trying to tame my hyper-competitiveness, because that's NOT what a mission is about, but I'm very grateful that they feel comfortable with us, and willing to have us teach their close friends.

Okay, into my bulleted items:
-our apartment

Kitchen

Bathroom

Bedroom

My Desk/table

-our apartment/place of living is in the basement of a member's house--we're the first missionaries to live there. It's an awesome apartment .....but we don't have any carpet, there are a LOT of spiders...and there are some weiiiirrd smells. Tuesday we were all praying, and after the prayer SB and I just looked at each other, made the same disgusted face, and realized that the large area rug REEKED of cat pee. I'm not talking just a little bit, but a LOT. We don't want to offend the owner of the house (a single mother recent convert of 2 years with 5 girls)....so we rolled up the carpet, and stuck it in the farthest corner of our kitchen. (you can see it rolled up in the picture of the kitchen I'll send you).

-my poor feet....they're so weird. I've been religious about soaking them and doing my daily routine, but I don't think my toe is healing super well. Also, now I have hyper dryness of my plantar fascia! awesome. not. I haven't applied drysol for over a week, but my skin still has been sluffing off from dryness. It looks better today, and I'll keep applying lotion at night to help with this problem.
 
-I love eating at member's houses! It's always a little awkward because they don't know you and you don't know them, but members here are awesome and super welcoming. We ate with several families this past week who have daughters on missions! I think that when you have children out on missions you're a little more conscious of missionary work, and those mothers are having some great missionary experiences. We also ate at a house with a bunch of little boys, and one boy was literally scooping sour cream and licking it off of a spoon. It was pretty funny....and kind of gross too haha. I love children.
 

7 hour wasted planning session

-since we're opening the area, the area book is basically nonexistent. We spent most of our weekly planning (ie, 7 HOURS of planning), discussing members, less actives, former investigator's, the map, etc. It was much needed...UNTIL the APs called us and let us know that instead of sharing the area, we'd be splitting it. uuuugggggghhhhhhh. AFTER 7 hours of planning. Oh, and they weren't going to get us the new boundaries for another day and a half. uuuggggghhhhh. Sometimes Elders are not the most thoughtful creatures in the world. My companions and I were all equally frustrated, and we had many exasperated sighs and groans after that phonecall.

Tracting FUN!

-we've mostly been working with less-actives and part-member families, but we've done a little bit of tracting as well. No one will directly come out and say it, but tracting really stinks. It's a terrible method of finding people! Very few people are willing to let you in, and it's awkward if they do! That being said....I have a story.

On Friday we were trying to contact a former investigator. We walked to where her address was supposed to be and it appeared to be abandoned. SB and I decided to be bold, and we opened her gate and marched up the porch with the courage and boldness they try to instill in us in the MTC....only to have a scary DOG NOISE come out of NOWHERE. We seriously had no idea where the heck the dog noise was coming from, and we booked it from the porch as fast as possible. I did NOT want to go back in there, but as an ancient dog with probably blind eyeballs and a bad hip came limping out from under the porch, SH decided that we had come this far, and we were going to go in....so once again, I mustered up all of my courage, and went up and knocked on this scary house. A larger older lady answered the door, beaming at us with about 7 teeth, as MORE DOGS swarmed us. I think she had like 6 ginormous dogs, and only one looked like it would potentially eat our face off. We said that we were there to talk about religion and discover how people come close to Christ, and she let us in.  We were able to get to know her, share the message of the restoration, and challenge her to read the Book of Mormon. Her name was Z, and she was a 7th day adventist who actually had mormons come and teach her about 10 years ago.....they had clearly either taught her very poorly, or she just didn't understand, because she had some wild ideas about what we believe! We were able to clear up some questions, testify, and invite the Spirit. We're headed back tomorrow for a follow-up, so we'll see how it goes. Also, her son's tiny Asian girlfriend, T, came in about 2/3 of the way through the lesson, and said that she had actually gone to our church when she lived back east, and that she really liked it and would like to go back. SO, 2 potential investigators from being bold and entering a sketch place.

K, one more funny story, then I need to send pics.

-we helped a L. move on Sat....as we arrived, she exclaimed, "OH MY GO*(not missionary appropriate), I'M SO GLAD YOU'RE HERE!" She then proceeded to grasp our hands, kiss them profusely, touch our faces waaay too much, and clasp our hands and say, "I NEED TO PRAY." She then started sobbing, and said, choking her words out through tears and over-emotionality, "Thank you Jesus, that's all I can say." Uuuhhhh. We hadn't even done anything yet....and she really didn't have us do very much. She was an interesting bird. We were going to share a message, and were all piled onto her tiny couch, and she ended up talking to us about a screwdriver for like 15 minutes. I think we need to get better about taking control of the situation....especially since she hugged SB goodbye for like 5 minutes, while kissing her hands and neck. Afterwards, SB just made her squeaky toy voice and said that she's never felt so uncomfortable in her life.

-Portuguese. Oh man, I didn't realize how much I love Portuguese. I say all of my personal prayers in Portuguese, and I relish my hour of language study every day. I've been able to maintain a lot of what I learned, and am striving to memorize at least one scripture a week, as well as several vocab words a day. I hope I'm able to continue to maintain it....

Well, I love you and I miss you all! This mission has been really fun, and I'm excited to serve TWO missions. Thank heavens I got out all of my emotions of doubt and distain towards a reassignment in the MTC, because I love it here! Every day I just work my hardest to make it count, which has been great.

I have such a testimony for this work, especially for the Holy Ghost. He is such a guiding power in my life, and all people can feel touched as we invite the Spirit into their homes. It's awesome.

Love you all!

Com muito muito amor e felicidade,