Going to Connecticut

Wednesday May 13th

Well first of all, it was SO good to talk to you and see your cute faces! I love you oh so much. Please don't put that video anywhere, embarrassing! Some of this email I wrote before I talked to you, so some will be repeated. But for the sake of the future when I go back and read these some day, it will be good to know that I got a transfer call to go to the Yorktown zone. My area will be Danbury, Connecticut and I am going to be the STL (Sister Training Leader) there. I'm pretty excited to go to Connecticut! It'll be awesome. My companion is going to be Sister Groburg. She only has two cycles left. So I might kill her here...(meaning I will be her last companion). She is really nice. She was in my zone in Manhattan so I already know her :) 

Also, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD AND MARISSA!!! I love you both so much!! Have the best birthday ever!

WEDNESDAY 

So we went to West Point last week for pday with the zone. We went on a history tour and went through museum like things. The campus is beautiful but Let me tell ya, I was dying. I hate history overload, I hate long tours, I hate too many museums. Not my cup of tea. He stopped to tell us about every plaque and symbol. It was the longest two hours of my life. The Food place where they feed the cadets was cool because they feed thousands within minutes and it had a really pretty view outside so that was nice.  But other than that, forget it. Haha 

THURSDAY 

So Thursday was super hot so we decided to go look up this religious friend we have. He just feeds us and talks about God with us, super respectful and loves missionaries but he isn't interested in switching religions or anything. But anyway, he has a little store thing so he gave us free lollipops, cupcakes and big Popsicle like things. It was sweeeeet. We also got to teach some awesome lessons. Oh ya, a less active of ours gave us a few dollars and asked us to go buy her a notebook and pen from the dollar store so she could have a journal to write down notes about the BoM in. So we did and we ended up buying perfume from the dollar store so it was only $1 and its called "only she" and it's compared to "Justin biebers girlfriend" perfume hahaha  it actually smells great! 

FRIDAY

We had an APF and so it was our turn. So we decided that we would do a pamphlet and teaching people competition thing again. If we won, the Elders had to sing with us for Mother's Day and if they won then they didn't. Well they ended up barely winning..but since they never made us waffles from the last time they lost they decided they would sing with us. So that was a relief haha so we practiced when we got home. It was 95 while we were Tracting and it is getting so humid. Not sure where spring went. 

We had the most incredible lesson ever with Ashley and Giovanna her daughter. Giovanna still loves us. Whenever she sees our car pull up she stops playing and runs to her mom and yells "mom the church girls are here!" And then she comes back outside and waits for us so she can give us hugs, it's so cute. Anyway, Ashely invited her friend to join our lessons. So her friend was there and we taught them the gospel of Jesus Christ and then the friend had tons of questions. We talked about the Spirit for a while because they didn't understand and hen Ashely was like "will you teach her the restoration and plan of salvation right now please? She would love to know all that" then she turned to her friend (Denise) and said "this is really good stuff. You will like this" and then told us to "take it away" haha so we taught her super simply those two lessons and then the friend was like "wow I just got the chills!" So we explained how that was the spirit and her mind was blown. She opened up to us like crazy and told us all the reasons why she wants to know more and how she wants to go to church and all this stuff. Then Ashely's husband came out and he was like "not that I was listening or anything but can you answer this question..." And he went on to ask us a question that we answered for him and then he thought that was so cool so he decided to join us for the closing prayer. So ya it was awesome. When we left we took out their trash and all their boxes to recycle(they had just opened a new air conditioner [one that goes in a window] so they had boxes for it) and then the husband LOVED us so we got some nice brownie points from him. Haha jk, it was awesome though. 

We ended up taking dinner from 8-9 so that we could just eat super fast then shower and go to bed at 9 since we had to wake up so early! 

SATURDAY 

We woke up at and headed to Manhattan. It was the best day ever. I can't even describe to you how incredible it was to meet and hear from Elder Cook. We all got to shake his hand and he said he had a personal interview with each of us as he looked into our eyes.. Scary. Haha..He told us that New York is the center of the universe :) it's true. Anyway, he left the most incredible apostolic blessing EVER on us. Like the coolest one I've eve heard. I think that's the 3rd or 4th I've heard on my mission and this one was by far the best.  [family I hope you never forget it! I told you about it on skype, but I don't think Riss was on yet so pass that message on to her too. And tell Sam too please!] And then his testimony. Dang. Now that was incredible. He talked about how sacred some things were but that he wanted to share with us part of his testimony (which I told you about on skype). I wish I could just tell you all of it! But just know, everyone was crying and he Spirit was soooo strong it was the most incredible thing. 

Elder cook also had us stand up with how many lessons we teach on average a week. (Now this isn't Mexico or something, so it's hard to teach a lot of lessons). So like 5-10 then 10-15 then 15-20(most people stood up here) then 20-30 and then 30+ and my comp and I were like one of three companionships to stand up for elder cook for 30+. It was pretty sweet because it just showed how much the Lord has blessed this area. That would NOT be possible without the Lord. This is Monticello. Population 50. Afterwards he told us that we can measure success of our misisonary work by how much we invite. So if we teach someone something and invite them to do something according to the Spirit to exercise their faith then even if they reject, we are successful. He said that if we have more faith and teach more then we will have success even if people decline. 

Elder cook and President Morgan also both talked about how there may be several people who are more qualified and prepared but the Lord has called US each to serve here and to teach in the areas we are sent in the positions so we hold. Pretty much it was AWESOME. Best day ever. 

On the way home there was this girl who seemed to be less active and she said to her friends, "You have to be home at nine, that's why I'm not going on a mission!" What a great reason not to go.. Haha  

Later that night I got a phone call from President Morgan asking if I would accept the call to be a Sister Training leader in the Yorktown zone. So that will be interesting. I'm glad that it's right now though because I will get to go to MLC (mission leadership council) right when the new mission president comes in, so I'll be able to get to know him more a lot faster. Pretty much I just will have to work along side the zone leaders and then go on a split with all the sisters in my zone each cycle and interview them and make sure they are all doing well. Stuff like that. It'll be good though, I'll learn a lot from it I'm sure. 

SUNDAY

On Sunday we Sang "come thou fount" at church with the elders and played a recording of the piano since nobody can play the piano. Haha it sounded like it was coming from the piano though so it's all good. After church we just went to the hsiehs to skype. Sister Smoot Skyped her family and then I Skyped you. We were so excited! And as I said, it was so good to talk to you all for a short while! 

I talked to Talked to sister Macuilt from my last area!!! She is doing SO good. I called to wish her a happy Mother's Day and what not and we ended up talking for like 30 minutes or so. She just got called as a ward missionary and she is preparing for her endowment so I will get to go to that when that happens!! I'm SO excited for her! Goodness I can't even contain myself. 

MONDAY

Monday was rough, it started out by me stepping on my hot curling iron. My toes got all blistered up. The bottom of my foot is nice and pretty. Then later on when we were cleaning and packing I knocked over Sister Smoots red juice. That stained the white carpet nicely. I have too much stuff so packing was a nightmare. I ended up gettin it all to work, I just had a few extra additions to my suitcases :) but district meeting was good, probably the best one we have had in this area. We mostly talked about the conference with Elder Cook and then the doctrine of Christ. 

TUESDAY

We finished packing and cleaning and saying bye to people. We also went to the food pantry and said bye to everyone there and interfaith council at the Jewish Temple. 

When we went to have a lesson with Barbara (our investigator that is super awesome and has a bap date for next month) kept asking if we could come over Wednesday on the way out. She hugged me like 20 times. It was so cute though haha. She decorated her house with all the pictures of Christ we have given her and she set her pamphlets out and her Book of Mormon stories. She is awesome. I can't wait for her to get baptized. If she wasn't still smoking, she would already be baptized. 

We also had a lesson with sister mccreary and she took like a million pictures on her wind up camera haha it was cute. She just kept thanking me and gave me all her contact info and she gave me a scripture too. It was adorable. 

And I'm pretty sure it turned green outside like overnight. It's been so green everywhere here the past few days. Definitely better than the white snow and brown trees. 

I went to mail a package full of random stuff that I don't want to carry around and it came up as $155 and I was like ohhhh man, nope. That can't happen. And then the lady was like "oh wait, that's only if you want it to get there tomorrow. How fast would you like?" So of course I said "as slow as possible" and it ended up being $44. It's a big box with a ton of random stuff in it. I just about had a heart attack though when I saw $155 haha

So this week I was studying faith because that is what we are focusing on as a mission this month. We exercise faith all the time. We take a shower because we have faith that we will be clean from it. We try out for sports teams because we have faith that we can make it. We put things in the microwave because we have faith that it will become hot. Faith can be hard at times. Faith is trusting that God knows something we don't. Faith can be believing that everything will be alright in the end. Just as president Hinckley said, everything will be alright in the end, and if it's not alright, it's not the end. It really is hard to have complete faith in God all the time. Trusting in His timing and His will can be a big struggle. I have really noticed how prayer helps me to have that peace so that I can have faith in Gods plan and faith in Gods will. 

I love you all so much. I am praying for you. I am thinking of you. I am going to work extra extra hard this week in hopes for some more blessings for you. I love you! Xoxox 

Love,

Sister Tanner <3

Saying goodbye to the great people of Monticello!!