Week 3-The Aroma of Tacoma

I'm finally here!!

Yesterday was the longest day of my life. Going off Washington time (since that's where I am, ya know) I got up at 2:30 am to finish packing and get Sis. Young down to the travel office to head out to South Dakota. At the airport, my bags weighed in at 50 and 45 pounds exactly so I had no extra charges. Slept for a few minutes on the plane. At the airport were President Weaver, Sister Weaver, the 2 Assistants, and 2 office Elders to greet us. Sister Weaver gives really great hugs and she and President Weaver are some of the nicest people I have ever met. After 5 minutes with them they already love you like their own children. It's great. They took us to a spot right on Puget Sound and had us just take everything in for a minute. It's so pretty up here. We saw a bald eagle while we were there. Apparently they're everywhere up here.

We went to a church building where they were having the transfer meeting. They fed us, talked to us about cars, mission money stuff, apartments, things like that, and we had our quick interview with President Weaver. They already had trainers picked, but not assigned. They did that after the interviews. So, my companion is Sister Balmforth. She is from Taylorsville, UT and has been out here about a year. When she came in (they did this big announcement thing, kinda cheesy, for each missionary and the Sisters were last) she hugged me and said, "I knew it was you!" That confused me but I asked her about it and she said when she saw the three new Sisters she was pretty sure I would be her new companion. They call us babies here. She is my mom. And my area, where I am born, is Silverdale. It includes the Navy base up here, which is the largest submarine base in the US. So that's exciting.

We went and knocked doors for a little bit. We do that every night from 5-7. Apparently that's where 50% of our baptisms come from still. We just go around around and offer people church tours (where we just show them around the local building, tell them what a service is like, and a little bit about our beliefs) and we let them know they're always welcome. Most of the people were really nice. Not interested but really nice.

We got a few funny responses. One person said he was a born again atheist. Cause that makes a lot of sense. And this other lady wasn't interested, so we just told her where the building was in case she ever wanted to come, and she said oh we know where you guys are, you're not lost. Again, that makes sense. It was a good experience though. Then we met some people from the ward, I guess they were excited to meet the new Sister (that's me in case you forgot). Everyone was really nice and I was really out of it haha.

We finally got back to our apartment at 9 which, by the way, I guess we're lucky to have one of the nicer ones that doesn't have mold all over it. Count your blessings, right? It is pretty nice though. Much, much bigger than the MTC. And more comfortable. And the members give us food like crazy so we never have to worry about that. In short, I'm happy with where I am. Fell asleep at 10:30, 20 straight hours on only 3 hours of sleep. I don't know how I was still talking by the end of it, but I was and I was happy haha :)

Ready for the best news?? We were driving up to our area (about 45 min away from Tacoma and right on Puget Sound) and Sis. Balmforth and I discovered that we both play basketball and both of our numbers in high school were 11. It was meant to be. We have lots of plans for this, including not telling the Elders that I play so they can be surprised when we play on P Day, next Monday. Also, at the transfer meeting they had all the new missionaries stand up so everyone could see who we were (all 194 missionaries in the mission) and we wrote something interesting about ourselves that they read. Mine was that before my mission I had never worn a dress or skirt for more than 4 hours in my life. As they read it, my brand spankin new comp whispers, "Hey, me too!" It was meant to be.

So yeah, things are good. I had a lot more to talk about this time. I'm really glad to finally be out of the MTC. I loved it there, but role playing only gets you so far. And, when your favorite TRC investigator misses your last appointment because she's sick, then there was just no reason at all to stay.

One thing that is really cool is every meeting with missionaries we say this recitation which includes D+C 4, a quote from, I think, Joseph Smith, our mission motto, and 3 Nephi 5:13. It's very long and I had not idea what was going on the first time it happened but it's really great. So, go read D+C 4. Good, good stuff.

That's all I got for now. I'm really excited to be here and just get to work. Let's do this!! Haha

Love,

Sister Chronister

P.S. It is COLD here!!!! Oh well, I'll just have to suck it up. Apparently January and February is the worst though. Pray for me. Seriously.