Dearest
Mommy,
Things are great!! Interviews with President were exactly what we
needed! Transfers are next Monday, so I
will be writing you on Tuesday next week. Either I or my companion will be transferred. I don’t know who or where we will go, but
basically anything is possible. It’s
very possible that I will be training a new missionary. There are about 20 sisters in the mission
right now, and Monday our mission receives 17 new sisters. Then, in the next transfer (April) our
mission receives 23 more new sisters, and the next transfer after that our
mission receives another 25 more new sisters. Everyone is basically freaking out because
training for newbies lasts 2 transfers and so the sisters that are remaining
may be training 2 new sisters at a time. The number of sister missionaries in the world
is exploding!!!
I’m actually hoping to
train, but more than anything I just want the Lord’s will to be done. I know that I will get the companion that I
need. Here’s a crazy tid-bit of information
for you guys. Before the new missionary
age was announced, an average of 600 people started working on their mission
papers every week, but the week after the new age announcement in the last
General Conference 8,000 people started their papers. CRAZY! The
work is definitely in high demand now! If that’s not a sign of the 2nd Coming, I don’t
know what is!! (My MTC teacher wrote me and told me that information.)
The work here is
going.... We aren’t having a ton of progression, but we just received new
weekly goals from the president that are ridiculously high and so we’ve really
stepped up the work here!! We get home
completely exhausted every day!! But it’s
a very satisfying feeling... To give you a taste of what we’re doing, I’ll give
you some of our goals and some of what we achieved in the past week.
New goals= 10 lessons
taught to investigators with members present, 10 other lessons taught to
investigators, 15 new investigators, 10 lesson taught to members and/or less
actives (these are weekly goals).
We achieved in the
past week= 3 lessons taught to investigators with members present, 27 other lessons,
14 new investigators, and 21 lessons taught to members. We were crazy busy!! And on top of all that, our
new goal for daily contacts (which used to be 10 per day and was hard) is now
20 per day. Our companionship goal now
is just to be able to continue working at the same pace and my personal goal is
to keep the same pace for the rest of my mission. We received a statistic that said for every
fifteen new people we find, one will get baptized. So, if we want one baptism every week, we
have to find 15 new people every week. So yeah, that is sort of how the mission
works... It’s now calculated that we will have more rejection than acceptance. Ha! Ha!
Right now we are
working pretty hard with our mamita!! She is super funny and we have developed
a really close relationship with her. She’s not active, but will be soon. ;) I cannot believe that I’ve been in the mission
for almost a year!! It’s been really
slow and long, but also really fast and short all at the same time. Time is so crazily messed up being on a
mission and it feels different to every person. For me, I can’t believe that all of these
changes that have taken place in me in ONLY one year, but thinking of all
of the things that have happened, it seems like I’ve been here longer.
Generally for me
personally, days go by slow, but weeks go by fast. I’m taking as many pictures as I can!! Being able to explain things firsthand is
going to be way better and much easier than trying to write it all out for
sure!!! I’m trying to take really good
notes on everything that happens every day, so that if desired I can explain
everything in detail.
Let’s see something
that I’ve studied this past week.... Well, I’ve been working on making a
chronological map of the Book of Mormon. It’s pretty fun. I like figuring everything out for myself! Also, I read the talk by Sister Ann Dibb from
October General Conference (BTW, I’ve read and studied almost every single talk
from the last General Conference. Thank you SO much for that edition of the Ensign!!!!!!
I LOVE IT! The General Conference Ensign from this coming
April would be nice, too, when it comes out.) The talk was about her t-shirt design. I loved so many points from this talk, but one
of my favorites was that she said something along the lines of the following, “True
repentance deepens our testimonies and increases our desire to be obedient to
God’s commandments.”
Living the gospel
makes us happy! = One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned on the mission. :)
Anyway, I’m out of
time! LOVE YOU ALL AND MISS YOU
TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hermana Hermansen
P.S. That is crazy about all the places that girls
in our ward are going!! It’s going to be hard for them….but rewarding and
definitely worth it!!
