Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Letter #57: February 18, 2013


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!!

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