This week was so jam-packed, I can't even begin to tell you everything that's happened--even an hundredth part of my doings cannot be contained in these writings. Early Tuesday morning Sisters Fonua and Tolman dropped me off at the mission office with all the other soon-to-be trainers, and I found my very first companion, Sister White, was among them, as was another Elder from my MTC district. We're growing up and having "children" of our own! Oh how fast it is going. We carpooled to the mission home, where we were given some instruction by President and Sister Bahr before meeting the new missionaries. My new little one is Sister Cope. She is from Bountiful, UT and is the goofiest person I think I have ever met! I love her to death. She has a natural ability to follow the Spirit's lead and blew everyone away during roleplays at Zone Meeting the next day. She is a tough one! Due to some confusion at the MTC, she and the rest of her district were shipped out Monday night, instead of morning, and didn't arrive until 5:30 Tuesday morning, the day of transfers. They went about 36 hours without sleep, but Sister Cope worked her hardest her first day anyway.
Training in a trio is crazy. Sister Fonua is still with us! She has two transfers left and is delighted to be staying in this area, she's hoping this is where she'll "die" (finish her mission). I'm glad to have her, she is very experienced and has given me a lot of good tips for training. Elder Westover, one of the assistants, told me that training is a humbling experience, and it certainly is. It has shown me just how inadequate I and every other missionary really is to do this work. All I can do is be a vehicle for the Spirit and live and work so that it can speak through me. Sister Cope seems to be thriving despite my mistakes and faults, so hopefully I'm doing a good job! This is a great time and a great area to enter the mission. This week we had two baptisms, Ping and Omar, Omar was confirmed yesterday and Sister Cope set our investigator Eric with a date!
Funny story. So Sister Plange, one of my favorite ward members, is known for giving missionaries a hard time when she sees them out working. She likes to pretend she's not a member, approach the Elders as though she's interested, and then be very difficult and ask crazy questions until they're sweating bullets. So we thought we'd get her back. The other day we brought Sister Cope to meet her and told her that she was deaf (Sister Cope can sign very well). We had Sister Plange absolutely convinced! It was the funniest thing I've ever seen. She was writing things down, doing charades, over-anunciating her words, everything short of literally bending over backwards to make Sister Cope comfortable and make sure that everything was communicated correctly. Sister Fonua and I nearly lost it several times. We had her going for about a half hour before, after a pause in the conversation, Sister Cope thanked Sister Plange for the lunch she'd served us and said very sweetly, "Thank you for the hot dog." The look on Sister Plange's face was priceless! She knew it couldn't have been me or Sister Fonua that spoke. She told us later she had even wondered for a moment if it was a miracle, the Holy Spirit speaking for this new Sister missionary. She almost killed us when she realized how badly we'd gotten her, but she was too impressed with us to really be mad. :)
It's been a hard, wonderful, crazy, back-breaking, joyous, hilarious week all rolled up in one. That's basically that best way to sum up mission life. I'm glad to hear you all are doing well. I loooooooooove you!
Sister Black
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