Monday, I went out for lunch with Elder Brown, Elder Miskin, Elder Rivera, Elder Christensen, Sister Reynolds, Sister Keller and my cute comp Sister Thongrit. Then we all went to Target and bought sunglasses and matching marvel t-shirts. For zone activity we all played chair soccer and the sisters dominated again!! Whoo! After zone activity we went to the zone leadership counsel in Valencia. It was bitter sweet because in the Bakersfield mission we are no longer allowed to have them. We counseled as a zone on how we can better help the missionaries and their areas.
Thursday we had our first interviews with President Layton. Then we got to go through new missionary orientation which was pretty cool. It is interesting to see how different they run everything in this mission. President and Sister Layton are really nice though. We had dinner with the Shepherd family who will be going on a mission in Urkraine. They were so cute telling us about all of the cool things that they will get to do and how excited they are.
Friday we had a zone conference with our zone and got to see how president runs everything. It was basically the same, but was a little different... President likes to ask random people to sing so that was scary..... we had dinner with the Lamersons which is always the highlight of my week.
Monday We went to Target again and everyone tried on new shoes and a couple of people bought some. Then we went to zone activity and played another game of chair soccer... this was probably the scariest one of my mission because everyone took teams and it was war.... after zone activity we had a pass-off lesson with Elder Rivera and Elder Christensen. They gave us a really cool family who wants to learn more about Jesus Christ. We shared with them the importance of going to church and reading the Book of Mormon. They invited us to please come back and teach them more! We had dinner with the Holquest family and we picked up one of the girl's friends named Ephony.... She has investigated the church on and off, but she is starting to really open up to us. On the way to our next appointment we got a phone call from an un-known number.... we answered it and turns out it was President Layton and this is what he said.... Sister Howard, "I want you to pack your bags!".... Sister Thongrit and I immediately started panicking...... then he explained that he wanted us to go on a special exchange with two of his sister training leaders so that we could better understand the new mission culture and they could understand ours. It will be for a week Wednesday to Wednesday and we will be exchanging after the mission leadership counsel.
Tuesday we visited Sister Valencia and shared a scripture with her about the atonement. Then we did a load of stop-bys because all of our appointments cancelled. Knock-out was kind of hard becuase we were really worried about going on the exchange and meeting all of the new missionaries, so we called our district leader Elder Brown and his companion Elder Miskin and asked them to give us some motivation. They were very guided by the spirit and helped us to feel so much better about all of the new changes. We had dinner with the McCoy family and then they took us out to get frozen yogurt with a couple of the ward families. It was a really fun night and help us both to feel better.
Wednesday was the 4th of July!! yayay!! We celebrated by wearing fun red, white, and blue glasses and star necklaces while we drove 1hr and a half on our way up to our leadership mission in Tehechpie. Everyone in our zone told us to take pictures... but it really was just sand and hills everywhere with some power line poles and wind mills.... When we got to the church we saw all of the new missionaries and were seriously intimidated... so we waited till our zone leaders came before we braved walking in. The missionaries were all super kind and we made friends pretty fast. The meeting was very spiritual and it was cool to see how this mission works. Then we exchanged and I am now comps with Sister Parcel for a week! Palmdale is pretty cool... there are a lot of random cool things that I have gotten to see... like a road that has its own song when you drive on it... or all the random toilets on the side walk. When we drove to dinner a random fire started on one of the hills so we got to watch all of the fire trucks and helicopters come and try to stop it. Then we went home and sat on our porch and watched all of the gorgeous fire works.... It felt so peaceful and reminded me of home...
Thursday we had weekly planning day which was interesting because Im use to planning on Tuesday. Then we went out and stopped by people and tried to OYM (open your mouth) to everyone we saw. We had a meeting with the zone leaders to decide how to best give the missionaries the cool new information that we talked about in Mission Leadership Council. President just started a thing called OYM 10/20 which means as a companionship we need to talk to 20 people a day... the missionaries were nervous because they don't normally do that, but I was so excited because we basically already did that in San Fernando so I was pumped and ready to go! We had dinner at Sister Robinson's house then she took us to go and stop-by a part member family. We invited the kids to church and picked up Elizabeth and Ariana as new people to teach! Then we went to a Book of Mormon class with two recent converts and read a chapter with them out of the Book of Mormon and went over the importance of going to the temple.
Friday we had district meeting and I got to help do a training on the repentance chain.. which I know nothing about!! Apparently its just a few scriptures you share at the end of a lesson before you invite someone to be baptized... then we role played with the hermanas.... we have some super cool ones that came from Nicaragua when their mission got disbanded So we hit it off pretty well because they understand why hard it is to adapt to a new mission. then we had interviews with President Layton and Sister Layton taught us about how to have good manners on the mission. We easily talked to 20 people and were able to get some return appointments.
Sunday I went to the Palmdale ward and got to go to ward correlation. Then we talked to people and had dinner at the Millers. It has just been so hot here!!
Anyway I love you all, Love Sister Howard
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