Thursday, July 17, 2014

Letter #33: First Week of Transfers is Longest


Ive decided that the first week of every transfer is always the longest and i literally dont know what happens to the other five they go so fast! but this was week one so it went at a nice and slow pace as we got back into the swing of things and introduced Sister Bringhurst to the area. I dont remember a single thing that i talked about last week so sorry if i repeat.. but this is S. Bringhursts last area so we've made the goal to help her go out strong and kill it this transfer. Littleton wont know what hit it! 

Since the Elders left we've picked up all of the stuff that we had them covering before. So we're not necessarily busier, we're just filling our days with different things to cover what they did too. 

for example, their beautiful and golden investigator natalie! they were working with her for just a week before leaving and now we get to be blessed enough to teach her! she is perfect. she is 16 and coming to everything. EVEN SEMINARY. who does that? she does! we got to go in and teach her seminary class one morning this week which was super fun. their teacher is brother gold and he invited us in. and then later his wife told us that he was impressed by our teaching skillzzz which is a huge compliment coming from him because he is (no joke) a genius. anyways, back to natalie.

we had two lessons with her this week, both in the berrey's home. anna berrey is her friend and the one that invited her in the first place. the first lesson we had her mom came to because she wanted to check out what the deal was with the mormons. so we answered all of her questions and she seemed really okay with things after that. the problem is that she wants natalie to wait a while to be baptized and is kind of putting a brake on things. which is sad because natalie would get baptized tomorrow if her mom okayed it. but we had a good visit with her mom and sent her off with her own copy of the book of mormon!

the next visit was her dads turn! they didnt come at the same time because things are rough at home and theyre going through a divorce. but her dad was much more chill. they both said that they wouldnt stop natalie from doing what she wants and that theyll support her "even if she wants to be a mormon." but her dad listened to us teach our lesson and participated and also took a copy of the book of mormon! he said he'd come back for our next lesson too :) 

natalie gets a long with her dad a lot better than her mom. but we're concerned cause we dont want this to ruin her relationship with either of them. so we'll be super careful and respectful moving forward. and the berreys are a stellar family. they have a son who just got home from his mission in australia and theyre just on fire. 

on sunday andrea came to church with her kids. jon didnt come :( andddd my heart broke. his life is getting crazy with work. the summer is his busy season and he'll be traveling like 80 percent of the time now. nooooooooo. not good. we've gotta find a way to work around that and keep him progressing. so we had a lesson with just andrea and the ostaszewskas came. (Sister O is my favorite person here but dont tell anyone). we had a lesson about the plan of salvation and andrea started talking about how she had read in the bible about another woman who was in the garden of eden before eve and we were like uhhhh what translation are you reading?! haha we asked her to find it for us and show it to us another time.. 

This week we had dinner with the Agles! it was super fun cause i got to hear the update on how Cami is doing in Peru. Shes almost done which is wayyy cray. and then we talked about mikilah and ashlyn and jessica and afton and everyone all around the world serving! Sister Agle is so cute and keeps up with all of there blogs and stuff. also she's just an amazing woman. She's been working with some of the missionaries here on a portable visitors center that would just blow your mind. so impressive and beautiful. 

okay now lets talk about the tender mercy of the week. well, theres a lot of them. but ill just talk about the one that stands out the most! It happened on Friday. So we had reached the end of the day and had only like 40 minutes left before curfew. Bishop gave us this list of less active people to go and visit because he doesnt know them. so he wants us to go find all of them and report back to him. anyways, so it was the end of the day and we realized that we were one lesson short of our goal for the day. so we were bummed about that and couldnt think of anyone to go see with only so much time left in the day. so we decided to hit up some people on the less actives list. which never results in anything. usually people just tell us that they arent interested or theyve moved like two years ago and they new people living there arent interested either. so we picked a house at random and ring the doorbell and this woman answers saying "what on earth are you poor sweethearts doing out there in the dark and the cold? come inside right now!" TENDER MERCY. haha turns out that this sweet woman hasnt been to church in years because of health issues but all she wants is to come back. Bishop has never even heard of her but apparently some of the woman in the ward still go and visit her. and so we had a little lesson with her and told her we'd come back soon. and there you have it, God throws us a bone at the end of a long day sometimes just to say "Dont worry Sisters. I'll help you meet your goal for today just because I love you." 

So that was our week more or less! Its been a good one. It always is! No matter how high or low the weeks, days, and moments are, I am still in awe every single night when I kneel down to thank God for all the He has blessed us with. How active He is in our lives. And how incredibly much He knows and loves us each personally.

all my love,

Sister Tantillo

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