November 21, 2011 letter

What a crazy week this has been! Sometimes at night we joke about how this cannot be missionary work because we are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, organizing everything here and there and calling people and finding rides and throwing events together and its nuts. It is so crazy going from a ward at home to a branch and seeing how much good strong members that are willing to serve are needed! I dont know how else to tell you what happened this week except to go day by day!

 

Monday: ok a little bit of back ground info on this one. We had an international thanksgiving this week so that all our chinese students could have a thanksgiving dinner and they could bring stuff from china and friends for us to meet and what not.... Ok back to monday. We bought a giant 20 pound turkey to cook, (which none of us had ever done) and got home and realized it needed to thaw for like 3 days. We didnt have 3 days, we had one. So I said that we should just put it in water and let it thaw, but it was too big for our sink. So sister horan decided that she would put it in the tub. BRILLIANT! she took it back there turned on the water, came out to switch over her laundry and forgot about it. half an hour later she remembered and i think you can all guess the rest of what happened. yep, we flooded part of our apartment. So we frantically ran around gathering towels and blankets and anything else we could find to soak up the water and called people to bring over their box fans and it was nuts.

 

Tuesday: this was our thanksgiving dinner day. We woke up and realized that none of us knew how to cook a turkey and really the whole dinner was riding on this turkey. So we mixed up some crazy spice concauction to season it, called sister jensen and prayed over our turkey in the hopes that it would turn out good. I think its our prayers that worked because it was SO good! we had 16 or 17 people at our dinner (which seems little but its actually alot for one of our activities) and thats not including the elders.

 

Wednesday: The elders locked themselves out of their apartment AGAIN. This is like the 5th time. We luckily can break into their apartment with our key (things you'd never thing you'd learn on a mission) so we have now saved them somewhere around 200 dollars for all the times they've locked themselves out.

 

Thursday: Planning day. We realized that none of us know how to plan for a week like this upcoming one because everyone will be gone for the thanksgiving holiday. that means that all 25 of our invetigatiors will be gone and we cant really contact because campus will be empty. Then in the middle of this all sister horan realized that if she gets transfered everyone will be gone and she wont get to say goodbye, so she decided to call president and he told her that she IS getting transfered. So we needed to say bye to all the students before they peace out for the break. We told mei mei that night (who was suppose to get baptized on december 3rd) and she said "so you wont be here for my baptism?" she said "no" and she said "well can i get baptized tomorrow then?"....."uh, yeah, we could make that happen".. so the rest of the night was spent making that happen. Finding speakers and telling people and getting someone to baptize her and it was maddness!

Friday: Mei mei got baptized. All the bishopric was out of town AND the ward mission leader. Bishop was busy but he luckily could rearrange his schedule so he could come and conduct for us. it was AMAZING though. Seriously. Watching someone get baptized is incredible. there is such a powerful spirit there. and mei mei is someone we've been meeting with everyday for the last 2 months to get her ready for it.

 

Saturday: Another baptism.Sarah got baptized. She didnt tell anyone and didnt want anyone there exept the missionaries, her best friend Ting Ting and whoever baptized her. It has taked us a LONG time to get to the bottom of why she didnt want to be baptized and when she finally told us we figured things out and she was so happy that we could work with her situation. She has wanted this for a long time but didnt think it was possible for her. It was amazing experience. We also had two dinners this night because we always eat with wanda saturday nights but the chinese students wanted to make a dinner for sister horan to say goodbye to her. So we had a huge thanksgiving dinner and then another HUGE chinese dinner. I didnt eat much sunday haha

 

Sunday: Finally sunday. Nothing overly crazy happened. We had charelton come to church finally. which is good because he has a baptism date and needs to start coming to church. We visited a couple people that sister horan wanted to see before she left and then went to dinner at a members house. They all had fun trying some of the hottest chili pepers in the world and it was hilarious to watch!

 

WOW! Crazy. So this next week will be crazy too. Sister horan is leaving and i am pretty much taking over troy. We are getting a 3rd sister who will be on her last transfer before she heads home. She requested to come to troy, but is coming at the worst time. There wont be any students here to teach over thanksgiving or christmas break. we gotta find somethings to do to fill our time so she doesnt get trunky! It will be insane. Thanksgiving will be my first big holiday away from the Fam and i am missing you all dearly! I am so grateful for each and everyone of you!

 

OH! one last thing, My mission president has previously allowed us to email whoever we wanted, but is changing that to just family (brothers sisters parents grandparents) so if you write me an email, I will write back but PLEASE give me your home address so I can handwrite you a letter! I would love to hear from all of you and hear how you are doing.

 

This week you should all say a prayer of just gratitude and be thankful for the things you've been given!

Have a great week!
Sister Webb