Thursday, May 30, 2013

Letter From Katherine (05/28/2013)

Hello Family!

I'm so glad that I was able to call and talk to you at the airport. It was great hearing your voices:) My first week here has been kind of tough. It has just been a really hard adjustment. A lot harder than I was expecting, but don't worry I'm happy:) 

When we first arrived in St. Louis President Clark, his wife, and the office elders were there to meet us and load all of our luggage into the trailer. We drove to the mission home, which is adorable, unloaded everything and then guess where the office elders took us? To a danish pastry shop! It was awesome! The owner is from Denmark, and were ere able to talk to him. Or should I say Sister Hall was able to talk to him. haha the pastries were great! After that we went to the temple where we met with President and Sister Clark and the other four missionaries who were called to Missouri. We took pictures, and president Clark talked to us and told us about the mission goal. This year they want to have 450 baptisms. I felt the spirit very strongly when he was speaking and it got me super excited for the work! They took us to dinner at this cool tepenyaki like restaraunt and it was delicious! Afterwards, we went back to the mission home and just kind of took it easy. President Clark interviewed us all, and then we had a testimony meeting. It was a really good day. President and Sister Clark are awesome! They are actually finished with their mission in June. Which means I will have 3 mission presidents my whole entire mission, which is kind of crazy for a sister!
Wednesday we had our transfer meeting. They had all the new missionaries sit on the stand, and then one by one we went up and they had us read who our companions were and where we would be serving. I have three companions. Sister Bierman is my trainer and she is great! I know I will be learning a lot from her. She is from Sandy Utah, and she has been in the mission field for five months. My other companion is Sister Linton.  She is from Wyoming and has been in the mission field for four months. It has been interesting seeing how things are done here in Missouri. I'm definitely not in the MTC anymore. My apartment isn't bad, but I don't know what to compare it to since it's my first one. I have been to the sister training leader's apartment though to do laundry and theirs was way nicer. I don't have a problem with mine though. They have a clubhouse where we have access to a gym, so that's nice. The apartment that the Sister training leaders are in has tennis courts, and we are planning on playing some time for p-day. I'm excited and also worried. I have played tennis in forever!

Wednesday was what President Clark calls a nesting day. We went and ran some errands and got me settled. I didn't have the money from the mission so I used my debit card to buy some clothes that would be good for the hot weather, and also some other things that i needed. So don't worry I haven't been spending like crazy. I just barely got the mission money today. 

We have a bunch of investigators and it has been a really good experience working with them. We actually have met with ##### and ##### Capone. Yeah, their great uncle is Al Capone...
I wouldn't call them investigators, because they aren't interested in the gospel at all, but they just like to talk, and talk, and talk, and talk. 

We picked up two new investigators last week, Joel and his girlfriend Annie. Annie is from Kenya, and she acted very interested in the gospel. We had a really good lesson with them. Sister Bierman calls them golden investigators. We also have another investigator named Daphney who was supposed to be getting baptized this Saturday, but she wasn't able to make it to church this Sunday. We will be visiting her tonight to see what has been going on. 

We walked to church on Sunday, and it was pretty hot. The church is four miles away from our apartment, so it was 8 miles there and back. We would have driven, but we didn't have enough miles on our car because Saturday night we had to drive to the ward mission leader's home to meet with him, and he lives pretty far away. We have a really big area.  

3 of the wards in the stake had a 5k and picnic yesterday, so that was fun. I ran the 5k woot woot! I kind of left my companions in the dust...oops.. don't worry though, the A.P. was there and he said it was fine. haha afterwards they had a picnic, and that was fun but the ward just isn't very friendly. So my advice to you is love the missionaries! make them feel good, and help them! 

So, all in all, it has been kind of rough. It's okay though i'm happy and trying my best. I love all of you so much! Thank you for everything! 

Love Katherine

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