Too Many Stories For One Transfer

And the ups and downs just keep coming! Thankfully it is the end of this insane transfer! We all got our transfer documents last night, after a day long delay, because of our crazy mission. Sister Nichols will be leaving to Black Mountain, Sister Cummings will go back to the Carnegie ward with Sister Stinnett, and I will stay in the Paseo Verde ward and train a brand new missionary!!  I do not know her name yet, but I will go meet her tomorrow after she gets here from the MTC!  I feel unqualified but I am excited for the opportunity. It's going to be so fun!  

So, last Monday after emailing we got to go to Smashburger with Abraham! We spent the rest of the day cleaning our apartment and playing sports at the stake center. It was a pretty chill day. 

On Tuesday we met with two of the Carnegie investigators, Vanessa and Crystal.  They are both awesome! Vanessa is a super cute older lady - who is from Westland, Michigan! We talked about Michigan for a long time. Crystal has a super cute little 3 year-old, and when we got there she had made lunch for us!  It was super sweet. She is so ready to accept the Gospel and be baptized. 

We had a bit of a rough night that night though. In my last email I talked about a less active young man that we had gone to visit who was suicidal. We had asked him where was one place he wanted to be, or one goal he had. He responded with, "I want to be in Heaven." We told him he would have to wait, because Heavenly Father still had work for him to do here. We told him that we could all progress and prepare to meet our Heavenly Father together, though, and that the Temple is the closest place to Heaven on earth. We made a goal with him to get him there. He accepted and told us to come back to meet with him every Tuesday night. We went back on Tuesday night and had a horrible, horrible feeling as we were pulling up to the house (around 6 pm). There was a police officer outside who had been called by one of Scott's friends who was concerned about him and wanted the officer to go and check on him. Scott's brother pulled up a few minutes later and he had no idea where Scott was. We left a little bit later to go to the church for meetings. We felt a strong impression to pray for Scott and his family. As we knelt in a circle in a small room, the Spirit was so strong, and we could feel the power that was there with us. We felt that we weren't the missionaries that were supposed to be there to help Scott, but there were missionaries beyond the veil ready to help him. We could tell that Heavenly Father would be there for us, for Scott's family, and for Scott - no matter what happened.  Later that night we found out that Scott had gone to the Las Vegas Temple and shot himself inside the Atrium in the lobby. It was a very sad night. We stayed up late talking with President and Sister Neider. We prayed for the Bybee's all night. We know that Scott is in a better place and is receiving help from the missionaries that are there.

On Wednesday, we got two new investigators! Marcy Till, a lady that was on our potentials list. We brought one of her member neighbors with us. We left her with a Book of Mormon, and she invited us to come back after Thanksgiving! She had a bearded dragon named Lizzie, who she let us hold! We got some pictures! It was really cool. We also met with Avery, a 9 year-old of a less active, part-member family, who is very excited to be baptized! We are also going to be working with her Father, to re-activate him. He is super nice and seems really ready to come back. That night we stayed up cleaning our house and car to be prepared for our mission tour the next day with Elder Bruce A. Carlson of the Seventy! 

Thursday morning we went for a breakfast at the Green Valley Stake Center and had an all-day training with Elder Carlson! It was really awesome. We were in the missionary choir, too! After that we got to go to a Relief Society Thanksgiving dinner with a couple of investigators! 

On Friday a member took us out to lunch for her birthday! I mean, who wouldn't want to be with three cool missionaries on their birthday - am I right? :) We started making cookies for all of the "do not contacts" on our ward list! We are going to drop them off for Christmas! We also contacted a lot of potentials and some less actives that day, and then got to have dinner with a recent convert and her suuuuuper talkative granddaughter. Mom and Dad, I formally apologize for talking so much as a kid because, wow. Just wow. 

We got to meet with Vanessa again on Saturday. We waited for transfer calls allllll day, but since everything in our mission is crazy, it was delayed until Sunday. But, that night, we found a huge un-opened bag of gumballs in our cupboard. What do you do when you find a huge bag of gumballs? You have a competition to see who can fit the most gumballs in their mouth, of course. So Sister Nichols watched in disgust, as Sister Cummings and I stuff gumballs into our faces. Obviously, I won with 52 gumballs!  I blame my sore jaw on my competitive side.  Go me! 

On Sunday we had our crazy two church schedule! We texted Missy telling her we were excited to see her at church, and she texted back in all caps telling us how excited she was! She is so cute and loves, loves, loves the Gospel. I can't wait until her parents let her be baptized. We also started to see snow on the mountains - noooooooooooooooooooo! It's too "cold" here (hahaha, joking, it's still in the 60's). Our transfer documents came that night and our zone all met at the church to have them read to us! So, yep, I'll be training this transfer! 

That's about all the exciting stuff I can remember for this week! Have a great week and Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Love, Sister Coltrin

 

PS. Mom, you'd be proud, my planner cover is a cool nativity picture I found in the New Era - I thought of you :)