Wednesday, June 19, 2013

19 June 2013

Hi Family and Friends,

This week has been so, "full on" and it makes me even more grateful for P-Day's each week. The responsibility of a Zone leader requires some adjusting to, but I'm thankful I have a companion who has done this a few times.  We have had a lot of meetings, including planning a Beehive House training with the Zone leaders in East 2 Zone.  We presented the training this morning and later on today we have a Zone meeting with all the sisters in our East 1 Zone.

I thought I'd share a little of our summertime schedule here on Temple Square with you. We have different responsibilities on the Square and everything is to give us opportunities to teach the gospel.  We do motor coach tours, hospitality tours, investigator lessons with Elders, hourly flag pole tours, organ recital tours and my favorite, Beehive House tours to name a few.  Summer is, "large group tour" season so it isn't uncommon to show a group of 40 people around the Square.  Having been out for almost a year coupled with my work experience at the Polynesian Cultural Center - which really is how the Lord prepared me for this specific mission - I have no fear of and showing large groups of people around. The Beehive House is buzzing with people and my companion and I are required to be at the Beehive House twice during the week which then allows us to go off and fulfill our other duties as Zone leaders.  In all honesty, I have been a little bit more stressed this week then usual and chocolate is probably my best friend right now, but don't worry, I'm still waking up at 5:50 a.m. every morning to work off some excess energy either through basketball or volleyball.  I am grateful for my friends and our little exercise group which mostly consists of the Polynesian sisters.  My goal for this transfer is to help the sisters out where ever possible, help them to know how awesome they are and just love them and have fun doing it.  All the sisters are a bit over-worked and stressed but they are so hardworking and some times, they don't get time to eat or sit for too long so we miss out on studies in the mornings with our early morning meetings but they don't complain and say,  "We can make up our studies in our teaching center time!"  That is so awesome!

I have had lots of blessings this week and those blessing included seeing my friends Emily Trujillo, Paige Bush and Bec Howard from Australia.  While we didn't have a lot of time to catch up, it was a huge blessing just seeing them.  It was also great having my sister missionary friends return from their outbound assignments.  I missed the sister missionaries a lot and its incredible at how quickly the turn over of sisters happens with each transfer.  Jenna, we just received a Sister Lee from the Idaho, Boise Mission who knows you and she is doing an outbound experience here and she said to say, "HI!"   We were in desperate need of Mandarin speaking sisters, so the Missionary Department sourced sister missionaries from other missions close by who spoke Mandarin and had them transferred here.  Poor things, as I've spoken to a couple of them and both were equally shocked when they found out they were being re-assigned to Temple Square.  We are so grateful to have them here!

Tomorrow, we will have our Relief Society class a day early because on Thursday we are having our Zone conference.   Sister Bowden and I have been asked to present a 20 minute segment about, "How to help the sister missionaries feel more confident during large group tours!"  The conference will start at the GIllette's home at 7:30 a.m. where we will have breakfast and then travel as a zone up to the beautiful, "This is the Place Heritage Park" where we will have our training.  It's going to be a full on day, packed with lots of fun, especially knowing that we will be fed lunch too.  A huge, "WOOHOO" for free meals!

Well, as I mentioned earlier, this week has certainly been full on, but I am really enjoying everything I do, despite the added stress.  Today, one of our new sisters (we have four in our zone) "passed off" and she hasn't even been here a week.   She's amazing!  Last week for District meeting another of the new sisters said she had committed someone for baptism over the phone while she was in the MTC and had done it again.  These new sisters are incredible and the Lord is really watching over our mission and blessing us with such strong sisters.   When the sisters pass off to us, Sister Bowden and I pretend to be a, "Mother and daughter team from England" and it can be hilarious.  We have so much fun, but the best part is when we role play and whenever Sister Siegle or Sister Walsh share their testimonies, I can feel the spirit so strongly.  No matter how short the testimony,  the spirit is still strong.  I have learnt that when you testify with the spirit the investigator's can feel of that spirit and know that what you are teaching is true.  Sometimes as missionaries we may not know if the people feel something, but I know they do!

I love this gospel, I love this Church,  I love the Lord and I'm happy to be a missionary.  Next month I will hit my, "1-year mark" and I keep wondering where all that time has gone, but I'm thankful for the things I have learnt over the past year and the things that I am yet to learn in the coming months. 

Love you all,

Sister Chadderton xoxo
The last one standing

P.s.   I forgot to mention that last Monday when we had our transfer conference activity, we were blessed to watch a preview of the new pioneer movie entitled, "Ephraims Rescue" by T.C. Christensen and it was, "INCREDIBLE!"  It is the best pioneer movie ever, even way better than Legacy.  I plan on acquiring a copy of it and bringing it home before I leave.




No comments:

Post a Comment