Hi there family!
Guess what? "I'm going outbound!" Apparently, the General Authorities have a little holiday in July and they are back today and we've learnt that we will be assigned our outbound areas today! Exciting! It was announced this morning in Relief Society who will be going outbound and I and the rest of my class are all going - Sister's Magaoay, Vaivai, Walsh and a few others. We will all be going out around the same time. YAY! This means that I get to call home for five minutes on Friday afternoon because our transfer conference is Friday morning. I'll try calling around my 6:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. which will be your Saturday 12:00 noon - 12:30 p.m. We will return to the Square in October, just after General Conference and I will have two more transfers and then it's homeward bound for me! For security reasons around the Square, when someone asks us how long we've been out, we say, "Less than a year" or "Just over a year!" I know it has almost been a year for me but it doesn't really feel like it. But there are times when my body is feeling a little run down and then it does feel like I've been out a year. But whose counting! I really love our early morning sports and almost everyday at 5:50 a.m. a bunch of us try to play basketball. Before I forget, you probably won't hear from me again until July 29th- just under two weeks. Because of Pioneer Day celebrations happening next Wednesday, our transfer day has been moved forward to Tuesday which means I won't have a P-Day. It also means I will be sleeping on the couch for one night because by next Tuesday we will have 177 sister missionaries in our mission but we don't have enough beds so those that are going home or outbound are sleeping on the couches. It'll be fun and we love slumber-parties!
Anywho, this week has been, "BUSY!" Yup! Our sweet Sister Wall's had to make one of the hardest decisions regarding her health. She made the decision to go home this week and it was really sad to say goodbye to her but I know she will get better help and rest at home so we look forward to her return. We helped her to pack and also helped her companion to move her things in with her new companion. They are all settled now.
We had our zone activity at the, "WairHOUSE" last week. It is the trampoline place and it was so much fun! After ten minutes of jumping I was so tired and I forgot how much energy you expend when you jump constantly. I love the Sisters in our zone. They really do know how to work hard and have fun too. A bit of a fail though because we were meant to go out for ice-cream after but the orientation safety videos at the trampoline place took so long that we didn't have time to do ice-cream after. Another zone needed the cars for their zone activity so we shot back so they could have the cars and went to our little apartment where we had cake for Sister Gannon and Sister Hancock's birthdays which were in two weeks of each other. Family, you would be so proud of me because since being on my mission I have never baked so much in my life and it's fun. We asked our roomies at the beginning of the transfer to buy us some chocolate chips so they went to Costco and bought us a 2 kilo packet and our goal has been to use them all up before we leave. So, this week I made some banana chocolate chip muffins for District meeting. Sister Wall would normally bake for us but because she has gone home, Sister Bowden and I made them. So good!
On Sunday we were invited to speak in the Palmer Court Branch which is a branch for those people who live in Palmer Court which is housing for the chronically homeless. To qualify for the housing you have to have spent up to 700 days living on the streets. I spoke at this branch during my last transfer and I was so happy to speak again. The people are so humble and really nice and they make such a huge effort to be in attendance. I spoke about prayer and shared some pioneer stories about prayer as well as my own personal experiences. After Sacrament, we attended Relief Society and the two ladies that sat next to me had trouble finding the scriptures mentioned in the lesson so I would find it for one of them, then trade books and then find it for the other and trade books. It was nice to be of help in a small way and they were so cute. I really admire the Branch President and his wife for their great examples of being Christlike in everyway. Great experience again.
Well, I continue to recognize miracles during my mission. One that I will share with you happened just this week where I had made a list of the people that I needed to call because I hadn't been able to get a hold of them earlier. Almost everyone that I called on my list picked up the phone and one particular lady that I had been calling and hadn't talked to for quite some time, picked up the conversation where we had left off. It was as if we had only spoken yesterday. She told me she had met with her local missionaries a couple of times and really enjoyed it. However, because she's a volunteer at a children's half-way house she doesn't get much time to attend church but she still wants to learn more about it. She's incredible and she has a lot of friends who are LDS and she's so keen to learn more. I believe she'll get baptized before the end of my mission. Another of my investigators that I've been teaching since the beginning of my mission was back in the States this week and my companion and I were able to talk to him and it was awesome. He still wants to learn more about the church and we re-invited him to be baptized and he said he wants to be baptized but he has to be in his home State for more than 2 weeks to do that. He is planning on visiting his friends in Utah but I won't be here. But, who knows, maybe I'll get sent to California for my outbound so I can teach him in person - that is what I'm praying for! We have our final zone meeting this Thursday night and then transfer conference Friday. As I look ahead to the new week, on Monday night we have T. C. Christensen - the Director for the movies, "17 miracles" and "Ephraim's Rescue" coming to talk to us and then Tuesday is transfers, Wednesday morning is Pioneer Day Parade and then we are all departing right after that. Sooooo excited!
Anyway's, thanks for all your prayers and support! My sweet companion has a few days left and she will be homeward bound! She is a trooper missionary because she works so hard and you wouldn't even know she only has days left in the field!
Have a fantastic two weeks and thanks for the postcards Mum and Dad and thanks for the card Jeena.
Love Sister Chadderton
Pictures:
1: Mattie that was Sister Pipe's investigator while in the MTC. I then got to help teach her and she was baptized!
2: WairHOUSE Trampoline. Jump time!
3: I know you've missed this face!
4: Sister Siegle - this photo tells how we all felt after an hour (me after 10 minutes)
5: East 1 Zone!!!!! Best Zone EVER
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