A whole year gone by... almost

Welp. It's July again. I hope there's sunshine around somewhere.

 

I realized (ish. I can't exactly say that this is something new for me) this week that I've officially been in one area too long. We made a goal to start working with some of the investigators in the "Formers" section of the Area Book, so at the beginning of the week we looked through it to see if there was anybody with some potential. As we looked through it I made a very interesting discovery: the vast majority of the teaching records in there (and I mean the vast majority. There were only about six that didn't) had my name on them somewhere - either in the "Missionaries who began teaching" section or the "Reasons why the investigator chose to stop meeting with missionaries" section. Oh man. I'm amused. So of course we decided to start Round Two... at least with some of them. It'll be interesting, I'm sure.

 

I've decided that there are several benefits to working in a threesome, but I haven't quite decided if the benefits outweigh the negatives. Maybe they're equally balanced. On the plus side, when an investigator calls and says, "Let's meet in 10 minutes,"  we don't have to either (a) scramble to find a member who can get out to the church building in that amount of time or (b) tell the investigator "no" and then spend another ten years after that trying to set up an appointment that'll work for him and for us. In addition, when we go contacting, things are a whole lot more amusing, because when people see us coming we get the look of absolute terror a whole lot more than we used to than when it was just two of us. On the other hand, we get the look of terror a whole lot more than we used to, and people go farther out of their way to avoid us than they did before. And our living space is a little cramped. But that's okay! We're losing the apartment anyway, haha. Our landlady decided she wanted to move into the apartment herself come September, but of course she can't do that with a bunch of missionaries hanging around. Of course I laugh because, as you may recall (unless I didn't actually say so), keeping the apartment here was one of the reasons President sent us to Sakhalin in the first place. Life is so ironic.

 

So it sounds like you're all having lots of success in various and sundry parts of the world. Hope it isn't too hot. I'll be thinking about you all as I walk around in my coat again this week. Ha. Actually it isn't quite that cold. Not yet anyway. I think we've still got another week or so of summer before the temperature drops again.

 

But that's all you get today. I love you, enjoy yourselves, say hello and happy birthday to all who deserve it from me (incidentally, happy birthday tomorrow, grandma!), and try not to do too much relaxing. See also: give referrals to your local missionaries!

-Sister Read