And so it Begins... :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Dear Family,

It's been a crazy week! Haha, looking back on journals, I am pretty sure I always say it's been a crazy day or week. But only because it's true. Tuesday, of course, was transfers! A lot of people going home and a lot of missionaries coming in! Good news- they are having two sets of Sister Training Leaders in my zone! So that means we will probably only have to go on like 3 exchanges, instead of 7. We are super happy. My new companion is Sister Nielsen! She is really great! We got in our car and started driving home and I said "This will be exciting!" and she said "I'm glad you think so, because I'm really nervous!" and I was so glad she said that, because I was totally nervous, too, and I didn't think she was! Haha. I was relieved I wasn't the only one!! Right after the transfer meeting, President Craven just said that we would be going on exchanges with the other Sister Training Leaders this coming week so that they can help give us some tips on what to do.

Let me just say... it's like a whole different world has opened up with this responsibility, yet at the same time you still just feel like a regular missionary. We have a lot more meetings and more calls. Like every Saturday there is a conference call with all the zone leaders and sister training leaders and President Craven. Tomorrow we have MLC (mission leadership council) in Charlotte, and we have conference calls on Monday nights, too. We've both been kind of thrown for a loop! We still don't know who we are supposed to go on exchanges with, but hopefully we find out soon so we can plan ahead! Sister Nielsen made a calendar on one of our whiteboards so we can see everything.

As far as teaching goes, this week was kind of rough. In  Brother Watson's words; "I think we used all the water from the teaching pool to fill up the baptism font this last week". Haha. We had set up lots of appointments and did all we could to find some people that really will progress, but haven't really found any yet. It's been stressful because they keep a close eye on our key indicators. Like just today the Assistants

to the President asked for our November averages so that they can be reported in the meeting tomorrow. There just can be a lot of pressure sometimes. It's ok. I'm trying to keep telling myself "what's the worse thing that's going to happen?" and really the worse thing that could happen is that we don't have great numbers. Which obviously, we want to have good numbers, but Sister Nielsen and I have talked about how really the most important person we are accountable to is Heavenly Father, and He knows when we are doing our best, and knows all of our circumstances. Another thing from this week was a sister that had been less-active but had come back for the past year and had gone to the temple called and told us she is done with the church. Someone said something to her and now she said she's done. I was really sad. I tried saying a lot of different things, and she said she knows the church and the Book of Mormon is true, but she said she was going to make a final decision by the end of the week, and we haven't heard back from her since..

Good news though- (Linda) was confirmed and is already being a great member! I didn't hear from her for several days, and couldn't get her on the phone. Finally she called on Thanksgiving from someone else's phone and said everything was ok. She is so hard to get a hold of sometimes, and it makes me anxious! Haha. But everything was fine, and she did get confirmed. Last night we took her to a mission home fireside, where President Craven speaks to investigators and recent converts, and it went great. She would raise her hand for every question! She was telling us all about all the people she has been sharing the gospel with, too. She was super excited to find out we had pass-along cards we could give her :)

Picture taken at a member's house and sent to her parents!

Thanksgiving was pretty good! We had weekly planning, and then a conference call with all the District Leaders and our zone leaders in our zone. Then we went to visit a few people and we had dinner at the (Santo's) house. They have three kids that are all out of the house. The youngest son is on his mission right now. They had Bro. Santo's parents and older brother and their wives over (they're Japanese, but they are from Colorado) It was a relief getting to have Thanksgiving. I am grateful for a lot of things! Especially my wonderful family :) I knew you would be thinking of me on Thanksgiving, and I was thinking about some of the things we do every year. From the sounds of it, nothing has changed ;)

It's just been a roller-coaster week. Sometimes I feel very calm some moments, and then other times I feel like I will not be able to do this. I know that everything will be ok, it's just been a big adjustment. A mission is a lot of adjusting. Luckily it's helped to keep me focused, though. Sister Nielsen is a great missionary, and we both want to do our very best. And she eats super healthy, which will help me :)

Yesterday was a great day at church. I really loved the speakers and the classes. Something I thought about while taking the sacrament was how much I would want to recognize Christ if He were to come into the room right then. Would I recognize Him right away? I decided I need to study more about the Savior. I think sometimes it's really easy for me to forget all of the reasons why we do this. This week I kind of felt like I had my head in the clouds of technicalities and scheduling. I just don't want to get so worried about all of the technicalities of missionary work that I forget the reasons why we do it. This week made me realize I don't want to stress away the last part of my mission. So I am going to try really hard not to. But back to recognizing the Savior- I love this part in the Bible Dictionary under "Faith", which says "The Lord has revealed Himself and His perfect character, possessing in their fulness all the attributes of love, knowledge, justice, mercy, unchangeableness, power, and every other needful thing, so as to enable the mind of man to place confidence in Him without reservation."

Sometimes when people talk about increasing your faith, I sometimes think of trying really hard to change the way you think, or telling yourself "just have more faith!" which I guess in some ways is true. But the BEST way to increase our faith is to learn more about Christ! We do that, of course, by studying, praying, going to church etc. Because as we do those things, our faith is naturally increased! It doesn't have to be forced or strained at all. We have more confidence in Him because we know better who He is.

Also speaking of Christ, have you seen the new Christmas video yet?? The First Presidency is really making a big push for this! They have picked our mission to keep track of how this "initiative" affects missionary work. So they're having us keep track of all the referrals and investigators we get as a result. They've also purchased the main advertising on the YouTube homepage for December 7th, and have tons of advertising in Times Square. They have specially made pass-along cards, and they expect our mission to hand out 40,000 this month!!! Wow. I think they said it's like 10 a day. There should be pass-along cards included in the December Ensigns, too. I love things like this. It's fun to see different ways they are spreading the gospel.

I'm not really sure what else to say about this week! It's December 1st and it's 70 degrees. So strange. I keep getting all mixed up about what season it is. Definitely does not feel like December, though!

I really miss you all. It's hard sometimes to not be excited to see everyone again. It seems so close and so far away. I'm trying to have the best few weeks that I can. This is the most exhausting thing I have ever done, but Heavenly Father has been helping me a lot!

I love you all! Happy Thanksgiving :) I hope you have a great week.

Sister Adams