I made it to the field! I am now here in Roseburg and I'm loving it!
I have two companions. Sister Glover is the blonde one with short hair and Sister Brower has the curly hair. They welcomed me by decorating our little apartment super cute. I love both of them! They are so much fun. At first I thought it was really weird that I'm getting trained in a trio, but now I actually really love it!
Being in the field is way different than I thought it was going to be. Mainly because I found out when I got here that I am now a facebook missionary. I still get to do some normal teaching, but no door knocking or contacting. No physical door knocking, at least. We spend two hours every day on facebook, friending a ton of people who live in Roseburg and messaging random people on facebook. After we start a conversation with someone about anything, we try to turn it to Christ and see if they are interested in learning more. Social media is not my favorite thing or something I have any experience with. So when I found out that that's basically all I do as a missionary, that was initially kinda disappointing to me. But I decided to be positive about it. Especially because I only have one or two transfers to be a facebook missionary, so I've gotta use my time to the fullest! It's really cool that I have the chance to be a part of two completely different missions, so I just want to work really hard so I can look back and be proud of the work I did in Oregon when I leave. I feel a little bad that I have this cheat positive outlook about being a social media missionary. One of my companions really hates facebook and she doesn't have anything but facebook to look forward to for 13 more months. But even though facebook isn't my favorite, I can take comfort in the fact that it's not gonna last that long for me. And the good news is that when you decide to be positive about something it makes it fun!
Some cool stuff that happened this week. I got to hold a sword when we went to a mutual activity at a member's backyard black smith building... smithy? Is that the official name for those kinds of things?
Also I got to go to the duck pond and help with a community service project picking up trash there. We got free t shirts!! I love free t shirts with a passion, so that made me super happy. There was a LOT of trash to be picked up there. We found a lot of weird stuff, even stuff floating in the pond. Like a subway sandwich, a dead body, half a gallon of expired milk... Just kidding, we didn't find the milk. That would be way too creepy.
There are a lot of homeless people in Oregon all over the place. Missionaries are instructed not to go near them but we saw a bunch of them at the duck pond camped out.
We got to teach mission prep on Sunday! We taught them how to teach the Plan of Salvation then they practiced in pairs. Since there was an odd number of youth I paired up with this kid named Taylor. I was really impressed with his teaching. He asked a lot of questions and likened everything to normal and easy to understand stuff. He's gonna be a good missionary. Also he apparently spoke Spanish, so when it was my turn to teach him I got to get some practice in. That was really nice because neither of my comps speak Spanish. One of them says, "MUY BIEN!" all the time in a low voice. And she says random Duolingo sentences all the time. It's pretty funny.
We have a baptism coming up which is super exciting! I met Heidi at the duck pond then saw her again at church yesterday. She is a cool lady and I'm so excited for her to get baptized soon! I'll keep updating you guys about that.
Sorry this email is all adventures and zero spiritualness. I'll just share real quick what the Relief Society teacher talked about yesterday. She taught on the talk Lovest Thou Me More Than These? which is such a good talk by the way. One thing that we discussed was that a strong enough desire overcomes automaticity. Even if you can no more than desire to believe, start with that and your testimony will become stronger than you thought was possible. And the automatic habits of not praying, getting easily distracted while studying, falling asleep while reading the Book of Mormon... they can be overcome if you have a genuine desire to learn and grow. It's not always each but it does work. I have a testimony that through Christ we can do anything. There is nothing we can't get through because there is nothing that can be thrown at us that Christ didn't already conquer. So all we have to do is rely on Him and keep moving forward. You guys got this! I'll talk to you all next week. :)
Hermana Cazier
From last week:
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