Sunday, September 22, 2013

I've lost track of what week it is...but here's yet another e-mail!

Hello everyone!

I hope all of you have had a truly wonderful week! I know I have :)

So I felt kind of guilty about the "incident" last week, so I e-mailed my mission president just to make sure that it was all good and here's what he said back,

"Sorry about your "Close encounter of the lecherous kind"! To avoid it in the future you might consider "pepper spray" or a taser."

This is why I love my mission president!

Anyways, this week has been really good!

Firstly, some facts about the Tennessee Mission...
last year, there were only about 100 missionaries, 20 of which were sisters.
Now, we have almost 200 missionaries, 80 of which are sisters. The mission has doubled, and almost half of the mission is sisters! Yay!

Because of the number of sister missionaries, they've created a new calling, called a "Sister Training Leader", and she has a similar responsibility to zone leaders, in that she does exchanges with other missionaries in the zone to help train them. We did an exchange with one of our sister training leaders, so Sister Goates went up to Chilhowe (I don't know if that's how you spell it) and Sister Burmingham, the sister training leader, came down here to Polar Creek which happened to be her first area. It was really cool for her to be back where she was 7 months ago, and so we went and saw some investigators and less active members that she had worked with when she was here. The coolest part of our day, was when we visited a less active member that Sister Burmingham had worked with. Sister Jacobsen had met her once a few months ago, but at the time she wasn't really keen on meeting with the missionaries, and she wasn't very open. When we went on Wednesday, however, she was so inviting and open! It was so cool! We found out that her 17 year old daughter was pregnant, and she actually invited us to her baby shower which happened to be on Saturday. (coincidence...I think not!) The baby shower was put on by the Young Women's presidency, which is probably a little unorthodox, but it was awesome! Samantha, the daughter, felt very loved and included by the members, and she seemed like she really liked us being there! I didn't think that the first baby shower I'd go to would be on my mission...but it's all good! I also enjoyed the fact, that of the three games that we played, we won two. Haha good times :)

A note about the members here...they are so kind to us and so supportive of us! Sister Monteirth, whose been sending you pictures from dinner, is so sweet and so excited about missionary work! We took her with us to meet with Cindy and they connected instantly! She is so great! We have another wonderful ward missionary, Sister Grant, and on her days off she goes with us to teaching appointments! She also lets us use her washer on P-day (because we don't have one) and feeds us all the time! Another excellent ward missionary is Sister Connley! She is so wonderful! She has a daughter serving a mission in California right now, and so she is very sensitive to us! She made us a wonderful "olive garden meal" last night consisting of the Zuppa Tuscana, salad (with the salad dressing) and bread sticks! It was so good! She's also doing a get together after conference in a few weeks, and she's inviting us and the elders and some investigators. We're invited Cindy and she's so excited to come! Sister Sorensen is another wonderful ward missionary, and she's driven us to zone conference, come to teaching appointments and fed us food. She's the best! Sister Scarborough and her husband were baptized just 6 months ago, and she just got the calling of missionary meal coordinator. She is so sweet! She wants so badly to do a good job! She wanted to make sure we had a meal every single night (which doesn't happen) so she signed herself up to feed us twice in one week! She is so sweet! (side note, we love working with Brother and Sister Scarborough in helping them to be sealed in the temple - they are so excited!) One of my absolute favorite people is Brother Flemming. He is the ward mission leader, and he magnifies his calling like no one I've ever seen! He is so wonderful! He goes out with the missionaries (usually sisters can only do team ups with females and elders can only do team ups with men, but because Brother Flemming is so awesome, he has special permission to go on team ups with us!) He is such a sweet guy, and he absolutely loves the missionaries and loves the investigators that we teach! He's the best!

Sorry that rant about ward members was so long, but I'm just amazed at the love and generosity that these people have for the missionaries! there are even more people who I didn't mention who are so great to us!


Cindy's still golden, by the way! She is the absolute best to teach! She couldn't make it to church yesterday, so we're pushing back her baptism to October 19th, but that's going to be perfect because it gives her a chance to watch conference, which she's really excited about!

All in all it's been a great week! I love you all so much and miss you all like crazy pants!

Love,

Sister Pennington

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