This week has been very, very busy. For starters, we moved apartments. It doesn’t sound like it would be hard because missionaries only have 3 suitcases, right? Well, let me tell you, we had at least 8 truckloads of stuff to bring over to our new apartment! Luckily the elders moved all of the heavy stuff up to our new apartment for us, like our beds and our couches. I took the bunk beds apart to make them easier to move. We finally have de-bunked bunk beds. (So regular beds) It’s such a relief to not have to worry about hitting my head or Sister Session falling through the top bunk and squishing me. It’s nice to have so much more room and to not feel so cramped all of the time.

The other sisters in our area were so kind. They came and spent a few hours with us deep-cleaning our apartment so we wouldn’t have to take up all of our proselyting time to clean. It was so nice! And that saying is true: many hands makes light work! We’re almost done with the apartment. Sister Session and I just have to finish cleaning out the fridge, clean the floors, and touch up the base boards. It’s pretty crazy that we fit in that apartment now that everything is moved out of it.

Cleaning was a real pain. Apparently Sister Horrocks and I didn’t get all of it out when we first got there in December. There was quite a lot of hidden nastiness, like a petrified spider that was stuck to the wall.

It was really fun to get settled into a new place. It feels very homey and it’s nice to have a place that we know is clean. I really hope I don’t get transferred next week so that I can enjoy it for one more transfer. I’m extremely nervous for transfers. I’ve been here for 7 ½ months, which is a really long time. I’m hoping I can spend at least ½ for my mission here. I love the people here so much and we have such a great relationship with them. For example, last Sunday we went to Big Sky for Sacrament meeting, so we missed 1^st ward’s Sacrament meeting. We arrived just before it finished and were waiting out in the hall to greet people when our Relief Society president comes up to me and said, “My husband was wondering where you were in church. He told me that it’s so nice to have missionaries that you really miss if they’re gone!” It was nice to know we were missed and I was really surprised how many people noticed we weren’t in Sacrament meeting! It was nice to feel loved. J I sure will miss them whenever I’m transferred! It’s a good thing BYU-I is so close so I can come back and visit!

Anyway, this week was really productive! We had 20 lessons (one less than last week L but we had over 43 attempted lessons!). We talked to a lot of people and were able to get 3 new less-active families to work with. Well, one is technically a part-member family.

We had a good lesson with K--- this week and got to talk to several non-member friends that were at her house. But, even though the lesson was really great we were very sad because they were going out of town that weekend. So we prayed for rain on the day they were supposed to leave and boy did it pour! We were so happy and thankful! But then her mom wouldn’t let us come over and we were super bummed!! We have to push her baptism date back. I feel so sad for her because she wants to be baptized but so far hasn’t talked to her mom yet. In order for her to be baptized her mom’s rule is that she has to approach her and talk about it, which I understand. She wants to be sure she’s getting baptized for the right reasons.

M--- cancelled on us twice this week. She got a new boyfriend and is spending all of her time with him. We are so frustrated! She doesn’t seem to think much of cancelling on us repeatedly. Maybe we’re too nice about it. She has so much potential but she’s not putting any effort into knowing if the gospel is true on her own. It’s endlessly irritating. Not to mention that we can’t seem to make the first lesson about Joseph Smith stick. We’re taking over the Restoration video for her to watch. We’re hoping her retention rate for movies is better.

So, we went to visit the L--- because they haven’t been getting back to us about anything! So we pulled up in the driveway and sister Session and I were talking for a minute while she finished her mango juice (because it looked like no one was home) and as we were sitting there Brother L--- pulls up in his truck! It was so awkward because it looked like we were sitting out front waiting for him. Oh well though. So I salvaged the situation and introduced him to Sister Session.  But now that I have a new companion he invited us over for dinner next week! I’m very excited and glad to know that they are still interested in moving forward. I really like their family.

Sister Price in Three Forks bought us lunch at A&W which was really nice. It was fun to talk to her because she’s preparing to send a daughter off on a mission and we were able to give her some pointers of things we wished be had known or things we wish we had brought.

So, it turns out one of the young couples in are ward are millionaires. It’s crazy! We were just over to their house for dinner the other day and they never mentioned anything, you would never have guessed (other than that their house was very large for such a young couple). We didn’t find out until we were contacting one of our less actives that was trying to get a job for his company. She told us that it’s a multi-million dollar company and we were like, “woah, no way!”. It was pretty neat. It’s crazy how many people here are secretly rich! (And how many are not-so-secretly poor).

We went to the H--- and their little girls really wanted to paint our toes, so we were like, “uh, okay?” Luckily, the older one painted mine and they look good, but the younger one got fingernail polish all over sister Session’s feet! It was pretty hilarious. She was such a good sport though. I must admit it was kind of weird to have people touching my feet while we were trying to teach.

We finally planted my tomatoes out in the garden today! I’m so excited! I got tomato cages and they have the whole set-up. It’s a poor-woman’s garden though. I scrounged some rocks and boards to make a fence and we have to carry in water from a little stream to water it. I feel like it’s something out of Little House on the Prairie or Jungle Book or something. It’s actually so fun and Sister Session is quite the trooper, humoring my strange gardening desires and helping me pick big rocks out of the soil.

We visited D--- this week. He’s the really old man living in the disgusting trailer. He’s so sweet though and might have gone to a different ward yesterday! We’ll have to see. He fell though recently when he went back to Salt Lake to get some scans for cancer. He’s not doing so hot on walking right now. But I was relieved to find out that the thing he’s always drinking when we come over is grapefruit juice, not alcohol with something in it.

R-- is doing great, still preparing to go to the temple. We had a lesson with him last week and it turns out that we had never covered the subject of tattoos. He told us he was planning on getting one and we had a very long talk on why our bodies are sacred. He said he had changed his mind about the tattoo when he left, but I guess we’ll have to see.

We went to go see J-- this week and we could tell when we pulled up that it was a bad time to be there. She was in a terrible mood and had been crying. When she’s in a bad mood she is kind of scary, but I put my big-girl pants on (figuratively speaking) and went over and sat down on the steps by her and put my arm around her. I wasn’t entirely sure that she wasn’t going to freak out, but it turned out to be the right thing to do. She told us all about the terrible time she was having and really was able to vent to us for a while and we were able to talk and she showed us some cool pictures of her daughter’s trip and we tried to help her feel better. I don’t want to give too many details, because it was a private conflict they were having, but needless to say that by the time we left she was much improved.

It was funny because when I was giving her a goodbye hug she whispered something to Sister Session but I didn’t catch it. So I asked Sister Session what J--- had said once we got to the car. Sister Session told me she said, “I really do like her.” It made me feel really good because J--- can come off as a very verbally harsh person, but inside she’s secretly a marshmellow. ;) She’s one of my favorite people.

Last night at dinner one of the little girls, Brea, gave Sister Session and I each one of the carnations from the boquet her mother had gotten her. We were so touched! We put them in a place of honor in our apartment and they really do bring some life to it! It makes it seem homey.

Well, that’s about it for this week. I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot of things, like how Sister Session caught a mosquito hawk in a pitcher and was going “ew, ew, ew” all the way to the door to let it out (I told her she couldn’t kill it because it eats all of the mosquitoes); and about all the rain we received this week…

Oh yes! Cool story about the rain! So the day that we had to move it was supposed to be very rainy. So the night before we prayed that we would be able to move everything without it getting soaked and it was the coolest answer to prayer that I have ever seen! We would pack up a bunch of stuff in the house while it was raining and as soon as we would start to carry it out the rain stopped. We were able to drive over and unload it without it getting wet, and usually as we were going up the stairs to take the last box in it would start pouring again! We got really wet, but all of our stuff stayed dry! This happened all day long. I can’t believe I almost forgot to write about it! What a cool miracle! :D The Lord really does care about things that are important to us.

I have to get going because we have a lot to do and a very small amount of time to do it. I would love to hear from you all and I hope you are having a safe and wonderful summer!!

Xoxoxoxox

Love,

Sister Draney