What a Week!

What a week!

Mom thanks for sending a package. I’ll be so excited to get it. Also tell Peter and Auntie Cath thanks for the letters.

Sunday started off great! Sister S was baptized. I was able to finish teaching her and then she had Elder Fullmer baptize her. It was awesome.

After the post, Elder Douglas and I drove out to Sumter for the other fast and testimony meeting. This one lasted 5 and half hours. haha. It was a little long, but it was just as good. In my testimony I told the story about preparing a talk for stake conference where it was a possibility that the Prophet could be there. I was nervous then. I was nervous to bear my testimony even now at this meeting... but then I explained the difference - the nervousness then was that I didn't know what I’d say... and the nervousness now is that I’m more anxious to tell everyone that it is true.

Transfer week is always intense. It started Monday morning. We got 6 new missionaries. 2 of them were from Canada and probably the most solid missionaries that came in. So cool. They were hilarious too. One of them is 24 and he was just amazing. they have the best accents and now I all I want to do is move to Canada. The Taylors in the office are from Canada, too - they're working on me as well.

We had to give a lot of training their first few days. Then we had the transfer meeting where all of the transferring missionaries come in and receive their assignments. President says a few words and then we put the new assignments up on a slideshow and then they all leave. It’s really cool.

The best part was that everything went smoothly. Usually it doesn't.

After that, we spent the rest of the day with the departing missionaries. It was so fun. That whole group was just packed with the best missionaries. There were ten of them and President spoke about how between all of them, they were responsible for about 300 baptisms over the past 2 years. The 3 sisters that went home in the group were the 3 that I came out with. Elder Taylor left - back to Bicknell. Man... it was just a tough group to see go. We had a lot of fun though and some good stories were told. Then the next morning we drove them to the airport and they were off.

Thursday I was just dead.

I sent a ton of pics from Sister McConkie from transfer week. We lived at the mission home for about 3 or 4 days. She took plenty of pics of me and Elder Douglas.

So I think the whole mission, including Elder Douglas and I, are all just about settled from transfers. Everyone is getting their feet on the ground and looking to have a great June! it is President's last month. Yikes. I don't want to see him go. We have the goodbye zone conference coming up in the next few weeks.

Elder Douglas and I had a way cool experience last week that carried over to this week. Last Saturday night, we were getting ready to make transfer calls and then start our fast... so naturally we wanted some take out Chinese. We went to this ghetto place right down the street from the office that we'd never been to before. When we pulled up, this Chinese man (about 25 years old) look so excited to see us. His English was so broken that we couldn’t understand each other, other than ordering our food. The man wrote down on a piece of paper though, the date - 3- 18- 2011. After we got our food he made a phone call and then suddenly handed me the phone. On the other end was a Chinese sister missionary serving in New York. She told me that he was their recent convert baptized in March and that he just barely moved down to SC. So Elder Douglas and I since Saturday, have visited him, we gave him a BoM in Chinese, and found a Chinese speaking member to take him to church. He’s so awesome. He’ll be going to church tomorrow.

So many miracles are happening. It’s awesome.

Love ya

Elder Stoneman