July 22, 2013

In trying to start this letter - the first word that comes to mind is tired. I am really tired. On the upside, my companion is AWESOME. Her name is Sister Barney. Bell & Barney - sounds like a classy company name to me. We were in transfer meeting where President announces trainers and trainees. I was looking around the room and my eyes kept going back to her and I kept thinking "I want that one." Then as time went on and when she stood up and president was about to announce her trainer, i thought, "She's my companion. Thats gotta be her." And sure enough it was! She is coming along great and is really patient with me which is a relief. I feel really bad a lot - like I am throwing a million things on her at once...but I can't really think of any other way to do it. And a lot of times I forget that I'm training honestly - and the other day we were stuck and we didnt have a lot of appointments and I just turned to her and I said, "Im going to be completely honest with you: i have NO idea what to do right now."

And the other day we were early to a dinner appt so I said, "we have a few minutes. With awkward times like this, even though our focus isn't tracting - its member missionary work, we make the most of every minute so lets go knock on a few doors." Now at this point, I had never gone tracting on my mission. We didnt have a lot of time and Sister Crane had never been and so it made me scared which was dumb and sister crane felt bad for never teaching me. Sis Barney was like, "What should I say?" It was hilarious as I thought "I have no idea, i've never done this before." I said what do you think you should say? here's a book of mormon - introduce yourself and pick a main point of the gospel. She said, "Do you do this a lot?" I said, "We try to be most productive with members but when we have a few minutes, tracting is better than just sitting on the grass. So yeah, I've done it all the time." Its bad to lie - but I just couldn't tell her that i'd never been tracting before. how embarassing! when you dont know how and dont want to - what better way to do it than to have the greenie do it? Is that mean? :) So we did it and she did awesome and we ended up having a really great discussion with the man and he lives next door to a member so we gave him a BOM and said we'd come back next week when we were over at the members house again. It was easier than I thought. That reminds me...i still need to tell her I lied to her. Probably not a good method of teaching but hey fake it to you make it?

 

I just hope we're doing all we can. Sometimes I don't know. I feel like I'm doing everything I know how to do - but I wish i knew more. I have a feeling like something's missing and when i was being trained I knew that if we were unproductive, my trainer would say we could be doing this better or more effectively or that's a good choice but here's a BETTER choice....and I don't have that now.  I want this area to grow and that's the hard thing about growth, is that it's slow, so its hard to tell sometimes if you're REALLY doing ALL you can to help it grow. I want to do everything right and it's frustrating knowing that human nature doesn't agree with that, learning that it's ok to make silly mistakes sometimes when you're doing all you can. I just don't want to miss something and her "grow up" learning something the wrong way or not doing something as good as she could. And I just want Sister Barney to feel like a good missionary - to feel productive and know how to be yourself while being a missionary.I think that's one of the biggest things i've learned is how to balance both. You can't be one or the other. You can - but it doesn't produce the best results and it's not as fun either. I want to be a good trainer but also a fun one and sometimes I have so much ADD and so much "go go go" and I dont want her to think that being a missionary is only that. But things are good and i have to remind myself of the miracles that continue to happen! Like we founds this lady randomly that is a less active that doesnt have her records transfered here and wants to come back! Like having someone that you're trying to get a hold of that NEVER answers randomly walk into church. Miracles happen every day if we look for them, most of the time they are right under our nose and we don't even look at them as miracles. But they really are.

Love you all!

 

Sister Bell

 

Keepin it real...because it is real