Transfers!!

 (Sister Putnam)

Monday: L E G O  S T O R E

I called the fam, and they told me they were able to get flights back to Saudi!! We also met the rest of the district at the mall, & that was really fun. The elders are obsessed with the Lego Store, it's actually really funny. Sister Madsen & the other sisters & I got some sweaters (gotta love the clearance section!) And then Sister Madsen & I went to target & I got a skirt, thinking it was the right size because I looked at the size on the hanger & figured the size of the skirt would be the same because this isn't Saudi. Apparently that was not the case & I realized it after we had already gotten home so I'll either return it or exchange it for another skirt haha.

Tuesday: Filter? Who's she? Never heard of her

The washing machines & dryers at the hotel were completely occupied all day on Monday, so we had to do our laundry on Tuesday, but while we were down there, we saw a guy there & we talked to him a bit & then went back up to our room & realized we should have offered a happy message to him, so we were like 'dang it!' & so then when we went down to the laundry room again to transfer the laundry & the same guy was there, & we talked to him some more & asked him if he'd be interested in a happy message & he was like "okay, I guess" & we just talked about religion & stuff & he seemed somewhat open to getting lessons, but his work schedule is complicated & so he said "I'll pass, I don't want to waste your time..." soooooo yeaahhhh. The guy's name is Koui, & he seems pretty nice. Then we went to drop off a late Christmas present to a lady in our ward who is unique & we had the craziest conversation ever with her, one I won't forget, nor will I ever understand. This lady doesn't have a filter whatsoever... Here are some highlights from the conversation we had with her.

Lady: What was the word that president Nelson said in General conference this October that started with the letter I?

Me (I might add that I'd just gotten my wisdom teeth out before General conference & was therefore drugged up & didn't remember much from conference): Um....I don't remember.

Sister Madsen: Israel!

Lady: *to sis. madsen* Good! *looks at me* You didn't remember?

Me: No...

Lady: *looks @ sis. madsen pointing at me* Does she have long hair?

Sis. Madsen: ...yes...

Lady: Good. Make sure she keeps it that way so you can pull her up from hell.

~

Lady: *talks about how ducks are annoying and mean*

Lady: *tells us how often to have children*

Lady: *tells us to buy jeggings so we can "look sexy"*

~

Lady: *to sister madsen* You're so skinny!

Sis. Madsen: sister putnam is skinny too!

Lady: *looks at me skeptically*

(I had my coat zipped up)

Lady: *to sis. madsen* you're so skinny, you should only carry one child at a time *to me* you could carry twins if you needed to

~

Yeah. Zero filter. We walked away from that conversation like "what the heck just happened!"

Anyway, then we went to work at bishops storehouse, & then we had a few lessons.

Wednesday

We had interviews with President Auna, & then we had institute & then we had District council, this was the last district council before transfers & we were all kinda slap happy so that was fun. We had a lesson after wards & then we had a service project for the youth! They did a spinoff of the great British bakeoff for mutual & we're the judges, so the youth leader brought us the finished product of no-bake cookies, all with code names to keep the no-bakers anonymous.

Thursday: H a r r y P o t t e r

We taste tested the cookies. The code names for the cookies were all Harry Potter themed names. If you think I made harry potter jokes for the video we sent in, well, congratulations, you know me well! Naturally, I did so! Then we went on a walk & filmed some things for the content calendar for this year. We had a Social Media training meeting, so hopefully finding people to teach on Facebook will be more successful in the future. We had a lesson with a guy in our ward & talked a lot about things that C.S. Lewis wrote & also we talked about the book Jesus, The Christ, & Sister Madsen & I decided we were going to start reading it this week. We had a service project set up for Saturday, to help clean up this one guy's yard, & he contacted us saying he had to cancel because something came up. Well, that freed up time on Saturday, so we needed to find service to do. Remember Melinda, the lady who we waited on for three hours last Saturday? We called her, and said we could help her move the stuff from her storage unit, & then we talked to the zone leaders & invited them & some other sets of elders to the service project because, again, she'd insisted that there be boys there.

Friday:

We had a mission devotional, & then we were going to do a bible study with this one girl & then she had to reschedule, & so that was disappointing. We had a lesson with a girl named Cherlyn who loves missionaries & that was fun, & we also did weekly planning.

Saturday: Maybe, possibly, inshallah

Remember the service project for Melinda? well she bailed on us! also, we talked to the other elders who were going to also help her move into her new house, & apparently, she's been bailing for like 3 months, & so yeah that's pretty great. So, we called the zone leaders & other elders we'd invited to the project & had to tell them the news, so that was sad, it was gonna be a fun service project, but then we all had to find service, or fill our time otherwise so that was fun. We had a lesson scheduled with a member in person in the lobby of our hotel that we were super excited for, but she forgot about it so we were bummed again, & then we went on a walk with Sisters Barker & Israelsen, & then we came home & gave a lesson to another lady in our ward.

Sunday:

Church is at 9am for our ward this year, so that's fun. Right after church, the same guy who provided us with Christmas dinner asked us to hand the new Come, Follow Me manuals out to people in the ward, & even specified a few, including the lady from Tuesday with no filter (after asking us to give one to her he was like "yeah...sorry" LOL). Then as we were driving out of the church parking lot he stopped by our car & asked us to roll down our window & then was like "is anyone feeding you for dinner?" & we were like "...no..." & he was like "y'all want a ham dinner?" "oh, you don't have to do that-" & he was like "ok, well we're doing it." so that was really nice.

we had come, follow me for the last time with our district, & it was really sad, because 4 elders are leaving, two of which were companions & were like brothers, & it was really sad. They all bore their testimonies to us & then afterwards we all signed their ties that they made together. then afterwards we picked up dinner & came back home & ate & it was so good & then we had a lesson with a lady in the ward & we discussed the importance of seeing others as children of God & she'd apparently been thinking a lot about it, so that was really cool! It's awesome how the Lord makes our insights & the lessons line up with other people's lives.

Okay, I love you all!