Brothers And Sisters, ALOHA!
It's been a crazy week. Well, I guess every week is crazy, when you're Sister Marshall. On Tuesday, I packed my bags and drove all of my stuff down to Livonia (45 MINUTES AWAY) and got news that I was in fact bringing all my stuff back to Ann Arbor to an apartment complex less than a mile away. It happens.
My new companions are Sister Hirz and Sister Price. Sister Hirz is a visa waiter also waiting to go to Recife. She's been out for 6 weeks. Then there's Sister Price who has been out for about 12 weeks. That's their story. I really like them a lot so it's been really good. It's been hard though, because I'm supposed to be the one who knows what we're doing since I'm old and stuff, but I still feel like deer in the headlights. My "new" area is actually the same exact area that I was just in, just I'm preaching to a different crowd. The very scientific smart think they know all college crowd. It. Is. Hard. Here, our investigators call us the "mormon sorority sisters" because the institute building used to be a frat house. We have a car, but we aren't allotted a lot of miles, so we take the bus a lot and we street contact up the wazoo. And it's incredibly hard to talk to people on campus because everyone is busy, and feels like they don't have time, and half the time I don't blame them, because I was in their shoes less than a year ago.
We do have some cool things happening though. We're teaching a handful of people. One of these people is A__. An___ is this hilariously indian man who is actually getting baptized on Saturday. Yesterday, we were having dinner at this one girl's house, and so we were all telling funny stories. This one chinese guy, H__, told us this story about how when he was younger, he would throw rocks at chickens, and one time a chicken attacked him. Then this other girl told this story of getting chased by a llama. Then A___, who is pretty quiet says, "this one time, i got chased by a monkey." and that was all he said and he said it in his awesome indian accent, and I almost peed my pants, I was laughing so hard. But we're so excited for him to get baptized. He's excited too! He has a baptismal interview with our district leader, Elder Latu, who is Tongan. The gospel is so cool!
Then we have X___and another girl Y___. Both of them are pretty similar. Freshmen from China, can't really speak English. But they are interested, and we're just helping them get a background of religion because neither of them have believed anything since they just moved from China. They are very receptive.
Then we have S__. S___ is Egyptian. He was muslim, but he had some questions. And now he's talking to us. But he asks really hard questions, and so we're working with him. He's super cool. I'm just still trying to figure out what he needs. I guess he met with missionaries about a year and a half ago, and randomly started again. I asked him why he started again, and he avoided the question.. so we'll see with him.
He are also meeting with this guy, T__. T___ was actually found by the Ann Arbor 1st Elders and so I knew him before I got transferred. They passed him off to us this week. He's 25 and went on 3 tours to Iraq. He plans on getting baptized on the 23 of November, but we have a lot of work to do with him.
I'm still trying to get into the hang of things. But I love it. I know I'm here for some reason. I knew I was going to get sent to a hard area. And I was right. This is difficult. But it's okay, I am loving every minute. Also, random thought. I was sitting here typing and a bird just flew into the window. It was kind of funny.
Well, work is going good in these parts! Love you all!
Sister Marshall