First week In-field

Hello All!

I arrived safely in North Carolina on Monday and we all stayed overnight at the mission home for transfers on Tuesday. I have a picture of the missionaries who flew out to Charlotte that day that I'll attach to this email and a couple pictures of me with Kelsey too. By the way, so I sang on Saturday at the Relief Society broadcast and that was a really great experience. However, I don't think my face made it on camera (kind of a good and dissapointing thing). When they show the whole choir though I can point out exactly which one is me. Oh well, how many people get the neat experience to sit and sing where the Mormon Tabernacle Choir does? And not many people get to see the back of the prophets head during his talk haha. ;)

This week has been great. My trainer is Sister Whitmer and she is very fun and sweet so we get along well. We were assigned to Hickory which hasn't had sister missionaries in a number of years, so it's kind of like we're opening an area I guess. Brother and Sister Nielsen picked us up from Charlotte and drove us to Hickory. On the way there though the bike rack we had broke and my bike ended up dragged a little bit on the highway before we could pull over. It ended up wearing a big hole right through the tire. So I haven't even used my new bike yet, it's at the shop being repaired and I have a church loaner bike. I am just grateful the bikes didn't entirely come off and hit the car behind us. Sister Whitmer and I were positive about the whole thing though and we figure we'll have lots more adventures like that. :) The roads here are crazy and probably in Hickory they are the craziest in the whole state even with a GPS. I have never been more grateful for Brigham Young setting up the grid system back west at home. The members we have met so far (which isn't much because of Conference weekend) are very excited to have sisters again. Oh and they found out that we both like to sing so we've already practically been recruited to their choir. When I got here I just kind of jumped right into missionary work, there really isn't another way to do it. I have only been out a week and already I've taught lessons, door contacted, and we even have someone committed to baptism. Last night we were on our way to an appointment we tracted into on Friday, but he wasn't home. So our back-up plan was to stop by someone we saw in the area book. Well the address wasn't right or something, so we only had a little bit of time left and decided to just knock around the apts. the address had taken us to. We found a sweet family, mother, daughter and son, who let us in. Turns out they had a dear family member pass away just last month so we bore testimony that they would get to see him again and they agreed to pray and read the Book of Mormon together. We go back to see them tomorrow and we'll teach more about the Plan of Salvation. It was really neat to have been led to that family. That's one of the things about missionary work that I am learning and seeing unfold: you study and prepare to teach but you got to be open to the Spirit's promptings because what you originally have in mind might not be what they need to hear at that time so you take courage to let go of your outlined plans and follow the Holy Ghost. It absolutely happens and works, but I have to be willing to stop taking counsel from my fears and start taking counsel from my faith. Anyway, Sister Whitmer and I are excited about this family because just the night before we decided we wanted and prayed for to find a family we could help get to baptism and eventually temple covenants and then we found this family! President and Sister Craven call Charlotte, NC the mission of miracles and I know it will be.

Well, that's about all that has happened this week other than settling into our apartment. I hope to hear from y'all and feel free to write snail mail too. :) By the way I sent a card with our address on it, but I realized it was wrong. Our REAL address is 1209 5th St NE #240 Hickory, NC 28601.