Sept 5, 2011

Hello dear friends and family.

I was going to start today's email with a ton of trivial information, knowing that you're all hanging on bated breath to know what my new comp is like. So I was thinking about sharing some of the Church statistics:

Stakes - 2,896

Missions - 340

Districts - 614

Wards and Branches - 28,660

CHURCH MEMBERSHIP

Total membership - 14,131,467

New children of record - 120,528

Converts baptized - 272,814

MISSIONARIES

Full-time Missionaries - 52,225

Church-service Missionaries - 20,813

TEMPLES

Temples dedicated - 4 (Vancouver British Columbia, Gila Valley Arizona, Cebu City Philippines, and Kyiv Ukraine)

Temples rededicated - 1 (Laie Hawaii)

Temples in operation - 134

but I decided, instead to just get straight to it... Soooo....

Her name is Sister Williams. She's from Albuquerque, NM. I already compared notes with her about Abq, and we don't know any of the same people. In fact, she lives on the complete opposite side of town from where we lived. Anyway. She's got four older sisters, who are all at least twenty years older. She was adopted as an infant. She's African American (how many sisters get to say they served with a black sister? Not many!) She's a graduate from BYU in, drum roll..... English Lit... crazy, huh? So we have a couple things in common. She's super cute, and has a rockin' testimony of the gospel. She was raised in the church. She's a very shy person, but she's intent on overcoming her usually quietness so that she can share the gospel. She wants to be the best that she can. I'm excited to be serving with her, and for the miracles that we'll be seeing together. She's pretty cool!

As for the things that have happened already this week... I don't really have much to report, because we've been attending a lot of training meetings this last week. The church has rolled out a new training program that is a lot different from what trainers used to do (which was pretty much whatever they wanted). Now we have a structured study program with goals and applications that we're supposed to complete each week of the new missionary's first twelve weeks. It's pretty cool, but since no one has done it before, we've had to have a lot of training on it. Which means that we haven't done much proselyting yet. We've done some... a little tracting, and some lessons that we already had scheduled, but nothing miraculous. Probably the coolest thing was getting to see 3 confirmations in sacrament meeting yesterday. I was so proud of those new converts! I love them, and I'm so happy that I got be a part of their teaching experience.

Coming up this week, we have some exciting appointments with a few new potential investigators, and some good less active lessons. So it'll be our first real full week of work together as a companionship. I'm excited to see what the week will bring. I hope and pray that it will bring good miracles. :) Both for me and my comp, as well as for all of you!

As a side note... Next week, on Monday (my traditional email day) we are having a mission conference. Elder Kearon of the 1st Quorom of the Seventy will be meeting with us for most of the day. So we won't be having a regular P-day next week. President Weston will change our P-day to a different day next week. I don't know which one, yet, but just so you know, when you don't get an email on monday next week, it isn't because I didn't write, but because I couldn't. :) I love you all. I hope you have a great week!

Love, Sister Reid