Still in Rio Rancho

Well my dear family and friends, another week has rapidly flown by here in Rio Rancho... along with my first transfer. What?! I am already done with my first transfer? Yep... more info on that coming later. Here's the excitement regarding this past week.

Monday: Preparation day, so we e-mailed and wrote letters and did our grocery shopping. We had an FHE with Magda and the Roundsville's (they are such amazing members. President Roundsville is the stake president so he's super busy, and they left early Tuesday morning for Disneyland, yet they were still willing to do this for us.)

Tuesday: It was one of those days where SO much happened... but it's mostly personal things with our investigators so I can't share details, but oh what a day. We were all exhausted by the end of the night. We had a lot of interesting lessons and... I don't know. It was interesting. But we did have 2 great lessons with Emma and Norma to end the night, so that was good.

Wednesday: We were in much better Spirits than we were on Tuesday. When we went to Magda's, she taught us how to use "dry brush" to paint a design on a lampshade. It was really cool! She is such an amazing lady. We went to the Luna's and Sister Luna gave us all a necklace. We also went to meet a recent convert family that President Roundsville has been telling us that we had to go meet. They are so funny! Too bad they're not in our area anymore--again, more on that later. We were having such a good time with them, and they insisted that we sit down and eat with them even though we didn't have time. We completely lost track of time and were late to our appointment with Norma. Oops! Not a good time to do that right before her baptism. But we made it there, just 30 minutes after we were supposed to be there. Her sister-in-law, who we are also teaching, makes jewelry and also gave us all something. I chose a necklace and earrings that are so cute!

Thursday: We had the last district meeting of the transfer. There are some good Elders in our district. 2 of them were transferred out of the area. I have made some good friends here. It was yet another interesting day that I can't really talk about. It's just been one of those weeks. We also found out that Lily and Alexis are postponing their baptism until the 24th because of the flu. But they will be so much better prepared, so it is really a blessing in disguise. They are going to be such amazing members someday!

Friday: Umm... let's just say that you can ask me about it when I get home. It was a wild planning day and we spent a good portion of the morning on the phone with the zone leaders... well, zone leader because the other one was with the Assistants training to be an AP, and he was on the phone with the APs to get our questions answered, and... yeah. We left our house in time for our 5:00 dinner appointment. Yep, that's right. Almost 6 hours planning, and it was the least productive planning day in terms of scheduling. I mean, here we are at Tuesday and Sister Michel and I are still clueless as to what our numbers are for the week! But really, it was a good day.

Saturday: We had lots of good lessons and worked hard. We stayed very busy. We also got transfer news Saturday night. You might have already guessed... I'm staying right where I am with Sister Michel. Sister Trunnell is headed up to Cortez, Colorado as I type this. But our area has been split, so we've only got 3 wards and 2/5 of Rio Rancho plus Bernalillo instead of everything. A set of Spanish Elders came in this morning. But really, it wasn't much of a surprise. Sister Trunnell has been here for 11 months... and this is still her first area. And there's only one other area for Spanish sisters, and the other sister up in Cortez is from Mexico and can't drive (nor can Sister Michel) so Sister Trunnell and I have to be with the 2 of them because our areas are too big to bike or walk.

Sunday: We again worked hard and made lots of visits as Sister Trunnell had to say her goodbyes. This was the first time she's had to say goodbye. She has before, but she's always been back for the appointments the next week. Not this week though. I wonder if it's hit her yet that she's actually leaving. Gee, by this time, she might be almost up there. At the very least to the point where she's meeting her new companion, who she actually trained here in this area a few months ago.

Monday: We didn't get much of a preparation day, but that's okay. Sister Trunnell said some more goodbyes. We tried to e-mail, but the library was closed. Then we headed down to Albuquerque to help with the training for the 3 new sisters who arrived. We took them out knocking on doors. This was a good experience for me because I'm still not very comfortable doing this because we don't have time in our area. But I had to step up and be the example. And ya know what? I did okay. Of course, all the contacts were in English which helped. But I'm going to have to start stepping up a lot more now speaking in lessons and when we do have time to go finding because there's only 2 of us. And I'm sorry Mom, but you won't get a hand written letter from me this week. We spent a good portion of our day in Albuquerque and had no time to write letters. We didn't even have time to buy food! But don't worry. We did that this morning. We were up really late, and by really late I mean 1:00. Sure 4 months ago 1:00 am was nothing for me, but that was difficult. I've gotten so used to getting about 8 hours of sleep, and we had to get up earlier this morning so we could load the car and be on our way to Albuquerque by 7:30.

Tuesday: I got to drive in Albuquerque rush hour traffic. Oh boy was that fun! It took us about 40 minutes to travel the 15 miles from our apartment to the mission office. I don't like traffic. I've gotten used to Rio Rancho, and even the outskirts of Albuquerque and the roads may have more traffic than I'm used to in Idaho, but yikes! I did not enjoy the drive this morning at all! We spent some time orienting the new Spanish Elders to their area book and gave them a brief over view of the investigators they'll be taking over. We headed back to Rio Rancho about 10:30 and made the drive in 20 minutes. Granted we didn't go clear back to our apartment, but we went a comparable distance to get to Walmart for food. It's weird just being the 2 of us now. We don't know what to think yet. I'll let you know next week.

Have a fantastic week! I love you all!

Hermana Good