Centennial Update: Part 1 March 28, 2022

 

Hello Friends and Family, I'm sorry it's been such a long time. I hope this letter can make up for some missed weeks. I'm going on 4 weeks here in Centennial. My getting here was a little late. When transfers came out, Sister Anderson and I had colds, so my leaving was delayed for about 2 weeks until it all worked out. This was really good for me in a lot of ways. Fruita was the only place I'd been on my mission, the only place I'd lived for 7 months without seeing my family. I'd grown very attached. But having 2 weeks to wrap my head around leaving gave me some detachment time. In that time, I was still Sister Anderson's companion, and we began getting to know the Fruita 3rd and 4th wards. Though Sister Anderson was staying, she was over a new area, and Fruita 1 was combined with the Fruita 2 area. While we were there, we had a lesson with one of the family's in the Fruita 4th ward. I instantly fell in love with them. Walking away from that lesson Sis. Anderson said, "There are people like that EVERYWHERE! You will find all new people to love in Centennial." After that, my heart was ready to say goodbye to Fruita and meet new people. My trip over the mountains was nice. I drove with an senior missionary couple from Grand Junction half way, and was given to another senior missionary couple from Denver Metro area for the other half. Those mountains are so beautiful! And I missed a bunch because I fell asleep! Since it was just me in the car, I was able to bring the yellow rose my friends, the Gardner's, gave me for Valentine's all the way across the mountains. Upon my arrival, I met my new companion Emma Friberg. She is the first companion with whom I have immediately "clicked." I've convinced her to come to BYU and get her math major there. We keep my yellow rose and a basil plant, as well as green onions in a jar, and bulbs in rocks and water that we just have sitting in the window well! The bulbs have sprouted up quite tall. We are just waiting for them to bloom. Now to be brief, here are bulleted stories. -Sister Friberg and I sang in the South Glenn Ward! We had about 5 days to put it together, so we did "My Kindness Shall Not Depart from Thee" because it was the only sheet music I had. The day we showed up to sing, we were shocked to find Pres. and Sis. Rees (our mission president and his wife) seated in the back row of our chapel. Pres. stood up and came over, and as I shook his hand the first words out of my mouth were, "Well, my stage fright just increased tenfold!" He said, "What? Why do you have stage fright?" Sister Friberg replied with a slight quiver in her voice, "We are singing today." By pure coincidence, he and Sis. Rees choose to come to our ward the one day we were singing. The musical number wasn't perfect, but it was good enough that President asked us to film a number for one of the all-mission Zoom devotionals. Something we still haven't done...

-After helping pass off the last of 7 people this area has handed to other missionaries in the last month, Sister Friberg and I looked at our teaching pool to find that all the people we were teaching were in South Glenn. Our other ward, Centennial, had absolutely no one. When we met with our Centennial ward mission leader, he walked us through the entire ward list and talked to us about his ideas for engaging the ward in missionary work. It was a wonderful meeting! At the end, we expressed to him our vision of finding in Centennial, and promised him we would do everything in our power to bring someone into his ward. Not even a week later, we got a call from our zone leaders. A less active member of their ward had referred her daughter and son in law who lived across the street from her... in OUR CENTENNIAL WARD BOUNDARIES. Sister Friberg and I reached out to them, and set up a lesson for that Monday night, a week and a few days from when we had promised our Ward Mission Leader we would find in our area....

I've run out of time for today and still have MUCH more to share! This will be continued next week!