Getting Transferred! 5/31/2016

So after about 5 months of being in Parkland, I am now being transferred to Commencement Bay. It is bittersweet to leave the ward that I have loved serving with and have made so many good friendships with. But I am excited for the new experiences that I will have and the new friendships I will make. I will be an office elder with my new companion, Elder Goldstrehm. If any of you are wondering what an office elder is: well basically, I will be a normal missionary and continue to share the gospel and will be doing things such as, bringing other missionaries supplies, setting up for meetings as a mission, and doing a lot of paper work haha. I am most excited because we are in a truck!! This is the one area of the mission that has a truck so I am pretty excited!

As for this past transfer— it was great, even though we were not able to have a baptism, we learned a lot and had many great miracles. I am sure that many of the people that we have been working with will be baptized in the coming month. If you were wondering about T's baptism today, it was not able to happen because her family is sick with strep throat. We are hoping to be able to have a baptism for her this next week. On the bright side, both Elder Strong and I were able to baptize the kids that the Sister's were working with, on Saturday. Looking back, I learned a lot of great lessons that I will be able to take throughout the rest of my mission.

I think there were really two lessons that stuck out to me. First, I learned that planning goes a long way. We usually plan for the entire next week on a set day. While planning, we set to see people at certain days of the week. Well, as Elder Strong and I stuck to our plans and relied on the inspiration from the planning, we were able to see many miracles. Sometimes, we were not actually put in that part of the area for the person we thought we were there to see, many times we saw miracles of being in the right place at the right time. For example, last week we planned to go see a member who recently stopped coming to church. As we were going towards his house, a white van pulled up to us and the 19 year old in the passenger seat, J, asked us if he could get baptized. That was a tender mercy to see that God put us in the right place at the right time. Second, I learned not to get discouraged when things don't seem to go right. This transfer, Elder Strong [and I] have had many people commit to being baptized on a certain day and for some reason or another they have not been able to make that day. Somehow things always seemed to just come up and they wouldn't make it to church. I learned that there is a great deal of patience that comes with hard work and not to be discouraged, as long as I did my best.

Well, I hope that you all enjoy this next week and I will post the pictures below! Love you all!

Elder Bullough