Friends and Family!!!!
Do you like the title, it was on a fortune cookie I ate my second day in the field, I thought it was pretty relevant! Well I hope you are ready for this, because I have a novel coming your way!
First of all, I'm just going to jump ahead to conference! THE NEW AGE IS TOTALLY AWESOME!!! We were watching conference in the church building, and it was only me and my companion and the 2 spanish elders, and the 4 of us were just freaking out! We are so so so excited for the new opportunity for more sisters to serve as well as for young men to get out here faster! I can't wait for all the young teenagers we are going to be working with! I just think that this is truly inspired, and am so excited for the more sisters we are going to get because of this! I'm thinking with sisters being RMs at 20, there is no stopping what we can do! I'm so so so excited about this!!!
Okay, for the real stuff you all want to know. I got to Indiana on Tuesday and we had a great night at the mission home. Then on Wednesday we went to the Fishers building (just a church building they call Fishers) and had transfer meeting. Here I am watching all of these missionaries get called to new companionships and new areas, and I'm just sitting on the stand waiting for them to be done so they can introduce us and assign us to our trainers. Finally it gets to us newbies, and I am the last sister to be called. I am put with Sister Berrett, and we are assigned to go to Bloomington! So naturally I'm super excited to be born in Bloomington, just like mom was, and I am really excited to get to know my companion. All of us sisters go out to lunch and get back for another training meeting before we head to our areas. Before the training starts however, the president needed to see me and Sister Berrett, Sister Palmberg and her new comp Sister Stanford. Sister Stanford was in a car accident a year ago, and doesn't have driving privileges, and Sister Palmberg never got her drivers license, and they were a companionship... so we had to make an emergency transfer right then and there. Sister Palmberg is now in Bloomington with Sister Berrett, and I have been in Layfette with Sister Stanford! And before you get really bummed out that I'm not in Bloomington, I need to tell you just how amazing Layfette is! I'm in Layfette 3rd ward, which I'm convinced is the greatest ward in the state of Indiana! And I am super close to Purdue, so naturally I'm a huge Boilermakers fan now! The area is so nice, a little bit cold for my liking, but beautiful. Its actually a big nice city with a WalMart and everything! I just really love it here and even though I was sad at first that its not Bloomington, I know this is where I'm supposed to be!
The first week has just flown by! Its so weird how it has been working. Our first day we had three appointments and I'm already jumping in and teaching people! I love it! We also went tracting on my first day, which was probably the best fun ever! Some people are not interested, well most people actually, but just meeting people and talking about Purdue, or their children, or whatever we notice about them we can start a conversation about has been so fun! Not so much fun is when we knock on the door and three huge pit-bulls come running out and chase us... We thought they were stuck on us since no person came out, so we just walked away with these dogs running all around us, and the lady finally comes running out asking us to grab her dogs for her! Um, excuse me, your dog almost killed me, and now you want me to catch it! AHHH!!! That was literally my 5th house that I knocked on! I love missionary work! lol
But seriously, everybody in Indiana has dogs! Its pretty insane. President Collins joked about it on our first day here, but he wasn't kidding. I'm not sure if I'm allergic to dogs, cats, or the entire state of Indiana, but I have been having pretty bad allergies. Yesterday my eyes were so red and I started sneezing so much my companion thought I was going to die, okay not die, but she was freaking out more than I was. But no need to worry about me, I bought some claritin today and I'm feeling good!
We have a baptism this Saturday. They have been teaching him for a while and he had his interview yesterday... and he passed!!! We are so excited for him and the covenant he is about the make with our Father in Heaven! I can't wait for the baptism, I think about it everyday, and we talk with him everyday and he is excited. Tonight we are going to be teaching him about the priesthood and how he can have it soon after his baptism. I hope he is as excited as I am, because this is the real deal, and I'm STOKED!!!
We have been eating with members in the ward almost every night. One of our first nights we went to the bishops and actually taught a lesson to Bryan there (Bryan is the one getting baptized). The bishops family is great! He is so funny, and their kids are just relaxed and sweet! Their oldest son is serving in Mexico and he went to BYUI, and so they are always talking about him. We watched conference at the church building for the first three sessions, but then for Sunday afternoon we watched it at the bishops, and they fed us snacks, dinner (at half time, as the bishop called it) and a huge brownie with ice cream on it for desert. Oh thats another thing, the members love to feed us desert! YIKES!!!
We tracted into a lady named Amy two nights ago, and I just really like her! Her daughters were outside playing and they talked to us so much! They were so cute, and they asked us if we were really sisters, and then told us how beautiful we were and how we look like we could be sisters. The girls said they loved Jesus Christ and believed in God, but haven't been to church in a while. Their mom, Amy, works a lot and is too tired on Sundays to bring them to church, so we are going to be meeting with her soon, and I can't wait! She has been to a lot of different churches and I think she just hasn't chosen one because she somehow knows that ours is the true church and she has just been waiting for us to come find her! Anyway, just keep Amy and her family in your prayers!
Lets see... what else! My zone is so awesome, we had a zone training on Friday that blew my mind. Like honestly, one of the most spiritual moments of my life! I was just so happy leaving that training. Sometimes I'm just smiling and I have no reason other than the fact that this gospel brings so much joy to my life!
My companion is probably the coolest person in the world! Me and her are SO SIMILAR! She is from Fullerton California (and she is REALLY happy that I'm not from Utah). We get along so well because we have the same ideas on so many things. I love studying with her because she is a spiritual giant, and I love teaching with her, because she is just so good at putting the investigator at ease and just talking! We have 4 investigators right now, and I have only met 1, but we have appointments to meet the others later this week!
I told you I would be writing a novel. I just am going to end by saying that I love being a missionary! I love this gospel, and oh man, did I love conference! The doctrine of Christ was in every single talk given! I loved it!!! One of my favorites was Elder Bednars talk on conversion, its so true that testimonys can fade, but conversion is different. We are out here to convert people, not to just give them a small testimony that might fade a year or two after they join! And of course I also loved Elder Nelson's talk! Ask a missionary, because apparently we know everything! It made me feel so good to listen to him promote us like that! President Uchtdorfs talk was also mindblowing, and I related it to missionary work of course. I am not on a mission just to wait for the end to happen, I am enjoying every moment of it! And Sister Burtons talk about observing and serving was amazing. She is going to be in Indiana in a few weeks so I'm pretty excited to go to that!
Thanks for your letters family! My P-days are always on Monday's up here, so I will be writing you weekly at this time from here on out. I'm going to be in Layfette guarenteed for the next two transfers, but then after that Sister Stanford goes home, so unless they transfer both of us out (which I doubt) I will be here well into Feburary at least. My real address here is
3111 New London Ct. #529
Layfette, IN 47909
If you write to that it will come straight to me instead of going through the mission home in Carmel first. I am off now to play some frisbee with the spanish elders. I challenged them to some ping pong, but I think we are going to take advantage of the fall weather now before it gets to winter, and then bust out the ping pong battles at the institute once its freezing.
I love you all so much, sorry for the novel! GO BOILERMAKERS!!!
Sister Tara Cordner
p.s. Mom, Sister Collins wants to know where you got my bag, because she has the same bag, but she got it at goodwill, and wants to get a new one because hers is really old! Thanks!
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