It has been a long time since my last p-day and I am sure ready for it! So much
has happened since my last letter. On the Monday before we left for Omaha, we had a TRC appointment
for Visitor's center that was leading a tour. We set up little displays of
pictures a in few different rooms in the TRC building to take people around and
talk about prophets, the restoration, the Book of Mormon, families, temples,
etc. Right before we were going to give the tours, they told us that they had
about 30 people waiting to participate in the tours. With four companionships,
that meant each group would have 7 or 8 people. We were planning on 2 or 3 per
group, so we were a little nervous but thought we should be OK. When we got our
groups, it turns out that they had the 2 Spanish speaking companionships take Spanish
speaking tours of 2-3 people each and the other two companionships (including
Sister Pinchak and I) each took a tour of about 20 people. That is probably how
it will be in the summer at our Visitor's Center (in Omaha), so I guess it was good practice but I
was real nervous. I think that my face and neck turned bright red about 2 minutes
in and stayed that way through the rest of the tour! Luckily, that was the
worst part and the rest of the tour went really well.
The next day, we left for
Omaha at 6 am.
Our other roommates were so cute and got up early with us to walk us to the
Travel Office and say goodbye. When we arrived in the airport, President and
Sister Kunz were there waiting for us. President Kunz mentioned that mom is
from Omaha. I
don't know how he knows that, but the first thing that came out of my mouth was
"Yeah, and I thing we're related. . . . Distantly". That's pretty
much all we said about that. It was kind of awkward. I think it’s funny though.
We spent the rest of Tuesday and all of Wednesday with the Kunzs. On Thursday,
we went to downtown
Omaha
where a bank has placed statues of a wagon train with three larger than life
wagons. There are also animals placed randomly throughout downtown
Omaha. Sometimes, you can
only see parts of them because the artist wanted to symbolize how the animals
were here before the city was built, so you will see only the front half of
something hanging out the side of a building. We also visited the Kanesville Tabernacle
and made our first visit to the
Mormon
Trail Center.
In the afternoon, they had us go out with other missionaries who are serving
around
Omaha. I
went with Sister Kusnerik. First, we visited a lady that she had met on the
street a few days before. The lady wasn't home, but her daughter and newborn
were at home. She invited us in and we taught her the whole first lesson and
committed her to baptism. It was amazing. The spirit was so strong and she was
so accepting of everything we explained to her. She said that that very
morning, she had been praying for a change in her life and she knew that this
was it. Then, we went to visit another lady, but she wasn't home either. We
talked to her husband for a very long time. He was quite knowledgeable about
the Bible and lots of religions. We spent a lot of time talking to him and
didn't get to teach him hardly anything.
That night, President Kunz gave us each a letter that told us who our companion
is and where we will be serving. Turns out, the person we went out with earlier
in the day is actually our companion. So, my companion is Sister Kusnerik. We
are opening up the Oakview area, which has been closed for several years. It is
about twenty minutes away from the trail center, where we are also serving.
Pretty much every day since then, we have been in the Trail Center
a ton. Sister Kusnerik is also a Trail
Center trainer, so she
has been working on scheduling and getting ready for training (which will be
this Tuesday) and all kinds of other things to get ready for the rest of the
transfer. So far, we have only been able to make it out to our area once. We
met with the Ward mission leader, who sounds excited to have missionaries in
their ward again, but expects a lot from us because the last sets of
missionaries they had were not very committed to the work. We have also been
calling lots of previous investigators and referrals from 3 or 4 years ago that
were never contacted. We have a couple of appointments set up and hopefully
will get more soon! We will be out in our area tonight for a few hours, so we
are praying that some good things will happen then!
In the vast amounts of time I have been at the Trail Center,
I have given my first few tours by myself and gotten to do some good studying
of the history. The numbers of people that come the Trail Center
is different every day. We usually have at least one or two tours going on at a
time, but there was one day where we had to call in extra people because we had
four or five groups of families show up and a school group of 80 kids on their
way. My first tour was kind of an embarrassment. I don't even know what to say
about it, but things have gotten better since then. I feel pretty confident
about giving tours to members of the Church, but the hard thing is non-members.
They just usually come in only wanting to get history, but it is impossible to
talk about the pioneers without talking about religion and it is our responsibility
as missionaries to share the gospel with everyone, so I am working on that. The
sad thing was that yesterday, during conference, we kept having member families
show up for tours. We invited them to watch conference with us in one of the
theaters, but they all declined. So weird.
That reminds me, James Conlee, who is a former Young Ambassador and performed
with the YA's at the reunion tour last year, keeps showing up at the Visitor's
Center. He is working with the Manheim Stream Rollers, who are conveniently
located just down the street. So, we're pretty much best friends now. Ha Ha.
Right before one of the sessions of conference, we realized that the projector
in the theater wasn't working. No one was doing anything about it, so I went to
work trying to figure out what was wrong. Brother Conlee came over and helped
me because he could see that I didn't really know what I was doing. I think he
spent at least half of the session trying to figure out what was wrong. I felt
kind of bad that he didn't get to listen to a lot of conference, but I think
that he was enjoying himself. We will have to see if he turns up again.
Well, I feel pretty solid about this letter. It is pretty long, but a lot
happened this week, so I guess that is partially justified.
That's all folks!
Love,
Sister Lamb-baaaa
PS. I have only seen one cornfield so far.
We spent the rest of Tuesday and all of Wednesday with the Kunzs. On Thursday,
we went to downtown 
What a great Sister Missionary she is! This is a darling blog! A very fine way
ReplyDeleteto spread the word!