The Many Duties of an S.T.L.

- August 28, 2018

Hey Everybody!

Holy crap, this week was so busy! We have so much work, and it's just really amazing. The YSA ward has 8 or 9 recent converts, as does the West Hills ward, and most of those still need recent convert lessons, so we have been all over the place trying to meet with these people and help them continue to progress. We also had several lessons with people who aren't baptized yet too. It is just so cool to get to be teaching so often! I don't think I've taught so much my whole mission until now; it's just so amazing. I'm grateful for a strong companion like Sister Jarvis to be there with me! Now we just need to figure out how to teleport from West Hills to Northridge and back so we can have time for everything. ; )

Favorite Spiritual Moment:

The California Los Angeles Mission had a mission conference on Saturday. We had to get up at 4:30 am to be on time, because it was down in Santa Monica, and I had to be there at 6 to practice a song with in a choir. The actual mission conference started at 7. Why did we have to do it so early? Because President Oaks was the General Authority who was speaking to us. : ) He was in Southern California for some event at a temple (not the LA one) and 7 am was the only time he could fit us in. But it was so cool! We got to be in a mission picture with him, and everybody got to shake his hand. It was really cool to hear him speak because he didn't even write a talk; he wanted to make sure that he was speaking completely by the Spirit, to address the needs of the missionaries here. It was such an awesome experience.

Favorite Miracle:

As part of the mission conference with President Oaks, he left a little time at the end for people to ask him questions. There weren't very many of us who had the chance since time was short, but it was really cool to see what kind of questions were asked. Every question asked by a young, full time missionary was a sincere, unselfish question. Almost every single one was based on how we could better help those who we were serving. It was just so cool to see that when given the chance to ask an apostle of the Lord, all of us were willing to set aside our personal desires to learn how we could fulfill our missionary purpose more fully and become better disciples of Jesus Christ. It was a beautiful thing.

Favorite Funny Thing:

As an STL, there are a lot of problems we run into that we have to take care of. Some of those are explicitly spelled out in the white handbook and other leadership resources. Others, not so much. ; ) Our Hermanas called us at about 9pm one night this week, and when we answered the phone, the Hermanas were in tears on the other end. "What's wrong?" you might think, "did they have another baptism cancel last minute?" Nope. The Hermanas called us because there was a giant spider in their bathroom. ; ) They are both absolutely terrified of spiders, which is no good, because they have serious problems when anything like this happens. They had seen the spider in the bathroom, but when they screamed and ran and then got up the courage to go back to look, it was gone, so they were convinced that the spider was just laying in wait, hiding somewhere, until they went to bed so it could eat them. I'm serious, guys. ; ) Their fears also led them to believe that the spider was poisonous, and they were just freaking out, not knowing what to do. They were in hysteria on the other side of the phone, and we were too, but for us it was because we were laughing so hard. After some deliberation, we ended up going over there to try to help. They directed us to their bathroom, which was strewn with trash everywhere (and I mean everywhere) because in their panic they'd knocked their trash can into the bathtub with a mop. We ended up just picking up the trash for them, since they were afraid to because they thought the spider would be hiding under some of it. We never ended up finding it, so then we just helped the Hermanas to calm down. But yeah. That's how JARVIS and Garfield the Cat became Spiderman. ; )

Also, our zone leaders got off to a late start by accident one morning and had to come move their car so we could head to an appointment. These are both two very obedient missionaries, so looked totally flustered when they came outside. Elder Oswald quickly backed Elder Hiatt out because they were running late to an appointment too, and as we pulled out behind them, we heard this terrified exclamation come from Elder Oswald: "Elder, I forgot to shave!!!!" The poor guys. ; ) They resolved to come back and shave at lunch so they could obey the rule to shave every day, but we just thought it was great. ; )

Other Stuff:

On the night before the mission conference, apparently I was talking in my sleep. Sister Jarvis told me today that I was reciting the missionary purpose, half an hour before I woke up. At least that hopefully means I'm a consecrated missionary. ; )

I hope everyone is super happy and has an awesome week! I love you guys!

Love,

Sister Garfield