Missionary Work?--No Way!--Missionary FUN!!

Well, another week in the mission field has flown by! It has been a
pretty good week though! In singles ward we get to go to lots of
activities. It makes the week super fun!

This week for FHE they played water balloon volleyball and we got to
participate! They ran out of water balloons pretty quickly though, so
really we just played volleyball. It was all great fun-- except that I
fell down a hill, but that is beside the point!

Tuesday was a pretty exciting day! We had Zone meeting in the morning.
At the start of this transfer President Van Cott rearranged all of the
districts and zones because he wanted them to be bigger. So, our zone
is now all of the missionaries serving in the redlands stake-- which
is about 20 companionships since there is multiple sets in most wards.
Needless to say it was a pretty interesting meeting. We talked a lot
about finding and teaching so that we always have a pool of
progressing investigators.

Tuesday night was what was really exciting though. We got to have
Elaina's Baptism! Elaina is pretty interesting. She had been
investigating for about a year, but had fallen off the radar a couple
of months before we got here. We went and looked her up and when we
stopped by her house she informed us that she had been meaning to find
the missionaries again because she wanted to be baptized in the next
two weeks while her boyfriend was going to be home on leave. So her is
her timeline:
Thursday: We meet Elaina,
Next Wednesday: We meet the now Fiance, Dakota and they inform us that
she needs to get baptized by June 11 so that he can baptize her
Friday: Dakota and Elaina go to the courthouse and get married and she
moves in over the weekend
Tuesday: Baptism!
There were a lot of little things that had to happen throughout the
week as well, and it kept us on our toes, but we had a lot of fun with
them :)

On to other things though. I am not sure if I mentioned this or not.
So, in this area we live in an apartment complex near the University
of Redlands. It's nice because there are lots of young single adults
nearby. However, we also live on the same street as all of the
sorority and fraternity houses, so that makes things interesting.
Luckily they are out for summer now and dont have summer classes. We
got to enjoy their end of the year party last week that went until
about 4am :) Any-who, the U of R is a non-denominational Christian
School. This week we got to go meet their Chaplin, and talk about ways
that we can get involved with them. There isnt much going on until
August, but it was fun to get to talk to him and have him be so
excited to have us help out with getting the students excited about
religion.

We also have been teaching Cameron and Steffen. They are doing
wonderfully and are still working towards a baptism date here in a
couple of weeks :) On Saturday Night we had a lesson with them at the
temple, but much to the dismay of the sister missionaries their was a
very large black widow spider that enjoyed our lesson too. "All
Creatures of our God and King"!  Cameron and Steffen are super smart
though, and informed us all about spiders during our lesson as we
watched it catch, paralyze and eat a junebug. Yuck! I guess as long as
it's not close to me :)

Well, I believe that is it for this week. We found a lot of potential
investigators this week, so hopefully that will mean that I have lots
of new investigators to tell you about next week! Until then--
Remember who you are and what you stand for! Live up to the covenants
that you have made and uphold a legacy of righteousness! :)
Love you all!
Sister Hope

Don't worry-- I haven't gained any missionary weight yet! I have
leftovers of shame :)

The singles love to take us out for food! This morning we went and had
pancakes at a local café -- Yum!

Happy meal :)

I <3 MISSIONARIES :)

This is most of our mission!! One of few maps that covers our area
right now! We get Mentone, Redlands, Loma Linda, Yucaipa, Banning, and
Beaumont-- and everything in between!! :)



Elaina's Baptism!!
Elder McNees and and Elder Bolinbroke were her first missionaries.
Dakota, her husband, baptized her, and then me and Sister Dowd :)