SISTER ZACKRISON: ROLL TIDE!:)

Hey y’all!!

This is my new companion. Isn’t she a doll? I love her already. :)

Guess what, I can officially say “Roll Tide” as a greeting because I am now serving in the Tuscaloosa YSA Branch. I am in the heart of the Alabama college environment 24/7! When I found out I was going to a YSA branch, I got so excited and so nervous. I am working with kids my own age! But it also made me super excited to find out that I am back in the Bessemer Stake! When we were driving to my area, we drove by Hoover signs on the freeway…I about died! I wanted to go see all the people in my old area so bad! We are so close! But another cool thing is that I also was called as a Sister Training Leader. For those of you who don’t know, I will basically be serving in a role equivalent to a zone leader. We will be going on exchanges with the sisters, and teaching at zone training, and serving with the missionary leaders. I am very excited for this new calling, as also nervous as well. I have always looked up to my STL’s and now…I am the STL! So it has been a cool thing to see things from the other side. I only cover the sisters in my zone, so I won’t actually be in Hoover, but we will be together for any stake functions. I also get to “recruit” the YSA aged members from the stake to come up to the branch. So that will be fun to get to see some other areas too.

Wow, what an amazing week it has been. My first week in the YSA Branch, and my first week as an STL has been such a blur! A happy, busy blur, but a blur all the same. Saying goodbye to Booneville was tougher than I thought it would be. Booneville was a hard area for me, and I never really felt like I belonged there all the way. I mean, I knew I did, and I knew there was a reason for me there, but sometimes I still struggled. But saying goodbye showed me that I actually had made a difference there, and that I actually had touched the lives of the people there. The Lord really knows what His children need. I needed to grow there. I was also really sad to say goodbye to Sister Smith! I only got to train her for a transfer, and it was a transfer too short!

Tuscaloosa is like the promised land! This weekend was fall break, and so a lot of the students were gone for the weekend. Sister Edwards kept saying that it was so dead this weekend, but we saw a lot of people still! Man, Sister Edwards is such a fantastic missionary. She really has learned how to use every hour of the day in a meaningful way. We stayed so busy. I know that I will be able to learn so much from Sister Edwards. She is so kind, and so loving, and so humble. She has such quiet dignity, and she really lets the light of Christ shine through her. She really knows her purpose, and she is helping me learn how to be more urgent, and more prepared to find these golden investigators. She is amazing! She also goes home this transfer, so it put the pressure on me to really learn the area. I know I will be staying here for a while, and sometimes I get nervous I won’t be as good as her. But I have only been here for a few days, so I know I will catch on!

We decided as a companionship to make this transfer the transfer of miracles. We actually trained on it during a conference call with our zone. Miracles were meant to be proof to the Jews that Jesus is the Christ. And now in our lives, we can see miracles as the same thing. Proof that Christ is there, and that He is real. And in the four days I have been in this area, it truly has been miracles left and right! We have one investigator being prepared for baptism on November 16th, and we just set another date with and investigator for December 6th. And then! We met with a young couple, named Braxton and Kimberly, and they are so prepared! They told us some of the concerns they had with their church, and told us that they have really been praying about a new church. We met with them, and they came to church with us. The first thing they noticed was how happy everyone was. I loved that they noticed this, because we are testifying daily of the joy this gospel brings to us. They were able to really see for themselves that we were telling the truth. We invited them to be baptized, and we will be working closely with them in the future. This area is so wonderful! The YSA branch members are so willing to help us. They teach with us all the time, and they are so eager to do missionary work. I love being in a college town again. I love the environment, and I love working with people my own age. I feel so grateful to be here!

Halloween was this week, and I spent it as a normal missionary. We met with three investigators, and we were able to teach most of them with a member present. How lucky are we. We also met with one of our investigators, Samantha. She was the one who we set a baptismal date with. We were told not to go on campus due to the fact that they like to party hard. Ha. We took Samantha to a Halloween party that was happening in neighboring ward, and so that was really fun to get her out of the house on a holiday. It was a good Halloween nevertheless.

This week, a sister in my zone wasn’t feeling well. She is a brand new missionary, and got even sicker the longer she had been in Bama. We decided to take over some soup to her, and to Sister Warren, her companion. We stayed with them for a little bit, and made sure they were doing okay. Sister Moore had spent the day throwing up, and so we took over all the good things she could have. Like Gatorade. They are doing well!  I think I understand now why President cries at the transfer meetings. It has been such a neat experience. As I was sitting with Sister Moore on her bed, I literally felt my heart growing. I don’t know how it happened, but I know the Lord is helping me love in my new calling. It makes sense to me now, that if the Lord would let me love the sisters I am over, the Lord would let President love the missionaries he is over. It has been incredible to serve them, and to love them. I am so grateful for the experiences I am having to serve them, just as the Savior would.

My quote for the week comes from the CES devotional we watched yesterday. It is still so crazy to me that I get to serve with the YSA and go to these functions. The speaker was Donald L. Hallstrom. He talked a lot about focusing on making Christ our foundation. He said that no one can build our foundation for us, only we can. We are our own contractors, and we have to decide how deep we want the foundation to be. It is worth any price to know the Savior. But what I really loved, was when he said this, “It is not too late to put on a hard hat, and go to work.” I can testify that is will never be too late to come closer to the Savior. Life is a day by day experience, and we will make mistakes. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t fix them. The choice really is ours to make every day a building experience. Let us all go to work, and let us all come closer to the Savior this week!

I love y’all, and I hope this week was wonderful! I hope everyone had a great Halloween, and I hope that everyone is doing well!

Love,

Sister Zackrison