Man, this has definitely been one of the longest weeks of my life. As soon as Preparation Day ended last week, Sister Warnick and I started making preparations for our trip to Samara for Zone Training. We woke up at 4 in the morning the following day and hopped on a fast train to Avrora. We spent the rest of the day in Samara and had Zone Training the next day. We hopped back on another train as soon as Zone Training was finished and returned to Penza that same night. 2 trains in a 36 hour time span takes a lot out of you, I'll tell you that much. We left Penza on Tuesday morning and came back on Wednesday night. Even though we were only out of our area for 2 days, it felt like we had been gone for the whole week. It threw both of us off that it was only Thursday by the time we started working again. Sister Warnick and I are slowly making up the lost sleep, but starting tomorrow, the battle begins once again.
On Saturday, I got the last transfer call that I will ever receive on my mission. Sister Warnick and I were freaking out because at Zone Training the Assistants to the President were talking about how President had all of the transfers figured out, and then he changed everything at the last second. We were so nervous that we were going to get split up! I told the Assistants on multiple occassions that my only dying wish is that I stay in Penza with Sister Warnick. President, for the most part, is pretty good about granting people's dying wishes, so I wasn't too worried about it being fulfilled until the AP's started flipping nuggets about all the changes that were made. Anyways... President pulled through and I will, indeed, be dying in Penza with Sister Warnick as my last companion. 11 cycles (17 months) in the bag, 1 more cycle to go, 9 companions and 4 areas total, check.
Fortunately, neither of us are leaving, but Sister Warnick is going on her first Visa Trip to Kazakhstan on Wednesday, so we get to wake up at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning and take yet another train to Samara. Thankfully we should have some time to reboot after this train ride since we won't be coming back to Samara until Thursday night instead of the very next day. Should be a lot of fun, but you know you're getting old on the mission (and in life) when it takes all of the energy that you have to stay awake during the day after one of those trips. I definitely fit in that category. I'm still suffering from the lack of sleep from last week's adventure.
Zone Training was and always is a blast! It was a really strange experience for me when I came to the realization that this would be the last Zone Training that I would ever attend for the rest of my mission. Yikes. Anyways, Sister Thomas (the older) and I were given a chunk of time to fill at the Training, so we decided to talk about contacting, or tracting, as some people call it. Neither of us can say that we are necessarily good at contacting, but compared to the contacting methods I've seen other sisters do on exchanges, it needed to be addressed. We only had to fill a 30-45 minute slot, but it ended up going for over an hour. We had a lot of great discussions with the missionaries about why and how we should contact. Overall, I think it went pretty well. President Schwab and the Zone Leaders talked about love and happiness for the rest of the training, so that added a nice balance to everything that was said.
Aside from all of the traveling, this week has been very successful in terms of the missionary work. One of our less active, Tatiana (the one that just moved), has been making HUGE progress over these past couple of weeks. One of the first lessons that Sister Warnick and I ever had with her was in the beginning of November. At the end of that lesson she told us not to come back until December. Great. Going a month without seeing someone is usually pretty catastrophic when you're just barely starting to make progress with them. Anyways, fast forward to where we stand now; she is a completely different person! She is actually laughing and smiling and she is putting in a genuine effort to learn the doctrine. She asks lots of questions, is a HUGE giver of referrals, and she has started coming back to church! Such a gem. There are a handful of other less actives that are making some good progress as well that I would love to talk about, but I'm a little crunched for time today since we have to get ready for our train tomorrow.
Welp, that's all for this week, folks! Get a good sleep in and work on your contacting methods!
Do Svidanya!
Love,
Sister Wagstaff
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