We survived another transfer day! We didn’t have as many transferred from our Zone as we imagined. We do have a new Zone Leader and a new District Leader. We said “Good-bye” to two wonderful Sisters. Sister Monsivais was in our zone a year ago. Sister Light was in our zone now. We were invited to go to a lesson with her before she left and she told the family that she was being transferred to Montana! We thought it was a cute way for her to say she was leaving. We are starting to realize that the Sisters that we know the best will all be leaving before fall. It is such a strange feeling sometimes. We will have 5 missionaries from our zone go home in the next transfer. We aren’t getting very many new missionaries though. In June we will have 13 missionaries go home and only 6 are coming in. There is no transfer in July. The August transfer has 13 going home and 15 (so far) coming in. September has 13 going home and 9 (so far) coming in. The HUGE transfer last July won’t happen for us this year. I guess that is good news for us, making the meals will be easier, but bad news for the mission. Areas will be combined and closed. When we arrived there were 170 missionaries in the mission, there are now 140. We aren’t replacing the numbers that go home. The work still goes on. These young missionaries are amazing. We only had 1 Sister come for this transfer. She is darling. She was just excited to be here and to get to work.
We had surprising news this week. We knew the Southams were going home and they would no longer need the home they were renting because no senior couple was coming to replace them in Fallon. Elder Vaa’ivaka has been having some health problems and has been afraid they might have to go home. He and Sister Vaa’ivaka wondered if moving to Fallon would be good for him. Next thing we hear they are cleaning out their apartment and moving to Fallon. We now have the Thurgoods in Chester, California. The Vaa’ivakas are in Fallon. We are the only MLS missionaries left in the Reno area. We will surely miss the Vaa’ivakas’ help for the meals. We enjoyed spending the time with them. We pray that this will be what he needs health-wise. We are used to the missionaries moving around every six weeks, we didn’t know this would happen to a senior couple.
The rest of the week was business as usual. We worked at a Mobile Pantry. We went to a fun lesson with Brother Jamison. He is working on family history and we went to help with that. Elder Hardman is so jealous of the many names he has that can have their Temple work done now. Elder Hardman helped him “find’ his grandmother. They had a picture of her burial site online. That really pleased him to see. It is so fun to see how willing this good man is to continue to grow in the Gospel. He is 79 years young and is embracing all aspects of Gospel learning. We also went with the Elder’s to Pam Olson’s. We started teaching her about 3 months ago but she has been on many trips and is now planning on moving. She discovered that she had a Patriarchal blessing. She didn’t remember ever receiving one. She has a lot of questions (that she texts me after we go home). She really knows very little about Christianity. She thought everyone believed in re-incarnation and Karma. She is a character but I like her. I’m sad that she is moving. She has a big trip to the Amazon planned this summer but then she will move, she doesn’t know where or when she will go. She says her middle name is Gypsy. We meet some interesting people but I have enjoyed her questions, she is fun to talk to. We have also been taking Tondalaya to church for the past few weeks. I had invited her to go to Women’s Conference with me (Saturday) and we told her we would take her to the Employment Center. She usually calls us right back when I call but she didn’t call back during the week and when I went to get her on Saturday she didn’t answer her door. We would have talked to the manager but the office was closed. I was starting to worry that something bad had happened to her. Elder Hardman and I were imagining who would be the one to go into her apartment, eeek! She finally called this morning, said she had a job and she was exhausted and wouldn’t be coming to church today. It was such a relief to hear from her.
All in all, it was a good week. The Gospel’s true and we love you!
Love,
Elder and Sister Hardman
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