The Start of Something New

Monday, April 9, 2018

Burke, Virginia

Well, here we are. My third transfer in Burke and my first with Sister Merritt. So far, it's been pretty awesome. 

Last Monday night, we went to the G* family's home for FHE, and all the recent converts were there. It was a good night. We brought the giant cinnamon roll Sister A* gave us, and it wasn't even dented by the time we left.  Man, we needed some help to finish that giant ball of sugar.  We needed to bring in the big guns.  So I finally decided to bring it to District Meeting to make the Elders eat it.  I pawned it off on our latest District Leader.  I was sad to see the beautiful thing go, but my body eventually thanked me for it. 

 

FHE with our newest converts.

I survived a squirrel attack.  We went to bring garbage to the dumpster, and I threw the bag into the giant abyss, but I guess I violated a squirrel's resting place because as soon as it landed, a rabid squirrel jumped out and started having a hissy attitude with me.  Well, not really.  But it was scary, and it almost landed on my face, and I shrieked like a little girl and ran away, and then I made Sister Koch throw everything away after that because I didn't want to get my eyeballs clawed out.  Pretty scary stuff.

 

Two peas in a red-headed pod.

Sad to say goodbye.

 

We had transfers this week and my cute new companion is Sister Merritt.  She's super fun and hardworking and awesome.  She's from Wyoming.  We work really well together.  It will be an awesome transfer!

 

Silly at transfers.

Serious at transfers.

 

Sister Merritt & Sister Kleven. New companions.

We were invited to our neighbor's art show, but then when we got there, I couldn't find a parking place and I panicked so we didn't end up not going.  Sorry, neighbor. 

So, we are allowed to go to baptisms if we bring an investigator with us, and we really wanted to go to a baptism on Friday night, so we tried to find someone to come with us.  After exhausting all of our resources, we finally just unrolled our car window and asked the guy who was idling next to us at a traffic light to come with us.  He politely declined.  But then we were able to get our investigator, A*, at a baptism on Saturday night.  He was super excited about it!  And then when we got there, he was disappointed because he thought it was going to be in a river like where Jesus Christ was baptized.  I was disappointed too.  But guess who I saw at the baptism!  S*! She is a less-active member whom I got really close to in Alexandria 3rd, and I have missed her so much.  When she saw me, she came running over to me and gave me big ol' mama hug and cried for about five minutes.  It was a really great night.  And the lady who got baptized bore a super powerful testimony, and it was beautiful.  

I was reading in the April 2011 General Conference talk "More Than Conquerors Through Him That Loved Us" by Elder Paul V. Johnson.  Something at the end really stuck out to me and I wanted to share it with everyone!  It says, "I love the words of Paul: 'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … 'Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.' I know that God lives and that His Son, Jesus Christ, lives. I also know that through Their help, we can be “more than conquerors” of the tribulations we face in this life. We can become like Them."

I love the idea of being "more than conquerors".  We will always conquer and rise above our challenges when we remember the Lord and our purpose here.  Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.  Good stuff.

Nothing else too exciting happened this week.  I'm sorry I'm not a super exciting person. 

 

Love,

Sister Kleven