One Amazing Year

Hey everyone!

I hope you all had an amazing week!

So yes, this week I'll hit my year mark on the mission. I can't believe it's been a year! One year, three new favourite places in the world, and a ton of new best friends and amazing people that have changed my life. It's so crazy to think that this day last year I gave my farewell talk, and got set apart as a missionary!

BUT I still have 6 months and I KNOW that they are going to be incredible!!! Just like this week...

So what happened this week..

Well on Monday we went to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which was AMAZING!! Usually I don't really enjoy listening to choir music, but when you're right there in the room listening to it, it's just amazing! The spirit was so strong! Also, during the interval, I was informed that the Greenfield Sisters were there, so I scanned the room and found them and I got to see some of the awesome people from Greenfield! It was such a great day :)

At the concert!

Then on Wednesday we were in Boston AGAIN for MLC. It was President and Sister Millers' first MLC, so we all really didn't know what to expect, but it was SO good! The culture of the Massachusetts Boston Mission is "Zion". So, the Millers wanted to know what that was all about. They just threw a question out there: "What is "Zion" to you?" and we all got to stand up and say what it means to us, which was SO cool! We got to teach them all about the culture of our mission, which really meant a lot to us. ALSO, another thing that President Miller wanted to discuss as a council was Norwich! There was a few of us in the room who have served there, and he asked us to talk about why Norwich is so different to every other area, and why it's so successful. We got to talk about how the members work in unity with the missionaries, and the Bishop and other ward leaders are just SO on board with every idea we present to them. It really is the ideal area for missionary work, but I honestly believe we can do that with any area :) We just gotta WORK! :P But anyway, MLC was so great, and it was so nice to spend that day with the Millers, and get to know them better :)

Okay so Thursday was...interesting. To say the least. First thing in the morning, I was curling my hair, and I dropped the curling wand, but before it hit the ground I grabbed the wire, but the curling wand swung back up and burned my arm. It was so unfortunate. And then that just set the tone for the day! Haha I was so sad that my arm was in pain! We planned for Zone Meeting with the Zone leaders and we were just all struggling. Sister Hansen was sick, I was in pain, one of the Zone Leaders, Elder Tuckett had some bad chicken earlier that day so he was in and out of the bathroom throwing up, and Elder Silva was also sick. We were on the STRUGGLE BUS! So, it's safe to say that our planning did not go very well.

BUT we had Zone Meeting on Friday, and it was just amazing to see how the spirit took over. The four of us (plus our mini missionary) said a prayer together beforehand so that we could bring the spirit and have a great Zone Meeting, and the Lord provided! It went SO well :) Everyone participated, and we were all uplifted together!

Then on Saturday, I caught the sickness from Sister Hansen, so we were both struggling, but that didn't stop us from serving our fellow people! We made some delicious brownies for some less active people in the ward. It was awesome! But then we said goodbye to our mini missionary, McKenna. It was so sad. She was awesome, and brought a lot of good to our crazy week!

Then church was amazing yesterday! There were some great speakers. The first speaker was the Bishop's daughter. She's 14..I think. She talked about music, and I wrote down one of the things she said because it was so awesome. She said "Our voice is the only instrument that God sent us to the earth with". And then she talked about how we have to use our voice to share the gospel and build the kingdom of God. I was like "YEAH!"

Then Gloria gave her first ever talk! She spoke about "Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy". She did SO well! She used all the resources and she shared personal experiences. We were so proud of her!

Update on the Hartford Connecticut Temple!

So that was our crazy, yet amazing week!

I hope you all have a great week this week!

I love you all!

Love,

Sister Rebekah Barrett