Knock it off Dick!!!

Hello Hello from Daytona Beach in the Deland of promise! It's crazy over here let me tell ya but it's honestly been the best first week of a transfer ever. Wowza Sister Forbush and I are jiving and it's
amazing! We are both Davis High School graduates and so it makes is super nice because we can talk about all the fun people and places from home haha! She is seriously the sweetest human in the world and I love her so much already. We are going to be great friends. And she is way less stressed than I was when I first lead out an area. I was a mess. Oh boy I'm glad I've come a long way since then.

So Daytona is an interesting place because we're over a Family ward and a Young Single Adult Branch. And the Family ward is OLD. Like everyone keeps saying how Florida is the retirement capital and I'd never really seen it till now. In College park you'd walk into a place and you would see 20-somethings everywhere and here you see senior citizens everywhere. It's a super weird dynamic but I love old people haha.

Some highlights from the week! 

~I saw the ocean!! Our area touches the beach and the first night we had dinner with the Bishop who lives in a high rise and their view is the ocean. It's amazing. I missed the coast.

~Our teaching pool is amazing! Well it will need a little weeding because there was like 25 people in it... but a lot of them are amazing and pretty solid!! 

~ I met Joan and Vince who are this super sweet older couple and they are my grandparents haha. They've been taught for a little while and hadn't been ready in the past but now are and we were able to commit them to baptism for February 23rd. Joan LOVES her coffee though... So pray for her. And Vince came to a baptism the Elders had so he's getting excited. They still need to come to church though.

~We are also teaching this cute part member family who's children want to be baptized. So we were able to put one of the sons on Date for May. It's a blended family so the father is a little hesitant about his son getting baptized without being prepared so we're working on that. They also need a lot of prayers. The parents are named Leather and Alfredo lol. 

~  So Vince was talking about how the last owner of their house died in it and every once and awhile things will fall over or the door will slam and Vince will just yell "knock it off Dick" So I thought that was hilarious.

~ I had a lot of impromptu singing moments lol. We were at a lesson with Carolyn, who we're teaching, and Elizabeth who is her friend who she referred and 2 other members. And Carolyn finds out Elizabeth sings and so Elizabeth just starts singing Amazing Grace. Then Sister Forbush mentions that I also sing and that we should sing together so I harmonized with her to Amazing Grace and Carolyn recorded is lol. Then at the baptism they didn't have any filler in the program while they were getting changed and so the Bishop was like "And Sister Grant will be doing a musical number for us" So I got up and sang a couple numbers and the bishops wife played. 

~So we had this crazy lesson with this lady named Christina. She was getting kinda riled up about the whole modern prophet thing and was kinda accusing us of worshiping a man. We were trying to explain how the prophet speaks for God and how God has always used men as his mouthpiece and her son comes in from the other room and says "Mom I have to contradict you. Moses was a man and he spoke directly to God on Mount Sinai. So God does speak to man." It was crazy and we had this really intense discussion. There were some other things they weren't quite understanding but the Son kinda just came in and argued our point about prophets for us and it was awesome. 

~Church was a circus. So the Family ward starts at 9:00 and the YSA starts at 10:30 and we were trying to balance our time between both. So we went to a half hour of sacrament and then went to half of Branch council, then half of Gospel Doctrine class, then half of the other sacrament meeting, then we had a meeting with our new ward mission leader then went to the last half of gospel doctrine for YSA. It was crazy and I'm exhausted.. Apparently the missionaries in the past haven't focused a lot on the YSA but we're gonna change that. 

Good things are in store for this area! If you haven't looked at the new Come Follow Me manual definitely look at that and get studying! Ask yourself what you are seeking to know about the Savior through the New Testament. When we ask, seek and knock we will FIND. Love you all!!