The Mission World Goes Round and Round

Dear Family and Friends,

Another Zone Conference has come and gone. It was weird to have one of my companions giving her parting testimony, but the rest of it was really quite great. We talked a lot about helping our investigators make commitments, and while I still struggle with the fact that the Zone Leaders and APs seem to be able to do it all so easily with the people they are teaching--it just never seems to work out that way with ours--I think I learned a lot that will help me be better in the future. Unlike Elder Sorensen, nobody I've taught has been baptized yet. Though I did hear at Sister's Conference that the two sisters we were teaching in Round Mountain (back in my Palo Cedro days) are getting baptized in August. Many days I feel that my role is simply to help people progress and that it falls to other sisters to bring about the baptisms. That said, however, two of the people we are teaching do look rather like they are heading towards baptismal dates in August which is quite exciting. It is also nice that there is one per ward; though that means we are baptizing half of our active teaching pool in Buttes Vista which is bitter sweet.

Mission life seems very cyclical. You have a very good week and then you have one of those not so good weeks. This past week was on the slow side. We were unable to reach our goal of finding 4 new people (though on the bright side, we did start teaching one of our other investigator's sisters and that look rather promising). We had a lot of appointments set up followed by a lot of cancellations. 7 people were supposed to come to church and we only had 1. And then we discovered that only 2 people had signed up on the Buttes Vista dinner calendar for the entire month. But there were some good things as well. We sang a musical number in Sutter Buttes (they were doing a missionary theme for the 5 Sunday and they had already had two of us talk) with one of our investigators and his newly re-activated friend. It was kind of boring in that it was just a hymn, Hark All Ye Nations, but we needed something that we could learn fairly quickly and would require minimum practicing on Sister Howard's part (as she was our pianist). But we received a lot of compliments (Sister Nielson has a very nice soprano, plus I think people were just impressed we got the other two to sing with us, though truth be told our investigator volunteered himself and his friend). One old man asked me after the meeting if I had ever considered develping my talents, and seemed surprisingly disappointed when I told him that no, I hadn't. I am after all content to restricting myself to singing in church.

I hope everyone else is doing well at the family reunion, baby blessing, and other festivities. Enjoy your summer.

Love,
Sister L. Sorensen

PS. Yes, Mom we are doing fine on miles (we have nearly 300 left). And no, I forgot to bring my camera cords so no pictures. Sorry!

Editor's Note: This is a letter from the end of July that I never got posted. If it sounds a little out of order, it is not your imagination!