Week 4 - Mother's Day!

From Shauna (Emily's Mom):  

This Mother's Day was so great to hear from Emily and get to find out where she had been assigned within her mission.  Even though she was called to serve primarily in the Visitors Centers, it is very likely she will be assigned to different locations within the mission as a full-time proselying missionary, too, depending on the time of year (things definitely slow down during the winter).  I hadn't heard anything from her since she left the Salt Lake airport, except for the email and picture her Mission President sent, so we have been waiting on pins and needles all week to see if she would get to stay at the visitor centers full time, part-time, or be assigned in a full-time proselyting area.  

The night before Mother's Day, one of the senior couples, Sister Neff,  posted a picture showing 5 of the 8 sisters from Emily's MTC district.  It said "We are so excited to have these new sisters here at the historic sites! We have just finished training and are so grateful for your daughters’ willingness to serve." I didn't know if this meant she would be staying on to serve at the sites or if she was just doing training before going somewhere else.  We were thrilled to speak to her and learn that she gets to spend at least the first 6 weeks FULL-TIME at the sites!  yay!

Emily and some of her MTC district in the Smith farm house during their training.

Same group with the sisters that would become their companions.

The Hill Cumorah Visitors Center--all the sisters after their training!

It sounds like they had an intensive couple of days training in each of the visitors centers, and Emily is thrilled she gets to start her mission there!  The schedule is pretty brutal, but very enjoyable.  Not the typical missionary schedule with individual study time, companionship study, and exercise each morning (which she had been looking forward to), but she gets a ride from the senior missionary couples to a different visitors center each day (they have them on a rotating schedule between the 4 sites--anywhere from 1 mile away to 45 minutes away!).  

Since they have to be to the sites by 9 am, they don't have time for a lot of their normal schedule before they go.  They have been given a boat-load of books to study (which they pray they will have time to study throughout the day if there is a lull), and they don't have any way to go home for meals, so they are still trying to figure out how to do lunch and dinner without an oven/stovetop--just a microwave and crockpot in a break room, and a very small grocery store to purchase supplies from.  It's hard to even have time to eat she said since people stop in sporadically all day long.  She and her companion were hoping to put together some crockpot meals on their next p-day since the very small grocery store doesn't have many quick or healthy options.  She was optimistic, though, and excited for the challenge!  They are at the sites until they close around 7 pm, and then they have training meetings or duties until about 9 pm. 

Emily with her companion, Sister Ramos.

I just have to say what a neat miracle it is that Emily was given the opportunity to have Sister Ramos as her first companion out in the mission field!  Not very many people know that Emily actually took a Spanish class at BYU her last semester before her mission.  She felt prompted that she needed to learn some Spanish, and the prompting was strong enough that she really thought she might be called Spanish speaking somewhere.  When this English-speaking call came to the Rochester mission, I think she felt a little disappointed because she had felt such a huge prompting to learn Spanish.  However, I don't think it's any coincidence that she was given a bilingual companion who leads the tours in Spanish!  They do quite a bit in English, too, but Emily has already had the opportunity to bear her testimony in Spanish a couple of times, and even though she says it has serious room for improvement, she is so excited to get to be a part of the Spanish tours that her companion leads, and she says she can understand most of it already.  She hopes to improve her Spanish-speaking abilities while she is there.  I guess that little $5 Spanish-English dictionary she asked me to purchase on Amazon before she left will come in handy (even though I questioned why she would need it at the time).  

Life is good!  I'm so proud of Emily for following promptings from the Lord, and I know she's being blessed.  Thanks for all your prayers!

Shauna

P.S.  Emily's P-days will rotate to different days each week depending on her assignments at the sites, so this week it was on Monday, and next week it is on Wednesday.  She doesn't have quite as much freedom to check emails and write as she did in the MTC, but she sure appreciates all your emails and support!