Surprise!! I was transferred today and I´m back in Torreón. The truth is, this change was a lot harder that the other times I´ve been transferred. I absolutely LOVED my old ward and area, and a very special investigator named Maryam is being baptized on the 20th. I wanted so, so badly to be in her baptism. And it´s hard for me to leave Durango after being there for 9 months out of the 11 months I´ve been here in México. I definitely was not expecting to be transferred so soon, which was also hard. I was hoping to stay in the area another transfer, but I hope I´ll be able to at least return to Durango one more time before the end of my mission. Funny story, when I went to write my mission president today I saw that he responded to my letter on Wednesday and told me to prepare myself to leave the area. There was no way I was going to see that before today, but thanks anyway for letting me know :) Please pray for me as I adjust to this new change.
The ward that I´m in is called Roma, and my companion´s name is Hermana Luna. We´re the Sister Training Leaders here in this part of Torreón, so I´ll get to keep working with the other sister missionaries here. I´m grateful that I´ll get to keep serving as an STL because I have learned so much these past three months. It´ll be a time of a lot of personal growth here.
It´s also kind of funny because I was actually just in Torreón last Friday for the monthly Leadership Council. Towards the beginning of the Council we always review the mission goals and what was accomplished in during the month, and wow. Between April and May there was a huge change. In general everyone is contacting more, having more lessons, and there are a lot more baptisms. And it´s amazing because there are fewer and fewer missionaries arriving in the mission and they´re closing areas, but we´re accomplishing more with fewer missionaries. It was such a testimony to me that the Lord is truely hastening His work, and that the harder we work the more He blesses us. Apart from all of that, the training that Presidente and the assistants gave us was great. Presidente talked about obedience and the assistants about how asking inspired questions helps us to find our investigator´s needs. We laughed a lot at times and the Spirit was strong, and we also ate carne asada afterwards, so that was great too ;) I love going to Leadership Council and learning from Presidente and the Assistants. Tomorrow we have Zone Conference, where we´ll teach everything that we learned in Council. I think we´ll have a lot more time for our area than my companion and I had in Durango, because here we only attend one Zone Conference instead of two, and we only have four companionships under our care instead of seven in Durango. This is going to be a completely different experience, but I have faith that we´ll be able to do what the Lord wants us to here.
Thank you for all of the pictures and emails. Thank you for your love and prayers and everything that you do for me even while I´m here. I love you all so much and please continue praying for me. I´ll be praying for you!
Love,
Hermana Southard
