Monday, July 22, 2013

One Last Surprise

Dear Everyone,
I can honestly say I didn't know when the transfer was this week until we got the call from the AP's on Monday evening.  Dad seemed to feel that this transfer was pretty much locked as well considering for the first time in two years there was no questions as to what is going to happen at the transfer.  So it was in this sense of false security that I found myself  talking to the AP's Monday afternoon.  The first big news was that two Americans were headed to the countryside.  One of them being Elder Naef from my group who leaves in  November and the other being Sister Shiffler who leaves in 5 weeks.  Both are in nearby cities, but it is still pretty big news that Americans are going outside the city.  Unfortunately, that means I won't see Elder Naef until he gets back in the winter.  The biggestest shock personally came next as I learned that I would not be spending the home stretch with Elder Mainbayr.  No, he is headed to take Elder Naef's spot as the ZL in the other city zone and I am picking up Elder Chingunjav who is pretty new on the mission and was just trained by Elder Williams.  However, he is not the other ZL for our zone, that would be Elder Stranski who is still finishing up his last 6 weeks with his trainee.  Pretty crazy!  Elder Stranski and I will be doing quite a bit of coordinating over the phone and taking some time out of each week to plan things together.  With the new president being just that, new, we both feel a bit of heightened responsibility in making sure everything is running smoothly in the zone.
After the initial shock wore of it was back to business as usual with our combined district/zone training on Tuesday that went fantastically.  The two highlighted topics were obedience and safety (of course deeply related, lol).  We ran the meeting in the clerk's office of the Songino church and the odds seemed against us as we got started squeezing 10 people in the room.  But people brought their A game as far as participation is concerned and we had a wonderful discussion on the blessings of obedience. We shared from Elane S Dalton's talk form last young women's conference as well. She does a wonderful job at explaining the circles of influence that we truly have when we make decisions.
Wednesday turned out pretty cool when Elder Naef and I had to wait for our new companions to show up from Baganuur and ended up spending the first half of the day as companions.  We talked for about four hours and it was great that it turned out that way before he left for the countryside.  
Splits with Elder Stranski on Thursday where we found out that we both listened to all the same music growing up.  Teaching with Elder Stranski all day was a great experience and we taught an amazing Plan of Salvation lesson to a girl whose grandmother had just died.  
The rest of the week went amazingly according to planned.  The last three days of the week we didn't have a single lesson fall through!  That's a miracle for sure!
One month to leave it all in the field!
Have a great week,
Elder Neuberger

No comments:

Post a Comment