Dearest Family and Friends,
So as you know I was transferred at the beginning of the
week and I was told that I would be transferred on Thursday but didn't find out
where too until Tuesday. Well on Monday Elder Yates (my last companion) emailed
president and basically told him "If you're taking him away, at least send
him to Rifle" which is where Elder Yates' spent the first four months of
his mission and talked about it all the time. Come Tuesday at transfer meetings
and Elder Yates has already been put with his new missionary fresh out of the
MTC and they announce on the projector that I'm headed to serve in RIFLE! It
was a pretty wild sequence of events.
So now I'm in Rifle Colorado. Its a little town in the
middle of the Mountains off of I-70.
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| Rifle, CO |
It's been a sweet first week, especially because I've gotten
to know a bunch of the people that Elder Yates used to talk about. He served
with my new companion Elder Smelcer who is a great missionary hailing from
Fresno, California. He's a short, energetic water polo player who had a tough
companion last transfer so he's ready to just WORK this transfer.
The investigator that Elder Yates had talked about the most
is named John and he was baptized on Friday. Elder Yates had tried really hard
to come out for it but President didn't let him which was kind of disappointing
since John wanted him to say the opening prayer. It was cool for me to be a
part of though. Of course when I met John for the first time we were doing
service at the thrift shop where he works and he couldn't pronounce my name so
he just decided to call me "Dora" and then he just kept talking about
how he wished it was Yates instead of me. He's super funny, he really just
likes messing with people.
John's story is actually pretty cool. Our mission is part of
a pilot program for the Church's website justserve.org
so we spend several hours a week serving without talking about the gospel
unless the people ask. The program was just started recently and so John is one
of the first people that have gotten baptized as a direct result of this
program. The missionaries here go work at a thrift shop almost every day where
all the proceeds go towards the food bank next door. John works at that store
and one day at lunch he just started asking questions and eventually became
interested in the church and turned his life around. It sure strengthens my
testimony of the fact that when we "go about doing good" (PMG) and
are living the principles of charity that the savior taught our example can be
the best missionary tool.
We had a bunch of other cool experiences this week. We got
four new investigators this week. One was a referral through church
headquarters, another is the husband of one of our investigators we haven't
seen in a while that decided he would listen too, another was with a pack of
drunk guys that were friendly but loud but he was sober and gave us a
conversation and say we could come back and another was someone that had investigated
once before but had fallen off the map and now she let us back in.
I've started putting a quote from my studies on the top of
the page in my planner daily just to give me something motivational throughout
the day when I check our schedule. The other day I read in Mosiah 4 which talks
about not judging beggars and imparting freely of your substance. The part that
stood out to me was the line "for behold, are we not all beggars?"
(Mosiah 4:10). It motivates me to try to watch out for others a little more and
extend mercy as Christ does.
I love you all!
~Elder Della-Piana
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