The Keys

It's been a straaaaaange week. But, first things first. Me and Sister Bennion will be staying right here in DeFuniak for the next 6 weeks! That will be awesome because this ward constantly has missionaries transferred out after only 6 weeks, and this transfer news means me and Sister Bennion will be here at least 12 weeks total. 

Anyway, I'm afraid of the library people telling me to get off, so I'll get right to the point. This week has been full of running around the Fort Walton zone from rehearsal to exchange to meeting to everything else. The crazy things happened between Friday night and Sunday, so I'll just talk about that.

Friday night me and sister bennion had to go to Niceville to exchange me. The Sister Trainer Leaders go on exchanges with the new sisters once a transfer, and I was the very last one to go on one. Sister Bennion went back to DeFuniak with one of the Sister Trainers, and I went down to Fort Walton with the other Sister Trainer, plus one sister who has been tagged on with the STLs in a series of emergency transfers due to two people going home sick, both from our zone. So late Friday night, I joined up with those two and worked in my first trio (but it was actually so late by the time we got to Fort Walton that we didn't do any work before bed). Saturday morning I got to actually work with them. We had a missionary coordination meeting, which no one does in the DeFuniak ward. Then we got to study, contact a few referrals, talk to some guy that always sees the Fort Walton sisters on their bikes, and teach one, solid, sit down lesson aaaand we committed the guy to baptism! Ha! My second one of those, and he wasn't even my investigator. After that, me and the rest of the trio, Sister Hirst and Sister Jicha, went back to Crestview, where Sister Bennion and her exchange companion Sister Medlyn agreed to meet us.

So Sister Bennion and I had to go to a rehearsal for the musical performance the stake was doing, and that was in Fort Walton, so really we only came to Crestview to eat dinner (at which time I spilled meatball on myself, that will be important later), pick up sister bennion, and leave our car in Crestview to save some mileage. 

After the multiple hour rehearsal, the two of us caught a ride with the senior couple (our new parents, sorry mom and dad), the Baileys, back to Crestview, where they live. When we got back to our car finally at 10 pm... Sister Bennion realized she'd left the keys, our phone, and her wallet all at the church in Fort Walton. Too late and too far to go back, we had to instead stay the night at the bailey's house in our church clothes, and then ride with our senior couple, the Habels, back to DeFuniak early the next morning, arriving just in time for church wearing yesterday's makeup, and the same wrinkled, meatball-stained clothes that we had been wearing for the last two days. Finally, after church we got to go back to the apartment and change, then we bummed a ride from the Habels to do our Sunday afternoon prostelyting until that night, when we got the keys to our car back at the performance of the musical fireside we'd been rehearsing for. I sang and sister bennion played the violin, and the good news is we both got personally congratulated by the mission president after the musical performance, despite our strange, strange weekend leading up to it. 

Yep, and that story is about all I have time for. Look forward to six more weeks of DeFuniakan stories, everyone!

Love you all,

Sister Laura Cooper