Solid as a Rockwood

Shalom! I am legitimately a missionary. Weird right?! Weird but beautiful. Like the James Blunt song. But also not. at all.

Ok, details: Mission President: President Briggs from...lots of places. He and sister Briggs are AWESOME. I am already attached and love them so much and am sad they are leaving so soon. President Briggs is TALL and has bright white hair and a booming voice. Sister Briggs is petite, has great style and a cute little pixie haircut. LOVE. Area: Rockwood, MO. We cover 2 wards, Rockwood 1 and Rockwood 2. church is from 9am-4pm, with a meeting in the middle and occasionally meetings before. Umm, gotta say, I love it. I fell asleep during the second sacrament meeting hardcore and I KNOW everyone behind me was watching but it's like what are you going to do. Apparently the extreme fatigue wears off after a month or so of being a missionary. Let's hope that is also true in my case!

Companion: Sister Amy Thurber from Boise, ID. A theatre major at BYU-I, but hoping to transfer to Provo and join the film program there. She will be going home in August. Sister Thurber was trained here in the area where we are and is back to train me here! Sister Thurber is great. She is very positive and focused. We get along well! I think this will be a great transfer. At this point we are working on building our teaching pool. We have two progressing investigators, a bunch who aren't really progressing [yet], and several recent converts. I am still just meeting everyone and letting them get to know me and trust me; the sister I replaced was very dear to many of the people here.

We flew in on Tuesday and met the mission president, stopped off and saw the temple grounds (breathtaking), watched a movie about safety, ate a DELICIOUS dinner made by Sister Briggs and other Office sisters and spent the night in the mission home. It was awesome. The next morning we had a fantastic breakfast, got a tour of the mission office and then went to transfer meeting where we met our comps. 11 of us greenies came out this transfer which I guess is quite a lot.

We live with members in their beautiful home. We have the basement to ourselves which is awesome. We have a treadmill, weight bench, punching bags, and other cool things in our very own gym! I brought my luggage down to the basement in their elevator (no big deal, right) and moved right in. Then we went to Wal-Mart and I bought all of the things that I needed. While there we were able to meet and teach this awesome man named Muhammed. We might go teach him and his family this week. Muhammed went to medical school here in the states (studying pathology) and then right before the boards his daughter was diagnosed with cancer. so now he works at Wal-Mart to try and cover costs for that.

I have to go now, but to sum it up, People in our area are rich, but cool,I've held a bearded dragon and done other crazy things in the last week that are helping me realize that my mission will be more fun than I thought. Which is awesome.
I love you!!
Sister McDonald.