The news this week is that I am leaving today to go to the Wisconsin Milwaukee Mission!

I talked to my branch president yesterday and he gave me permission to email and do laundry today before I head out. The news this week is that I am leaving today to go to the Wisconsin Milwaukee Mission! The travel office told us that Wednesday night our online portals would change if we were getting reassigned. And although we were told Wednesday night we were checking all day. Wednesday we also got a new district so that evening I was with the zone leaders talking to the new district welcoming them to the zone, going over rules, asking questions etc. Members of my zone stuck their heads in and said "Go check your portal!" I hurried to the other room and my flag had changed. I was so excited and a little caught off guard. I have never been anywhere near there. I only had a few seconds so I saw it and hurried back into the room with the new district. I attempted to act composed again but without much success because of the epinephrine and norepinephrine which seemed to be dominating my attempt to be calm and collected.

We went to the travel office on Thursday and got my flight plans. I report to the travel office at 8:30 P.M. tonight. (Monday night) I fly first to Atlanta Georgia which leaves at 1:00 A.M and then to Wisconsin. With the time changes and all I should be there about 9 a.m tomorrow morning. I want to be excited and ready to work when I get there but I have a feeling I will be tired. I will do my best to sleep on the plane.

My Zone

A lot happened this week. It was pretty different because we didn't have a strict schedule since we weren't suppose to be here this week. We still had class for 6 hours every day but we made a lot of our own schedule and helped out other districts a lot. We were investigators for them and watched them try to teach us with their one and two week Spanish which can be entertaining at times. Our Elders were called down to the main office on Monday morning and were asked to participate in an all day service project for most of this week. Moving beds, desks, and other furniture on BYU campus. They are in the process of making an almost separate MTC from the old BYU apartments over there. They told us it will be separate from over here except for devotionals and they will have their own cafeteria and everything. They are expecting an overload of missionaries within the next few weeks that school gets out. The work is growing so fast.

Elder Parsons and Hermana Johnson

Hermana Johnson and Elder Truman

My district is splitting up so fast. Three of our Elders were temporarily assigned to Alabama and left Saturday morning. Two more of our Elders left this morning going to Arizona. I am the odd one out going to Wisconsin. I know that the Lord has a reason he is sending me there and I am excited to find out what it is. Elder Valle and Hermana Johnson have their visas but they don't have travel plans yet so they don't know when they will leave. After today it will just be the two of them. The five of us that were left sang in Sacrament Meeting yesterday. We sang God Be With You Till We Meet Again, and had every hermana in the second oldest district crying.

We got roommates this week! The whole time we have been here its just been my companion(s) and I but on Wednesday we got two new sisters. They are both going to Ukraine and are learning Russian. Their names are Cectpa (pronounced sistra, sorry I cant type my Russian accent) Welling and Gillespie. They are both from Utah. Its so fun to have companionship prayers at night in Russian and Spanish.

We have two class periods a day and during those class periods we always in a way do the same things. One thing we always do is a grammar lesson. The past five class periods we reviewed grammar and we feel like we have it mastered on paper so our teacher decided to have each of us teach our class a separate grammar principle to see if we really understand it. Our teacher was crying from how hard she was laughing at us pretending to make mistakes and asking our "teacher" how to fix them. It was awesome because she is usually so composed.

Hermana Johnson and Hermana Green

Devotionals this week were Elder Gavarrett (seventy) and Shane Littlefield from the missionary department. They both did a really great job. Between our devotional from last night and watching Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration last night I am feeling pumped to just go to work. During Relief Society yesterday we heard from Janice Kapp Perry. She wrote a lot of music/songs for the church and during the middle of her talk she asked all of the sisters to sing a medley of them. We sang A Child's Prayer, Army of Helaman, I love to see the Temple, Love is Spoken Here, I'm trying to be like Jesus, and As sisters in Zion (which she wrote the music for). She said she would never hear those songs sung more to her liking than she did as we sang them. At the end of her talk she told us about new lyrics she had written to As Sisters in Zion music that were going to soon be recorded and published about the announcement of sister missionaries. She told us that we were the first ever who would sing it. It was powerful. All I remember about the words were "The sisters of Zion are called to his labor...and somewhere in the middle singing the angels of heaven are walking beside us."
Also I forgot to mention that I saw Rob and Rinamay at the temple last week. He just had surgery on his shoulder. But it was cool to see them. I know this work is real. Talk to you all from Wisconsin next week!

Hermana Rhoten