Washington Vancouver Mission: First week in Washington!

Wow, this week has been crazy! So on Tuesday we had to get up at 3 am and finish packing to get to the bus to go to the airport at 4:30 and we barely made it! We flew into Oregon and then we went to the mission office to eat lunch and fill out paperwork where we had our interviews and got our ipads set up. That night they sent us out with other missionaries and I went with two sisters and we just went tracting. It was so much fun and I gave out two books of mormon which was awesome.That night we just spent the night at the mission home with president and sister Taylor. They are amazing and I can tell that they are going to be great for me. On wednesday I went to my area, I am in Vancouver in the Clark YSA ward with sister Thomas! YSA is such a different experience and we have the biggest area in the mission, so we get a car and we get more miles on it every month since we have to drive so far everywhere. There are elders in the YSA as well so we teach the girls and they teach the boys in the ward.Since we have to rely on referrals from other missionaries, we don't get a lot of success tracting since we just have to refer them to the other missionaries that cover their areas. We have a few investigators, and we have 3 that we put on date. One of the investigators, Amanda, is so ready to be baptized and wants to do it this month, but the problem is that she needs to get married first. She lives with her boyfriend and she said he is going to propose any day now and then they want to get married within the next couple of weeks.So we will see if she actually gets baptized this month, but after they get married we have to refer her to a family ward where she will get baptized. But I am so excited for her and she is so excited and ready to be baptized! Another one of our investigators wanted to get baptized on December 23, 2017 and we were really confused so we asked her about it. She said she wanted to get baptized on the 23rd of any month and the next month with the 23rd on a saturday was on December 23,2017. We had to explain to her that it didn't have to be a saturday so she was really excited about that and agreed to get baptized on December 23 of this year! :) We are going to try to convince her to move it up a month or two, but hey, it's better than in 3 years! We don't get a lot of investigators since we are a singles ward, but a lot of the work we do is with the less actives. We hunt down all of the less active sisters in the ward and teach them and try to get them to come back. We really do have a lot of success and we had 4 less actives come to church yesterday!

We had meetings before church yesterday and the power went out at like 8 at the church building yesterday morning. We had our meetings by the windows where there was some light and we walked by the chapel where there was a sacrament meeting going on, and I have to say it looked really creepy. They all had lanterns and their phone lights on and they were passing the sacrament in the dark. We laughed about it and then realized we had investigators coming to church for the first time that day and we tried to imagine what they would think. Probably that we worship satan or something. So we prayed that the lights would come on by 11 when our ward started and the lights finally came on at about 10;30. Huge miracle!

We live with the old bishop of the singles ward and he just got released last week but they are letting us stay! They are so sweet and take good care of us! Since most of the singles live with their parents, we get fed very well. We have dinner appointments every night so we never go hungry. If they don't feed us, they take us out to dinner, so it is all good! The singles ward is awesome and the members in it are great and so much fun! It is fun to be with people my age! Sister Thomas is such an amazing missionary and has done so much for this ward. She has been in this area for 6 months and will end up finishing her mission here by the end of my training. I am so glad we get along and we have a ton in common so it is fun! She is hilarious and can always make me laugh but she is also a very hard worker! I am doing well and loving the missionary life! I love you all!

Sister Henderson