Sister McKay Dickson: Week 4: First week in... Idaho?!

HELLO FAMILY AND FRIENDS! I am alive and well, and yes, if you read the subject line, I am in Idaho haha! I am in the Silver Valley area, living in a small town called Pinehurst (It looks like Bear Lake, but without the lake). I live about 45 minutes southeast of Coeur d'Alene. I'm definitely in the middle of nowhere, other missionaries refer to places like this as the boons lol.

Things to know:

I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY. I know it hasn't even been a full week here but I love it. And I have the best trainer/companion in THE WORLD. Her name is Sister Wilson and she is from Farmington, Utah. She makes me laugh super hard and we get along so well! We live with two other sisters named Sister Bachman and Sister Bowman and they are so amazing too. We all have such a good time and quote movies nonstop. The sisters get a kick out of some of my voice impressions (like Gru, Nacho Libre, Megamind, etc) haha, and I love to make them laugh. I honestly love my area so much. The people are so nice and it is so easy to talk to everyone. The only thing that has been stressful is that my companion and I are both new to the area, so she has had to do something called "Sweep Training". This means that we just have to read the notes of the other two sisters that left the area and try and pick up where they left off. So now we both have so many ward members, friends, and converts to meet. But we are getting the hang of it now and having so much fun while we do it!

Story of the week:

So, the two sisters that were here before Sister Wilson and I had SIX BAPTISMS LAST WEEK! Holy cow, so awesome. Now Sis Wilson and I have been meeting with all the recent converts and they are so amazing. One of them is this guy named Jody and he is my favorite haha he loves star wars and is hilarious. *Little bit of background* Jody rents his house out to like 4 people: Walter (His friend who is the one who got baptized a couple of months ago and is the one that got him to meet with the missionaries. He is the one who baptized Jody too), and then his other friend Rindy and her two kids. *Back to the story* One of her kids is a 14 year old girl named Amy. She has never listened to the missionaries before, even when Walter and Jody were being taught. When we went over to meet Jody and Walter, she was there and we talked with all of them and got to know them. Amy told us how she believes her purpose is to help others like Private Doss from the movie Hacksaw ridge haha. We asked Amy if we could come back and teach her more about Jesus Christ, because he was super selfless like Private Doss. She totally agreed and we came back yesterday and taught her about Jesus Christ and the Atonement and it was such an awesome lesson! The spirit was so strong! We taught her how to pray and she wanted to say the closing prayer, and her exact words in her prayer were: "Please bless that I can stay in contact with the sisters for forever" and I just about cried. It was so sweet. She agreed to keep meeting with us and said we are so cool, so basically I am just HYPED and I love love love this work and teaching others more about My Savior.

Spiritual Thought:

This week my spiritual thought is on being friends with everyone! I have been working really hard on not being quick to judge others and I think the mission is already helping me out with that. I have met so many amazing people already who I probably would never have never talked to if it weren't for the mission. Everyone has a cool story and we have so much to learn from each other. It's seriously been 5 days and I've learned so much from the people here. So my invitation is to talk to somebody this week that you wouldn't normally talk to! Find something you have in common and make a new friend, and I promise that you will be blessed with increased happiness!

I love you all SO MUCH and miss you just as much too. Send me emails because I can't respond on messenger unless you're immediate family haha! God is good and I'll talk to you all next week!

Lots of love,

Sister Dickson