Transfers, cousins, roadtrips and miracles November 6

This week is definitely, hands down, one of the busiest but favorite weeks of my mission. (I feel like I say that every week!). Well on Monday night we received a call from our mission president about transfers. If we are going to be moving to a new area or changing companions, we get a call on the Monday before transfers from President Johnson. If you don’t receive a call, you know you will be staying for another transfer. So once we saw our phone ringing, Sister Kunz and I knew. He told sister Kunz that she would be staying in the area and getting a new companion and.........he asked me if I would go to the DC 2nd YSA ward to be a sister Training Leader with Sister Bingham! I was really sad to leave Sister Kunz, but so excited to be with Sister Bingham. She is from Saint George Utah and we share a lot in common.
    At transfers on Wednesday I realized while driving to the stake center that Dallin (Well Elder Spurgeon now!!!) was probably going to be there. We pulled up and waited for the new missionaries to come outside with their trainers. I saw him walk out and he immediately saw me. He waved to me and started walking really fast over. He had a huge smile on his face and we shook hands since that’s what we have to do as missionaries haha! It was so fun to see him! He has a great trainer, and everyone couldn’t believe that we were cousins and serving in the same mission. Our mission president and his wife told me that when they picked him and his group up from the airport he asked them if they knew a Sister Haertling. They said they definitely knew Sister Haertling and he was so excited to say that we were cousins. We will most likely get to see each other at Zone conferences and mission events that will be going on in the next few months.
     Since the Festival of Lights is starting at the end of the month, we have a lot going on already trying to prepare for it. Last week all of the Christmas trees came up around the visitors center......it’s starting to hit me that it’s near that time again. There’s about 12 huge Christmas trees inside the VC and every stake in the surrounding areas is assigned to decorate the trees. They go all out for decorations and they look beautiful. Outside the VC, our area is doing so great! I’ve never served so close to the actually city of DC, and now we cover it all! We have a really big area and so we spend a lot of our time near the college campuses and in the city where all of the younger people are for internships, school and work. Something really cool about this area is that because there are SO many young single adults in this area, last year they created a stake JUST for YSA. Its different teaching people who are my age now, but a lot of fun as well. Yesterday there was a stake conference for the YSA in Virginia, but we needed permission to go since it was outside our mission boundaries. We asked our mission president and he said that we could go AND he would drive us there! Mission presidents are some of the busiest people ever and so it was really special to be able to spend time with President and Sister Johnson.
    We had a really cool miracle while finding people in DC this week. We were walking down the busy streets one night and it was kind of crazy because everyone is in a hurry trying to get places. We were walking past someone and I stopped and turned around to talk to him. He was really nice and started talking to us. His name is Mohy and from the Middle East. He works here for the embassy and was waiting for his coworkers to go to dinner. While he was waiting we had a great conversation with him. He had a lot of questions about after this life and Heaven. We taught him about the plan of Salvation and he LOVED it all. He said towards the end that the message we shared felt familiar and he is really busy but wanted to hear more. We are meeting with him on Wednesday and I know it was know coincidence that we were able to meet him that night.
   The stake conference yesterday was one of the best I've ever been to and Elder Kunz of the Seventy gave such an amazing talk. He served as a mission president in Omaha Nebraska which was a fun connection! He focused on the doctrine of Christ which is faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end. (Some great places that I love to study about that are 2nd Nephi 31, 3rd Nephi 11, and 3rd Nephi 27). By studying the Doctrine of Christ we can come closer to Our Heavenly Father, and feel the peace that comes through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I know that I’ve felt those two promises as I’ve studied throughout my mission. Something that I came across while studying this week reminded me of God’s plan for us and being willing to accept it. It made me think of the story in John 21 about Christ’s apostles fishing. They have been working hard trying to catch fish and do what they’ve done for a long time. But they haven’t been catching anything. Then Jesus who is on the shore calls out to them and tells them to cast their nets on the right side of the boat. They pull the nets up and there is more fish than they can even handle. A lot of times in our lives I feel like we may be doing the things we THINK we should be doing, but forgetting to involve the Lord. But He knows all things and exactly what we need to do in our lives to find happiness and receive all of His blessings. When we pray to know God’s will for us and are WILLING TO ACT, then we will be able to see all of the blessings that he has in store for us. Just like His Apostles, there will be so many blessings that follow when we listen and act on what he wants for us. I love you all and hope you have an amazing week!
Love Sister Haertling