Missionary in Montana!: Week 15

Hello all!

Happy late Thanksgiving, everyone!!

Boy, has this week been insane! First of all, we had transfers and we all met up in Helena to meet our new companions and disperse to our areas from there. My new companion is Sister Schwendiman and she's super sweet. She reminds me of one of my roommates in college, so I love her.

Well right as we got to Helena a huge winter storm hit and we got stranded there for 2 days so they put the straggler sisters into trios with some companionships in Helena so we could do missionary work while we were there. I was put with our sister training leaders and they have a cabin in the mountains outside Helena and it snowed like CRAZY up there! Within 2 days, we shoveled their driveways and walkways like 6 times. They are long driveways too so it was not fun. It was my first time shoveling snow like that though, so I can mark that off my Montana bucket list. Hahah.

We eventually got to Dillon, which is a couple hours south, and it is cold there too. We cover Dillon 2nd Ward (there's 2 wards here) and the "Big Hole" which consists of Polaris, Jackson, and Wisdom (which people say is the coldest town in the nation but who knows). I went from serving in Big Timber to Big Hole.

Dillon is a cute town and there's a college here so we have some YSA here. It's University of Montana Western and there's around 1500 students. They only have one class at a time here and it goes for 3ish hours.

The church building is set up just like the Jomax building at home, so I love it! I feel at home :) Everyone in the ward asks me if I'm related to Elder Nay who served here a few years ago. Nope. Different spelling. Hahah.

Our ward mission leader actually served here around 5 years ago! He felt like he needed to live here, so here he is! Crazy! But it's neat having a ward mission leader who really knows the area like that.

It's not windy here like my last area but it is still chilly! When we are out in about at night, it's usually 0 degrees or below. It hit -8 degrees once while we were out. It's so cold. I use a golf ball to knock on doors so I don't have to take off my gloves. And hand warmers are the bomb. Saved my life. And there's color ice within our car too that never melts. It's insane and everyone makes fun of me because I'm from Arizona. :P

Our apartment is nice and warm though. We live in an apartment that is in the basement of an elderly lady's house. We don't have wifi though, so we have to email at the church.

Anyhoo- I was kind of nervous to have thanksgiving with a bunch of strangers because I planned on being in Livingston for the holiday but it ended up being good. In the morning, we volunteered at a community Thanksgiving dinner at the Catholic Church, which was fun. Later, some member families took us in and we played games, had 2 full thanksgiving dinners and a couple desserts at other peoples houses and we about exploded. We got sick afterwards and were in for the night the next day so we watched a biography of Thomas S. Monson.

The work has been a little slow this past week due to transfers and the holiday. So I'm gonna try to start cranking it out this next week. We do have two people who could get baptized this next month so I'm hoping I will be able to help make that happen! I was bummed I got transferred right before our investigators in Livingston got baptized (which was on Saturday) but I was able to get over it kinda.

Anyway, I'm on a time crunch so I gotta go now! Hope everyone is doing well! Happy holidays!

Love,

Sister Ney