Week 25 - transfers

My last full week in Reading. Yes, I am getting transferred and it feels weird. I will not find out where until Wednesday. I have most of my stuff together now, and yes, I am working on getting it into the suitcases. It feels so odd to be leaving Reading after living here for almost six months. I am having a hard time getting my head around the fact that I have been out for six months. Time flies when you are doing the work of the Lord. It seems like yesterday that I was dropped off at the MTC and now my mission is almost a quarter over.

I went bowling on Monday because we thought it would be fun and that it would be my last chance to hang out with Elder Leavitt. He went down to the mission home to finish his mission there before his parents pick him up tomorrow. It is really odd seeing so many missionaries that I know go home because they finished their missions.

We had a multi-stake conference on Sunday. I don't know how well the speakers related to the people here. I think the best part is when they said that the Philadelphia Temple was about 67% complete. I am looking forward to seeing that temple finished in my mission because it looks really nice from what I have seen from the artist renderings of it. I hope I can go there during my mission, and it f I cannot, I will go sometime after my mission.

Elder Bjerregaard
#BecauseHeLives

Week 24

I cannot believe what crazy a week I had. We did a three way exchange on Tuesday, the exchange with my zone leaders on Thursday, and did nothing but study to finish out the week. Elder Bierman got strep throat, so I spent the rest of week cleaning and studying.

In my district we are having two missionaries going home next week. For the last Thursday or Friday all the departing missionaries goes to the DC temple so we could not do the exchanges like normal. It was fun because I was with two golden missionaries (less than three months in the field) in Pottsville. I thought it was fun to be in a trio for a day because we always had something to talk about. One problem is that all but one lesson fell through for Elder Oldroyd, so we did a lot of tracting.

One thing that I have been working on is being more patient. I never knew how many scriptures mention patience. One verse I found says that hope is the combination of the comfort of the scriptures and patience. I found that interesting because I never connected hope and patience in that way before.

My exchange with Elder Riche was not smooth sailing because three appointments fell through. I thought it was very frustrating. We tried to contact couple of people that I knew of and wanted to get in touch with, but we got nothing. I got even more frustrated. I ended up just praying for help. We still didn't see anyone, but I felt better afterwards.

I cannot believe that Taylor is getting close to coming home. It seems like he only just left. Then again, it feels like I have not been in Reading that long and I have already been here six months.

Elder Bjerregaard

#BecauseHeLives

Week 23

I went on exchanges with Elder Levitt. It is going to be my last time because he is going home. It is odd to think that when I first got here, he still had 6 months before he was to go home. Now he is leaving to the "land of eternal p-day" (missionary talk for going home).

We had investigators come to church for the first time in months. The missionaries have been working with the Wertz family. They only came for sacrament meeting because that is the only part that they committed to. I wish they stayed longer, but I am not really surprised they didn't stay. I think what they did is a step in the right direction.

We had a memorial service for the mother of one of our members on Saturday. It was a nice little service and a lot of non-members were there because the member is the only member in her family.

Elder Bjerregaard

Week 22

One more week is over here in the mission field and this transfer cycle is already half way over.

This might have been my most unproductive week for a while because we had a lot of things that prevented us from teaching people. On Wednesday we had a zone conference that took up most of the day. Friday was weekly planning so that took up the morning and then we had a talent show that we helped set up for. Then the weekend was general conference, so that took up most of the time there. But what could we do? It is not like we can move things around to make everything work nicely.

We did have a couple of lessons though. One of them was when we helped Jose start his family history on the computer. We didn't find any names he did not have, but I am sure the more we try, the sooner we will be able to find something.

I also went into Pottsville for exchanges. That was the first time I went into another area for an exchange for over three months. I thought it was a nice change over being in Reading every day.

Elder Bjerregaard
#BecauseHeLives