Change is always an adventure.
Last Tuesday I drove to Bakersfield and had to say goodbye to my dear companion Sister Larsen. She is home with her family in Colorado now. She is an amazing person and I miss her so much!
I then found my new companion, Sister Alderman, who I already knew from the MTC. We found our car, packed all our stuff inside (if college has taught me anything, it's how to play Tetris with luggage and small cars) and headed on our merry way. Well, that was the plan anyway. When we got in the car we discovered that we had no map and no GPS, just the address of our apartment. Since we were both going to a new area that neither of us had been to before, this created a problem...
One of our zone leaders had a GPS that he wasn't using, which he let us borrow. YAY Problem solved!....Until we put our address in and found that the GPS was so out of date that it didn't know where our apartment was. Luckily we were still in a church parking lot with a ton of other missionaries, and after asking around for a while, we found a sister who had lived in our apartment previously and she gave us directions on how to get there.
And so we were off, trying to make our way from West Bakersfield to East Bakersfield. We were going the right direction. We were. But then we somehow missed the freeway and ended up, well, very lost. So we drove around Bakersfield for a while, trying to find the freeway and not wanting to admit that we needed help. But we did. We finally stopped and asked for directions and FINALLY made it to the right road and were able to make it to our apartment (asking for directions helps—what a concept!)
So there we were, in our new apartment. We loaded all of our stuff out of the car and wanted to get to work right away, so we found the Area Book and started looking through it. (Every missionary area has a big binder that we call the Area Book. It is basically a record of all the people that past missionaries have taught, with information on the area boundaries, and the ward, and a bunch of other stuff.) Well, we opened the area book only to find that it was a complete mess. And was missing a lot of information. Such as a map of the area. And a ward directory. And the address of the church building. At least the phone that we were given had a bunch of contacts in it.....for a different ward.
So, there we were. We didn't know where our area was. We didn't know who was in the ward. We didn't have any phone numbers. We literally couldn't do anything.
So what do missionaries do when they don't know what to do? They go tracting. So, we just drove to where we were pretty sure our area was and knocked on some doors. Hey, if we found anyone that turned out to be in a different set of missionaries area, we would just hand them over as a referral.
So that was Tuesday. The only thing we were given was the number of our bishop. (But just his phone number, not even his name.) We tried to contact him but he never responded (come to find out a few days later that it was because he was in a COMA in the ICU.)
We have a map now. And a ward directory. It was a rough week but we finally know where things are and can start getting to work!
Our area is pretty poor, but I love it. Poor people are way more open to talking to us about the gospel. You also meet a lot of interesting people. And crazy people. On Saturday we met a guy named Jimmy. He had just gotten out of jail and was telling us how God helped him get over his meth addiction and how he was trying to find his friend's house so that he could pick up his Bible. He also taught us a rap that he wrote about being a gangsta for Jesus. It was legit.
As crazy as this week has been, it has taught me a lot. Like, even when you are lost and don't think you can do anything, you just have to work anyway, and you will be led in the right direction. We have to put forth the effort, and take those steps forward, even when we don't know where we are going (this applies literally as well as metaphorically.)
The gospel is true!
Love you all,
Sister Daelemans
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