Hi Meg,
Yes, we do have some Nickle relatives, but it's spelled Nicholl on our heritage sheets. Maybe they same, maybe not?
LY!
B
Sent from my iPhone
Sent from my iPhone
This week I learned some very unique and important things about missionaries and missionary work, like the following:1. Many times there is a discrepancy of definitions of "clean" between Elders and Sisters.2. Never say that things couldn't get crazier - They always can.Monday afternoon we found out that on Tuesday we were going to have Interviews with President Maluenda (every other transfer they happen). Cool. Nothing too different about that. Then we start getting texts and calls from the Zone Leaders like "we need to know how many members you have in the English Ward in your area." "Oh, we also need to know how many English and Spanish investigators you have." So, a little interesting, but nothing too crazy yet. We really knew something was up when we got a call asking sepcific questions about how many members with leadership positions in both wards lived in specific parts of our areas. So by Monday night we knew something was up, but we figured changes wouldn't happen for a couple of weeks, or maybe until next transfer.Interviews happened and were super good, and then the Stake President talked to all the missionaries saying that they were going to change it so that there aren't 26 missionaries in the English ward, and that things were going to be getting a lot more focused, with more changes to come. They were pretty vague, but we knew things would be happening in the next couple of days. All of the zone went to lunch after, and then we got a text from the Zone Leaders saying that we were meeting back at the church in an hour, and then some of us got texts saying we should pack our bags if we had time. We got to the church, and they announced all of the changes. About half of the zone stayed the same (with the exception of only teaching in Spanish,) and then they switched some areas, and they made it so that only 3 sets of missionaries are in Brownsville 1st Ward (the English ward).. And Sister Pickett and I are in that group! So we had to switch apartments with the Elders, and so in an hour and a hlaf we were packed and out of our old apartment. However, we quickly learned that the Elders probably hadn't cleaned their apartment in months. It was nasty. We moved in with another set of sisters, and it took us 2 days to get it clean. Within the first hour of being there we took 5 large bags of trash out, and swept up many piles of dust and dirt, and washed the kitchen floor for the first time in many months. There was what looked like a mummified cabbage in the fridge, and lots of exciting things discovered, but in the end our apartment is actually super nice and cute.With all the changes, we now cover 1/3 of the English ward, which means our area is massive. If you look on a map of Bronsville, we cover the North West corner from Price Road and Paredes up clear to a little town called Los Fresnos and over to Sen Benito. We also got a new area name - La Vieja. So now everyone calls us Las Viejas (the old ladies). The Zone Leaders thought it would be super funny to call us that, so now we get to be the old ladies. Ha. These changes are going to bring miracles. We went and talked with the Bishop and the Relief Society President, and some other people in the ward, and there are so many things that need to happen here. It's a great ward, but there is a lot of strengthening that needs to happen. There isn't a whole lot of unity or strong members, and of the 800 members on the records, only about 100-150 are active. It's exciting, because with this change we can really focus on the members and work with them to strengthen and change things. It's a little strange now though, because we will meet people and start teaching in Spanish, and then have to give them to the Spanish missionaries. I've started calling those investigators our Orphan Investigators. Also, this means that I won't get as many changes to speak Spanish. Which is bad. Yikes. But I know that this is for a reason and miracles will come :)The change through a lot of things off, so I made lots of mistakes this week. But we leaned a lot and this next week is gonna be incredible. Whitewashing is pretty intense - we have SO much we don't know about and a lot to figure out, but I have so much anticipation that we are going to see the hand of the Lord in really specific and beautiful ways. It's a privilege to be serving here and to get to be blessed with the opportunity of serving in this part of the vineyard where there are lots of miracles waiting to happen :)
Love you all! Stay strong, be courageous, and remember that way down in South Texas there's a little missionary who is praying for you all. :)P.S. Do we have any Nickle family members on the Reynolds side in our genealogy?
--Hermana Reynolds
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