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I decided this week I would just kind of look back at my journal entries and write this from what I remembered. It's been a bit of a normal week and we've had a good time. There were lots of opportunities to feel the spirit, lots of interesting lessons that we had, and it also was such a great time to spend with the zone and to get be closer with them.

The office this Friday was strangely empty. The İzmir sisters were gone as well as the entire İstanbul District leaving an eerie feeling in their wake. We had a meeting with President Cropper that day and, because we are the only sisters in the office, Sister Clinch came with me. We have a bit of awkard situation where I am STL but my companion is not. The other STL, Sister Woodford was in İzmir this weekend. It was such a confidential meeting talking about transfers and the possibility of opening up new areas. At the end of the meeting, She just turned to me and said "yeahhhh, I shouldn't have been there". It was nice to talk openly with her about ideas that we had and my thoughts on everything but also was pretty weird.  

I got a call from a senior missionary and I am now the Turkish CVC representative for the CVC club (which basically is a club that is supposed to motivate you to learn your language, so I'm excited). What I'm supposed to do as their representative is test other people in the Turkish language and see if they can make it into the club.I've already gotten a couple people asking if they could take the test and it's kind of fun to see how it's taking off.

Sunday was really crazy. We had planned our baptism for that day  and we were pretty confident that we had set up everything. And that's when the text messages started flowing in. One person wasn't showing up then two. Then all the people that we were hoping to do something ended up not doing it and it was crazy and stressful. And the whole time sister Clinch and I were just praying that everything would work out. We kept asking who could translate? Who could be a witness? Who can play the piano?  What made it harder is that we weren't there in person to oversee the baptism. At the end we were able to see the hand of the Lord. A couple miracles happened to help the baptism go through. Incredibly, an old member showed up who knew both english and turkish and translated not only all of church but are baptism as well. They hadnt been to a church in a very long time, but it decided that this weekend that they were gonna try to make it. A Melchezidek Priesthood holder did show up and was able to give our friend the gift of the holy ghost. Even though our friend couldn't translate the baptism talk that morning, we were able to translate the talk in less than an hour and were able to give it to the translator just in time. Overall, there were lots of miracles and I was so glad to see our friend entering to a covenant with God.

That night we had a member dinner which we usually don't get.This one was especially cool because we were able to eat with the other German sisters as well as a couple of senior missionaries. During this meeting it was cool to get closer with the german sisters who we usually don't see and to really just enjoy each other's company. Sister Clinch and I got home that night and it was just the two of us and we had a really good talk, making it a really perfect day.

Monday came round with a swing and started off with a game of soccer. For those who don't know, I am not coordinated enough to play soccer and, even though I tried my best, I ended up scoring on my own team twice. My companion, however, is very good at soccer. Towards the end of the game, in an attempt to redeem myself from my failures in the game, I decided to try to steal the ball from her.This was a poor decision, seeing as it resulted in me just running straight into her. At the end of this momentous game I decided that maybe next time we played soccer I would sit out.

The rest of that day was really good, especially our Companionship study. We talked a lot about stillness and about hope, faith, and fear. In the scriptures it says doubt not, fear not. It says be still and know that I am god. In fact the scriptures remind us all the time that the savior is with us and that he is here for us and will protect us. But if we know anything about life we know that we still have negative feelings. I guess my ultimate question was can faith exist with fear. As we talked about these topics and as we searched the scriptures together, we came to the conclusion that yes, we will have these negative feelings. It is when we let these negative feelings them overcome us in our spirit that we're not being faithful.  We need to constantly be trying to look to the bright side to have hope. And that's not easy, but once we learn how to do this, I think that is the key to our happiness. The key to our happiness is Jesus Christ. He is ultimately the way that we can overcome everything. We learn this in Philippians 4:13, which says, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me."

Overall, it was a good week! We had mini exchanges, people came back from Turkey, and some crazy nights. I so glad for my mission! 

Love you all and I hope you have a good week!