Wait, WHAT?! 7/14/2014

Oh hey!
I didn't see you there. 

How are you?

I'm good. Another week come and gone.

It was the legit most stressful week of my life. 

But it was awesome.

and...

I"M GETTING TRANSFERRED!

say whaaaaaaaaaaaat?

I literally had no idea whatsoever. 

 Like, absolute NO clue. 

I'm not mentally prepared to leave. I just got here! 

I have 2 more baptisms in the next 2 weeks! 

ahhhhhh.

I need a picture with the giant cow.
And a Janesville sign.
And the cheese store.
And all of my friends. 

I need to tour the Tallman house.
And keep teaching family history classes at Hedberg.

And teach the cute family we just found. 

And keep taking care of my tomato plants.

And my cat friend.

But. I am needed in Lake Mills even more. 

So. Party in Lake Mills!!!

Everyone is invited. Tell your friends. 

We'll bring cookies.

I'm excited to go to Milwaukee. Well, I'll be in the Milwaukee South Zone. But I'm excited. Everyone that has served in Milwaukee loves it. And I'm close enough that President already gave me permission to come back for James' baptism!

So, you may be asking, "Hey Ciarra *cough* I mean, Sister Butler, why was this week the craziest in your whole 20 years of existence?" 

I will tell you!

Tuesday we had Zone Training Meeting in Madison. We straight up got told. hahaha. We talked about sanctification and consecration and what we need to do to be better missionaries. Straight up stressful. I have not yet mastered the art of taking meetings like that the way they are [hopefully] intended. I left SO overwhelmed. Like they just punched me in the gut and said, "you suck. Go home." So. I had to fix that in my mental processes.

Wednesday we had packed day. Like, an appointment every hour from 10:30 - 6:00. We got a lot of work done and saw a lot of people and got new investigators! Aja's interview was at 6:00. President interviewed her via FACETIME since he was in the UP. That was cool. A super cool example of how technology is hastening the work of salvation! We were super rushed to get to the church on time and we hadn't eaten anything all day and were starving and it was stressfull. We had Book of Mormon class right after and we had the best turnout of all time! It was great! Oh. And Aja passed her interview! It was just a lot of scrambling to places all day and it produced a decent anxiety attack that night. Like...possibly one of the worst on the mish. It didnt help that I was being so hard on myself to begin with either. So I cried it out and luckily it was time for bed, so I took a sleep aid to calm me down and slept.

Thursday was icky. I just wasn't all there. I was sleepy and pretty much just not handling stress very well. But. We taught Paulette in the morning about family history and introduced her to the Book of Mormon. Sister Jardine bought us Culvers. I took a nap at lunch and accidentally slept during weekly planning. Then we taught Allicia and Sister Hayford and had dinner with the Figueroa's and the Spanish elders. We had to RUSH back home and clean hardcore in like 5 minutes because we exchanged at 8. President called that night. We talked it out and he's a nice fellow. Then we went to sleep. haha

Friday was exchanges. I stayed in Janesville with Sister Martin. We kind of ran around like chickens with our heads cut off. It was weird being in charge of Janesville on my own. We had a full day and made a ton of calls to coordinate the baptism. We did service at the womens shelter. Oh! Sister Pike showed us how to make felt from wool! #thingsthatillneedoneday

Saturday was literally crazy. We had breakfast with bishop and his family and the elders and Deidre and our good friend Harvey at 8am. We rushed from there to teach our family history class at the library. Thats always crazy. Then we studied a bit and helped Aja prepare for her baptism. And practiced our musical number. And basically ran around with our heads cut off again. It rained, so we had to move the bbq inside, and fit a million pounds of ribs and chicken and hot dogs in two ovens. BUT. 70 people came to her baptism!!!!! It was legit and beautiful and Harvey baptized her which is so cute because he just got baptized in March. And it was the greatest. Oh. And in the middle of that, I got a text that Sister J and I were leaving. And i was not expecting that at all.

Sunday was good. Everyone is so sad that the J3 is being broken up. Literally, 

 the ward loves us. It was a sad thing to say goodbye.

So. That was my last week in janesville. I definitely know that I was here for a reason - my good friend Aja was so prepared and we grew from each other.

Now I'm off to Lake Mills! Wish me luck!