Come what may, and LOVE it!

Hello! Howdy! Hola! Bonjour!

I hope that you have all had a fantastic week! My week started out a little rough, but through the hardships there are always lessons to learn, which is what life is all about, right?! Although the beginning was trying and hard, I definitely have felt an immense amount of love and comfort from my Heavenly Father and my Savior, Jesus Christ. The power of prayer is real, people! Take advantage of that gift, it will turn those hard days into brighter ones, I can promise you that.

Now on the to big change that has happened this past week. I'm no longer with Sister Bader (sad day), and I am now with Sister Mekonnen, and can I just say she is SO amazing. We have already had so much fun together and we work hard, which is the perfect combination in a missionary companionship! We are so excited to hasten the work even further in Hayes. And I haven't gotten us super lost yet, which is success I would say (thank you iPads and google maps haha)! Oh, and she is the first missionary from Ethiopia to ever be called to England, so having had a Swiss, and now her, I would say I've been blessed with the coolest comps of them allllllll.  I am so pumped for what these next 5 weeks hold!

So the day of transfers I was all anxious and nervous and scared and sad to be saying bye to Sister Bader. How it works over here is that you get a call two nights before and they tell you what will be going on. Then we all gather at a train station (which, can I just say, is more confusing than an airport) and swap around our companions. The morning of the transfers we thought that we had given ourselves a good amount of time to get there at 9:15 in the morning, but we quickly realised that lugging around 150 lbs+ of luggage between two weak girls was not the easiest task hahaha. We finally got on the tube and were super stressed because we realised that we would be almost an hour late. But we were mainly glad that our arms didn't fall off in the process. Luckily, when we would get to the long flights of stairs there were kind people who would help us out because I can imagine we were a sight to behold. We finally got to the gathering place only to realise we didn't even need to be in a rush because many companionships were still not there. Then began the wait. We watched as the number of missionaries there trickled down. Then Sister Bader shot off with her new comp and I was with another Sister. And then one hour passed. Then two. Then another 30 minutes. At this point it was just me and that one Sister with the Zone Leaders. Finally our companions showed up (they were more than a 3 hour drive away from where we were meeting, so we were forgiving haha), and then it was another 2 hour trip lugging around even HEAVIER luggage. Oh, and I can't forget to mention that as we got on one of the trains, I hadn't held on yet and it took off and I went flying. FLYING I tell you, into this man, and stepped on his feet. Embarrassing? Yes. Needless to say, when we finally got back to the flat, we weren't too excited to carry everything up the stairs, but we survived! Then we realised we had to go grocery shopping, so yet another 30 minutes of carrying around stuff. My arms were straight up noodles when the day came to an end. Exercise the next morning was not very productive due to the fact that I couldn't put any weight on my arms hahaha. But I am almost back to no soreness, woohoo!!

The rest of the week consisted of finding and more finding and teaching and more teaching. The funniest thing is how confused investigators get when transfers happen, since generally they don't get a warning because WE don't even get any sort of warning. But everyone has just automatically loved Sister Mekonnen because she is just FUN. I am so pumped for these next five weeks! I was a little jealous of her, though, because she just got transferred from an Air Force base, so she was surrounded by my fellow Americans and they were all gearing up to celebrate Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas, and they just do holidays a LOT bigger in the good ol' U. S. of A. But I still love my Hayes friends, so I wouldn't want to leave them :)

The sweet Senior Sisters <3 please ignore my awkward hair bump haha

After hearing David A. Bednar's talk a few weeks ago, I decided to study and listen to each of those wonderful talks he spoke about that were the last talks of some of our beloved Apostles. I was studying Joseph B. Wirthlin's Come What May and Love It, and I loved his closing testimony: "I know why there must be opposition in all things. Adversity, if handled correctly, can be a blessing in our lives. We can learn to love it. As we look for humor, seek for the eternal perspective, understand the principle of compensation, and draw near to our Heavenly Father, we can endure hardship and trial. We can say, as did my mother, 'Come what may, and love it.' Of this I testify in the name of Jesus Christ." Although none of us are anxiously awaiting any of the trials that lay ahead, we can constantly be striving to love whatever comes our way. Even though it's not always easy to recognise, always look for what you can learn when hard times come.

I love you all! I hope you have a fabulous week!

Love,
Sister Syddall