Hello friends and family! Hope you all had a fabulous week, this morning we got transfer calls and the verdict is..... Sister Provard and I are still together! We for sure thought sister Deuel and sister Provard would be switching because they've both been in the same area for 9 months... That's a really long time but I guess Sister Provard is going to have to handle me for another 6 weeks ;) Hopefully she can survive. She was only a little upset she wasn't being transferred.... Just kidding she screamed when she found out. I laughed my head off because she packed up everything. But the other island sisters are moving to Bayshore finally so that will be really good for the deaf group :)

Monday: Well nothing too exciting happened today although I chopped off my hair! Yep got to keep my tradition of doing something to my hair every may. Okay my hair doesn't really looked chopped but I swear he cut off six inches! I feel like a free woman haha. We also found out that we have a new laundromat in the basement of our apartment building and it's so much cheaper so I can testify that miracle happen everyday haha. We had another deep doctrine lesson with our member with the Isaiah chapters again and it was so good! She is such a champ and is so strong in the gospel.

Tuesday: We had our last district meeting together except our elders decided not to show up because they fell asleep..... Haha oh well. We drove out to Coney Island again to meet with that referral again and you'll never believe what she did.... She canceled.... Again. I'm so done. Haha it's always right as were walking up too. But another miracle is that we called our old investigator who went to the Dominican Republic for 10 days but turns out she extended her vacation that's why we haven't been able to contact her but we finally got ahold of her!!

Wednesday: Service at Prospect park of course and we had to weed an entire garden but it was really irritating because all the weeds were barely poking out of the ground so I started just getting a shovel an scraping the top soil off haha. Whatever works right? We had to drive sister fouts out to a doctors appointment since to trains went that far but while we waited Sister Provard and I just did some street contacting and she totally ran into a Jehovah's Witness so that was an interesting experience haha. Always is. Once we finished with the doctors we had a lesson with a less active member who recently had surgery so it was good visiting her and getting to know her.

Thursday: Today we had MISSION TOUR! This is a special day when a general authority comes and visits our mission and we had the special opportunity to visit with Elder C. Scott Grow from the 70. He is so amazing and he discussed a lot about using the scriptures with our investigators but the overall theme was repentance and conversion. There were a few quotes that I loved from the meeting and one was from president Reynolds, "Mission rules aren't an obstacle, they are a vehicle for greater conversion." And one from elder Grow which said, "We cannot lift another person higher if we are not on higher ground". It was such a powerful meeting although I'm sad we won't have another general authority visiting the rest of the year. :(

Friday: Today was the best day of service at Fort Green ever! We did pathway clean up from all the flowers and stuff falling from the trees but once we were done the service coordinators surprised us with a real life camp fire! Do you realize how long it's been since I've seen a fire?? Since two days before I left of my mission, that is so depressing to think about but they gave us hot dogs and marshmallows. Our deaf elder Brown, his 1800's side of him came out and he started challenging everyone to the stick pull game. Everyone lost of course because he's deaf and Tongan. You can never win according to him. Then we weekly planned and planted seeds, nothing too fancy :)

Saturday: This day was epic and full of interpreting. Nothing exciting happened until the late afternoon so I'll just skip ahead. But we had a stake wide women's meeting and the women's general authorities from salt lake came and visited us. Sister Jones (Primary President), Carol F. McConkie (1st counselor YW) and Linda S. Reese (2nd Couselor RS) and Elder Clay who is an area 70. It was so cool to hear their messages and to meet them all in person. Before the second meeting I was sitting in the interpreter chair and Sister Jones started talking to us and she shook my hand and then literally yanked me out of the chair and bear hugged me. They're such iron women and their testimonies are so powerful I'm so grateful I had to opportunity to chat with them and to hear their messages.

Sunday: Church was good and our branch president brought one of his friends and we were able to teach her after church so we found a new investigator! It was so good and she has so many questions for us which is great because that means she's willing to listen and ready to Learn. Our investigator is still really sick so she still can't come to church :( it's so sad to see her in so much pain. If I could take
her cancer away I would in a heartbeat. You truly grow to love people out here and it's so heartbreaking to see them so lost and hurt.

Well that's all for now! I look forward to another six weeks here in the deaf branch, it will be a adventure for sure :) thank you all for your love and support to keep me going. Talk to you all soon!

Love, Sister Seay