Milwaukee/ Racine/ Kenosha/ Spanish Sisters

¡Buenos Días!

Life is good here in the WMM!

This has been our first full week of the newly organized trio- I LOVE IT! (I am not sure all parties feel the same, but I love it!:)
The first week of a new transfer is always a bit crazy filled with zone conference, transfer planning and in our case: getting established in BOTH areas we serve in and helping S. Warner to get to know everyone. We’ve set a lot of goals this transfer and I am really excited to see the work grow in both areas. I feel like last transfer, we did do a lot of good- yes, but there is SO much more we can do… and now being in a trio we have the added energy needed to accomplish all that is at hand… I can’t wait! This work is always changing and we are always learning about different tools we can use to enhance the work we do everyday. I love love love being a missionary.

Here is a glimpse into our week:

[mon] pday! We had lunch with Julieanne and met her brother (one of the triplets) Brian. Oh how I love Julieanne. We had our usual, pb&j, salt and vinegar chips and some strawberries with whipped cream…. Yum. I am going to miss her when she goes back up to school at UWGB. We then went and played baseball with the elders at the park. I love to watch baseball, I don’t, however, enjoy playing the game. I have never liked small, hard, round objects flying at my face… no wonder softball wasn’t my thing, I played to be a good sport though, I played pitcher. For dinner we ate at the Donnich’s with President and Sister Donnich and their son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter: DJ, Tracy and Joselyn. I LOVE THE DONNICH FAMILY. They are hilarious… if I ever have a child like DJ Donnich I might die, he’s hilarious, but what a troublemaker he was. They make me laugh ‘til I cry.

[tues] we went to the med school to help with the LDSSA booth there. I can’t believe that I am old enough to have people MY AGE in med school… I am old you know? It was orientation for all the first year students… such smart, bright, happy kids, makes me hopeful for the future of medicine. We then took sister warner to see UWM . It was ALIVE with students again! Woo-hoo. It has been dead all summer. For dinner we went to Beth Schwenker’s! Beth is AmAzing! (reminds me of Amy Brown) She was baptized six months ago. First off, she made us, along with her roommates, the best dinner ever. Seriously. Then she shared her testimony as we taught the restoration to everyone [it was like a mini YSA party, so many people were there]. She said what sparked her interest was the simple phrase, “If ye seek wisdom, ask of God.” How profound, that can be applied to all aspects of our life. She is a great example to me. Her testimony is beautiful, she is a living example of how the gospel can truly change our hearts. I love the YSA!

[wed] we headed to the STATE FAIR with the kozlosky’s! I love the kozlosky family. I feel like one of their daughters and they treat me as such. At the fair I tried an elephant ear [wi version of fry bread, minus the beans, too bad about that], it was really good…. Apparently you go to the fair for the food [it’s in an air conditioned building too!] …. I tried pizza, ice-cream and honey. YUM. After all that, the girls wanted to go on rides, ya I don’t do fair rides. We never went to the fair growing up- my Mom and Dad always said that drunks put the rides together… haha. They always said Disneyland was the only safe place! HA [plus fair rides are sickening anyways, especially after the food we ate and being out in the heat] so I opted to go with mom and dad kozlosky to the only other air-conditioned building… vendors. That was a lot of fun. I love them. We had so many opportunities to teach at the fair and to be seen by people. I can’t even count the number of times people asked me about my teg or why I was in Wisconsin all the way from PHX etc etc. I love being a representative of Jesus Christ. Wisconsin culture is a lot of fun. There was a whole huge tent devoted to MILK and another for CHEESE. Later that day we taught Janice… she is still struggling with smoking, we hoped to get her to addiction recovery, but we compromised and her home teachers are going to teach her the lessons. In the evening sister warner took Brittany’s senior pics at Whitnall park, we got eaten alive by mosquitos! …but the pics were cute.

[thurs] we did weekly planning in the morning and then headed to the temple with Lauren Major, a ysa. It was so nice of her to drive us, it was only her second time going since being endowed. We went early to do an endowment session and then met the Racine Ward in the Baptistry. We took snacks and put them in the kitchen area of the temple so we could eat in-between. I love the Racine ward so much. It was such a blessing to see Cheryl do proxy baptisms in the temple. The spirit was so strong. Nothing is sweeter than finding out a person’s concerns, teaching them, feeling the spirit testify to you that they know it’s true, seeing the spirit work on them, seeing them covenant with their Heavenly Father thru baptism, receive the Holy Ghost and then enter the temple and do that work for someone else…. AmAzing! I can’t wait for her to go in a year to be sealed to Ted and Natalie. She has come so far since the first time we met her and she said something to the effect of, “I can’t be baptized, I just really like dirty movies with lots of swear words!” haha. That was only about a month ago.... Going to the temple always helps refocus me. What a blessing it is to have a House of the Lord so close to us… I love the TEMPLE!

[fri] ZONE CONFERENCE … it was the Milwaukee North and the Milwaukee South Zones combined at the Spanish Branch Building in Milwaukee… the air conditioning was almost non- existent, with 70 elders in a small room, that’s just not pretty. BUT our lunch provided by the sisters in the Branch was AmAzing!

I learned so much at zone conference. This mission has changed so MUCH since I arrived nine months ago. We have so many more tools to use and the trainings we receive keep getting better and better.

Here are the tools in our “tool belt” that we learned how to use better at Zone Conference: Daily Contact ... “What’s your Plan?” centered planning ... Powerful Commitments … Companionship Study ... Members … Prayer ... Receiving Revelation . Family History … Asking Inspired ?’s … Inviting to be Baptized on the First Lesson … How to Begin Teaching ... Media . Faith … Chapel Lesson Tours ... Inviting to Church ... The Book of Mormon … Baptismal Calendar ... Baptismal Interview ?’s … Standard of Excellence … Quadplots….

Seem like a lot? YA… it IS!!! But it has helped so much in making the time we spend teaching more effective. I love Zone Conference… it is the oil in my lamp that I need each transfer.

[sat] was a ridiculous day. We didn’t plan effectively so we ended up doing a lot of driving for no reason… sometimes being in a trio is a treat… 3 people …. 3 different ideas. We determined we need to plan WAY better.

That evening we attended Valerie Risse’s baptism, she’s an AmAzing YSA. Then, we went to the YSA dance for a little bit, then home to Racine. Whew… what a day. How amazing to see Valerie’s baptism be attended by SO many YSA. I love the ward here. I love Bishop Becker. I love Milwaukee. [ps a bonus to the night was to see Spencer Twilmeyer dance in the middle of the dance floor. Ha sister warner looked at him and said… I DANCE LIKE THAT! Wow. I told her our friendship post mish is TBD! Haha jk I love her and I love spencer.]

[sun] church. & lots of it. I went up to the Muskego Lakes ward and to the YSA ward with Sister warner. Sister behrends went to the Spanish Branch and to the Racine ward with Cassidy Blake as her companion. It was fun to spend the day with sister warner, it was like old times. We laughed a lot. That evening we had dinner at the Blake’s in Racine and then went to visit Temika King and her children…. I love that family. (ps I met a family that just moved in to the family ward from Snow Flake! Small world!)

We are so busy here… I love to be busy. I love my mission. I heard this quote the other day and I love it too:

"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself."
- C.S. Lewis

I feel it happening to me… We are all a living house… embrace the change!

I love you all!

Love, Sister Pamella Jo Black