Goodbye ASL 👐🏽🤘🏼🖖🏽 Hello YSA 👫👰🏾💑 (5/30/16 email)

Well I'm being transferred from the deaf branch to the young single

adult ward on Wednesday! I have so many different emotions: so sad I'm

leaving the deaf branch 💔, but so excited to be able to teach people

my age and make some new BFFs, and also apprehensive about what to

expect in the YSA ward because I'm just sure there's going to be

awkward affection and flirting I'm going to be exposed to. But I am

super excited! Especially because my new companion will be Sister

Okerlund and she seems amazing. In the car ride with President and

Sister Taylor to the airport a few weeks ago, President asked me who I

want my new companion to be. I quickly listed off like eight different

people and Sister Okerlund was one of them! We went to a sister

training leader meeting last week at the mission home and at the end

President Taylor just said, "Well while we're here, do you all want

to know who your new companions will be?" Lol everyone was silent

for a minute, then we were all freaking out! Of course we do! So when

he said Sister Okerlund and I were going to be together in the YSA

ward we both got so excited!

This is the deaf branch mission leader. He is seriously the cutest and I

wish I could adopt them as grandparents! They won a bunch of different

things at some deaf social (t-shirts, water bottles, etc) and didn't

want them so they gave them to us. He spelled each of our names on

everything and skipped the R on my water bottle. Haha it just makes it

that much more meaningful!

This is H! She seriously has my heart. When I first got here she couldn't finger spell her name--or any name really--but now she's explaining the story of the Restoration on her own! She has seriously come SOOOO FAR in this short time! I wish I could take her home with me because she is just the sweetest thing. And she loves getting fake nails lol she has a different color every other week.

Here's a member of our branch, K. He doesn't like pictures so I had to sneak some with him.

This is Brother and Sister C! They take both sets of ASL sisters out to eat every week! Because we cover so much area, it's hard to plan when we'll actually be near their house. So they just meet us in whatever city we're in that day. They are such a cute and sweet couple! Oh and Brother C isn't even a member, but he takes the missionaries out every week.

 Here's the ASL fam. Yeah we all look kind of awkward, but we just had to hurry and take a picture right before they left.

Since it was my last Sunday in the branch yesterday, I was asked to give a talk. Oh man preparing for that talk helped me personally so much! Isn't it weird how that's always how it works? Well anyway, I decided to talk about positive thinking/perspective (btw there are about a million talks on that), and I learned so much! This one talk by President Uchtdorf is called "Grateful in any Circumstances," and it's about how we shouldn't focus as much on being grateful FOR things as much as just being grateful IN our circumstances whatever they may be. And I also read a talk focusing on living in the moment. It's so easy for us to continually look forward to how things will be just around the corner, or look back and reminisce on the way things used to be, but every moment in our lives is a special time. Every aspect of our lives is part of a perfect plan set up with an eternal perspective, so we need to live in the moment and enjoy our lives. That's what I learned this week! I would share a quote from one of the talks, but I changed all the quotes to ASL grammar in my notes and I'm too lazy to look them up in English again. But it's an amazing lesson to learn, and I feel like it's something all of us can constantly improve on! Love you all!!