Sickness, priesthood, general conference, transfers!

Well, Sister James last week out in the mission field turned into a pretty lame week because I got strep throat.

Monday I had to retire home early from p-day because I felt horrible. I had a massive headache and a fever. Tuesday morning we had to take Sister Bowers to the airport to fly to MLC. We spent a productive morning in town, and got to go out to eat. But when we got home, I once again crashed and my fever was even higher. By Wednesday morning I decided to ask for a priesthood blessing. Thursday morning we still had to go to district meeting, but afterwards decided it was finally time to seek medical attention considering my throat was so swollen I could hardly swallow. Just by looking in my throat the doctor immediately knew it was strep. She prescribed me some strong antibiotics and told me they wouldn't start working for 3 days and I wouldn't start feeling better for 5 days. This was very disappointing news to me because that seemed like a very long time and being sick a missionary is physically, spiritually, and mentally very hard. However, I know that the priesthood is in fact the power of God on earth and I know that my Heavenly Father loves me and is very aware of me, because the same day that I started the antibiotics my fever went down to a normal temperature for the first time in 4 days and the next morning the swelling in my throat had significantly gone down. My healing has been much quicker than expected and I'm so incredibly grateful!   

After a week of spiritual stagnancy, I was beyond excited to finally have to opportunity to watch General Conference. We got to go to a chapel in Sapwalap and watch it in English with other Missionaries. Seriously every single talk was incredible but my two favorites were Elder Christoferson's from Saturday morning on the Atonement and Sister Sharon L. Eubank's from the Women's Session on what it means to be a woman! But the most important part about conference is what changes we make in our lives because of what we've learned! Here are a few inspired goals I have set:

1. Learn more about Jesus Christ and His atonement and THINK about Him more in my daily life.

2. Serve people at an individual level, even if it's inconvenient! 

3. Be Glad! I am a daughter of God, full of worth and I will continue to strive to be worthy, so I might as well have a positive, happy, enthusiastic attitude even when my circumstances are hard. 

As for transfers..........I'm with Sister Bowers! There are no new Sister Missionaries in the mission, and 3 went home this transfer. This means a few areas had to close down. The sister training leaders area closed, and the sister training leaders are now split. The new sister training leader is Sister Behling. Sister Russell, who was the old one, got transferred to Guam for her last transfer. We dropped her off at the airport late last night and it was heartbreaking watching her have to leave these people that she loves so much.  Sister Bowers is an answer to my prayers. She is already one of my closest friends on the Island and she already served in the Uh area for 10 months. She goes home in 5 weeks (this next transfer is short) so I'm excited to learn as much from her as possible in this amount of time. We are so ready to build up Uh Branch! 

Dehr doadoangki pehmw en kang mwonge pwe ke pahn soumwahuda! Ahpw mehlel, soang koaros mwahu. Poakepoakei kumwail! (dont use your hands to eat food because you will get sick. But seriously everything is good. Love you all)

Love,

Sister Milne

pics:

1. This was at lunch on tuesday, Sister Bowers is the one next to me.

2. This was at dinner on sunday night after our branch mission correlation meeting. The Zone leaders who run the Unit in Awak which is next to Uh join. I tried pig stomach and it was good but definitely what you would expect a stomach to feel like!