Monday Emails From Now On!

It's sooner than you thought!

At the mtc, my pday was Tuesday but from now on its on monday! So if you're from my stake back at home, I'll be added to the sea of boys that write emails haha.

Okay so I think I told yall about last Tuesday and getting to Denver so I'll start on Wednesday and update yall from there

So Wednesday was transfer day! Typically every 6 weeks is when missionaries change companions and change areas. So like if I was in the lake Mary ward and my sister Georgia was my companion, at transfers I could be put with Abby in the mt Dora ward or something like that. It sounds like to me that you switch stakes when you transfer to somewhere else. I think thats cool cuz you get to know a whole different area of your mission for 6 weeks.

Okay back to Wednesday, so we got picked up by the APs (assistants to the mission president). We were taken to a chapel that's considered home base for the missionaries and then we were drafted like its the NFL haha.

President clawson (the head honcho of the Colorado Denver north missionaries), was on the stand and in front of him were two screens. One with the greenies (new missionaries) and the trainer missionaries. He was super dramatic about announcing them but it was fun that way.

My trainer is sister Graham! Shes from Virginia and specifically the town that drinks the most dr pepper in the US. She told me every year her mom would take her and her siblings out of school once a year for dr pepper day just to get free dr pepper and a t shirt. Sister graham is kind, patient, and she laughs at my jokes. She's taught me a lot about the small detail rules we have to follow and cool tips and tricks about getting in contact with people and following up with them.

Here's a picture of us like 10 minutes after meeting with the mission president and his awesome wife

So after the draft we were able to go back to our apartment and unpack. Turns out we are sharing our apartment with another companion of sisters! They're from Tonga and the Marshall islands so in my head they're the Island Sisters. 

Thankfully, this apartment is 2 bedrooms so we dont have to be squished 4 in a room. That didn't even occur to me that that was a possibility until I saw a video of my mtc friend who was showing what her apartment looks like and shes crammed 4 in a room! That's so crazy to me.

The rest of Wednesday and Thursday looked like calling a bunch of people and doing stop bys. There's a thing called “the method” in my mission which is once someone shows interest in the church we contact them 3 times a day for 4 days until they talk to us somehow. So we can text, call or visit their house. This on paper seems lowkey creepy but its literally bcuz we want them to go to church and feel the spirit so its fine.

The reason “the method” was created is because apparently my mission gets like a crap ton of referrals (people asking to meet with missionaries)! I think they said we're the highest mission to get baptisms from social media referrals in particular. So we have “the method” put in place so we dont waste those referrals and give the people what they are literally asking for.

So far we haven't had to do much knocking on random doors because of it but it hasn't even been a full week so we'll see.

A unique experience that happened on Thursday though was my first stop by. We were hoping it would turn into a new member lesson (once someone gets baptized, you have to teach them the lessons all over again so they really know it), but this guy just kept talking. His name is Rocky. He's a big soulful black dude who literally has a room just for praying in his apartment. When we went over he just would not stop talking and telling us stories haha. Apparently he only got baptized because God told him he needed to visit a temple and he knew we were the only ones with a temple so he got baptized really quick so he could get a temple recomend and go inside. I asked why God wanted this for him but he said it was a secret basically 🤷‍♀️. He also told us about all these evil spirits that watch him because of the mission God put him and then told us a bunch of stories about how he saw these evil spirits in dreams and how they affected his day to day life. 

It honestly felt like I pulled this out of my butt, but as we were listening to this I wanted to relate this back to the gospel somehow so I asked him to read joseph smith history 1:15-16 where it talks about an evil spirit getting ahold of joseph before the first vision and then rocky told us another story based on josephs experience lol.

We were hoping to teach him but it was just a get to know you session after all.

Afterwards tho, the member that accompanied us said I did a great job! Sister fifita, the rs (relief society) president, said she had no idea how we were gonna respond to all these stories rocky was giving us and said she was impressed by the scripture I pulled out. I truly would not have been able to remember that random part of scripture if it weren't for me being on a mission, studying the scriptures every day, and actively trying to be in tune with the spirit. I hope to have more experiences like that but hopefully we can actually teach people.

Okay so on Friday we went on the denver tour!

President clawson had us sit through a boring long meeting that in summary was just “dont be stupid” then he talked to us and we dissected the Colorado flag and related back to our missionary purpose (yellow circle = Sun/Jesus, blue stripes = baptism, that kinda thing). I thought it was cool and it made me more excited to be here. He also emphasized that we should embrace the culture of where we are on our mission so we took a 4 mile walk downtown as greenies and trainers and the clawsons and we saw the state Capitol, the brown palace, the only river in Denver (jk idk but there's no water here basically), and some other cool stuff. I enjoyed it and it would be cool to be assigned to the Denver area so I can look at all those places again.

Here's my companion and I on the denver tour with our mission president taking the photo

Saturday we did a split! This means that we trade companions with another companionship for the afternoon. This was super fun to me because we spit with Hermanas so I sat thru a lesson that was completely in Spanish and then we took phone calls and did role plays (practicing scenarios with a companion so we can get better at talking). Sister Graham was able to fully set up a baptism for Sunday with the Hermana she split with! It was so cool to hear that.

Sunday was super successful for no reason! We had two friends show up to church PLUS we kinda sorta had our first baptism🫨 The other elders who were in this ward put someone on date to be baptized then we thought we would have to push it back to next Sunday because we had so many meetings we didnt know about plus the denver tour so we had to move a lot of appointments. But our zone leader elder hererra encouraged us to finish the lessons with her and do the baptism anyway. He told us Saturday evening to still have the baptism and it ended up working out! The other elders didnt document her progress very well (we thought we were gonna have to teach a lot more) so all we had to teach was about eternal families basically. So we did that Sunday, made a program on canva and it actually ended up happening! I'll add a photo of me, my companion, and Chantell who got baptized

Alright, and today is Pday!! Im learning more and more about what pday really is (i get more restricted the more I learn about it lol). So pday is from 8am to 6pm and then we continue missionary life from 6pm to 9:30pm when we have to be back home. We can wear comfy clothes all day but not when going out for pleasure, you can only wear pday clothes to workout, or do service really. So we went shopping for food for the week, bought a big fat fluffy blanket cuz sister graham wants it cold and I need to prep for winter anyways, and now I'm at the computers at the leasing office in our apartment complex so I can download music and send out my email!

Some other stuff:

-the area I'm in is Aurora!! I got excited hearing that bcuz I know an aurora back home who I miss dearly ❤️ 

-I really dont know what I'm doing shopping for the week so if any of yall have simple recipes id love to see them

-The address to the mission home is 1250 Main St, Broomfield, CO 80020 in case yall wanna send me packages or letters😁

-And I love emails from yall! I can't respond unless it pday so if I forget to respond to you, KNOW that I read it but I might've forgotten so I apologize in advance.

-I can listen to music!! The mission standards on music is that it has to invite the spirit, help you fulfill your missionary purpose, increase your faith in Jesus Christ, be sacred, and uplifting. So I'm debating on whether that means I can listen to Creeping Death by Metallica. But I say this bcuz id love any recommendations for music like that!

High altitude hugs,

Sister Moghimi