Yeeha, soooo to answer all of your questions as you've been dying for a week. :D I am serving with sweet Sister Burton in the Tampa 1 Metro area, so what does that mean? That means it is a completely brand new area and there are 2 sets of missionaries being sent there, Sister Burton and I and Elders Willard and Nelson. Guess what do we do in this brand new area? We are basically down town in Tampa and a couple of islands by it, Davis Island, Harbor Island, etc. and we Street Contact ALL day EVERY day. Did we have any direction except that? Nope, ha ha we actually didn't even know our boundaries or about the Islands until the 3rd day or so we were in the area. We have been instructed to street contact and basically we are just planting the seeds and trying to get referrals for other missionaries, IT IS AWESOME!!!! I was excited at first and then the first day was a painful reality check on how hard it was and awkward to go up to people on park benches or in passing as the walk by or ya da ya daaa how to make it as natural as possible so they don't get a weird impression about Mormons. Ha ha! So the First day was a little hard but Now I am pumped up because we have had a lot of neat experiences happening already and it is becoming so much more natural and I've been really learning how to trust the Lord and know that I'm not a bad missionary just because we are not teaching full on lessons all the time and that we are just doing things really fast and in passing and handing out Books of Mormon's. It is crazy and awesome, I love it!!! And it really is providing so much growth for me and taken me out of any comfort zone I might have had left, definitely taking that all away, ha ha.
Oh and ha ha I'm a Sister Training Leader too, which means I'm like the girl version of a Zone Leader. So Sister Burton and I will be over 7 sets of Sister Missionaries and we have exchanges once or twice a week. The MLC meeting (missionary leadership correlation or conference meeting?) was really cool on Friday. We got to hear all the new things that are in planning for our mission/ development, including Facebook which the majority of us leaders are involved in and are waiting for phase 2, phase 1 was creating the Facebook pages and only adding President Cusick and President May as our friends. Phase 2 will be further instruction to come and making sure our Zones are Super obedient because if they aren't we as leaders are held responsible, no pressure right? Oh and get this other piece of exciting news, they are working on ipads for our mission and in the next couple of months us missionaries who are obedient will be getting mini ipads to do all of our area book stuff in and to use instead of having to carry our scriptures around and being able to show people videos and what not. Isn't that epic?!
Oh and guess what guess what!!!!! So The Book of Mormon Musical (by the creators of South Park, not cool at all and really bad) will be coming November 12th downtown Tampa at the Straz theatre and will be going for 2 weeks or so. Our mission President is already working on plans for it where 8 sets of missionaries will be at the theatre with boxes of Books of Mormon's to hand out to people and go with the logos that the church has been putting out of...The Book is always better then the movie or show, something like that! So we will most likely be involved with that since we are the street contacting missionaries and HOLY COW, isn't that crazy?!?
So, ha ha lots of stuff that I'm grateful for and have already had so much personal growth from it all. I'm really grateful to the Lord and echo Ammon's exclamation of joy in Alma 26, God is good. I had prayed last transfer to be a better missionary no matter what transfers brought, to be more focused and just better for God. I prayed to be more of who God wants me to be and who He knows me to be and to help me remember who I really am from the pre-existance. Heavenly Father answers prays, to be a better missionary He has called me to be a Sister Training Leader which requires me to be an example and a more/exactly obedient missionary because other missionaries will be watching me and follow after what I teach spoken or unspoken. Pray answered :) And then to be more of who He knows me as, ha ha I have been put in a street contacting new thing which requires me to completely trust and depend on Him and to have confidence. I love how prayers are always answered in unexpected ways, it is beautiful how God works and makes me think of Elder Bednar's talk, loved where he talked about when we ask for certain things and God gives us situations or other things to give us not only what we ask for but more of what we really need.
I am very grateful and blessed in more ways then one. I love our apartments, carpet floors, aw I missed carpet floors and a nice gym which is epic, I've been working out a lot harder and it is Fantastic! Also another HUGE blessing is the Tampa Ward which I wish we could work more with but oh their are 8 of us missionaries who attend that ward so the other Elders Nelson and Shupe and Hermana's Snow and Graves get to work with the ward and they are so lucky. We work with them to but in a different way, we are not involved with less actives or recent converts since we are street contacting missionaries and yessum are area book process is ha ha not really existing since we just do what we do :) But anywho, the first time we went to the Ward building, it touched my heart deeply because on the inside it is SUPER similar to the Cliffside 1st Ward which just warmed my heart because it was like a piece of home for me and I was really surprised by it and had so many random childhood memories and thinking back to what the building was like growing up and wow, it really had an impact on me and I was grateful. It felt like home which meant a lot because I really miss home but it was sweet to have a piece of it here.
Oh and I wish you could all meet our Ward mission leader, Brother Lewis, good grief that man is ridiculously AWESOME, I look up to him so much, he is hilarious and on fire!!! I'm going to send a copy of the ward mission plan he came up with in correlation to the "To the Rescue" thing to mom and dad. He is amazing, he gets it and his testimony is booming. Our bishop is such a neat man and is a sweetheart, Bishop Addison, good grief, both of them and their love for their ward really impacted me.
And ah, testimony meeting, I cried with the first testimony who was this cute little boy who just recently got baptized and he talked about how he can feel the spirit and how some days he gets mad and feels the difference but knows that it's ok, that the spirit it still there and that he can say sorry and it's ok. He then bore his testimony that he know's the church is true and he started to cry as he said that we are all God's children and God loves us. And good grief, that got me, such a tender testimony at such a young age and I'm just grateful for families raising their kids right and I'm grateful for our family and bah! So good! Attending church that day was powerful for me, it was the closest I have felt to home on my mission thus far and really meant a lot. God is good and I'm so happy. Ahhh this email is getting way too long and I don't know if you'll all make it because it's so long, ha ha so here's my new address oh and when ever there are transfers feel free to send your letters to the mission office address because they'll get it to the new address's while ya'll wait for my new one :) Just letting ya'll know, not because it was hard this week just because I love letters, promise I'm doing great!
So here's the address...
502 S. Fremont Dr. #420, Tampa, FL 33606
I know this is really long, so I'll try to wrap it up but last night we met a lot of cool people on campus, Rakisha and her two kids, Sosonia and Alyia (cool right?), and we met a girl from India, Sonam and met a guy from Shrilanka, Rashawn, and met a guy named Wayne Magee, ha ha this cool Black guy who apparently has Irish and native american in his ancestry, super cool.
So yes, missionary work has been adjusted to something else and I'm learning how to have 1 minutes/5 minute lessons which is great because I prayed to teach more simply and more simplified. Again Heavenly Father answers prayers in very un-expecting ways. So yes, we're coming up with creative ways to contact, we'll be riding the bus to talk with people, possibly side walk chalk of the plan of salvation like they did in London was it? or New York? Can't remember and yeah, we're going to try to set up a table at the University for different events. Yessum lots of creativity going on, woot to the woot!
Ok, I'll stop writing but I love you all so much and my heart if full and don't forget to have the courage to just ask the Lord. He wants us to ASK and He WILL give! I love you all so much and am truly grateful and I'll try to remember to give more cool details on some of the people we met and what not!
LOVE YOU MORE THEN WORDS CAN EXPRESS or like a weird man singing to himself,
LOVE,
Sister Tasha C. Bush
P.S. to give you comfort since we are in a city, we will be getting pepper spray, our mission President is going to be getting pepper spray for all of us Sister's, yay! :D
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