February!

Just and FYI, I (Casey's mom) got behind with all that has happened in our lives so please excuse the next two long posts.

February 2, 2015

SO. The big news is that I got transferred. I'm now serving in the city center of Birmingham!!! I freaking LOVE IT!!! It’s so amazing. We average about 20 lessons a week and my companion is amazing. His name is elder wiser and he is from pleasant view Utah. I have a feeling that we'll be together for the rest of my mission. I love it so much here. Everyone that we are teaching is right around our age so I feel like I can really connect with all of our investigators. It feels like I'm just hanging out with friends all day! I'm still in a bit of shell shock because I'm just not used to being this busy, but it is truly amazing. Having city center to GQ in is awesome. We could be there all day every day for the next two weeks and not meet the same person twice. It's a bit of culture shock as well living in a big city. I've never in my life lived in a place like this. It's so cool, although I still think Washington tops it ;) Today we're going over to one of our Chinese recent convert's house and she is teaching us how to make sushi! I am just on cloud nine. I feel kind of bad as well because I know how hard of a time Andy is going through right now and I don't want him to resent me for talking about how great my life is right now, so if you could keep this all of the down low for now that would be good. We have 4 sets of missionaries in this ward and an average of about 200 that make it out every Sunday. My companion is the district leader which make me the DLC (district leader companion.) The most sought after position in the mission. All of the perks of being a district leader without all the annoying things! haha I am really on cloud nine right now. It's been a long hard road to get to this point, but it looks like the last 10 weeks of my mission are going to be pretty flipping awesome. Elder Wiser and I have set some goals for this transfer, which are really going to stretch us, but I know we can do it.

This last week started really slow and ended at a pace that I've never before experienced. Tuesday I spent a lot of the day packing and got a few cards from the ward and a lot of really nice heart felt goodbyes. Wednesday was transfers and as soon as elder wiser and I had dropped off the luggage we headed out and had three lessons..... I know, three lessons, on transfer day. Since then it's been all GQing and teaching and giving people baptismal interviews. Something really funny happened while gqing as well haha we were talking to people outside the library and we saw this guy getting kicked out of the library by security, he came over to us and gave us a hug. haha he smelt really bad of alcohol and wasn't really making any sense, but he told that his name was Al and that he was a drunkard! I basically said that's cool I guess we all have our own callings in life or something to that effect. He took me by the arm and started marching down the street with me. He sees this really old couple and shouts at them “JUST MARRIED??" hahaha the old man laughed and asked him if he knew what the building just to the left of them was called. He shouted"PISSWATER!!" and walked away leaving them speechless. haha we madeit over near a statue and I asked him who the statue was of and he shouted at me " IT'S OBVIOUS!" I said well I don't know who it is! and he says, I'll give you a hint. and just started peeing in a drain.. haha I said pisswater? and he goes OF COURSE!!

I don't have much time right now mom, so I'll let you do the editing of all that. I love you guys so much and I'm, praying for Yulia and Andy right now!!

Love you guys!

Elder Sorensen

February 9, 2015

YES I am still loving. My new problem seems to be time effectiveness, planning so that we have enough time to get to appointments and accomplish everything that we needs to, but that's definitely not the worst problem to have. I'm planning on doing a video journal today with just a complete rundown of all the investigators we are working with. I can't believe that week 1 in Harbourne is already over.. so crazy. Time is moving so fast right now! can you believe it's 9 weeks until i come home!! that's insane. On Monday we had a pretty chillaxed day. just roamed around the bullring with the zone leaders after planning. Our zone leaders are Elder Unice and Elder Kerr and they are flipping amazing. I love them so much. I'll try to send you a picture with them. On Tuesday we taught 4 lessons and a recent convert lesson and then had missionary coordination. On Wednesday we taught 3 more lessons and went to institute with one of our investigators. that was quite fun. On Thursday We had zone meeting which was really really good. The sister training leaders gave some awesome training about specific accountability and specifically fallowing up with investigators who aren't receiving answers to their prayers. then the zone leaders gave an awesome training about priorities. we don't usually ever focus on t hings that are unimportant and not urgent, and we don't usually waste our time on things that are urgent and unimportant, we spend most of our time doing things that are urgent and important, but real effective use of your time comes when you can figure out how to accomplish those things which are not urgent, but very important. after zone meeting I went on exchange with Elder Higham. he is probably one of the best missionaries I've ever met. It's like his personality was tailored for missionary work. haha It might sound fake with how positive I'm being but this is all 100% legit from Elder Sorensen himself. I love my life right now. On Friday we exchanged back and taught 3 more lessons. and did a bit of weekly planning. Saturday we had sports morning and elder wiser had to do 3 baptismal interviews. that night I had probably the dodgiest dinner I've ever had hahahaha It's a long story but I'll tell you about it when i get back. Got to save the best ones for later;) On Sunday we had all three of our appointments fall through so we finished weekly planning. that's about it! I'll try to take some pictures this week and send them to you! Love you guys!!!! Elder Sorensen