My last few days in the MTC were really good. I had learned so much and had some really cool experiences teaching and learning. We left at 2:30 on Wednesday morning and got into Des Moines, Iowa just after noon that day. Everyone, including myself, was dead tired. President and Sister Jensen and the assistants picked us up from the airport and took us to the mission home. There we had some training, interviews with President Jensen, a testimony meeting, and of course a delicious dinner. President and Sister Jensen are awesome! They are so nice and just willing to help us missionaries so much. T
he next morning we went to Iowa City for transfer meetings and I met my trainer, Sister Ramsey! She is from Brea, California originally but had moved to Utah in high school. She is just great and super nice. We get along well and she has taught me so much already. Her favorite food is doughnuts. So naturally we get along.
In transfer meeting I also found out what area I would be serving. We are in Kirksville, Missouri. Try and find that on map without using Google! Kirksville is a small town of only 17,000 people here in northern Missouri. It is three hours from Iowa City, Des Moines, St. Louis, and Kansas City. There is not another sister missionary for 200 miles! Ya we are kind of in the middle of nowhere. But we do have a Walmart, multiple grocery stores, and some okay food. We ate at a Mexican place after district meeting on Saturday and they served ground beef tacos. Yum, my favorite. Also, there are two small universities here, Truman State University and AT Still which is a medical and dental school. It'll be good when school starts again because there will be more people around to talk to. But there are a lot of farms out here, mostly growing corn, soy beans, and hay. On our way from Des Moines to Iowa city I fell asleep to corn outside my window. Two hours when I woke up there was still corn going by. So it is true, there is corn everywhere, even here in Missouri. It is really warm and humid here and it threatens to rain almost everyday. It reminds me of Hawaii weather a bit and I don't mind it. Sister Ramsey and I have a car but share it with the other missionaries, so maybe I will mind it when we have to walk everywhere for a week. There are two wards here in Kirksville and five sets of missionaries! Yup, five. There are three in our ward. Us and two elders cover Kirksville, and another set covers two outlying towns that are in our ward, Edina and Memphis.
The people here in Kirksville are so great and sweet. They are just good country folk who like to tell it how it is. I have sat in more lazy boy recliners in the past four days than I would have in a year back in San Diego.
Yesterday we had church and some great testimonies were given. We had an investigator at church, Barb, who we had also taught on Saturday about the Book of Mormon. She is so sweet and great. We have a date set for her to be baptized, October 4th, so hopefully we can keep working with her so we can reach that goal.
I am just so happy here in Missouri (kind of ironic if you enjoy word play), but I really do love it! I have learned so much here already and can't wait to meet more people.Read the Book of Mormon! I love it and my testimony of it has grown so much out here as I have turned to it for answers and help. I've seen what the gospel and Jesus Christ can do for people and my conviction in my message has only been strengthened here.
Love you all,
Sister Skaggs
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