emailed on August 29, 2022
Hi everyone!
What an absolutely crazy week!! As the title suggests, I am in Alabama now still in the Georgia Atlanta mission ?. I’m in the lovely area of Phenix City 3! This wasn’t an area before Wednesday, so we are whutewashing/opening the area. It’s the second time I’m whitewashing into an area, so that’s fun. It is nice because we are splitting Phenix City 1 on half, so we don’t have to start from complete scratch, but it is still mad chaos lol.
Monday, we had a last district P-Day with the Stilesboro district. We played chair soccer, so that was fun. The rest of PDay was pretty much used for packing though haha.
Tuesday was so crazy! We definitely overbooked ourselves trying to say goodbye to all of our friends and members, so we said goodbye to as many as we could, but ended up having to call the rest.
Wednesday morning was hectic. We had to be out of the apartment by 8:45 so we could make it to a lesson with one of our friends. Let me tell you, it was one of the best lessons that I’ve ever been in so far on the mission! It was actually such a fire lesson!! The spirit was strong, and our friend asked good questions and overall was just fantastic. Immediately after the lesson, we went straight to Peachtree city for transfers!!! That is where I found out I was going to Phenix City! That night, we went out and we found two friends who we have another lesson with on Wednesday. Hopefully, that goes well! It already seems like the people here are a lot more receptive to learning more, so I am excited to see what Elder Jensen and I can do this next transfer!!
Thursday, we didn’t have an areabook in the morning because the system took forever to get us in. We ended up going out for a bit after we got our studies done. Alabama heat hits different though, it is a lot more humid ?. Probably because we are right next to the Chattahoochee, but I feel like it’s fine. Not sure if I mentioned that I am in a 4 Elder apartment now too, so we are also rooming with Elder West and Elder Chapman. We did get our areabook by Thursday evening, so we planned for the rest of the night.
Friday, honestly…I don’t remember what happened ?. I think we were on the page, so we did a bunch of Facebook work, so that was fun. I’m sure we probably went our to explore our new area a bit more haha.
Saturday, we went to a baptism for Sister Lowery who is in the other Phenix City area, and it was a super spirit felt baptism :). It is always a sweet experience being able to go to peeps baptisms :). Then we had studies and went out to find more people. (our areabook is pretty much empty, so we are prolly going to stay on the Finding for a while ??)
Sunday was actually super cool. We got to go to Fort Benning, which is the military base in Columbus. There is a branch there where there are a bunch of soldiers in basic training who get to go to church. The first hour, those who aren’t members get to go to rooms where a bunch of missionaries (us) get to go and teach them! Elder Jensen and I got to teach Lesson 2, so that was super cool! There were 14 privates who now know what the Atonement of Jesus Christ is 🙂 love it!! That was super cool! After that, we went to the Phenix City building and made it for the last 20 mins of Second Hour. As I am no longer District Monkey (comp to District Leader) we actually had time to find, so we hit the streets and explored the area some more, which was good :).
And that leaves us to today where we cleaned a bit and are now at the Columbus building, which is low key weird because I haven’t been here for 6 months. But, there are a lot of missionaries here, so that’s cool ?.
Spiritual thought today is that Jesus Christ’s Atonement is the plan. Not the back up plan in case we mess up, but the plan so when we mess up, we can repent. It is infinite, and there is great power that comes from it. Don’t be afraid to repent because it might seem scary. We are all going to mess up, but in the end, turning to the Savior and using His Atonement will Always be the right and best thing to do. Something we got to teach the soldiers was that even though the times that are not easy, because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, He knows exactly how to help you, and as you pray, you can be confident that whatever you are going through is going to ultimately be for your gain in the end. I am grateful to be able to teach these restored truths and I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
I love you all!! Hope y’all have a great week!!
-Elder Claussen
