Mitzi Gates: Sister Mitzi Gates // Week Three

It's been great! I love Nashville. I'm actually serving in Hendersonville. It's a good place. a lot of the families out here are broken, and i have never had such a strong testimony of families in my life. I have never appreciated my family more than now. I LOVE YOU ALL!! But the plane ride was good, we stayed then night at the mission home and had dinner and a testimony meeting. Woke up and we had a big meeting with everyone. Then we opened up a letter kind of like a mission call and we read it in front of everyone of where we would be serving and with who. My companion is Sister Cotton. Cute girl from DC. She has been out 3 months. We are white washing. that means they put us in an area where they took out the elders and we start from scratch. They have never had sisters in this area ever before. So it's a big deal. But it's so hard to white wash because we start from nothing. we have been going around and visiting the ward members, and investigators and everyone we can. It's hard. the wards are like 6 by 8 miles. CRAZY! I miss how everyone is Mormon and our ward is like on one road. haha but it keeps us busy. A LOT of inactive families. But the ward members feed us dinner every night. so thats nice! it gets dark at like 4:30 so that makes the evening long. Its hard work. I haven't broke down crying, but i for sure tear up a lot... i miss my family more than anything. I feel like i'm getting no where but we are. This sunday we already had 2 investigators come to church with us and thats a big deal! the ward doesn't know how to act with sisters so it's a little hard right now. but they are so into missionary work! it's amazing!!!! it's great really. we had dinner with a recent convert who went through the temple last month and we were talking and she just farted and we were like what the heck? and she was like well i'm an old lady and a southern bell, so whoops! We started to laugh! welcome to the south!! we get a lot a lot of doors slammed in our faces. so many people preach to us about their gospel and we just have to take it. This tuesday were going to a bible study class with one of our investigators so that should be interesting. It's getting cold. I wear as many layers as I can. we have a full time car but we still go tracking. It's hard work. But i just want everyone to know what true happiness is. it's good because we can build off of their faith of Jesus Christ, but some are so stuck in their ways. I love this work and wouldn't want to be any where else. But it's dang hard and very frustrating. this week was really hard. but I have never prayed so much in my life we pray over EVERYTHING!! it's really crazy. But i love you all so much. Thanks for the support and keep the prayers up, each one is needed!! LOVE YOU!!

Sister, Gates!