Sister Marli MacLay: Transfer to Brady . . . ."I'm here in the heart of Texas"!

Heyyyyyy y'all! I'm here in the heart of Texas!

I got to say a few goodbyes in Childress. The hardest was Danna, Jaide, and Vella and her girls. Vella was crying when I told her I was leaving, and told me how she was a tough cookie that lots of missionaries tried to get back to church, but they couldn't break her. She said sister Eggett and I were tough cookies too, and we didn't just break her, we crumbled her (which she said was a good thing lol). She told me that there were some tough cookies in Brady I needed to break and that they were lucky to have me. I feel like if there's only one reason I was in Childress, it was for Vella, Lamia, and K'Dreonia. OH ALSO MIRACLE- Vella had a huge non-cancerous tumor on her neck that was acting up and swelling so much she couldn't speak. She still came to church my last Sunday there and stayed all 3 hours! Then she rushed out at the end of church and went to the hospital to have emergency surgery. She got her tumor removed and she had no pain during even though they couldn't numb her, and no pain after with no medication. We got her a preisthood blessing that night too. When we went to say goodbye to her, she was a completely different person! She was so bright and full of life and happy! She legit had sister Eggett and I dying from laughing so hard. She said she is back at church to stay. I love her and her girls so much! They have definitely changed my life. I've got pics this week too!

So last Tuesday we took the 2 hour drive to Amarillo, and there I left my companion and got on a transfer van with 15 other missionaries. We then drove 2 hours to Lubbock where I met my new companion, Sister Lloyd, and then got into another transfer vehicle. We drove 3 hours to Abilene, and then there we got our car and drove 2 more hours to Brady. Good times.

I love it here in Brady. It's about the same size as Childress, but the branch has only about 20 people. The chapel is teeny and the church building is basically a double wide trailer with a steeple stacked on top haha. I'll attach pics.

My companion and I were asked to speak yesterday. It seems like we will be speaking about every other week. I also manned the piano and an 8 year old led the music haha. There's slim pickins. There's 0 youth and only a couple of children.

Also, Brady's water gives you cancer if you drink it and a toooon of people here do meth.

Pretty much everyone out here works for the oil or sand companies. And the sand company sells its sand to the oil companies lol.

All we have really done since we've been here is try to contact investigators and potentials. We have had little success. People don't like to open up their doors for us lol. We had bike day Thursday and it got up to 108. And it was nice and humid, plus Brady has plenty of hills. We were outside biking from 12pm-7pm. We ran out of water pretty quick haha.

Saturday we had a Pioneer day thing with the branch. We got to meet everyone and I mostly hung out with Burt, who is the dad of a member. He has alzhemiers/dementia and was telling me the whole time about how he's the man who went to the moon. He jumped there and it took 1 million years, so then he built a machine to help him get there faster. He owns a house on the moon. And in case you were wondering, there are both aliens and lemonade up there. I have a video of him i'll see if I can attach haha.

We also got to serve at a cancer benefit which was awesome. Plus we got a free brisket dinner with it.

The other day we met two of our investigators, Daniella and Flor, at a park for Daniella's 12th birthday. They had a bunch of family there and we were the only white people haha. They let us hit the pinata. Lol. We got goodie bags too.

So many good and funny things have happened this week, but I'll leave it at that!

I hope all y'all have an amazing week!

Sister MacLay