Sister Marli MacLay: "I made it to Lubbock, I'm serving in the YSA Ward Texas Tech Campus".

Howdy!

I made it to Lubbock! Like I said a few days ago, I'm serving in the YSA ward with the Texas Tech campus. Mondays seem to be our busiest days so we asked President to change our p-day to Saturday! Even today though, we have 3 lessons and dinner with the mission president and his wife tonight. The work doesn't slow down! (well except maybe during Christmas break coming up lol)

This ward is amazing! They are completely missionary work focused. The members are always inviting their friends to activities and to meet with the missionaries. They call this the "celestial ward." I'm so dang excited to be serving here. I haven't even had my first Sunday!

So I got here Tuesday. I only cried a little leaving Sister Lloyd and Horner lol. That night I felt so lost without Sister Lloyd. Shout-out to her and Sister Horner. She's my bestie and Sis Horner is my favorite daughter.

After we dropped our stuff off at home, we ran to institute. There was so many people! Like 15, which is as much as came to sacrament in Brady!

I got to meet Yoko who was baptized when she was young in Japan but doesn't really remember anything. We had an awesome lesson with her this morning on the gospel of Jesus Christ. She is amazing and I'm so glad there are Asians in Lubbock because I have missed them. <3

Wednesday we met with all of the missionaries serving in our ward. There are 8 of us, including a senior couple and the assistants to the president! They just added two new sisters to the ward who are currently living with us until they find an apartment for them. We got to have an awesome corellation and talk about how we can work together.

Thursday was Thanksgiving! We went over to the bishop's house and helped them make dinner. It was awesome because we also had a few returning members and some people we are teaching come! And the food was bomb too. I miss my grandmas Pecan pie though. Nobody else's compares.

On our way home we were driving on the freeway and saw a ginormous line for Best Buy. We skeeeerted off the freeway and decided to go contacting in line. They're all stuck in line so they can't run away muahah. And it was almost all YSA there. We met a few great people!

We had a pie palooza at the institute later where everyone just brought their leftover pie. Before it, Sister Kitterman and I decided to go out to campus and invite people to come. Campus was pretty dead because of the holiday, but we felt prompted to walk down this main road and saw a guy standing on a statue, acting like the statue. So we went and talked to him. Immediately he said, "I knew you were coming. God told me." he was a character y'all. He told us how he was psychic, he was running for president, etc. We invited him to our pie palooza and walked to it with him. The pie palooza was a huge success! We had so many non members come and we had 3 lessons going on at once! I got to teach George with the AP Elder Bishop after all the other sisters left the table lol....but it was super great! He turned out to be 37 so we referred him to non-ysa missionaries. Haha. The assistants sent us the pictured attached below later that night.

This morning we also got to hang christmas lights in trees at the church/temple! Elder Bishop loves climbing trees and managed to shimmy up one like Mulan. Background on Elder Bishop: he is from Mississippi and it's obvious and he is a marine. It's so weird serving around other missionaries. Going from being hours away from them in past branches to serving with 6 others in a ward is crazy.

So yeah um Lubbock is amazing. I'm so so stoked to be here. I do miss my Brady family dearly though. And being a Sister Training Leader is awesome! We are over 10 sisters and so we will have an exchange every week! I love them all so much already <3

With all my love from Texas,

Sister Marli MacLay