Alligator--Tastes Like Chicken

I completely forgot to mention last week that I ate alligator! The Langdons fed it to us the night before Sister Winsor left. It was pretty good, they'd fried it and we put lemon juice on it. It was a little chewy but tasted a lot like chicken. Also, Sister Bell and I saw an alligator while we were walking around this subdivision on Friday. So I've now eaten alligator and seen an alligator. 

My new trainee is here and she's awesome! Her name is Sister Bell, she's 19, she joined the church when she was 12, and she's from Las Vegas. We've been working really hard and getting along well, so it's been a great few days, although there have been plenty of interesting challenges as well. 

Sister Bell and I both feel that something we need to work on this transfer is covering more of our area. We have a huge area and not a lot of car miles so it's a little hard to get to some of the far reaches, but we really feel like we need to make that a priority, especially since there are a lot of referrals that haven't been contacted who live out in those areas. We hope to be doing a lot of exploring this transfer.So we've been doing everything we can to make sure that we'll be able to get out to those areas. Sister Bell is still adjusting to the humidity. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. So, on Tuesday this week Sister Winsor and I went up to Irmo for transfers. I think I was about as nervous about training as I was when I first got off the airplane in South Carolina. I did not feel ready at all. All the trainers had lunch with the trainees and then we randomly paired off and went out tracting in a nearby neighborhood. I ended up with a really sweet sister, Sister Burbank, from Logan, Utah. We tracted for about an hour and a half, and we didn't have that much success but I think we both felt a lot better afterward. It wasn't nearly as scary as I expected it would be, to be the "experienced" one. Although I was still really nervous the next day during the actual transfer meeting. But things have gone very well with Sister Bell. We're still getting used to each other, how we do things and personalities, not to mention my driving is a little rusty, but overall we're doing really well. 

Our biggest problem the past few days has been our GPS, Nigel. He's decided to stop working and stop charging in the car. So we've been having to navigate without him lately.  But it all worked out fairly easily and we never really got lost, so I think we're going to be all right, even if Nigel keeps dying on us.

Stake Conference was this weekend, and it was wonderful. We got to go down to Charleston, which is where the stake center is, so was a lot of fun, although we weren't in the downtown area. Still, it was further south than I'd ever been before. After the Sunday session, Sister Morris, the member we were riding with, took us across the big bridge that connects Charleston and Mt. Pleasant, and we got to see the battleship in the harbor. 

We've been able to have several good lessons with less active members lately, most of them assignments from the bishop. Some of these people we'd been trying to get in contact with for weeks, but we've finally caught some of them at home. We had an awesome lesson with one sister.  We were able to get a member to come with us and it really helped. 

I'm really excited to have Sister Bell here. She's definitely got a lot of determination and desire to teach, so I know she'll be willing to work hard, and I'm sure we'll be successful. I love hearing about everything that's going on at home, it sounds like it's been a good few weeks. I love you all, and I love being a missionary!