That awkward moment when you're a Sister Training Leader and you don't even know it until the transfer is halfway over....

Greetings everyone! Ashlee the missionary here.

Alright first off, I stayed awake for all 5 sessions of conference and even took fantastic notes. Never thought that would happen on my mission; actually I never thought that would happen in my whole life so that's good!

Secondly, yes I am a Sister Training Leader and it wasn't a fluke. If you don't know what a STL is, that's probably because it's really new. They were created with the age change because so many sisters started coming in. A STL is the female equivalent to a Zone Leader. Sister Magleby was a STL last transfer and now we are companion STL's. We are over 4 companionships of sisters and go on splits with them once a transfer. When we go on splits, we make sure they are doing okay, being obedient, etc. We help them with planning and strengthening their areas.

Yes WE are supposed to be helping THEM.

I am a greenie STL.

RANDOM.

What's awesome though is that it's not random. Heavenly Father needs me to be a STL right now. I have NO IDEA why or WHAT THE HECK he is thinking. I feel so inadequate it's not even funny. I'm seriously still a new missionary and I feel like I have absolutely no clue what I am doing. I'm already just completely going on faith for myself and my investigators and less actives and now I have to worry about 4 companionships. Yup. Dad wrote me a letter about how they can't fire me and not to stress about how many rules there are. Just to do my best. But what I am so stressed about is how many people I have to help. I feel like there is no way that I can do everything that my trainer and my mission president have said I needed to do. My best is not good enough.

The amazing part of this whole thing though is that my best doesn't have to be good enough because of the Grace of God. Did you fools watch conference? Because that's what President Uchdtorf talked about. And it's so true. I know that my best won't be good enough, but once I have done everything that I can possibly do Heavenly Father will take care of the rest.

So here are my mixed emotions about the situation:

-I have gained new confidence because Heavenly Father sees a lot of awesome potential in me.

-I'm totally stressed out because I have to worry about everyone and their dog.

-I feel so terribly inadequate and quite frankly scared because I have never had to rely this much on Heavenly Father in my life.

...But my testimony is growing at an exponential rate. I'm just totally livin' on 110% faith. It's flipping scary as heck and totally awesome.

So speaking of conference! First of all I'm incredibly worried about President Monson. He didn't look too good. Secondly, here are my take-a-ways:

1. Family is everything and ESSENTIAL to God's perfect plan. They talked about this a lot. Which is incredibly awkward as a new missionary. Marriage??? Babies??? Ummm....wut.

2. Helaman 5:12 is still my favorite scripture of all time. Has been since freshman year of seminary. It was mentioned in conference a lot. Even if they didn't talk about that scripture specifically a ton (it was mentioned once or twice) they talked a lot about building our foundation on Christ. So that's important. Oh and Dad told me that in his letter too. So yup.

3. LIVE WHAT YOU BELIEVE. Enough said!

So I would like all of you to tell me what your favorite talk was and how you are going to apply it. Elder Nelson said something about conference is great, but it doesn't really mean anything unless we allow it to change us. So if you could all tell me what your favorite talk is and how it's going to help you I WOULD LOVE THAT! It will really strengthen my testimony :). Also I feel like Elder Nelson's talk was really for our family so you should watch it again together as a family :)

My "favorite" (I got a lot out of all of them!) talk was Gerald Casse's. Something that he said that I really loved was "The gospel is a fountain of knowledge that never runs dry." We need to keep rediscovering the gospel and stay anchored on the simple truths of it. I loved how he finished with "I Stand All Amazed." When I read the scriptures and testify to people I teach I want to really think about- am I truly astonished?

One last experience I had- We almost didn't have an Easter dinner. Since it's General Conference, the meal calendar didn't get passed around in church. So we were planning on having oatmeal. Yup. But then we decided to visit a whole bunch of less actives to share the #becausehelives video with them. The sweet Tamulones family fed us. It was seriously the biggest miracle ever! There were like 30 nonmembers there! AND THE FOOD WAS GOOD. But hopefully we will get to teach them!

Well that's all the time I have this week! I LOVE YOU FAMILY. It looks like you had an amazing Easter! Miss you and hope to hear from you soon!

Love, 

Ashlee