Sister Gale in the Greece Region of the Adriatic South Mission

Long story short I'm now in Athens. All the Thessaloniki missionaries got emergency transferred Tuesday morning because we got put on a national lockdown and President Anderson didn't wants us 5 missionaries to be stranded in Northern Greece without a way to get out because everything was still up in the air of whether or not we'd all be getting sent home. I had been mentally preparing myself for a call telling us we'd be going home, but even a call telling us we needed to get outta Thess asap, I don't think I was actually ready for. Gosh that one hurt. I never thought it'd be so hard to leave my area. I love these members. And it's breaking my heart not knowing when I'll see em again. I was talking to the Tantos and started crying when I was telling them we'd all be leaving. And blessed Sister Manuela and President Tanto were just comforting me telling me I should be proud of what I have done and I shouldn't be sad. That I've loved the p...

Not much too new on my side of the world. We're still quarantined so I'm not sure how exciting it can get.  Quote of the week from the one and only Jhoe! "Much better always pray to god every time. This is the secret weapon to protect the virus always pray to god." He's pretty sad missionaries in the Philippines are being sent home and hopes it will be a quick temporary thing so he can meet the elders helping to teach him! I sure hope he can too! I'm really grateful he is so interested in learning literally all the time! Basically every night we are in some sorta spiritual discussion and I enjoy helping him recognize truth. He tries to read the book of Mormon 30 mins a day now, how amazing?! Well we've been moving into our new apartment! It's the senior couples old apartment and super nice. We're blessed. On Tuesday I was on the phone outside and then Sister Ahlström popped her head out the window and said very sternly, "Sister Gale I n...

What a time to be alive people. Especially being a missionary during it all! It's been a wild 7 days let's just say. Anything but normal. A lot of people don't wanna meet with us at the beginning of the week since they think we're gonna infect them. We got all stocked up on 2 whole weeks of food ASAP from President's orders and we're trying to pretend like we aren't being affected at all even tho a huge weight just got put on our shoulders because all the senior missionaries got sent home. We've got huge shoes to fill in place of our senior couples, they do so much. When I 1st heard the news I kinda started to worry how we would be able to do it all with just our young missionaries, but then remembered how we did it when I was trained here nearly a year ago, we can do it again. Peace was also brought to my mind recalling the words of our Prophet and church leaders calling for the greatest generation of missionaries they have ever seen. The Lord has entru...

Καθαρή Δευτέρα (clean Monday)... another random holiday in Greece. All the shops were closed up and instead people were out flying kites! Kinda random right? Well it represents 1) the resurrection of Jesus Christ and 2) in hope that our prayers are reaching to the heavens. It always seems like there's some deeper meaning to these celebrations and it's pretty cool. Talk about findinggg because that's literally all we did all week long. Tuesday was actually bearable tho because the zone leaders came up to Thess for exchanges and we had all us 8 missionaries together for a Book of Mormon/ whiteboard activity   along the sea. That was fun. Plus mother nature flipped a switch and we hit the low 70s... wowza is that a blessing because I was about done with the cooler weather. Anyways, we were out talking to people from the end of district council at 2:30 till the end the day so we talked to a ton of people. Youssef joined us and honestly I wish he could get baptized right n...

Exchanges week! So basically we weren't in our area all this week which was kinda weird and instead we were in Athens with the rest of the Greek sisters. The flight down on Tuesday afternoon we had a really cool experience! We were seated next to this really nice guy we told us he had actually met missionaries exactly 10 years ago that day in the exact same situation on an airplane and he had accepted the Book of Mormon they gave him. He thought that was pretty cool and quite the coincidence. He hadn't done anything with Book of Mormon though so we told him he better open it up since it seems like God is trying to tell him something if he's meeting missionaries for the 2nd time. We ended up having a really good discussion about the Atonement and what that means for us and what of an expression of love that is. He was polite and liked what we were doing, contributed to the conversation, but was very reluctant to giving us any contact information which was sad. He told us if ...