Sister Gale in the Greece Region of the Adriatic South Mission

An eternity to prepare for my mission, an eternity to reflect, but only 18 months to live it. I can't even try to express in words what my mission means because it's everything to me. I've come to learn so much more the reality of God's love, the enabling joy the Atonement of Jesus Christ has as we utilize it in our everyday lives, the power of the Book of Mormon, and SO MUCH MORE. I am so grateful he trusts me enough to still allow me to be serving him at this special time. Over 30,000 missionaries have been sent home because of COVID-19. I am lucky enough to stay. It has not been easy but why should it be? It's the Lord's work, there is always opposition, but he is on our side and the work will prevail.  All the teary goodbyes were rough but I couldn't have imagined a better final week in Thessaloniki. It has definitely become my 2nd home as I've spent more than half of my time in the field here! I don't like to think of myself as much of a cryer b...

Man we are just a cop magnet! 6 of our elders were helping us clean out our old apartment when the landlord living below us called the cops! Best way go describe him is a psycho super hairy santa clause gone wrong. Yeah that's a pretty accurate description. He accused us of all living in the apartment even tho there were only suppose to be 2 people according to the contract. The cops asked if we were living with our boyfriends, motioning to 2 of the elders standing on our balcony still upstairs. Ha. Not. Also thought we were partying. I mean hey, they can go ahead and look what we got hiding up there and will find the 72 liters of waters we have to have for emergencies. Quite the party right?! We all laughed because everything we were being accused of was just wild from what was actually going on. We explained the situation and the cops were confused why they were even called. They explained to our landlord yet again that of course the girls would ask their friends for help to...

I'M TRAINING SISTER KIDD! I was actually supposed to train her back in March but then the blessed Corona hit us. But she's finally here! She's my 3rd English companion now and we've hit it off, it's been a great time! :))) After a crazy Tuesday of trying to fly missionaries back and forth between Cyprus, I ended up having 2 new missionaries with me for a day since Sister Grant ended up not being allowed to fly to Cyprus. That same morning Sister Mathis' flight home to the states got canceled and it was just a bunch of craziness all in all. But President Anderson is a miracle worker and just doesn't give up on anything. As he put it, "I'm not too happy with the church travel agency and I'm pretty sure they're not so happy with me." In the end Prez worked his magic and everyone got where they needed to! I promised the 2 new sisters I had with me that this wasn't what normal missionary work is like haha, they just came at a really wi...

You'd think things might normalize out here a bit but this week was just as wild as ever! Ya never know what to expect!  Some here's some of the crazy stuff: • our front door key broke in the lock at 10:45 Tuesday night when we were trying to let Sister Reynoldson in because Sister Campbell was in the hospital and they wouldn't let Sis R stay. So sis R had to drive over and pick up the zone leaders who had some genius idea to hammer the spare key from the other side and pop the broken key out • 5 missionaries  in Albania were suppose to return home but their flights got canceled the day before and they are now detained indefinitely in the country. Already have an extra week in the mission field. Not sure what'd be going through my head if that happened to me • 3 new sisters from the UK were scheduled to arrive here Thursday  afternoon but they got deported by Germany... while all their luggage was kept in there too. Then Saturday they got flown through Sweden...

Elder   Uchtdorf reposted a video our mission made about how we've been doing missionary work since the quarantine on his personal instagram and facebook! We've got first hand apostle approval for the work going on here. That's pretty dang cool.  Everything country wise is back to normal now minus social distancing. Schools even started back up. We were out with our district walking around Μοναστηράκι on pday and some lady called us out saying we're gonna turn into America if we don't stand 2 meters apart since we were all standing together haha. We all kinda chuckled under our breath and nearly told her we were from the states, but then she might have actually freaked out, so we didn't.  Our Filipino members had us over for dinner Sunday night which was so enjoyable. I love the kinda, warm-hearted, friendly spirit they constantly have! Found out that one of the members, Cleo, had actually found and converted to the church in Hong Kong in 2000, just a fe...