I transferred a lot on my mission. Like, A LOT. Sister Howard, the
girl who trained me, was in a total of two areas for the duration of her
18-month mission. I had something like seven? I think? It's a little
hard to remember now. But I had more than a lot of elders, who were
there six months longer! I was known as the Transfer Queen. It became
something of a joke, with the elders occasionally teasing me, "What did
you do wrong this time that they had to move you again?"
One elder, my zone leader who would go on to be Assistant to the Mission President (and many years later also become something of a YouTube star!) once put it very nicely in a talk-tape I was making for my parents. He grabbed my little recorder and said, "Bentley-shimai is transferring again! I guess everyone needs some of her love!"
Recently it's felt a little like that again. I was in the Young Women's presidency and that was great. Then they moved me to the Relief Society presidency and that was also great. Then they told me they were releasing our president (she had a lot of family out of town that needed her help). For whatever reason it took about a month for that to happen, and then the new RS President also called me to be her 1st counselor. So that was great. And then before two weeks were up, I got called by the stake people (a stake is a collection of congregations, so kind of a level up as far as church management goes) and they're putting me in the stake RS presidency.
I never manage to do anything the normal way!
But truth be told, I am honestly excited about this new calling. The new Stake RS President is my best friend's mother, so I'll be working with her a lot and she must be great, since she raised my awesome best friend! And I'll have the chance to get to know a lot more of the members in the area, which I'm pretty sure I'll love.
I have absolutely LOVED Charlottesville, but occasionally it has frustrated me because there are five congregations in this little town, but everyone in my congregation lives 30 minutes south of town. So I know there are lots of members close to me, I just don't actually know who any of them are! Hopefully this will give me a chance to remedy that!
But I did feel really bad for my ward's newest RS president when I had to inform her that she would need to look for someone to replace me. After just two weeks. Sorry, Ann!!