January 19, 2015 Letter

SO THE BIG NEWS ARE YOU READY??? 

I have been transferred!!!!! I am so so so excited. It may not sound very cool, but you have no idea how cool it is. I got transferred from Barrio 2 to Barrio 8. Not a huge jump, but a very different part of Madrid and I´m so stoked to be here- what I´ve seen in my last 30 minutes here has been BEAUTIFUL. I´m going to be training a new missionary here, as well, so that´s pretty dang exciting. Her name is Hermana Judd and I´m actually half training her. She´s been out for one transfer and her first trainer is going home today, so I´ll be taking her spot as mommy number two for the next transfer. Training is two tranfers long, so I´ll be doing this half of it with Hermana Judd. OH MY GOSH SHE IS SOOO COOL. I´m so excited about this new transfer and what it will bring. She´s from Sandy, Utah and went to Waterford High School and then to BYU for a year. She said she knows Casey, which is super cool, and she is just such a sweetheart and her Spanish is seriously so good. I´m so excited. I can´t believe I´m training, I really can´t, but it´s going to be such a great opportunity to learn and grow and become more of the missionary that the Lord needs me to be. 

 I was praying ALL WEEK to just be happy about whatever transfers would bring. I really was hoping to get to go to the Islands or to the North, but when I found that I was going to Barrio 8, it was pretty incredible. I didn´t want to serve in the Barrios anymore! I really, really wanted to have a super cool, exotic area, but as soon as I heard where I was going, I just got this overwhelming feeling of excitment and happiness and peace. The Lord really did answer my prayer there. I know that this is where I need to be, with the companion and people that I need to be with. Gonna need to rely on the Lord A TON because I seriously don´t know what I´m doing (like, why the heck are they entrusting me with a new companion...) but I´m so excited to just get going! I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY. It´s the hardest and the very best time and I have a feeling this tranfers is just gonna be a great time for me. 

Leaving my area was such a heartbreaker. I LOVE Barrio 2 so much. The people there are just seriously incredible and I will never forget my time there. There are some members and investigators that I will always consider some of my closest, dearest friends. It´s such a special relationship to have with somebody- to be their missionary. Not something I was expecting in the mission at all, but something that I have really come to cherish. 

Something that I learned this week is the importance of focusing on other people and that successful missionaries really come in all shapes, sizes, and forms (same thing with successful people in general, I suppose).  I am finally realizing that I can be a good, successful missionary as well, being myself. By being Hermana Samantha Seegmiller, I can be an instrument in the hands of the Lord. He´s given all of us the formula to find that success (obedience), and as long as we do the very best to be as obedient as we can be, He will bless us to become the people and missionaries that He needs us to be. The other very important way to become the missionary that He needs me to be is by literally forgetting about myself. That doesn´t just mean forgetting about my desires and my distractions and everything else that doesn´t pertain to missionary work at all, but by forgetting about my inadequacies and my struggles and my fears and just putting all of it aside and by doing all that I can for other people. Because this work isn´t about me. It´s about the Lord and about His children, so I´m going to do the very best I can do exemplify that in the way that I work. This transfer is an opportunity for a fresh start and I am so excited to just do the very very very best I can and be the best I can be here. Oh I cannot express to you all how very truly excited and happy I am. 

So, funny story of the week (I will include pictures of this as well, don´t you worry). So, as you know, I chopped my hair at the end of my first transfer in the mission. I really liked it, but when it started growing out I realized that I really missed being able to do different things with my hair, so I made the decision to grow it out. So it grew and it grew and grew and grew and this transfer, I realized (with the helpful and not so subtle help of the Elders in my district) that I was rocking a pretty nasty mullet. Like, I´m talking buisness in the front and a very long and super sketchy party in the back. I knew I needed to cut it but I just kept putting it off because I never have time and because I was really embarrassed to go back to the haircutting place that I went to the first time and ask her to fix the lovely haircut that she gave me... 18 weeks ago (I know, I get embarrassed about really stupid things.) Finally, Elder Williams, who happens to know how to cut hair, basically told me that either he was cutting it or he was making me go somewhere to get it cut. Not in those exact words, but I got the idea that my hair was a lot worse than I was realizing. So, after eating lunch with the Bishop and his wife as a district on Friday, he borrowed her haircutting scissors and we all went out to a park near their house. He sat me down on a bench, I used a scarf to cover my neck, and as homeless people walked by and watched, he chopped my hair. WHY IS MY LIFE SO WEIRD. Here I am, sitting on what I am pretty sure doubles as a homeless woman´s bed during the night time, getting my mullet chopped in the freezing cold by an Elder who really actually has very little experience cutting hair. He actually did a pretty decent job, though. So, yeah, hair is doing better. The comments ranged from "Wow your hair actually looks decent" to "You better keep growing it out" to "You were way more sexy with long hair" (that was from my Hermana Irigoyen, who is both very blunt and doesn´t realize that sexy is sort of a weird word to use to describe people in English). So, yes. Priorites on the mission: 1) The Lord. 2) Other people 3) My hair (sort of a joke. But sort of not at the same time).