Heyo!
No shortened version this week because I just finished the long version and I'm short on time (like every week)
This week has been a good one with Sister Ellis! She was in my last district before I came here, so we were already pals. I'm glad we get to work together now because I always wanted to be closer to her and never got the chance to until now!
Okay, so quick update: our friend Chuck didn't get baptized last week like I said he would, but it's more our fault (and Satan's) than his, so he's totally getting baptized still! Scheduling conflicts kept coming up until we realized there was finally no possible way to keep his baptism on that day. We're now planning on having it in early October and we're super excited!
I also realized I never even gave an update when I got here about people we're teaching, so here's a quick one about my three favorites:
VANESSA: a cute 10 year old girl
BERNIE: the funniest old man ever. We text him in all caps because that's how he texts us
COLLEEN: a cute lady who a member met and felt prompted to hand a Bible to. We're passing her over to the Crittenden sisters soon, but she's cute and loves talking to us because were her "Jesus pep talk" of the week.
We filmed a series called "Curious" for he Facebook page this week, and it was like professional and everything! The Zone Leaders put together their skills and got a professional camera from a member and a zoom mic that belongs to Elder Chidester, so we had good camera skills as well as good sound! Because it was after transfers and Sister Odom had to travel a long way (with permission) to still be in it, we just sectioned off a good seven hour filming day and did it all at once. We had a nice group of people all with very important jobs:
Elder Williams: Director and camera man
Elder Chidester: Director and a guy named Ammon
Sister Odom: A girl named Danny
Sister Olsen: One of the Missionaries
Me: The other missionary
Sister Cox (Sister Olsen's companion): Boom mic holder and someone who has a phone call with Sister Odom in one scene. She had the coolest Boom Mic ever because they took Elder chidester's zoom mic and it on a microphone stand that was unscrewed from the bottom so she could just hold it like an actual Boom Mic.
Sister Ellis and Sister Stumpf (Sister Odom and my companions who joined along because transfers had already happened so President gave us permission for Sister Odom to come back and film): "Makeup", though there was no makeup needed... But they also did a food run when we needed lunch halfway through the day!
Elder Bruce (the new Zone Leader): the "action" man. He held a square white board that was written on to look like those things that you hit together to yell "action!"
It was lots of fun and reminded me a lot of the community musicals my family does every year in Fillmore. But, better yet, it should turn into a really well done and funny series about a girl who takes the missionary lessons and learns what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints actually believes. We met this cute group of older ladies while we were filming because they were having their monthly high school get together near us. I got a chance to chat with them and they were super sweet and said they'd go check out the Facebook page in the area and keep their eyes open for when our videos start coming out! It might be the most unique missionary moment of my mission. I never thought I'd do missionary work by inviting people to watch a series I got to be a part of 
We had Mission Leadership Council this week and it was a blast! For the get-to-know-you portion we had to write our most embarrassing moment, so I shared the one I wrote about back at Christmas time about the time that I was at an event with a bunch of Missionaries and I said hi to my Zone Leader twice on accident and he joked about being glad that someone notices him and my automatic response was "Don't worry, I always notice you". That encounter still haunts me What made it worse was we all drew someone else's story from a hat to read and guess who it was, and of course the person who drew mine was Elder Chidester, who knew the story and could dramatize it for everyone. So, moral of the story is: be good at laughing at yourself because that makes life more fun!
After MLC we got to to talk to President and Sister Ensign (Sister Ensign is a big deal because she had surgery and has been unable to come to meeting in a really long time. So we're super excited to see her again) about an idea we had. Because we recently changed the way we count numbers at the end of the month in the zone, we wanted to hold a Specialized Training for our zone to teach the missionaries some skills that will help them. (Briefly put, a Specialized Training is like a mini Zone Conference!) We recently stopped counting the number of members visited and are now counting how many Member Finding Teams we have and how many member commitments are kept. (We keep these numbers so we can compare them month to month to see how the mission is doing and what we can do to help them) So our idea was to have a training on how to work with members in order to have a Member Finding Team, and then how to give commitments that are attainable and fit to the needs of the members. After explaining our whole idea and how long we wanted it to be, president admitted he wasn't 100% for the idea (though Sister Ensign was), BUT he said he trusted us to know the needs of our zone better than he does. So, he ultimately gave us the go ahead and it was a really tender moment that made me feel really good that he's willing to put so much trust in us 
Our last crazy story of the week was Friday. Just, Friday in general. That was the day of MLC, but a while after it we got a text asking if I would give the spiritual though in District Council...and we were completely confused. Wednesday hadn't worked for District Council and we suddenly realized we'd never planned another day. But actually they had and we just didn't see the message! Luckily we had plans that could be shuffled around and we were able to go to District Council that evening! Poor Elder Lister, that's what happens when your district is just straight Zone Leadership. Everyone's schedule is whack. But our schedule lately has actually been a lot calmer, so that's been a relief for me. I can't imagine training a new Sister Training Leader if things were as crazy as when I first got here.
Well, that was my week! My spiritual thought of the week will be when our "Gospel Lab" video comes out. That's another series Elder Williams made on the Facebook page full of fun simple science experiments that relate to the gospel. It went really well and went on for two seasons, but they wanted to come up with something better, which is where the idea for "Curious" came from. So Sister Ellis and I are making the series finale for Gospel Lab and I'll share it to my page when it comes out!
Have a great week! Love you!
Sister Bliss
PICTURES:
*A Facebook post I made using a broken bench outside our apartment. That poor bench wasn't broken just a couple of weeks ago! We once had a meeting with the Zone Leaders in which two of them sat on the sides and one just stood so they could let us have the unbroken side.
*Some crazy stuff happened while filming "Curious". Like, climbing a tree to see if we could get better sound with the boom mic. Spoiler: it didn't work
*The group of sisters that met for transfers. We used to all meet at one church building for transfers, but ever since COVID-19 hit we haven't been able to all meet at once. (Top row left to right: Sister Stumpf, Sister Lambourne, and me Bottom row: Sister Odom, Sister Guthrie, Sister Buxton, and Sister Ellis)
*Sister Odom and I being goofs
*Our group photo at MLC
*Pictures in front of the Cincy skyline 
One is of me and Sister Ellis. And the one of just me may look like I'm just really happy, but in reality I was actually just dying because of the sun.
