Week 69

Hello to everyone! I will be very brief today! 

I went to the temple this morning and had a blast! I went with four other people. Two sisters that go home with me, one that goes home a transfer after us and a lovely member of the ward! 

Oh yeah! I should probably explain what happened a few days ago! We got a call from president Riggs tells us that we needed to meet at the mission office at an ungodly hour of the morning. There was a sister that's been having some health issues and needed to go home immediately. Her companion was going to be our new companion and we would be covering two wards. 

Sister donato and I packed up all of our stuff, and we moved into another apartment that was bigger so that we could have more room. And so basically we've had an insane past few days trying to move stuff and figure things out since we will be covering the two wards! Ha ha so it's been quite the adventure, but it's been a wonderful adventure! My new companion is named sister archibald and she is legit! She's from Utah and has been out for about six months. We've been having a blast and she's been in many musicals as well, so we have several musical performances lined up for the next five weeks. 

There's my life in a nutshell. Have a good week! 

 

 

Week 68

 

Nothing much to share, except a few funny things people have said as well as other things that happened:

1) I was driving and out of nowhere sister Donato says, "WHY DO I HAVE CHOCOLATE IN MY MUSTACHE?!?!"

2) we invited an investigator to get ice cream with us for a ward activity at a members house, somehow we forgot to tell her that it was at someone's house and as she was driving down the road she called us and says"there's no ice cream shop on this street!" 

3) we saw a random guy walking down the street in just boxers and a tie. Classy combo

4) at transfer meeting, president Riggs was trying to demonstrate something and asked one of his assistants to come up and help him, however, he did not prep the missionary beforehand. So president Riggs was pretending to be an elder and so the assistant didn't know what president was looking for, so as president stood up with his iPad. The elder said, "elder, why do you have a picture of president Riggs daughter on your iPad !?" President Riggs just got this dumbfounded look on his face since that was jot what he was expecting to come out of his mouth and we all just burst out laughing. 

5) elder geohegan departing testimony, "elders, if your pants look like they're painted in, they're too tight. Sisters.....in the mornings. There's a treadmill in the gym. USE IT. not that I'm saying you're all fat, but just that I know that everyone gains a little bit of weight in their mission....." Hahahahaha

6) we accidentally sent a text message to a less active.....asking if she was less active. 

7) We had an investigator email us and say, "Thanks for showing me about Mormonism it has been a good experience I am going to my friends Orthodox Church tomorrow , because next week I'm getting baptized . Thanks for everything." Mind you...up to this point, she had just learned about Christianity from us...then she went crazy. 

8) at a lesson we wanted to take a picture with an investigator and the investigators sister says, "wait, step into the light I can't see my sister". (Our investigator is black) 

9) for one of our meals this week we just ate cheesecake for dinner. 

 10) I was standing in a group with three people, out of nowhere I Swear the conversation switched because they all start going in a circle each saying something like, "I'm a monkey", "well I'm a pig", " and I'm a rooster " everyone turns to me and says, "what are you?", and all I could said was, "what??". Come to find out....they had somehow jumped conversation into the years that we were born. 

11) we texted a former investigator asking her to come with us to a relief society activity. And we thought she would say no, but she agreed. And while there everyone introduced themselves and she said that she's a nonmember, but that she wants to be a member, so that was a crazy miracle. 

12) I completely butchered a closing hymn at a meeting, but it was super funny. We had run over time and so it was just one verse and for some reason my fingers weren't working and I just slaughtered it hahahahha 

13) we had another miracle with a former investigator. I'd never met her, but my co panino and I had separately felt like we needed to visit her, and then she happened to be home. 

14) at church yesterday, there was a nonmember who had shown up and we were talking to him and as he started to walk away, another member walked up and surprised, yelled, "Sisters did you see?? He had a nonmember with him?!" ......I'm pretty sure the guy heard it....

Anywho, theres my week!!! love you all!!! :)

Cheese cake for breakfast

 

Week 67

May 11th 2015

Hello! So I'm writing early today, 

Story one:
So yesterday at church I thought we were an hour ahead of where we
were, so at the munch and mingle I was panicking!! And trying to eat
the stuff fast and run to the car so we could run home and eat an
actual meal. I made my companion run all over the place with me. Ha ha
I was saying that we had five minutes to pull a meal together, and
somehow we did it and as we were running out the door (quite
literally) sister Donato goes, "what time is it?" I looked at my watch
and yelled back to her, "6:10! We've got to....oh. Wait. It's only
5:10, we still have an hour." My companion just started laughing.

We went to the visitors center to see “Meet the Mormons” that
night, we had a good group of people! A couple of Nonmembers and a
couple of members. They all really enjoyed it!

Story two:

We had an amazing day on Saturday. Seriously I don't know how it
happened. So to start off...on Friday night I was praying and I just
felt strongly that we needed to go to a particular place somewhere in
our area. It was weird because a couple days earlier I had the same
thought and we'd gone there and we'd met several awesome people, but
no one that I was thinking who would just get baptized right off the
bat...well maybe one girl. I don't know. Anywho. So I just like felt
we needed to go back and that we needed to go to a particular
apartment building.

Also as a side note...I've changed the names of the people we talked
to on this day. They’re all Muslim and it's not safe for Them right
now. In order to keep their names safe I will not put them in
writing and I won't send pictures of them home. Buuuuuut I'll show
them to you off my mission. Soooo yeah.

any who....back to the story. So we headed there and as we pulled in
we saw a bunch of people standing in a group, Probably 3 or 4 people.
So of course we walk up and start talking to them. One of them right
off the bat said that she wasn't Christian and left.

But the other girl was so cool. We'll call her Quan. She seemed really
interested and right off the bat told us some hard things that had
happened in her life. We gave her a Book of Mormon and stuff and kept
talking. The first girl came downstairs again (we'll call her Sarah).
And as we sat there talking Sarah listened. Out of nowhere from an
apartment upstairs someone started saying something and we couldn't
hear. Sarah walked over and listened and then came back.

Apparently the girl who was up on the balcony asked us to come over
and visit her as soon as we were done talking to Quan and Sarah. So
we weren't sure what to expect, but we finally headed up there.

The girl just let us straight in and started telling us how she just
really wanted to learn about Christianity. She was raised Muslim and
there's just things that don't sit right with her. She's been watching
videos about Jesus and watching movies about him. And she wants to
learn more. So we were super excited and she just told us to dive in
and start teaching her. Her name, or what she will be called here,
will be Molly.

So we just felt the spirit right from the beginning. She wanted to
learn. So we taught the restoration right from the beginning and she
just ate everything up. Seriously. The spirit was so strong. She loved
talking about Jesus Christ she wants to highlight the Book of Mormon,
she even specifically out of the blue asked us if she could come to
church with her tomorrow.

When we pulled out the Book of Mormon she goes, "whoa! I've always
wanted to learn about the Mormon’s!" Ha ha and during the lesson too
when the first vision was about to come up, I just knew that
something was going to happen in order to distract from the spirit.

So halfway through the lesson, Quan and Sarah came into the room and
seam (who wasn't interested in listening at first) sat and joined the
lesson, while quail went to the back room. Quan tried to call her to
the back room, but seam quietly said that she wanted to stay. So she
did. So as we are coming closer to the first vision and as we are
starting to preface it....someone starts yelling outside...someone
knocks on the door...all kinds of stuff, but we were able to settle
down and feel the spirit. But long story made shorter...she wants to
come to church next week and she wants to keep meeting!

(It's funny, we've actually been having a lot of legit experiences
like this happen lately)

Story three:

We had a lesson with Deaunte a couple days ago. He was super excited
to see us and wants to meet twice a week now. He's accepted everything
that we've shared and now He's now on date for baptism!! June 13th!
We're so excited!

Well, have a great week! Love you all.

Week 66

First off, yes that picture with the blonde hair was fake :) I just wanted to freak you all out! ha ha!

McDonalds Miracle: so we ran to McDonalds to get food super quick....and while we were in line, one of the guys at the register looked at our name tags, asked if we were Christian and then asked if he could come to church with us! 

Another miracle: we had another lesson with Deaunte and every time we would talk about something he would ask us a question about it and then he would get so excited and say things like, "OH MY GOSH THIS MAKES SO MUCH SENSE!!! I LIKE THIS SO MUCH!!" ha ha it was so cool! He wants to start asking his boss to get Sundays off of work so that he can come to church. He's totally going to get baptized at some point. 

Well...yup..have a good week!

 

Some from mom's letter:

Someone that came out on the same day as me just informed me that I'm now on a less than 100 days count down....hahaha ohhhhh man, times a flying out the window. 

That's really funny that you mentioned that talk from Stake Conference and how someone mentioned Satan doesn't know what you think, unless you say it out loud, so no complaining because it just gives him ammunition to use against you.  I was actually talking to my companion about that yesterday! ha ha 

ha ah oh man thats funny about the Sister Missionaries from Skagit River Branch bumping into Cody and figuring out he knew  Cabe and bumping into you at conference and putting all that together!!! We don't have sister missionaries in our ward yet, right?? 

maybe theyll get them soon;) ha ha 

Anywho, love ya!!! Have a good week!! and have an awesome cruise!

 

 

may day activites

may day 1 year mark for the other 3 sisters

may day volleyball

 

Week 65

Hey! So we're emailing super early today! We've had several really

awesome experiences this week that were really spiritual. Here's

a few of them!!! :)

A random Muslim girl walked up and started talking to us! It's super
dangerous for Muslims to be converted to Christianity, but she just
walked up out of nowhere and started talking to us and wanting to
learn.

We also had a Lesson with a guy named mike for the first time. He was
referred by a member and he was really prepared. We talked about how
missionaries are called to teach the basics of the gospel. We
literally are helping hem to build a strong foundation on Christ so
that after they stop meeting with is they can continue to learn and
grow and build. The spirit was really strong and he seems super
interested in learning more!

This week I went on two exchanges with sisters in our zone (about 12
companionships). On the first exchange I stayed in the Langley YSA
ward and Hermana Craner came over here with me and my companion went
to her area. We were out checking in people and seeing if they were
interested in learning. On one door that we knocked on a person
answered the door and we were looking for his sister, but she wasn't
home so we started talking to him and stuff and he was really
interested in the gospel. He's African American and his name is
Deaunte. On no prompting from us, he started to tell us that he's gay,
but that he's felt really strongly that God doesn't want him to be
gay, so he's been trying to overcome it, and it hasn't worked, but he
wants to try again. He felt the spirit so strong in the lesson. I was
so amazed at his desire to overcome his temptations. That would take
enormous self control and whatnot, but he most definitely will be able
to do it. He said he was also going to start telling his sister,
Erika,about the experiences he has been having so that she could start
learning too!!

On the other exchange that I had.....was with my previous companion
sister Waldron!!! It was so exciting! We had several awesome
experiences and we wre also able to call our recent convert Vicki
eddington from one our previous wars where we had served together! So
we are all going to go up to the temple together in a few weeks.

We talked to a couple of brothers that had investigated over a year
ago and they seemed really interested. We had felt like we should go
check in a referral that we hadn't been able to contact, and he wasn't
home again. So we checked our area book to see if there were any other
people in that area who had been learning about the church and there
was one in particular named "Jesus", that stood out to us (obviously
the name helped....;) haha jk). So we went over to his house and his
brother Nelson answered the door. Then we just started talking to them
about the Book of Mormon and how it would bless their life, and by the
end of our discussion one of them said something about how he needed
to read the Book of Mormon more and how he would try to do it every
day. And the other one at first said that he would just read his
brothers copy, but I gave him one anyway and he said he would put it
in his car and read it if he had a few spare moments and he would try
to read it as finals approached because we promised him that it would
help him out with his finals and studies. They were super great! We're
really excited to start teaching them!

well, thats about all of the random news for the week! love you all!!

 

 Eeewww thank goodness it's a wig!

 

:) 

Week 64

 

4/20/15

    It has been quite the grand week!

In the YSA ward, they decided that during our "munch and mingle" they would officially invite me into the ward, by giving me a birthday cake and singing happy birthday. haha It was quite funny and definitely unexpected. 

Sister Donato and I will be giving a presentation tomorrow for a bunch of missionaries and whatnot, and we ended up finding out about it yesterday, so we started scrambling around trying to find out what to talk about and how we could tie it in and make sure we stayed within our allotted time. We are talking about asking investigators inspired questions. We knew right off the bat that this is a subject thats talked about a lot, so we wanted to make it different and interesting. Especially since we were asked to use an example that has been used many many times over. 

As we were praying about it and trying to put ideas together, we finally figured out what to do! We are going to talk about how as we are teaching in lessons, its not information that these people haven't heard before. In Doctrine and Covenants 138 it talks about how "they with many others received their first lessons in the world of spirits". So we are going to teach them that our questions that we ask need to be pinpointed at helping these people to bring to their remembrance the things they've already learned before this life. 

We have an example that we will share where we will hold up a couple different types of keys. A door key, a car key, etc. and asking them to explain what it is that these keys are used for and how did they know. We will then tie it in to how our inspired questions are different keys. We first have to know which door of knowledge we want our investigators to open, so we have to give them the right key (or inspired question) to help them to open that door of knowledge for themselves. 

Hopefully the lesson goes well! 

This week we've had several cool things happen, but 'ill just mention one of them. I was able to go on my first sister exchange this past week. Basically what happens is I switch companions for 24 hours so that my companion and I can help to train, uplift and encourage other missionaries. We had several neat experiences happen on the exchange and they had been struggling to find new investigators, but we were able to find a couple of them and have some really powerful lessons with less active members. 

Anywho, thats about it! have a grand week! love you all!

 

Kali's papers to get the ball rolling on COMING HOME in Aug.!!!!

 

Week 63

Hello!
It's been a great week!!! I'm officially in the Langley Young single adult ward. Very odd to be in a singles ward thats for sure. There's a couple of guys that go there that I swear walked out of pirates of the caribbean or something....they've got the long hair for it.

Although I'm a huge fan of the free food and random activities that we get to bring people to! 

Oh also....I forgot to mention, but I'm a Sister Training Leader now. Basically what that entails is that I get to go on 24 hour exchanges with other missionaries, I'll get to see how they work, see how they are at teaching, I can train them on random aspects of missionary work, make sure theyre being obedient, etc. I also get to attend some other meetings where we learn what kinds of things we can do to help the misisonaries within our stewardship and we get to train groups of missionaries at zone conferences we go to and stuff. It'll be an adventure thats for sure. 

So! My companions name is Sister Princess Donato, and she's from the Philippines!! She's really cool, we've been ahving a lot of fun! Shes been out for a little bit under a year. 

Something super awesome happened the other day. So within 24 hours of me being in Langely, we had an investigator, who is not a YSA, who we were teaching, and we needed to pass them off to missionaries in a family ward....aaaaaaaaand the missionaries ended up being my previous companion Sister Williams and her current companion!! When I found out I about jumped for joy and Sister Williams and I got to be with each other for a couple of hours while my current companion went into the lesson. It was SO fun. 

Next, One of my other previous companions, Sister Waldron, is actually within my stewardship as well!!!! So I get to go on a 24 hour exchnage with her soon!!! BLESSINGS!!! whoohooo!! 

Today we had a lot of fun in D.C. it was the perfect weather and the blossoms had just popped up!!! It was great!! I saw Sister Bost and Sister Gardner randomly there! 

oh also...I might do something random with my hair today...it'll be different, and I haven't decided for sure if I'm going to do it, but if so i'll send you pictures next week!!;) 

anywho, love you all!! Have a great week!!

 

New Companion Sister Donato