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

 

 

 

 

New Mailing Address!!

Hey all! My new address is:

Sister Kaliana Quinton
3017 Hightower place, apt 108
Fairfax, VA 22031

:)

I'm in the Langley YSA ward and my comps name is Sister Donato! Oh
also I might not have much time to email Monday, we're going to DC!

Week 62

Happy April fools and happy easter! 

Holy cow we got some GREAT pranks in on April fools. Here's some of what happened:

When we headed out towards the gym In the morning, we had forgotten the date. The sister training leaders were in front of us and They were acting weird and we knew something was up! Out of nowhere one of them says to her companions, "sisters can you accompany me to the bathroom?" Yeah cause THAT'S Normal. Then they were gone for forever. We just knew they were planning something! We thought they were going to come in all dressed up or something, but then the time kept passing by and we knew it wasn't that. Finally two of them showed up and they were like, "well dang Sister Martindale is having some trouble in the bathroom!" They are awful liars...So finally the third sister walks in and we knew that they hadn't been in the bathroom. But obviously we didn't let on that we knew. 

Then for the rest of the time in the gym, the sisters told us of a prank that they were going to play today for April fools. We were having a little sisters meeting and as part of it they were going to tell them that President Riggs has noticed that elders and sisters have been having inappropriate conversations and emailing each other back and forth and now we were going to have our iPads taken away for awhile. So, they got us in on the joke, and we had it all planned out. 

Anywho, So eventually we get back to our apartment and I walk into the bathroom and I'm about to pee and I see there's something weird on the side of the toilet! Saran Wrap!! I almost did not see it, I totally would've gone the bathroom in it anyway if I hadn't seen the little part on the side. Phew! That could've been bad! So I walk out of the bathroom laughing. 

I see Sister Bost walk to the fridge, open it and just pause. I could see the top shelf from where I was standing and I saw a thing of vanilla just chilling there. I was quite confused as to why Sister Bost would put that in the fridge. Well...Sister Bost was still just standing there staring at the fridge, so I come over and my brain just got super confused and took several seconds for it to process what happened. All of our pantry....was now in the fridge. HAHAH 

Anywho so then I walked back in the bathroom to get ready and I hear Sister Bost turn on the sink, but it sounded weird, so I came out of the bathroom and the door of the fridge is completely soaked in water...and so is the floor. So I start laughing and asked what happened. The sister traning leaders had also taped the little spray thing in the sink down so that when the sink gets turned on it would spray everywhere. Well...it did. Then Sister Bost gets this evil look on her face, looks at me, and I knew exactly what she was thinking, so I started running for the back room right as she started to try to spray ME. 

We took the other sisters and Saran wrapped the elders car! Mwahaha it was so great. We knew they were going to do something extreme in return.

We  also had an epic prank planned for the sisters! We knew they were going to lock their door because of April fools, so we had to find some way to get their keys. Yeah not an easy task. As we were sitting in our sisters meeting they walked out for two seconds and we looked at the other sisters and told them to not tell. I grabbed the sister training leaders keys and I had to find in which bag they were in, so I was scrambling trying to find them. 

I was panicking because I wasn't sure if I would be able to find them in time and stuff, but my hands touched the keys so I quickly grabbed them and sprinted towards my seat and I heard them coming down the hall and I sat in my seat literally within one second of them coming in the door. Seriously if they would've been there one second earlier I would've been caught. But I made it. 

Then as we were sitting in there Sister Bost and I had to figure out how to get up to their room without them finding out. Sister Bost airdropped me a message and she stands up and says., "well....speaking of stress relief...I need to go relieve myself" so we both grabbed our bags and stood up. 

We started sprinting down the hall and we grabbed Saran Wrap and Vaseline and ran upstairs. We were running past old people. We were so stressed. We got up there and made it inside! 

Sister Bost Saran wrapped the shower head and I put Vaseline on their toilet seat, so that when they would sit down....yeah...haaha but I made sure to do it so it wouldn't show, they would just feel it when they sat down. Tehehe

We locked the door and ran back down to the meeting. Sister Bost made a comment about how she's still lactose intolerant...so that people would think back to the bathroom that we had apparently just come from. Anywho, we sat there for the rest of the meeting and I was holding the keys and wondering how in the world I was going to get them back in their bag without them noticing. Well, God was watching out for us because at the end of our meeting the sisters wanted a picture....in the other room! So as everyone started to file out, I ran to the purse I got them from and tossed them in, I felt so cool, I truly have no idea how we got this to work so perfectly. 

The elders stink bombed our apartment. Soooo kind of them. Ha ha they got the sisters too. 

The elders also handed us a car registration and said our old one was expired, I totally thought they were playing another prank on us. 

After our meeting and stuff we were going to get lunch with the other sisters, and as we grabbed our door handles, we discovered peanut butter in them! Dang elders. well obviously since it was still April fools we needed to get back at the elders. So we took the other sisters and we brought Oreos outside and we opened each Oreo up and we licked the inside to make them stick and we put them all over the windows (we couldn't put the Oreos on anything other than the windows because it would pull off the paint). 

Later that night The elders saw us and said to watch out for tomorrow morning. And oh boy did we have a surprise waiting for us the next morning!

 During our companion study we're just like....umm. We should go check the car and see if there's anything done to it because we need to go somewhere at 12. So we got out there and...we saw our car...or what was left of it. The front tires were gone and it was sitting up on the car jacks. Well they sure got us good!  It we definitely thought it was funny! Then we wanted to see if they had done something to the other sisters car as well..... And they ended up NOT doing anything to the sister car except writing a message in the dust on their hood "you're lucky we didn't have anymore car jack stands"

So there's the end of our April fools pranks! It was quite the day! 

A couple of days go by. And we ended up spending half of our studies not in the way I'd thought we would. As we were getting ready in the morning, we got a text from the elders saying that one of them had a tick and they didn't know what to do. So ticks are risky business and if you don't get it out really fast you could potentially get something called lymes disease, which is super awful. 

We quickly ran up to their apartment and he showed us the tick and it was imbedded in his leg. None of us knew exactly how to get it out...we always receive a bunch of texts about watching out for getting ticks, but we've never received any texts saying what to do when you get one! So we called Sister Riggs. No answer. We called some other missionaries, they didn't know....well...we decided we needed to google it. 

So we all headed down to the computers and found some good information. We needed tweezers, and rubbing alcohol. So we quickly got those together from our apartment and we pulled a chair out in the hallway since the elders aren't allowed in our apartment. 

It was too dark in the hall so we Got a lamp, and were holding it over Elder Cline as he was attempting to pull this tick out of his thigh, and his legs were super hairy so he was trying not to pull any hair, but just grab the tick around its head so that we don't leave portions of the tick inside his skin. 

FINALLY, he get its out of his skin and we placed it in a plastic bag, and we put rubbing alcohol on the place where we had pulled the tick out. We knew we needed to get rid of the tick, and smooshing them does not work, it needed to be burned. And the tick was trying to find some way to escape the plastic bag. We poured some rubbing alcohol into the bag with it and then we took it outside and lit it in fire. 

It was quite adventure we had.

The next day we were at Chipotle for dinner. We saw a random guy going through and buying a girl some food. 10 minutes later we saw him there buying another girls food. We thought we had a real life John tucker on our hands.....but come to find out...he was just buying all of his female friends food or something...lie cause they were all sitting at a table with him......confusing for sure.

And obviously for Easter Sister Bost and I I decided to have our own indoor Easter egg hunt with the eggs mom sent us. Whoohooo! It was loads of fun! 

Conference was also super legit!! They had some really awesome talks this time! Well...they usually have awesome talks, but I felt like these were even more awesome than normal. 

Anywho, have a grand week!