May 27, 2015

We moved Preparation day to today because of Memorial Day on Monday. Because people were more likely to be home during the day on Monday, we decided to work that day. It was a great thing, because we met some great people and we hope we get to start teaching them, but it was really rough because I was SO. TIRED. We weeded for 3 1/2 hours for a member in the morning, and then came home to shower and do studies. I think I fell asleep in the shower. I know I fell asleep during personal study. Only for 10 minutes, but I did. It was also super duper hot and muggy on Monday and also last night. Today isn't quite so humid, which is really nice. There's even a breeze! 

We've been doing  a lot of knocking on doors and street contacting lately. We had to drop our only investigator who was "progressing" because she really wasn't progressing. She also is pretty mentally unstable, so after talking to the mission president, the ward mission leader, and the bishop, we didn't feel like she would really be capable of making the baptismal covenant anyway. She was a really sweet woman, and she needs a lot of love, but unfortunately she needs help that we can't provide. We can help her spiritually, but she wasn't putting very much effort into that, sadly. 

Our door knocking and street contacting has being going well, however. I don't hate it anymore. In fact, I kinda like it even. Its terrifying, because you have NO IDEA what kind of person will open the door or what kind of things they or the people we street contact will say. But I've definitely learned not to judge a book by its cover. The nicest people might be covered in tatoos or have tons of piercings. Or they might be the people in the nice houses wearing nice clothes who we might initially assume are too proud to want to listen. But God has a way of preparing anyone, so we just have to talk to everyone to figure out who is prepared! 

Sister Davis is great. We get along well and she thinks I'm hilarious, which makes me feel validated. She is so bold and willing to talk to everyone! Its kinda terrifying, but its good for me. :)

We went to the Manassas City Museum today. I don't have any other pictures to send other than the ones from there. Sorry! 

Have a great week, everyone! The Church is true and the Book of Mormon (which I finished again this morning) is the most amazing book ever written! 

May 18, 2015

This week was CRAZY. We were so busy getting things ready for transfers and going to the temple and doing service and....wow. I'm exhausted. 

On Wednesday night Sister Christiansen and I went over to the Giordano's house so she could say goodbye. It was really sad and really hard, but we took a lot of funny pictures. They're going to miss her a ton. She and her last companion were the ones who knocked on their door in the first place. We started actually teaching them when I got here, but I know they have a particularly special place in their heart for her. We all miss her a TON here in Manassas. 

Transfers were on Thursday. My new companion's name is Sister Davis. She is from Lindon, UT, and has been out for 6 months, but this is only her 2nd area. She's a cute girl and a great missionary. I'm excited to serve with her this transfer. She will literally talk to EVERYONE we pass, including those who only speak Spanish and don't have a clue what she is saying. Its great. 

It's kinda terrifying leading out the area. There is so much stuff to keep track of! Plus, I'm the designated driver now. Ahhh!!! I haven't driven in 3 months! But I was trained well, so aside from driving all the way to Walmart today and then realizing that I left our grocery list on the table at home, I haven't done too bad.

One super exciting thing about transfers.....SISTER ORR IS HERE!!! She was my companion from the MTC who had to go home because of a past surgery that wasn't fully healed instead of coming out here. She came straight from home to the mission field, and got to skip the MTC this time. I gave her a hug after the transfer meeting, and we just stood there and cried, It is so amazing that she is here. :)

I really don't have much to report this week. I still love being a missionary. :) 

Pictures! 

1. My zone from last transfer

2. My district from last transfer

3. A really pretty road that we drive down all the time

4.Fun pictures from the Giordano's house. Its a Virginia thing to have terrible lighting indoors, so that's why all the pictures are dark and grainy. 

 6. Sister Christiansen and I 

5. sister Orr and I

I will have a picture of Sister Davis next week. I promise! 

May 12, 2015

I feel like every P-day for the past month has been craziness. We've had zone activity and the temple today and just all kinds of crazy, so I feel like I haven't sent much of an email in a while. 

Today I got to go to the DC temple. It is GORGEOUS. Inside and out. I LOVED being there. The temple is such a wonderful place. My advice to everyone is to set their sights on the temple and always be working to get there and remain worthy to go. There is no better place to be. 

A few weeks ago we had zone conference, and during zone conference, President Riggs made us a promise. He told us that if we tracted for an hour every day and asked for referrals from everyone, we would find two new investigators. Sister Christiansen and I found......3!!! And then another one a few days later. We're so excited to work with all these new people! Two are a Hindu couple from India with a 5 year old son. They have no concept of Jesus Christ, so it will be a very different experience to teach them. One is Catholic man named Joe who talked to us on his porch for 20 minutes and accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon. We tried to come back to see him, but no one was home. We'll try again soon. The 4th person we found is a woman named Shannon. We were trying to check on a less active, but when we knocked on the door, we discovered that Heidi had moved and Shannon and her teenage son now lived there. She let us in and we showed her the He Lives video. As she watched it, she began to cry. She told us that she was going through a really rough time, and our timing in showing up (and God's timing in sending us), was perfect. We have a return appointment with her on Friday. :)

Transfers are on Thursday (boo!). Last night the assistants called us. Sister Christiansen is getting transferred and will be a Sister Training Leader (that's basically the equivalent to a Zone Leader, but for sisters.) We're both really sad she is leaving Manassas. We've loved serving here together. I wish she could stay, but that's selfish of me, because she's an AMAZING missionary, and I need to share her. Drat. 

Anyhoo, I love you all!! Have a great week!

Pictures:

1: We live by the train station. The trains go by all day and all night blaring their horns of death. The first time you hear it, you think its the end of the world

2. Two geese on the roof honking loud enough to rival the trains.

3. My district! We're  missing one elder, because he was at the temple that day, but the rest of us are there!

4.Sister Christiansen pulled these sheets out of the dryer and then wrapped me in them. They were very warm. 

5.We don't know what this little beasty is. It fell out of a tree and into Sister Christiansen's hair or something. It fell out of her hair while we were praying. 

6.Me beast-wrangling. 

7. My hair dryer broke. After having my hair up in a crazy bun all day in the humidity,this was the result. A mane. 

8.. Before doing service all day yesterday. We did insulation and screwed cement things into a floor to prep it for tile. We didn't look nearly as pretty afterward.....

9, 10, 11. DC temple!!! I love it! 

April 27, 2015

This week was pretty a good week, but I feel like I don't have much to say! We had Zone Conference, which was really great! President and Sister Riggs are awesome. I'm going to miss them a ton when they go home in June. 

Our investigator, Krysti, came to church yesterday! Yay!!! She was restless and jumpy the whole time, because she is nervous around a lot of people, but she really liked it. It was a regional broadcast from Salt Lake City to the North-East area of North America, so it was being sent to stakes from Nova Scotia to someplace in Virginia. Elder Nelson and Elder Hales both spoke, so it was really great. Krysti told us that she has only had two cups of coffee since we taught her about the Word of Wisdom and she is down to only 5 cigarettes a day! She still has a ways to go, but we're so happy that she is working hard on it! 

We taught the Plan of Salvation to Anita and her friend who happened to be there. The friend was really interested, so we got her information and we're going to refer her to the missionaries in her area. She told us she is looking forward to meeting our "sisters." Haha. Anita is much harder to read. She reads the passages from the Book of Mormon we leave with her and reads the pamphlet, but its hard to tell if she is really feeling the Spirit. She wants to get baptized, but we don't think she really understands what that means. Its SO hard to teach her because she has three rowdy children-a 6 year old, a 5 year old, and a 1 year old. The baby is the most wild. He is always ALL OVER everything and super distracting. He's cute as can be, but he makes it so hard!! She is also on her phone a lot, which is irritating. We don't know what do do about her, but we keep praying and studying and working hard to figure it out. She told us after she read the Plan of Salvation pamphlet that it seemed like something she was remembering it, and not just learning for the first time, so that was awesome to hear. We know she has a lot of potential, but its so hard to know what to do! 

The Giordanos are still doing super well. They feed us amazing Brazilian and Italian food when we go over there, and they are an adorably family. We taught them about family history work, and they all got SO excited about it. Patricia and Antonio will probably go to do baptisms at the temple before to long. I just love them so much! 

Anyway, that's about all I've got for you. Here are some pictures: 

1) A cardinal! 

2) I got a birthday package! Thanks Steve, Leila, Luka, and Nico!!! 

3) These trees are so pretty! 

4) The blossoms close up. 

5) A Preach My Gospel truck?

PS Next week p-day is going to be on Wednesday, not Monday. We're moving it so that I can go to the DC temple! Yay!

April 23, 2015

This has been such an AWESOME week. sister Chirstiansen and I are headed to DC today to see the cherry blossoms, so in order to save time and still let you know about all the awesomeness, I'm going to just give you a lot of pictures. Okay? Okay. 

We went to the Manassas Battlefield last preparation day with the sisters from the Manassas 2nd ward (we're in Manassas 1st). It was SO gorgeous and so much fun! We just walked around and read signs and took pictures.

The trees here have EXPLODED!!! Popcorn is popping everywhere and it is so beautiful! Spring in northern Virginia is incredible. 

I'm sending a random assortment of other pictures, too. Sister Christiansen's mom sent both of us Easter candy! (I don't like Easter candy all that much, but its the thought that counts, right?) 

The Blodgetts are a couple in their late 20s who just moved back out here from BYU and who had us over for dinner on Sister Christiansen's birthday on the 2nd. We had chicken enchiladas. They're having us over for my birthday, too! Kirk and Spock are political candidates. 

We had a Sister's meeting for all the sisters in our Zone. It was wonderful. We went and saw Vivian Sims again! If some of these pictures didn't come through, I'm really sorry. I'm having wifi issues. :P

The most exciting thing this week was, of course, the baptism!!! Patricia and her husband Antonio cried pretty much the whole time. Raphaella was a combination of excited and nervous, but you could tell she was feeling the Spirit too. They are such a special family! Patricia wrote down her testimony and showed it to us in Relief Society yesterday. It nearly made me cry. I have absolutely LOVED working with these three special people. They have already made it their goal to go to the temple in a year and be sealed as a family. I'll still be on my mission, so I can get permission to go with them! It has been such a privilege and a blessing to teach this family. They are so faithful and wonderful. Any of the fears they have had in this process have been healed by their incredible faith. We have a sign-up sheet that goes around Relief Society every Sunday for women who want to come on splits with us to put their names on. Patricia turned to me when it came by and asked me if I thought she would be able to do it. She was concerned that her English isn't good enough, but I assured her it was, and that we would love to have her with us sometime. She was very excited, and added her name to the list. I am just so happy for them, I can't even contain it!!! We have discovered that there are SO MANY Portuguese speakers in our ward. Two sisters are from Brazil and one served her mission there. Antonio's home teacher served in Brazil and so did Raphaella's primary teacher. The bishop served in Portugal, so he speaks Portuguese as well. This was definitely the right time and the right place for Patricia and Raphaella to join the Church, and for Antonio to come back. It couldn't have been better. :) 

April 20, 2015

Thank you for sending pictures!!! Sam didn't send any. But she is totally GORGEOUS. Holy cow!! Jacob is a goof. These made Sister Christiansen and I laugh. Your letter from last week was HILARIOUS. I had to read half of it out loud so that Sister C. could appreciate how funny my mother is. :) 

My mission president doesn't have any problems with boyfriends joining in on Skype on Mother's Day. And I do want him to be there. He felt awkward asking you about it, but I told him to ask anyway. Be prepared. He'll probably cry. He sent me the cutest email for my birthday telling me his whole thought process when we first started hanging out and then dating. He's a really great guy. I hope you all like him, because I'm planning on keeping him. 

I can't believe Jacob is almost done with braces! I swear he gets bigger in every picture.

I love you, Mom! 

Baptism