September 13, 2010
AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! What the heck! This is my last week! hahaha, I was explaining my feelings to some members last night at dinner and Sister James told me that the week before her brother came home from his mission, he said that his feelings were so "bipolar". hahaha. She explained it perfectly the way I feel. Bipolar as in getting really excited to come home to see you all and go to the temple again but then getting super nervous and scared because this is the way I've lived my life for the past 18 months........now what lies ahead for the rest of my life and how do I go about getting back into that life? Like school and work and all that jazz. During church yesterday, I started to have a little hyperventilating moment inside of me when I realized that I only have one more Sunday on my mission. One more Sunday where I run around like crazy! This is just a little bit scary! But I know you guys will keep me super busy and preoccupied :) And I know everything will work out fine too. It always does. But all in all, I do feel very at peace about coming home. Those hyperventilating moments just come every now and then, but then I am at peace again, haha. Oh my, I still can't believe it. By the way, when will we get to go to the temple???
ANYWAY, we had a great week this week. We got to see the Wolfford's and we are seeing them again tonight. We talked about them starting to do family prayer and family scripture study together and they told us that they had already talked about that just a couple days before. They are just so fantastic!!! We are doing a Family Home Evening tonight with them to help them get in that groove of doing that too. They are seriously people that I will look up to my whole life and remember them with such fondness!!! It's going to be hard not being able to see their baptism. But as long as they do it, then that is all that matters. Speaking about cool people and referrals, this ward is so amazing at being member missionaries! There was another family who brought their neighbor to church last week and we met with her in their home this past week. Her name is Dawn and she is great. Hasn't really had much religious exposure in her life but she's so sweet and open. She has an 8 year old daughter who is totally into going to church too. I'm telling ya, a lot of awesome things are going on right now!!
We also found a new investigator named Stephen. We met him at a public forum on campus. He was on the phone and Sister Johnson just slipped him a Mormon.org card as he walked by and about 5 minutes later he came back and asked her a bunch of questions. We met with him this week and he is way cool! He knows a LOT about the bible and his dad was some kind of christian minister, but the questions he asks are not trying to bash. They are totally sincere and he seems like he is really trying to figure this stuff out.
One other fun thing for this past week.....the YSA branch had a BARN DANCE! :) hahaha. We invited some investigators so we showed up for a bit. I think it was totally preparing me for having fun going country dancing again some day! :) Don't worry, we didn't dance or anything. We helped out in the kitchen and talked to people, but it was still fun watching people learn how to square dance.......or I should say TRYING to learn how to dance! And another cool thing about it, it was a combined YSA activity for people in other stakes as well. So I saw a girl from my first area in Elizabethtown and then a kid from my second area in Dover! That was so fun to see them and talk to them again! Almost like bringing back my mission to one area :) And of course, since those areas were at the beginning of my mission, they told me "I thought you'd be long gone by now" hahaha. Not quite yet guys.
This week is going to be an awesome week too. Hopefully it'll be the best, most amazingly spirit-filled, full of miracles week of my whole mission. That's what I'm praying for anyway. You guys can pray that I can have that kind of week too if you want. But we are going to be seeing everyone we possibly can. We even got an appointment to see Karen Rath (who was supposed to be baptized in July but dropped us) so I could give her my info and say goodbye to her. Oh and get excited because I'm going to bring home some Amish treats! mmmmmm, they are so good! :)
I hope you guys have a fantastic week! Love you all SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much! See you in 8 days! Oh, and I will be checking my email again next Monday, so you can still write to me then too :) I'll still be here! Love you!!
Love, Holly
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Week 72 - Wow, only 2 weeks!
September 7, 2010
Hello!
I can't believe it's only two weeks now! Even though this transfer has been a little rough, it's been going by really fast. I can't wait to see you guys again though! We'll have some fun :)
This week has been pretty awesome. Last Tuesday, the other sisters moved into a new apartment, so we helped them do that and we happened to do it in the middle of the day and on the hottest day of the week. OH my goodness! My eyes and my body the rest of the day were just exhausted, haha. It was a fun day though. Let me tell you a little about the Wolfford's. They are such a great family! They've probably been the most unique, amazing teaching experience I've had my whole mission. It's like the way missionary work really is supposed to go! haha. The neighbors who are members, the Burgess's, play such a huge role in this, I love it. But the Wolfford's came to church on Sunday and Bill said that it was his favorite meeting he's been to so far (fast and testimony meeting). He even said he felt prompted to go up and share his testimony but he pushed that thought down because he wasn't ready to do that. Then, it being fast Sunday, we didn't have any dinners signed up which is kind of a bummer. But all of a sudden after church, the Wolfford's called us up and said how about you come over to eat at our house and then we'll have our lesson. Oh man, they are just so great and so prepared! During there lesson, we taught the plan of salvation and one of their boys, Cameron, must have learned it in primary one week because he was helping us teach it! It was so cooool! We also talked a lot about baptism too. They say that they know they are eventually going to take that route, but Bill says he just needs to get over the fact that he's been baptized before. He didn't fully quite grasp it yet. BUT THEN Brother Burgess started talking about the Holy Ghost and how it is our constant companion after we are baptized and receive that gift and that really hit him! After our lesson, we went outside and was talking to the Burgess's and Bill came running back out and told us he had one more question, do Mormons baptize by just faith? You know he's really thinking and contemplating it. It's such a testimony builder to me too! I know I said it before, but this has been the most interesting and perfect teaching scenario I've had my whole mission! We're teaching them again tonight and I'm still secretly hoping and praying that they will be baptized before I leave! If not, that's OK too. It would be really fast trying to do that, but I'm still really hoping for that! haha, I know, it's really selfish of me. As long as they do it sometime, it'll make me happy!
Another family in the ward brought their neighbor to church this past week! This ward has just been amazing with giving referrals! We are also having dinner at their home tonight and this neighbor is coming over as well so we can start teaching her. Her name is Dawn. After church on Sunday, I went up to go talk to her to tell her it was nice to meet her and told her hopefully we'll get to see her again next week and she said "Ya! I really liked this!" If this ward keeps this up with inviting their friends, it'll actually be the way the prophet and apostles always want it to be like! haha, it's great!
Amber is still set to be baptized on Oct 23rd. We had an amazingly spirit filled lesson with her this past week. She was telling us how she doesn't feel worthy of receiving all these blessings and being baptized because of the life she used to live. She's such a cutie. But she has that desire and really wants to change her life around, so we definitely told her how she IS worthy and this is why the Lord has brought her to this point. She is always worthy to accept the gospel. :)
Let's see, what else.......this week has just rushed by! I know these next two weeks are too because this week is already full of things to do and next week I need to start saying goodbye to people! Wow! Good things are going on though and I am super excited to continue to see miracles for the next two weeks! I know they are going to happen! I love you guys a lot and can't wait to see you in two weeks!!!!!!!!! Have a fantastic week! Stay happy, stay strong and keep sharing the gospel!
LOVE YOU!
Love, Holly
Hello!
I can't believe it's only two weeks now! Even though this transfer has been a little rough, it's been going by really fast. I can't wait to see you guys again though! We'll have some fun :)
This week has been pretty awesome. Last Tuesday, the other sisters moved into a new apartment, so we helped them do that and we happened to do it in the middle of the day and on the hottest day of the week. OH my goodness! My eyes and my body the rest of the day were just exhausted, haha. It was a fun day though. Let me tell you a little about the Wolfford's. They are such a great family! They've probably been the most unique, amazing teaching experience I've had my whole mission. It's like the way missionary work really is supposed to go! haha. The neighbors who are members, the Burgess's, play such a huge role in this, I love it. But the Wolfford's came to church on Sunday and Bill said that it was his favorite meeting he's been to so far (fast and testimony meeting). He even said he felt prompted to go up and share his testimony but he pushed that thought down because he wasn't ready to do that. Then, it being fast Sunday, we didn't have any dinners signed up which is kind of a bummer. But all of a sudden after church, the Wolfford's called us up and said how about you come over to eat at our house and then we'll have our lesson. Oh man, they are just so great and so prepared! During there lesson, we taught the plan of salvation and one of their boys, Cameron, must have learned it in primary one week because he was helping us teach it! It was so cooool! We also talked a lot about baptism too. They say that they know they are eventually going to take that route, but Bill says he just needs to get over the fact that he's been baptized before. He didn't fully quite grasp it yet. BUT THEN Brother Burgess started talking about the Holy Ghost and how it is our constant companion after we are baptized and receive that gift and that really hit him! After our lesson, we went outside and was talking to the Burgess's and Bill came running back out and told us he had one more question, do Mormons baptize by just faith? You know he's really thinking and contemplating it. It's such a testimony builder to me too! I know I said it before, but this has been the most interesting and perfect teaching scenario I've had my whole mission! We're teaching them again tonight and I'm still secretly hoping and praying that they will be baptized before I leave! If not, that's OK too. It would be really fast trying to do that, but I'm still really hoping for that! haha, I know, it's really selfish of me. As long as they do it sometime, it'll make me happy!
Another family in the ward brought their neighbor to church this past week! This ward has just been amazing with giving referrals! We are also having dinner at their home tonight and this neighbor is coming over as well so we can start teaching her. Her name is Dawn. After church on Sunday, I went up to go talk to her to tell her it was nice to meet her and told her hopefully we'll get to see her again next week and she said "Ya! I really liked this!" If this ward keeps this up with inviting their friends, it'll actually be the way the prophet and apostles always want it to be like! haha, it's great!
Amber is still set to be baptized on Oct 23rd. We had an amazingly spirit filled lesson with her this past week. She was telling us how she doesn't feel worthy of receiving all these blessings and being baptized because of the life she used to live. She's such a cutie. But she has that desire and really wants to change her life around, so we definitely told her how she IS worthy and this is why the Lord has brought her to this point. She is always worthy to accept the gospel. :)
Let's see, what else.......this week has just rushed by! I know these next two weeks are too because this week is already full of things to do and next week I need to start saying goodbye to people! Wow! Good things are going on though and I am super excited to continue to see miracles for the next two weeks! I know they are going to happen! I love you guys a lot and can't wait to see you in two weeks!!!!!!!!! Have a fantastic week! Stay happy, stay strong and keep sharing the gospel!
LOVE YOU!
Love, Holly
Week 71- already???
August 30, 2010
Hi! :)
I just wanted to let you guys know that I got my flight plans in the mail on Saturday! AAAAHHHHH!!!! I started hyperventilating, hahaha. I've sort of not really believed that this time is coming, but this made it a little more real. It's weird but I am really excited to see all of you again! Oh and as for next weeks email, since the library will be closed on Monday, I'll probably write to you guys on Tuesday. So you can expect it then, but don't forget to write to me too! :)
So this week was a lot better then last. And we finally got to teach the Wolfford's last night! (Bill, Jenifer, Gunner, and Cameron). They are the family that some members referred to us. Oh my gosh, it was a great lesson! Bill straight-forwardly said "I'm all primed and ready for you!" haha, they are great. He's read in the Book of Mormon up to 1 Nephi 7 before we started teaching them and he's really been studying it and digging into it. He says that a lot of the things he is learning about the church are already things he has believed all his life, but hadn't found a church that shared the same beliefs and that he really does feel that God has put him on this path. He also says that he feels he's been mormon all his life without knowing it, haha. I followed up and asked if they've been able to pray to know if the Book of Mormon is true yet and he says that's the part he's scared about. He knows the answer he will get but that he's not ready to ask the question. So silly. The Burgess's (the members) are great though and they testified and the Wolfford's really look up to them. It's great too because he already knows so much because of the Burgess's, knows that we are there to eventually help him to baptism, so nothing is a surprise. I LOVE it!!! This seriously is the best way for missionary work.
We had a lesson with Jess this past week on the word of wisdom. This is something that she is definitely going to struggle with. This will be the thing that will determine her baptism. Dangit, I hate cigarettes!!! She's going to pray about it though and try to find strength from God, so we'll see how she is feeling by our next lesson.
Oh! And we had a lesson with our chinese investigator, Shawn. We talked a lot about baptism and he says that a lot of the things he is learning make sense to him and he feels the peace as he is learning about it. So we invited him to pray about baptism and he said that he knows what answer he'll get but that means that he is committed to become christian. haha, it's funny how all these people already KNOW what answer they will get but they are scared. Shawn is great though and we just need to continue to help him gain that faith in Jesus Christ. Then I'm pretty sure he'll be good. :) So when we teach the young single adults, we teach on campus in the spiritual center. That's where we have church too. Anyway, so we were teaching Shawn in there and this kid walks into the room and just sort of walks around, looking at pictures and lingering. Eventually, as we were wrapping up with Shawn, he came up to us and was like "excuse me, what group are you from?" So we told him (his name is Daniel) and he asked us if it'd be ok if he sat in and listened. Of Course!!! :) We found out that he has a copy of the Book of Mormon and has read Moroni's promise to pray about it and took that challenge to heart. He said he felt he got an answer of no it isn't true, but he's still searching. It was a great Q&A time we had with him! We invited him to church and he said that he would definitely try praying again to see if now is the right timing to receive a yes answer. It was a cool experience!
Well, I hope everything is going so well for you all at home! I love you all so stinkin much and can't wait to see you in just a few weeks! Have a great week this week! Keep staying strong and sharing the gospel with people around you!!!! :)
Love, Holly
Hi! :)
I just wanted to let you guys know that I got my flight plans in the mail on Saturday! AAAAHHHHH!!!! I started hyperventilating, hahaha. I've sort of not really believed that this time is coming, but this made it a little more real. It's weird but I am really excited to see all of you again! Oh and as for next weeks email, since the library will be closed on Monday, I'll probably write to you guys on Tuesday. So you can expect it then, but don't forget to write to me too! :)
So this week was a lot better then last. And we finally got to teach the Wolfford's last night! (Bill, Jenifer, Gunner, and Cameron). They are the family that some members referred to us. Oh my gosh, it was a great lesson! Bill straight-forwardly said "I'm all primed and ready for you!" haha, they are great. He's read in the Book of Mormon up to 1 Nephi 7 before we started teaching them and he's really been studying it and digging into it. He says that a lot of the things he is learning about the church are already things he has believed all his life, but hadn't found a church that shared the same beliefs and that he really does feel that God has put him on this path. He also says that he feels he's been mormon all his life without knowing it, haha. I followed up and asked if they've been able to pray to know if the Book of Mormon is true yet and he says that's the part he's scared about. He knows the answer he will get but that he's not ready to ask the question. So silly. The Burgess's (the members) are great though and they testified and the Wolfford's really look up to them. It's great too because he already knows so much because of the Burgess's, knows that we are there to eventually help him to baptism, so nothing is a surprise. I LOVE it!!! This seriously is the best way for missionary work.
We had a lesson with Jess this past week on the word of wisdom. This is something that she is definitely going to struggle with. This will be the thing that will determine her baptism. Dangit, I hate cigarettes!!! She's going to pray about it though and try to find strength from God, so we'll see how she is feeling by our next lesson.
Oh! And we had a lesson with our chinese investigator, Shawn. We talked a lot about baptism and he says that a lot of the things he is learning make sense to him and he feels the peace as he is learning about it. So we invited him to pray about baptism and he said that he knows what answer he'll get but that means that he is committed to become christian. haha, it's funny how all these people already KNOW what answer they will get but they are scared. Shawn is great though and we just need to continue to help him gain that faith in Jesus Christ. Then I'm pretty sure he'll be good. :) So when we teach the young single adults, we teach on campus in the spiritual center. That's where we have church too. Anyway, so we were teaching Shawn in there and this kid walks into the room and just sort of walks around, looking at pictures and lingering. Eventually, as we were wrapping up with Shawn, he came up to us and was like "excuse me, what group are you from?" So we told him (his name is Daniel) and he asked us if it'd be ok if he sat in and listened. Of Course!!! :) We found out that he has a copy of the Book of Mormon and has read Moroni's promise to pray about it and took that challenge to heart. He said he felt he got an answer of no it isn't true, but he's still searching. It was a great Q&A time we had with him! We invited him to church and he said that he would definitely try praying again to see if now is the right timing to receive a yes answer. It was a cool experience!
Well, I hope everything is going so well for you all at home! I love you all so stinkin much and can't wait to see you in just a few weeks! Have a great week this week! Keep staying strong and sharing the gospel with people around you!!!! :)
Love, Holly
Week 70 - a lot of good stuff!
August 23, 2010
Hellooooooo!
It was so good to hear from all of you! Thanks for your emails. This week has been pretty good. A lot better then last week! Sister Johnson has started to get over her bronchitis and feeling better and I've gotten over my cold, now we can just be hard at work! I got the most EXCITING news on Saturday night! There is this girl in our ward named Kaitlin Moss who has been going out with us to prepare herself for her mission. She got her mission call on Saturday night, called me up and said "L-Dawg (that's what she calls me), would you be willing to go tracting with ME after your mission?" I freaked out and asked her if she was going to Boise and she said yes!!! YAYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so excited for her! Heck yes I'll go tracting with her in Boise! I was seriously so excited, I was jumping and dancing around our apartment. It'll be so fun to have her out there and (selfishly) for me to still have a part of missionary work! hahaha. Are there any sisters areas near by our area? She better make sure to call me up to let me go out on exchanges with her! Yay! She goes into the MTC on November 17, so it'll be a while but I'm still stoked!
We were also able to set two of our investigators with a baptism date. The first one is Jess. She is married to a less-active member and lives in his active mothers home so Jess has been able to see what a change the gospel brings into their home. She's gone to several Relief Society activities too and she loves all the women. We've met with her quite a few times but this time we were finally able to set her with a date. She is set for Oct. 16 :) Ya, it's after I leave, but there is things she has to work on and I'm just excited that she's working for that day.
Our other investigator who is set with a date is named Amber. She is actually Jess's sister-in-law. Amber is married to Jess's brother. The sisters had met with her for quite a while a couple months ago but then things went on in Ambers life that made it to hectic and busy to keep meeting. She even had a baptism date for June but didn't get to it. But Amber came to a Relief Society activity and we got an appointment set up with her. As we visited with her she was telling us how she felt so bad that she didn't have time for the sisters but she wants to start working toward baptism again. She didn't want to steal Jess's thunder though, so she decided to do it after Jess's baptism. So she is set for Oct. 23. I'm so happy for these two! They are awesome girls!
Fall semester for Penn State started today so it is CRAZY busy!!! Everyone has been moving in, there are tons of Uhauls everywhere and the roads and Walmart have been packed! But you know what that means, right??? Lots and lots of work to do!!! We have a public forum tomorrow at the student union building, so I'm pretty sure we'll have tons of people to talk to. :)
Last thing that kind of made me sad.........with the new mission changes, they have a leadership training meeting for all the zone leaders, district leaders, trainers and some sisters. Me and another sister in this area were invited to go and I was soooooooooo excited about it! It is going to be in Harrisburg so I was going to be able to see that area again and I was excited to learn whatever they are going to have us learn. Well.....last night the zone leaders called Sister Cahoon and I and told us that we were uninvited. Sad, huh? I asked why and they didn't really give us a legitimate answer but the some of the other sisters still get to go. So that really bummed me out yesterday. Plus we blocked off all of thursday and friday to go and now we have nothing set to do! Do a mad rush of finding appointments I guess. I am just hoping that the reason he uninvited us is because President got some spiritual prompting that something AMAZING is going to happen to both sets of sisters here over those days. Let's hope so!!!
I love you all soo soo much! I'll see you in less then a month! Woah!! Have a great week and I'll talk to you all soon!
Love, Holly
Hellooooooo!
It was so good to hear from all of you! Thanks for your emails. This week has been pretty good. A lot better then last week! Sister Johnson has started to get over her bronchitis and feeling better and I've gotten over my cold, now we can just be hard at work! I got the most EXCITING news on Saturday night! There is this girl in our ward named Kaitlin Moss who has been going out with us to prepare herself for her mission. She got her mission call on Saturday night, called me up and said "L-Dawg (that's what she calls me), would you be willing to go tracting with ME after your mission?" I freaked out and asked her if she was going to Boise and she said yes!!! YAYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so excited for her! Heck yes I'll go tracting with her in Boise! I was seriously so excited, I was jumping and dancing around our apartment. It'll be so fun to have her out there and (selfishly) for me to still have a part of missionary work! hahaha. Are there any sisters areas near by our area? She better make sure to call me up to let me go out on exchanges with her! Yay! She goes into the MTC on November 17, so it'll be a while but I'm still stoked!
We were also able to set two of our investigators with a baptism date. The first one is Jess. She is married to a less-active member and lives in his active mothers home so Jess has been able to see what a change the gospel brings into their home. She's gone to several Relief Society activities too and she loves all the women. We've met with her quite a few times but this time we were finally able to set her with a date. She is set for Oct. 16 :) Ya, it's after I leave, but there is things she has to work on and I'm just excited that she's working for that day.
Our other investigator who is set with a date is named Amber. She is actually Jess's sister-in-law. Amber is married to Jess's brother. The sisters had met with her for quite a while a couple months ago but then things went on in Ambers life that made it to hectic and busy to keep meeting. She even had a baptism date for June but didn't get to it. But Amber came to a Relief Society activity and we got an appointment set up with her. As we visited with her she was telling us how she felt so bad that she didn't have time for the sisters but she wants to start working toward baptism again. She didn't want to steal Jess's thunder though, so she decided to do it after Jess's baptism. So she is set for Oct. 23. I'm so happy for these two! They are awesome girls!
Fall semester for Penn State started today so it is CRAZY busy!!! Everyone has been moving in, there are tons of Uhauls everywhere and the roads and Walmart have been packed! But you know what that means, right??? Lots and lots of work to do!!! We have a public forum tomorrow at the student union building, so I'm pretty sure we'll have tons of people to talk to. :)
Last thing that kind of made me sad.........with the new mission changes, they have a leadership training meeting for all the zone leaders, district leaders, trainers and some sisters. Me and another sister in this area were invited to go and I was soooooooooo excited about it! It is going to be in Harrisburg so I was going to be able to see that area again and I was excited to learn whatever they are going to have us learn. Well.....last night the zone leaders called Sister Cahoon and I and told us that we were uninvited. Sad, huh? I asked why and they didn't really give us a legitimate answer but the some of the other sisters still get to go. So that really bummed me out yesterday. Plus we blocked off all of thursday and friday to go and now we have nothing set to do! Do a mad rush of finding appointments I guess. I am just hoping that the reason he uninvited us is because President got some spiritual prompting that something AMAZING is going to happen to both sets of sisters here over those days. Let's hope so!!!
I love you all soo soo much! I'll see you in less then a month! Woah!! Have a great week and I'll talk to you all soon!
Love, Holly
Week 69- I love you all SOOOOOO much
August, 16, 2010
Hello my dear wonderful family!
How are you all doing? I hope you are all holding up wonderfully and doing ok. I love you guys a lot! I'm not going to make this email long because I'm going to write everyone an individual email. So I'll just basically go over the things that happened this week to let you know all that is going on out here in State College.
So it's going pretty well! My new sisters name is Sister Johnson and she is from Mt. Vernon, WA.......and Abilene, TX. Raised in WA but more recently from TX. She is doing great though and excited to be a missionary! It's really interesting to see the difference between the two different missionaries that I've trained. And boy is it two different experiences!!!! hahaha. It's going great and Sister Johnson is trying her best. She got sick her very first day out here though. Sad, huh? She started out with a cold, with sore throat, cough, runny/stuffy nose, etc. That stinks to be sick right off the bat! But the ward members have been great to her and have brought her lots of cough drops, tissues, chicken noodle soup, orange juice, etc. And while we've been tracting, there have been a couple people who made her some herbal tea to help her. It's been precious. There really are some great people in the world! She thinks it's turning into tonsillitis so we did have to stay in for a bit on Friday night......which makes me go stir-crazy. But I guess if we don't let her get a little rest, it's never going to go away. Actually yesterday was quite a crazy Sunday!! The way church normally works for us on Sundays goes like this......we have PEC at 7:30 for our ward, so the other sisters come with us and do their personal study at the church since we share the car. Then after PEC, sometimes we do a split and two missionaries go to our home ward at 9:00 while the others go to the PEC/university branch at 10:00, which is over on the Penn State campus. Then they come back and go to Relief Society for their own ward. So Sundays are usually pretty nutty, but yesterday it was even more nutty! After we got out of PEC yesterday, we found out that one of the other sister missionaries was sick and throwing up. haha, good way to start the day! So we decided to take her home along with Sister Johnson since she wasn't feeling well still and let them rest. Then Sister Cahoon and I tried to manage three wards by ourselves, jumping back and forth from the church, to campus, back to church, etc. Crazy, crazy day! Then after all of church was over, luckily neither companionship had solid appointments for the night so we managed to work everything out great. We saw one of our investigators, had a dinner appointment with someone in their ward. I'm glad for the way the night worked out, haha. And I am also very grateful that Sister Cahoon was healthy so we could still go to church and go out and work. I hate sitting inside!!!! I'm taking Sister Johnson to the doctor today to get some medicine or something and hopefully she'll recover soon enough.
We did get a new investigator this week. He's way cool! His name is Shawn and he is Chinese. He's cool because he really wants to learn about God and what that really means. He did an exchange program in Alabama and lived with a minister so he learned a lot about Christianity through him. He gets so confused though with everything the world tells him, which is understandable. As we were talking about prophets and how we have one on the earth today, he got really excited and was like "REALLY????????" haha, it was cute. I'm excited for him to learn more. :)
Well it's definitely been a crazy first week of the transfer, probably one of the craziest ones I've had. But everything is going great here and I'm so excited for all the miracles that are going to happen this transfer! You guys are in my prayers, every prayer! I love you lots and can't wait to see you soon enough. Have a great week, keep a positive attitude and outlook and remember how wonderful the plan of salvation is!!!! It's such a blessing that we can know of it! Love you lots!
Love, Holly
Hello my dear wonderful family!
How are you all doing? I hope you are all holding up wonderfully and doing ok. I love you guys a lot! I'm not going to make this email long because I'm going to write everyone an individual email. So I'll just basically go over the things that happened this week to let you know all that is going on out here in State College.
So it's going pretty well! My new sisters name is Sister Johnson and she is from Mt. Vernon, WA.......and Abilene, TX. Raised in WA but more recently from TX. She is doing great though and excited to be a missionary! It's really interesting to see the difference between the two different missionaries that I've trained. And boy is it two different experiences!!!! hahaha. It's going great and Sister Johnson is trying her best. She got sick her very first day out here though. Sad, huh? She started out with a cold, with sore throat, cough, runny/stuffy nose, etc. That stinks to be sick right off the bat! But the ward members have been great to her and have brought her lots of cough drops, tissues, chicken noodle soup, orange juice, etc. And while we've been tracting, there have been a couple people who made her some herbal tea to help her. It's been precious. There really are some great people in the world! She thinks it's turning into tonsillitis so we did have to stay in for a bit on Friday night......which makes me go stir-crazy. But I guess if we don't let her get a little rest, it's never going to go away. Actually yesterday was quite a crazy Sunday!! The way church normally works for us on Sundays goes like this......we have PEC at 7:30 for our ward, so the other sisters come with us and do their personal study at the church since we share the car. Then after PEC, sometimes we do a split and two missionaries go to our home ward at 9:00 while the others go to the PEC/university branch at 10:00, which is over on the Penn State campus. Then they come back and go to Relief Society for their own ward. So Sundays are usually pretty nutty, but yesterday it was even more nutty! After we got out of PEC yesterday, we found out that one of the other sister missionaries was sick and throwing up. haha, good way to start the day! So we decided to take her home along with Sister Johnson since she wasn't feeling well still and let them rest. Then Sister Cahoon and I tried to manage three wards by ourselves, jumping back and forth from the church, to campus, back to church, etc. Crazy, crazy day! Then after all of church was over, luckily neither companionship had solid appointments for the night so we managed to work everything out great. We saw one of our investigators, had a dinner appointment with someone in their ward. I'm glad for the way the night worked out, haha. And I am also very grateful that Sister Cahoon was healthy so we could still go to church and go out and work. I hate sitting inside!!!! I'm taking Sister Johnson to the doctor today to get some medicine or something and hopefully she'll recover soon enough.
We did get a new investigator this week. He's way cool! His name is Shawn and he is Chinese. He's cool because he really wants to learn about God and what that really means. He did an exchange program in Alabama and lived with a minister so he learned a lot about Christianity through him. He gets so confused though with everything the world tells him, which is understandable. As we were talking about prophets and how we have one on the earth today, he got really excited and was like "REALLY????????" haha, it was cute. I'm excited for him to learn more. :)
Well it's definitely been a crazy first week of the transfer, probably one of the craziest ones I've had. But everything is going great here and I'm so excited for all the miracles that are going to happen this transfer! You guys are in my prayers, every prayer! I love you lots and can't wait to see you soon enough. Have a great week, keep a positive attitude and outlook and remember how wonderful the plan of salvation is!!!! It's such a blessing that we can know of it! Love you lots!
Love, Holly
Week 68 - Beginning of the Last
August 9, 2010
Hi everybody!
Here it is....the beginning of the last transfer. And guess what? I'm going to be training again. Yay! I'm excited to have a little greenie who has that greenie fire! It'll be a great way to end the mission and we are going to see SO many wonderful miracles! It'll be the best transfer yet! Guess what else? Sister Anderson (who I trained before) is going to be training too!! Cool huh? She's an amazing missionary! I'm so excited for her! Sister Westbrook is going home though, so that's a little sad. Exciting for her, but sad for all of us who she is leaving. This week was full of goodbye appointments and LOTS of dinner appointments. Even lunch appointments. I'm surprised I haven't gained 500 pounds just this week! Maybe by the end of this next transfer I will, who knows, haha. I'll miss Sister Westbrook though, we've had a great transfer together and a whole lot of fun! :)
Since this week was full of a whole bunch of goodbye appointments, not a whole lot more really happened. BUT two appointments that I am absolutely excited about. The first was with Elizabeth. We met with her on Friday and taught her the plan of salvation. She loved it! Right now she is studying Buddhism because it's been the closest thing she has found to what she believes. But she can't get over the fact that they don't believe in one God and that Christ was the Son of God. She also has been looking into Dowism (sp?) but I guess they don't really believe in prayer and she is a huge pray-er. So when she heard the plan of salvation she was like "wow! I totally believe that this could happen!" She was so excited about it all. Elizabeth is great! We invited her to be baptized and she said she would definitely pray about it and pray about all the things we have been teaching her. She is going through a lot right now though, trying to figure out wedding planning and moving and a whole lot more, so it may be a while until she's ready to be baptized.
Then we have a new investigator, Karen! She's awesome too. We tracted into her house earlier this week and she let us in right away. She is newly married as of like 2 months ago. Cute! She told us that she has family that lives in Tremonton, Utah (they aren't members) but she goes out to visit every now and then. She's seen the SLC temple from a distance and thinks it's beautiful! Of course! She said that she has no knowledge about the church though and she's really interested in learning. So we set an appointment to bring her a Book of Mormon and she was really intrigued by it all. It's fun to be able to see people learn of the gospel when they have never heard a thing about it before. She's really interested in the Book of Mormon too. She told us that she had never really thought of people living here on the American continent but that it makes sense. She also told us that she talked to her family in another part of Pennsylvania about meeting us and had a good discussion with them. All good signs, I'm loving it!
One other cool story. A family in our ward brought their neighbors to church with them yesterday!!!! They seemed to really enjoy it too! The members have talked all about the church with them and have given them a copy of the Book of Mormon and even talked about us meeting up with them. So we got to meet them yesterday and get an appointment with them. I'm so excited to teach them! It'll be fun to have a brand new greenie get to teach them too. I'm telling you, great things are going to happen this transfer!
This isn't very long, I know. Probably a relief to you guys though, haha. I remember just skimming through other missionaries emails because they were so long. So this will be a good break. I love you all soooooo much! Hope to hear from you all next week. Keep staying strong and keep being amazing member missionaries! :)
Love, Holly
Hi everybody!
Here it is....the beginning of the last transfer. And guess what? I'm going to be training again. Yay! I'm excited to have a little greenie who has that greenie fire! It'll be a great way to end the mission and we are going to see SO many wonderful miracles! It'll be the best transfer yet! Guess what else? Sister Anderson (who I trained before) is going to be training too!! Cool huh? She's an amazing missionary! I'm so excited for her! Sister Westbrook is going home though, so that's a little sad. Exciting for her, but sad for all of us who she is leaving. This week was full of goodbye appointments and LOTS of dinner appointments. Even lunch appointments. I'm surprised I haven't gained 500 pounds just this week! Maybe by the end of this next transfer I will, who knows, haha. I'll miss Sister Westbrook though, we've had a great transfer together and a whole lot of fun! :)
Since this week was full of a whole bunch of goodbye appointments, not a whole lot more really happened. BUT two appointments that I am absolutely excited about. The first was with Elizabeth. We met with her on Friday and taught her the plan of salvation. She loved it! Right now she is studying Buddhism because it's been the closest thing she has found to what she believes. But she can't get over the fact that they don't believe in one God and that Christ was the Son of God. She also has been looking into Dowism (sp?) but I guess they don't really believe in prayer and she is a huge pray-er. So when she heard the plan of salvation she was like "wow! I totally believe that this could happen!" She was so excited about it all. Elizabeth is great! We invited her to be baptized and she said she would definitely pray about it and pray about all the things we have been teaching her. She is going through a lot right now though, trying to figure out wedding planning and moving and a whole lot more, so it may be a while until she's ready to be baptized.
Then we have a new investigator, Karen! She's awesome too. We tracted into her house earlier this week and she let us in right away. She is newly married as of like 2 months ago. Cute! She told us that she has family that lives in Tremonton, Utah (they aren't members) but she goes out to visit every now and then. She's seen the SLC temple from a distance and thinks it's beautiful! Of course! She said that she has no knowledge about the church though and she's really interested in learning. So we set an appointment to bring her a Book of Mormon and she was really intrigued by it all. It's fun to be able to see people learn of the gospel when they have never heard a thing about it before. She's really interested in the Book of Mormon too. She told us that she had never really thought of people living here on the American continent but that it makes sense. She also told us that she talked to her family in another part of Pennsylvania about meeting us and had a good discussion with them. All good signs, I'm loving it!
One other cool story. A family in our ward brought their neighbors to church with them yesterday!!!! They seemed to really enjoy it too! The members have talked all about the church with them and have given them a copy of the Book of Mormon and even talked about us meeting up with them. So we got to meet them yesterday and get an appointment with them. I'm so excited to teach them! It'll be fun to have a brand new greenie get to teach them too. I'm telling you, great things are going to happen this transfer!
This isn't very long, I know. Probably a relief to you guys though, haha. I remember just skimming through other missionaries emails because they were so long. So this will be a good break. I love you all soooooo much! Hope to hear from you all next week. Keep staying strong and keep being amazing member missionaries! :)
Love, Holly
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Week 67 - Cooling Down
August 2, 2010
Hey again my favorite people in the world! :0
How is everyone doing? Great I hope! Thanks for all your fun emails! It's one of the many highlights of my week being able to read about what's going on in everyones life!
It's been a fun week. Last week, I don't remember if I told you but it was sooooooooooo stinkin hot! It was only in like the low 90's but with the humidity, it was pretty rough. But this week, it has cooled down a lot.....and less humidity! It's been wonderful and a lot easier to walk around in.
So as I was thinking about what to write about, I was having troubles thinking of something good. But then all of a sudden everything just came to my memory all at once so I have lots of completely RANDOM things to talk about today!
First of all, the amazing investigator Elizabeth we found, we have had a hard time trying to get a hold of her. We called and stopped by many times this week and haven't been able to get a hold of her. We were worried she got antied or something and was avoiding us. BUT she called us this morning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) She said that she has barely been home for the last week and she had lost our phone number. But we called her again on Saturday and left our phone number again and she called us back to set up another time to meet! Yay. They have to move into her mom's house because of financial difficulties so she has been in the process of doing that and also thinking a lot about church, so she has been thinking of lots of questions to ask us! Elizabeth is so great! I love miracles! Just when we are in despair, the Lord blesses us!
Some other cool things happened this week. I have been really really really praying hard to see lots of success for my last transfer. Since 2 baptisms fell through this transfer, I've been feeling a little saddened. So I've been trying to "wrestle with the Lord" and pour out my heart to be able to see miracles......even to help teach and baptize a family (that's my transfer goal!) Here's the stories: first a member in our ward called us and said that he has a neighbor family that he has been working with who have been asking lots of questions. They said that they were interested in coming to church, but first they wanted to read up and learn a little bit about the church. So he asked for a copy of the Book of Mormon and some of the introductory pamphlets. When we gave it to him on Sunday, he was excited to tell us all about this family and that they would hopefully be at church next week. But it's a family of 4 and they seem really interested, so are my prayers being answered? I sure hope so!!!!
Next is another family that we have sort of been working with, the Kondash's. They are super cool but so busy, so we don't get to see them very often. We stopped in and taught the Plan of Salvation to the parents and they want us to come back to teach it to their sons. They are planning on feeding us this Friday, so hopefully it'll be a great lesson too. They seriously ask the most perfect questions and tell all their friends about their "Mormon girls!" haha, I love it.
Every week we also do what is called a 'public forum' on Penn State's campus where basically we get to set up a booth and talk to people. It is a closed campus, but they allow us to do this once a week. But last week we talked to this really cool Asian kid named Shawn (american version of the name) for a long time and he told us that he lived in Alabama for a while and worked with some Christian groups but really didn't understand the nature of God or anything. So we told him we would teach him about it and he was excited to come to church too. Asian's are seriously the nicest people ever! In the city, my favorite people to go up and talk to were the Asians and the Indians. They were all so kind and polite! So I'm pretty excited about Shawn.
Last of all, we helped Jess and her member husband, Jacob, move from the basement of her parent-in-laws home to an apartment above the garage. They needed to move out because another one of the Benedict's sons was going to be moving in to the basement. So we thought we'd be of help and help move things up, not thinking much of it. Just to help reduce the stress of moving. Well, we found out yesterday at church from Sister Benedict (the member mother in law) that it was a lot more help to them then we thought. She said that Jacob and Jess had moved a little slower then her other son was planning on, so their would probably be an overlap of moving. She said that there probably would have been a blow-out between brothers over it and that we came in just at the right time to get everything moved out so the other boy could move in. Pretty lucky huh? It's fun to hear about these things after the fact. :)
So lots of good potential that we are working with! I seriously love this work and I am going to work the hardest I have ever worked these last 6 weeks! Oh man I can't believe that it is here already. Keep praying that we can see miracles and baptisms here in State College please! Your prayers are very well appreciated and loved! Thank you so much! Love you all and I hope everyone has a great week! Miss you!
Love, Holly
Hey again my favorite people in the world! :0
How is everyone doing? Great I hope! Thanks for all your fun emails! It's one of the many highlights of my week being able to read about what's going on in everyones life!
It's been a fun week. Last week, I don't remember if I told you but it was sooooooooooo stinkin hot! It was only in like the low 90's but with the humidity, it was pretty rough. But this week, it has cooled down a lot.....and less humidity! It's been wonderful and a lot easier to walk around in.
So as I was thinking about what to write about, I was having troubles thinking of something good. But then all of a sudden everything just came to my memory all at once so I have lots of completely RANDOM things to talk about today!
First of all, the amazing investigator Elizabeth we found, we have had a hard time trying to get a hold of her. We called and stopped by many times this week and haven't been able to get a hold of her. We were worried she got antied or something and was avoiding us. BUT she called us this morning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) She said that she has barely been home for the last week and she had lost our phone number. But we called her again on Saturday and left our phone number again and she called us back to set up another time to meet! Yay. They have to move into her mom's house because of financial difficulties so she has been in the process of doing that and also thinking a lot about church, so she has been thinking of lots of questions to ask us! Elizabeth is so great! I love miracles! Just when we are in despair, the Lord blesses us!
Some other cool things happened this week. I have been really really really praying hard to see lots of success for my last transfer. Since 2 baptisms fell through this transfer, I've been feeling a little saddened. So I've been trying to "wrestle with the Lord" and pour out my heart to be able to see miracles......even to help teach and baptize a family (that's my transfer goal!) Here's the stories: first a member in our ward called us and said that he has a neighbor family that he has been working with who have been asking lots of questions. They said that they were interested in coming to church, but first they wanted to read up and learn a little bit about the church. So he asked for a copy of the Book of Mormon and some of the introductory pamphlets. When we gave it to him on Sunday, he was excited to tell us all about this family and that they would hopefully be at church next week. But it's a family of 4 and they seem really interested, so are my prayers being answered? I sure hope so!!!!
Next is another family that we have sort of been working with, the Kondash's. They are super cool but so busy, so we don't get to see them very often. We stopped in and taught the Plan of Salvation to the parents and they want us to come back to teach it to their sons. They are planning on feeding us this Friday, so hopefully it'll be a great lesson too. They seriously ask the most perfect questions and tell all their friends about their "Mormon girls!" haha, I love it.
Every week we also do what is called a 'public forum' on Penn State's campus where basically we get to set up a booth and talk to people. It is a closed campus, but they allow us to do this once a week. But last week we talked to this really cool Asian kid named Shawn (american version of the name) for a long time and he told us that he lived in Alabama for a while and worked with some Christian groups but really didn't understand the nature of God or anything. So we told him we would teach him about it and he was excited to come to church too. Asian's are seriously the nicest people ever! In the city, my favorite people to go up and talk to were the Asians and the Indians. They were all so kind and polite! So I'm pretty excited about Shawn.
Last of all, we helped Jess and her member husband, Jacob, move from the basement of her parent-in-laws home to an apartment above the garage. They needed to move out because another one of the Benedict's sons was going to be moving in to the basement. So we thought we'd be of help and help move things up, not thinking much of it. Just to help reduce the stress of moving. Well, we found out yesterday at church from Sister Benedict (the member mother in law) that it was a lot more help to them then we thought. She said that Jacob and Jess had moved a little slower then her other son was planning on, so their would probably be an overlap of moving. She said that there probably would have been a blow-out between brothers over it and that we came in just at the right time to get everything moved out so the other boy could move in. Pretty lucky huh? It's fun to hear about these things after the fact. :)
So lots of good potential that we are working with! I seriously love this work and I am going to work the hardest I have ever worked these last 6 weeks! Oh man I can't believe that it is here already. Keep praying that we can see miracles and baptisms here in State College please! Your prayers are very well appreciated and loved! Thank you so much! Love you all and I hope everyone has a great week! Miss you!
Love, Holly
Week 66 - The Ups and the Downs.
July 26, 2010
Hi all my loved ones!
It has been quite an adventuresome week! A lot of cool miracles and a lot of big disappointments. I'll start off with the bad news first and finish off with the good news. That seems like a good way to work it.
Sad news.......Karen decided not to be baptized :( She called us on Thursday and left a message saying that she didn't feel her testimony was strong enough and didn't want to be baptized anymore. Once we got the message, we called her back and ran over to her house as quickly as possible to talk to her. We visited with her for about an hour and a half trying to help her resolve her concerns, but no luck. She wants to continue trying out other churches and continue reading the Book of Mormon and praying. It's so sad!!! I hate when Satan gets his way! Grrrrr. Like Natalie told me one time though, I think we CAN throw Satan down and stomp him on his head with a little faith and love! :) ( I use that all the time now. Thanks Natalie!) She'll eventually come around. I don't know if it will be in the near future or way down the road. But she'll get there. She's had too many confirmations from the spirit to really deny the truthfulness of the church. I think she's just scared at the moment. Besides that bad news, we had SUCH a hot week this week, with tons and tons of humidity. It was almost a killer. One afternoon, we didn't have anything else to do to stay out of the heat, so we tracted all afternoon. Had dinner, then tracted again out in the heat. I was glad to have that day be over! hahaha. Good ol' missionary life.
Alrighty, now for some good news. We met with Elizabeth on Tuesday and had a GREAT lesson with her. When we told her about the first vision, she was like "Why have I never heard this before??" It was great :) She was excited to read from the Book of Mormon and continue learning more. She's awesome. But a little minor sad news....we haven't been able to get a hold of her since then. Hopefully she's still reading and doing great.......we'll catch up with her sometime!
Our investigator Jess is doing really well. She's a lot of fun! Her and her husband Jacob (who is a member) had a little bit of a hard/emotional week this past week but we taught them the plan of salvation and I think it brought her a little more hope. They both committed to reading the Book of Mormon together, so Jacob can help her understand and we should be meeting with them this next Wednesday. Jacob's mom, Sister Benedict (who gave us Jess as a referrel), called us yesterday and told us how she is impressed with how Jess is maturing and she is seeing a lot of good changes in her. Good! That's what we like to hear! :)
One other pretty cool thing that we experienced this week. Sister Westbrook and I had noticed on a previous progress record that sisters had visited a less-active family named the Emel's. Sister Westbrook had never heard of them before so we decided to go stop by and visit. They let us in and talked with us for a good amount of time! They are great people! They used to be very active about 7-8 years ago but let themselves get lazy and just stopped coming. They have 2 sons that are still very active in another part of Pennsylvania though. I guess they lived in a branch and he was ward clerk and elders quorum president at the same time and she was relief society president and they got burnt out really fast. And I think some of their inactivity is from being offended too. Anyway, they were tired of serving so they just stopped coming when they moved to this area. Sad huh? I know sometimes we can be over-worked, but that's when we learn how to deal with it and talk with the bishopric when we need a change. We invited them to come to church and even brought over another couple in the ward to meet them. Which they hit it off right away and they seem like they will be good friends! Yay. Hopefully we can start visiting them on a regular basis and help them come back to activity!
So good things are happening despite the challenging time too. I still absolutely love it here in State College! It's so much fun and we are (usually) so super busy! It's great! :) Love you guys a whole lot! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU GOT MY TRAVEL ITINERARY ALREADY! Sick. Well I guess I'll see you guys soon enough. Have a great week!
Love, Holly
Hi all my loved ones!
It has been quite an adventuresome week! A lot of cool miracles and a lot of big disappointments. I'll start off with the bad news first and finish off with the good news. That seems like a good way to work it.
Sad news.......Karen decided not to be baptized :( She called us on Thursday and left a message saying that she didn't feel her testimony was strong enough and didn't want to be baptized anymore. Once we got the message, we called her back and ran over to her house as quickly as possible to talk to her. We visited with her for about an hour and a half trying to help her resolve her concerns, but no luck. She wants to continue trying out other churches and continue reading the Book of Mormon and praying. It's so sad!!! I hate when Satan gets his way! Grrrrr. Like Natalie told me one time though, I think we CAN throw Satan down and stomp him on his head with a little faith and love! :) ( I use that all the time now. Thanks Natalie!) She'll eventually come around. I don't know if it will be in the near future or way down the road. But she'll get there. She's had too many confirmations from the spirit to really deny the truthfulness of the church. I think she's just scared at the moment. Besides that bad news, we had SUCH a hot week this week, with tons and tons of humidity. It was almost a killer. One afternoon, we didn't have anything else to do to stay out of the heat, so we tracted all afternoon. Had dinner, then tracted again out in the heat. I was glad to have that day be over! hahaha. Good ol' missionary life.
Alrighty, now for some good news. We met with Elizabeth on Tuesday and had a GREAT lesson with her. When we told her about the first vision, she was like "Why have I never heard this before??" It was great :) She was excited to read from the Book of Mormon and continue learning more. She's awesome. But a little minor sad news....we haven't been able to get a hold of her since then. Hopefully she's still reading and doing great.......we'll catch up with her sometime!
Our investigator Jess is doing really well. She's a lot of fun! Her and her husband Jacob (who is a member) had a little bit of a hard/emotional week this past week but we taught them the plan of salvation and I think it brought her a little more hope. They both committed to reading the Book of Mormon together, so Jacob can help her understand and we should be meeting with them this next Wednesday. Jacob's mom, Sister Benedict (who gave us Jess as a referrel), called us yesterday and told us how she is impressed with how Jess is maturing and she is seeing a lot of good changes in her. Good! That's what we like to hear! :)
One other pretty cool thing that we experienced this week. Sister Westbrook and I had noticed on a previous progress record that sisters had visited a less-active family named the Emel's. Sister Westbrook had never heard of them before so we decided to go stop by and visit. They let us in and talked with us for a good amount of time! They are great people! They used to be very active about 7-8 years ago but let themselves get lazy and just stopped coming. They have 2 sons that are still very active in another part of Pennsylvania though. I guess they lived in a branch and he was ward clerk and elders quorum president at the same time and she was relief society president and they got burnt out really fast. And I think some of their inactivity is from being offended too. Anyway, they were tired of serving so they just stopped coming when they moved to this area. Sad huh? I know sometimes we can be over-worked, but that's when we learn how to deal with it and talk with the bishopric when we need a change. We invited them to come to church and even brought over another couple in the ward to meet them. Which they hit it off right away and they seem like they will be good friends! Yay. Hopefully we can start visiting them on a regular basis and help them come back to activity!
So good things are happening despite the challenging time too. I still absolutely love it here in State College! It's so much fun and we are (usually) so super busy! It's great! :) Love you guys a whole lot! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU GOT MY TRAVEL ITINERARY ALREADY! Sick. Well I guess I'll see you guys soon enough. Have a great week!
Love, Holly
Week 65 - Soooo Gooooooood! :)
July 19, 2010
Hi again!
I'm excited I got to finally hear all the updates about the reception and everything! And I'm glad it went wonderfully! I wish I could see some pictures! Tell Hayley to send me some through email! I'm dying to see what everyone and everything looked like!
Alright, some quick updates really fast.....we had zone conference again this past week and found out some exciting news!! President Pugh is going to be the new Seattle temple president!!!!! Cool, huh? I'm excited for him! And now excited to have a reason to go to the Seattle temple. :) We were also told about some changes that all missions are going through (again). Mostly just with missionary meetings. When I first started my mission, we had zone conference and interviews every transfer. Then in October when we had mission tour, Elder C. Scott Grow changed it to having zone conference and interviews monthly. Now it will be changed to having it quarterly. Only 4 times a year. Crazy huh?? So for sisters, they will only have 6 opportunities for zone conferences and president interviews! I'm so glad I got more then that! haha. They are starting it pretty much right now too, but luckily President Summerhays has already planned for an August zone conference. So at least I get one more! :) But my last interview will be next week.....until the exit interview. Yikes! Then they are also adding in Leadership training meetings for zone leaders, district leaders, and some sisters that will happen every other month. And they will last for 2 days. It's going to be interesting to see how this all works out!
Now for the real fun stuff! The work that is going on here! It is GREAT! Karen's baptism will be this upcoming Saturday! They announced it in church yesterday and she was just beaming! She's excited. When we visited with her this week, she said that she has been feeling a little depressed. Since she gave up coffee, she hasn't been having that 'pick-me-up' and her body is trying to adjust back to normal. In a moment of depression, she was going to give in and just drink some, but then she reminded herself that she REALLY wanted to be baptized and that would stop her if she drank it. So she stayed strong and is moving forward! She's great.
We received a member referral this past week! A lady in our ward has a daughter-in-law, Jess, who has been against organized religion for most of her life. She just had a cute baby girl though and realized that she wants religion in her family. So she asked to meet with us and she's pretty much set on joining. :) We had a great first lesson with her and talked all about how the gospel blesses families. It was perfect! I guess she had a discussion with her own mom about the church and her mom told her to not take the lessons. But Jess is set on it and is going to do what she wants! Another great thing that goes along with Jess learning about the gospel is that HER sister-in-law is coming in on it too! Her name is Amber. Amber formerly had all the lessons and was set to be baptized but things came up and she fell away. But Jess is sort of bringing her back around! It's a beautiful thing! I love this gospel so much!
As for Chuck, it's still pretty much the same old-same old. He was pretty sick yesterday so he didn't come to church. But Megan (his fiancée who is a member) invited his mom to church to listen to her Relief Society lesson and she said that she was interested in coming. Unfortunately she didn't come.....but that is a step forward. His mom wasn't opposed to coming. Maybe she has just been feeling left out because Chuck doesn't tell her anything so she gets mad at the church for it. Hopefully her heart will start softening and she'll come around.
We stopped by that one girl I told you about last week, Elizabeth, who is living in a former investigators home and wants us to teach her more. We stopped by and things were just really crazy for her that day, but she wants us to come back this Tuesday to actually sit down and teach her more. She's so cute and so sincere! She is planning a wedding and was talking about how she's having a hard time finding a church to get married in because they all charge so much if you aren't a member of these certain churches. We told her that she could look at our church and it would be for free. She LOVED that idea! haha. Don't worry, we told her about the basketball hoops and everything and she said that was OK because her fiancée loves basketball! haha. Cool. She's going to come check it out :)
And one last little thing I forgot to mention......at zone conference, Sister Westbrook and I recited the family proclamation during our scripture mastery time and President came up to us and told us that Sister Summerhays is taking us to dinner and gave us $20 again! :) Oh my goodness, I love President and I love this mission! Oh, and we found out that we are getting 4 new sisters this upcoming transfer! That's a lot!!!!! But we're so excited!
Anyway, enough of my rambling. I love you all so much! I hope you have a great week and I can't wait to hear from you next week! Love you and miss you!!!!
Love, Holly
Hi again!
I'm excited I got to finally hear all the updates about the reception and everything! And I'm glad it went wonderfully! I wish I could see some pictures! Tell Hayley to send me some through email! I'm dying to see what everyone and everything looked like!
Alright, some quick updates really fast.....we had zone conference again this past week and found out some exciting news!! President Pugh is going to be the new Seattle temple president!!!!! Cool, huh? I'm excited for him! And now excited to have a reason to go to the Seattle temple. :) We were also told about some changes that all missions are going through (again). Mostly just with missionary meetings. When I first started my mission, we had zone conference and interviews every transfer. Then in October when we had mission tour, Elder C. Scott Grow changed it to having zone conference and interviews monthly. Now it will be changed to having it quarterly. Only 4 times a year. Crazy huh?? So for sisters, they will only have 6 opportunities for zone conferences and president interviews! I'm so glad I got more then that! haha. They are starting it pretty much right now too, but luckily President Summerhays has already planned for an August zone conference. So at least I get one more! :) But my last interview will be next week.....until the exit interview. Yikes! Then they are also adding in Leadership training meetings for zone leaders, district leaders, and some sisters that will happen every other month. And they will last for 2 days. It's going to be interesting to see how this all works out!
Now for the real fun stuff! The work that is going on here! It is GREAT! Karen's baptism will be this upcoming Saturday! They announced it in church yesterday and she was just beaming! She's excited. When we visited with her this week, she said that she has been feeling a little depressed. Since she gave up coffee, she hasn't been having that 'pick-me-up' and her body is trying to adjust back to normal. In a moment of depression, she was going to give in and just drink some, but then she reminded herself that she REALLY wanted to be baptized and that would stop her if she drank it. So she stayed strong and is moving forward! She's great.
We received a member referral this past week! A lady in our ward has a daughter-in-law, Jess, who has been against organized religion for most of her life. She just had a cute baby girl though and realized that she wants religion in her family. So she asked to meet with us and she's pretty much set on joining. :) We had a great first lesson with her and talked all about how the gospel blesses families. It was perfect! I guess she had a discussion with her own mom about the church and her mom told her to not take the lessons. But Jess is set on it and is going to do what she wants! Another great thing that goes along with Jess learning about the gospel is that HER sister-in-law is coming in on it too! Her name is Amber. Amber formerly had all the lessons and was set to be baptized but things came up and she fell away. But Jess is sort of bringing her back around! It's a beautiful thing! I love this gospel so much!
As for Chuck, it's still pretty much the same old-same old. He was pretty sick yesterday so he didn't come to church. But Megan (his fiancée who is a member) invited his mom to church to listen to her Relief Society lesson and she said that she was interested in coming. Unfortunately she didn't come.....but that is a step forward. His mom wasn't opposed to coming. Maybe she has just been feeling left out because Chuck doesn't tell her anything so she gets mad at the church for it. Hopefully her heart will start softening and she'll come around.
We stopped by that one girl I told you about last week, Elizabeth, who is living in a former investigators home and wants us to teach her more. We stopped by and things were just really crazy for her that day, but she wants us to come back this Tuesday to actually sit down and teach her more. She's so cute and so sincere! She is planning a wedding and was talking about how she's having a hard time finding a church to get married in because they all charge so much if you aren't a member of these certain churches. We told her that she could look at our church and it would be for free. She LOVED that idea! haha. Don't worry, we told her about the basketball hoops and everything and she said that was OK because her fiancée loves basketball! haha. Cool. She's going to come check it out :)
And one last little thing I forgot to mention......at zone conference, Sister Westbrook and I recited the family proclamation during our scripture mastery time and President came up to us and told us that Sister Summerhays is taking us to dinner and gave us $20 again! :) Oh my goodness, I love President and I love this mission! Oh, and we found out that we are getting 4 new sisters this upcoming transfer! That's a lot!!!!! But we're so excited!
Anyway, enough of my rambling. I love you all so much! I hope you have a great week and I can't wait to hear from you next week! Love you and miss you!!!!
Love, Holly
Week 64 - What's going on???
July 12, 2010
Hi!
Kelsey told me that Jorge finally made it up here just in time for the reception!! YAYYYYY! It finally happened!!!! But no one else wrote to me about it so I am so curious to know how it all went. I want DETAILS! How is he doing here in America? Probably a ton of culture shock, haha. Poor boy. Please let me know everything all about it!
So I realized last week after I was all done emailing that I forgot to give you my new address. So here it is:
10 Vairo Blvd. Apt 245C
State College, PA 16803
Now you can send me some fun packages and letters and let everyone else know what it is so they can write to me in the last couple months left out here in PA and update me on their lives before I get home!
Alright, now I can tell you a little bit of what is going on out here. Things are going so good! Karen is still set for her baptism on July 24th. She gets cold feet every now and then but then she overcomes it and moves forward with faith. She is great. We had a lesson on the word of wisdom last time and her only addiction was coffee. But she easily committed to stop drinking coffee and stopped it that very day. I'm so proud of her :) When people let the gospel play a role in their lives, I love seeing their countenances change to become such a happy, bright person. It's beautiful. As for Chuck though, he's still doing good and wants to be baptized. He didn't make it to his baptism date this past Saturday though because he didn't ever talk to his mom about it. So we visited with him last night and set him with a new date of August 14th and committed him to just sit down with his mom this week and just talk to her about some of the things we believe in. Megan (chuck's fiancee who is a member) is teaching Relief Society next week too, so she's going to invite his mom to church. I never ever thought that this would be the issue I saw the most out on my mission....parents who don't let their adult children be baptized. It's a huge stumbling block in people's progressions, understandably. Children love their parents so they want to respect them, but that goes for each individual. So parents should respect the children too, especially when it's for so great a cause. Sometimes I just wish I could just stand on rooftops and clear up all confusions that people have about the church and everyone would believe me. Too bad it doesn't work that way though.
Here is my last story for the week. As I was doing my personal study this past week and during our weekly planning, I felt that we should look up some former investigators to stop by and see if they are interested again. I really, really, really want to find, teach, and baptize a family before the end of my mission so I was trying to look up all the families that have been taught. We stopped by a lot and they weren't home, a lot had moved, and we stopped by one house that I had actually starred in my notes because I felt so good about it, had moved as well. But the lady who answered the door was SO friendly to us! She talked to us for a long time and her son actually told us that he had seen us before. I guess the sisters had tracted into his grandma's house a little while ago when he was there and he remembered. Anyway, as we were talking about the church, she told us that she has been looking for a church herself. (Her name is Elizabeth by the way) She has gotten on this website called beliefnet or something like that and took a quiz about the things she believes in and it gave her a list of different churches that matched up with her beliefs. Ours was on her list!!!! She was going through and studying about the churches on her list but hadn't gotten to ours yet. So we got her information so we can teach her more! She seemed pretty excited about it too. I'm pretty excited about it! I'm praying that this is legit and that she sincerely investigates!!! That would be an amazingly awesome story!
Well, please let me know everything that is going on at home! I hate not knowing how things are going! Have an awesome week! Love you all! Keep being great member missionaries!
Love, Holly
Hi!
Kelsey told me that Jorge finally made it up here just in time for the reception!! YAYYYYY! It finally happened!!!! But no one else wrote to me about it so I am so curious to know how it all went. I want DETAILS! How is he doing here in America? Probably a ton of culture shock, haha. Poor boy. Please let me know everything all about it!
So I realized last week after I was all done emailing that I forgot to give you my new address. So here it is:
10 Vairo Blvd. Apt 245C
State College, PA 16803
Now you can send me some fun packages and letters and let everyone else know what it is so they can write to me in the last couple months left out here in PA and update me on their lives before I get home!
Alright, now I can tell you a little bit of what is going on out here. Things are going so good! Karen is still set for her baptism on July 24th. She gets cold feet every now and then but then she overcomes it and moves forward with faith. She is great. We had a lesson on the word of wisdom last time and her only addiction was coffee. But she easily committed to stop drinking coffee and stopped it that very day. I'm so proud of her :) When people let the gospel play a role in their lives, I love seeing their countenances change to become such a happy, bright person. It's beautiful. As for Chuck though, he's still doing good and wants to be baptized. He didn't make it to his baptism date this past Saturday though because he didn't ever talk to his mom about it. So we visited with him last night and set him with a new date of August 14th and committed him to just sit down with his mom this week and just talk to her about some of the things we believe in. Megan (chuck's fiancee who is a member) is teaching Relief Society next week too, so she's going to invite his mom to church. I never ever thought that this would be the issue I saw the most out on my mission....parents who don't let their adult children be baptized. It's a huge stumbling block in people's progressions, understandably. Children love their parents so they want to respect them, but that goes for each individual. So parents should respect the children too, especially when it's for so great a cause. Sometimes I just wish I could just stand on rooftops and clear up all confusions that people have about the church and everyone would believe me. Too bad it doesn't work that way though.
Here is my last story for the week. As I was doing my personal study this past week and during our weekly planning, I felt that we should look up some former investigators to stop by and see if they are interested again. I really, really, really want to find, teach, and baptize a family before the end of my mission so I was trying to look up all the families that have been taught. We stopped by a lot and they weren't home, a lot had moved, and we stopped by one house that I had actually starred in my notes because I felt so good about it, had moved as well. But the lady who answered the door was SO friendly to us! She talked to us for a long time and her son actually told us that he had seen us before. I guess the sisters had tracted into his grandma's house a little while ago when he was there and he remembered. Anyway, as we were talking about the church, she told us that she has been looking for a church herself. (Her name is Elizabeth by the way) She has gotten on this website called beliefnet or something like that and took a quiz about the things she believes in and it gave her a list of different churches that matched up with her beliefs. Ours was on her list!!!! She was going through and studying about the churches on her list but hadn't gotten to ours yet. So we got her information so we can teach her more! She seemed pretty excited about it too. I'm pretty excited about it! I'm praying that this is legit and that she sincerely investigates!!! That would be an amazingly awesome story!
Well, please let me know everything that is going on at home! I hate not knowing how things are going! Have an awesome week! Love you all! Keep being great member missionaries!
Love, Holly
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Week 63 - State College!!!
July 6, 2010
Hello again!
How is everyone doing? Well, I sure did get transferred and it turned out exactly as I was hoping and praying for! I am now in State College (home of Penn State) serving with Sister Westbrook again!!!!! It is SOOO much fun! We were both praying to serve with eachother again and the Lord answered our prayers. This is her last transfer now! Crazy huh? Two oldies serving together, but I am grateful. There is another set of sisters that serves here too and they are both pretty young in the mission. President is doing that on purpose. He wants all these newer young missionaries to gain leadership experiences quickly so he can have good leaders all throughout the mission. There are TONS of missionaries going home this upcoming transfer so the majority of the mission is fairly young. The other sisters think it's crazy but I like the way its going! haha. Well, let me tell you a little bit about State College. We serve in a family ward and a university branch......our Sundays are super busy! I don't know how missionaries do it in Utah! I was exhausted on Sunday. But everyone around her is soo sweet and kind. This place is a little bit of the best of both worlds on my mission so far. I get the countryside again and we see a little bit of Amish people again :) And we also get to be around the young single adults and work on campus. So it is a mixture of my whole mission in one area. I LOVE it! Let's see, what else can I tell you.....the work here is going great. There is a lot of great potential with the people the sisters have been working with. We were able to set one lady, Karen Rath, with a baptism date this past week. She is set to be baptized on July 24th. Pray for her please! Her's is a little bit of an interesting story. She actually investigated in the 80's but didn't get very far with it. She ended up joining many different churches over the years, I guess none of them were really fitting her needs. She joined a Mennonite church and it's the longest she's been in a church her whole life, which has been 5 years. Missionaries tracted into her about a year ago, but she wasn't ready for it then. Then the sisters stopped by a couple months ago and I guess she was just ready for it now! :) She completely believes that the church is true and she knows she wants to be baptized. She expresses one concern though of her making sure she's doing it for the right reasons. She feels although she knows it's true, she doesn't want to do it for other reasons, like for friends and socializing. But in our lessons, the spirit is amazingly strong and you can see the light in her eyes. She's great!
We also have another kid named Chuck who is supposed to get baptized this upcoming Saturday. Not sure if it's going to happen though. He's a young 20 year old boy who is engaged to a member of the ward. He was actually supposed to get baptized in May but he hadn't told his mom until the night before. So she got mad at him and told him to push it back. So he pushed it back but his mom is still not very happy about him joining the church so he's thinking about pushing it back even more. Who knows, but if you want to pray for Chuck to gain strength to move forward, that would be wonderful! :) haha, thank you!
The 4th of July was fun too! Supposedly State College has fireworks that are 2nd best in the nation. So we were super stoked to see these fireworks! Down at the Stadium they were having festivities and they had a HUGE cake that people could eat for free. We thought it would be a great idea to go contacting down there and talk to lots of people and get free cake too. But I made a mistake.......I forgot to bring my proselyting stuff with me (usually to church, I just bring a little church bag and my scriptures, etc) so I didn't have many pass-along cards or pamphlets or anything. So we had to go home so I could get that and our house is forever away from the stadium. We share the car with the other sisters and they had the car that day, so we didn't quite make it down there :( And then we went to the others sisters house to watch the fireworks because they have a big open back yard at the place they stay at and we thought it would be perfect to see them. But when they started going off, I guess we were too far away and we could only see about the top 1/3 of the fireworks over the treeline. Bummer! So it wasn't exactly what we were expecting, but I have to admit, it was a lot better then last year! I didn't get to see any fireworks last year!
Well, I am loving this area and I am so excited to be here! It's going to be a great 3 months ahead of me!! :) I love you all lots and can't wait to to hear how the reception went and everything. I'll be praying that it goes well and I will be there in spirit! Have a great week! Stay safe and happy!
Love, Holly
How is everyone doing? Well, I sure did get transferred and it turned out exactly as I was hoping and praying for! I am now in State College (home of Penn State) serving with Sister Westbrook again!!!!! It is SOOO much fun! We were both praying to serve with eachother again and the Lord answered our prayers. This is her last transfer now! Crazy huh? Two oldies serving together, but I am grateful. There is another set of sisters that serves here too and they are both pretty young in the mission. President is doing that on purpose. He wants all these newer young missionaries to gain leadership experiences quickly so he can have good leaders all throughout the mission. There are TONS of missionaries going home this upcoming transfer so the majority of the mission is fairly young. The other sisters think it's crazy but I like the way its going! haha. Well, let me tell you a little bit about State College. We serve in a family ward and a university branch......our Sundays are super busy! I don't know how missionaries do it in Utah! I was exhausted on Sunday. But everyone around her is soo sweet and kind. This place is a little bit of the best of both worlds on my mission so far. I get the countryside again and we see a little bit of Amish people again :) And we also get to be around the young single adults and work on campus. So it is a mixture of my whole mission in one area. I LOVE it! Let's see, what else can I tell you.....the work here is going great. There is a lot of great potential with the people the sisters have been working with. We were able to set one lady, Karen Rath, with a baptism date this past week. She is set to be baptized on July 24th. Pray for her please! Her's is a little bit of an interesting story. She actually investigated in the 80's but didn't get very far with it. She ended up joining many different churches over the years, I guess none of them were really fitting her needs. She joined a Mennonite church and it's the longest she's been in a church her whole life, which has been 5 years. Missionaries tracted into her about a year ago, but she wasn't ready for it then. Then the sisters stopped by a couple months ago and I guess she was just ready for it now! :) She completely believes that the church is true and she knows she wants to be baptized. She expresses one concern though of her making sure she's doing it for the right reasons. She feels although she knows it's true, she doesn't want to do it for other reasons, like for friends and socializing. But in our lessons, the spirit is amazingly strong and you can see the light in her eyes. She's great!
We also have another kid named Chuck who is supposed to get baptized this upcoming Saturday. Not sure if it's going to happen though. He's a young 20 year old boy who is engaged to a member of the ward. He was actually supposed to get baptized in May but he hadn't told his mom until the night before. So she got mad at him and told him to push it back. So he pushed it back but his mom is still not very happy about him joining the church so he's thinking about pushing it back even more. Who knows, but if you want to pray for Chuck to gain strength to move forward, that would be wonderful! :) haha, thank you!
The 4th of July was fun too! Supposedly State College has fireworks that are 2nd best in the nation. So we were super stoked to see these fireworks! Down at the Stadium they were having festivities and they had a HUGE cake that people could eat for free. We thought it would be a great idea to go contacting down there and talk to lots of people and get free cake too. But I made a mistake.......I forgot to bring my proselyting stuff with me (usually to church, I just bring a little church bag and my scriptures, etc) so I didn't have many pass-along cards or pamphlets or anything. So we had to go home so I could get that and our house is forever away from the stadium. We share the car with the other sisters and they had the car that day, so we didn't quite make it down there :( And then we went to the others sisters house to watch the fireworks because they have a big open back yard at the place they stay at and we thought it would be perfect to see them. But when they started going off, I guess we were too far away and we could only see about the top 1/3 of the fireworks over the treeline. Bummer! So it wasn't exactly what we were expecting, but I have to admit, it was a lot better then last year! I didn't get to see any fireworks last year!
Well, I am loving this area and I am so excited to be here! It's going to be a great 3 months ahead of me!! :) I love you all lots and can't wait to to hear how the reception went and everything. I'll be praying that it goes well and I will be there in spirit! Have a great week! Stay safe and happy!
Love, Holly
Monday, June 28, 2010
Week 62 - Baptism of the century!
June 28, 2010
Hello to all my favorite people in the world!
What a great, great week! And I'm sure you can guess why. Erin's baptism!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) (I think that's 20 !'s, that's how exciting it was) There was such a wonderful spirit there, again, it was just awesome. There were A LOT of people there to support her too. After two years of waiting for this moment, it finally was able to happen, so a lot of people wanted to be there for her and I'm SOOO glad that I got to be a part of it. During her actual baptism, since it's so short, usually I'm just like "yay for them, they are baptized!" But with hers, during the actual ordinance, the spirit was just sooo strong! I felt like I was being lifted and just filled with so much joy. It was so great to see. And then when she came up, she just gave the guy who baptized her the biggest hug! She did it!!! Hooray! I just can't even express to you how great it was, despite me saying it all the time. I wish you could have been here to witness it too. President and Sister Summerhays came too. They have also been very involved in her life over the past 2 years. Whenever they would see her, they'd just give her words of encouragement and sometimes President would call us up randomly and just say "I was thinking about Erin and I think you need to share this with her to share with her mom." It's been cool. Everyone loves this girl. She is going to be such a great instrument in the hands of the Lord! I know that He has special blessings just waiting for her!
Sad news though.......I'm getting transferred tomorrow. I was kind of expecting it and preparing myself for it, but when President actually told me on Saturday night, it became a reality. I'm really leaving Pittsburgh! I was half thinking that I was going to end up dying here (in mission terms). I've really, really, really enjoyed the 6 months I've had here and have just come to love the whole ward I'm serving in. I'll miss them all so much. But I know that good things are coming ahead of me. So I'm excited to see what the next 3 months have in store. It's a bittersweet moment. I'll let you know in my next email where I end up going to and the address of where I'm at. So if you happen to send anything in the next week, send it to the mission office address. Thanks! :)
Just a little update on Sam and David. We had a lesson with Sam on Wednesday and we brought Erin with us to share her testimony and conversion story because he was really wanting to talk to someone who was a convert. Her testimony was so strong and Sam really opened up to her and asked her a whole bunch of questions. The spirit was really strong in that lesson, probably one of the top 5 spiritual lessons I've had on my mission. Then we all bore testimony of the Book of Mormon and how it brings us closer to the Savior. I'll never get to see him again :( But I know that he is in good hands with the Lord and with Sister Anderson. She's an amazing missionary and she will try her hardest to get him baptized too! Same with David. David actually came to Erin's baptism and really liked it. Then he came to church yesterday and stayed for a linger longer the ward had. He's a really social guy and just goes up and talks to everybody so he pretty much made friends with the whole ward. They love him! haha. He's getting more and more serious in his investigation with the church so I am hoping and praying that he recognizes his answer and knows exactly what to do to act on that answer. Again, he's in great hands with Sister Anderson and I can't wait to hear about when he gets baptized! :)
Well that's about all the exciting news of this week. I'm going to miss Pittsburgh. So many great memories and miracles here. I hope you all have a great and wonderful week and I can't wait to hear about all that's happening at home next week! I love you all so so so so so so much!
Love, Holly
Hello to all my favorite people in the world!
What a great, great week! And I'm sure you can guess why. Erin's baptism!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) (I think that's 20 !'s, that's how exciting it was) There was such a wonderful spirit there, again, it was just awesome. There were A LOT of people there to support her too. After two years of waiting for this moment, it finally was able to happen, so a lot of people wanted to be there for her and I'm SOOO glad that I got to be a part of it. During her actual baptism, since it's so short, usually I'm just like "yay for them, they are baptized!" But with hers, during the actual ordinance, the spirit was just sooo strong! I felt like I was being lifted and just filled with so much joy. It was so great to see. And then when she came up, she just gave the guy who baptized her the biggest hug! She did it!!! Hooray! I just can't even express to you how great it was, despite me saying it all the time. I wish you could have been here to witness it too. President and Sister Summerhays came too. They have also been very involved in her life over the past 2 years. Whenever they would see her, they'd just give her words of encouragement and sometimes President would call us up randomly and just say "I was thinking about Erin and I think you need to share this with her to share with her mom." It's been cool. Everyone loves this girl. She is going to be such a great instrument in the hands of the Lord! I know that He has special blessings just waiting for her!
Sad news though.......I'm getting transferred tomorrow. I was kind of expecting it and preparing myself for it, but when President actually told me on Saturday night, it became a reality. I'm really leaving Pittsburgh! I was half thinking that I was going to end up dying here (in mission terms). I've really, really, really enjoyed the 6 months I've had here and have just come to love the whole ward I'm serving in. I'll miss them all so much. But I know that good things are coming ahead of me. So I'm excited to see what the next 3 months have in store. It's a bittersweet moment. I'll let you know in my next email where I end up going to and the address of where I'm at. So if you happen to send anything in the next week, send it to the mission office address. Thanks! :)
Just a little update on Sam and David. We had a lesson with Sam on Wednesday and we brought Erin with us to share her testimony and conversion story because he was really wanting to talk to someone who was a convert. Her testimony was so strong and Sam really opened up to her and asked her a whole bunch of questions. The spirit was really strong in that lesson, probably one of the top 5 spiritual lessons I've had on my mission. Then we all bore testimony of the Book of Mormon and how it brings us closer to the Savior. I'll never get to see him again :( But I know that he is in good hands with the Lord and with Sister Anderson. She's an amazing missionary and she will try her hardest to get him baptized too! Same with David. David actually came to Erin's baptism and really liked it. Then he came to church yesterday and stayed for a linger longer the ward had. He's a really social guy and just goes up and talks to everybody so he pretty much made friends with the whole ward. They love him! haha. He's getting more and more serious in his investigation with the church so I am hoping and praying that he recognizes his answer and knows exactly what to do to act on that answer. Again, he's in great hands with Sister Anderson and I can't wait to hear about when he gets baptized! :)
Well that's about all the exciting news of this week. I'm going to miss Pittsburgh. So many great memories and miracles here. I hope you all have a great and wonderful week and I can't wait to hear about all that's happening at home next week! I love you all so so so so so so much!
Love, Holly
Week 61 - And we'll have fun fun fun....
June 21, 2010
Hi again everyone. It was a great week for us. Lately, it's been pretty rough on the weekends with not a lot to do, but this week it totally changed around and it was a little rough in the middle of the week and SOOO much to do on the weekend! Ready for some stories? Good, I knew you would be.
Let's start with David first of all. As we met with him this week, we talked to him about the Word of Wisdom...which was probably a little premature because he's not sure if he has a testimony of the restored gospel yet.....but it truly was inspired because it helped us know what he needs. When we committed him to live the WOW, he said "Probably not" So that led into a whole lot of other stuff. Basically we told him that if he's only meeting with us just to learn and not to progress towards baptism, then we would have to drop him (not that harshly though) and then he got a little worried and was like "well, I want to learn more and I want to really understand this stuff." Oh ya, he also told us that he knows there is truth in the Book of Mormon but as he has prayed he feels he should stay in his church. That's why we talked about dropping him. So, since he got all worried about it and WANTS to progress, we told him to pray about if he should still meet with us, with him completely understanding our purpose. He called us later on in the week and said he really wants to understand and learn more about the foundation of the church and told us that after thinking about it for a while, he will try to live the word of wisdom. hahaha, he's so funny. He KNOWS the church is true, he's just so scared. I hope this can help him get passed it all.
We had a great day at church yesterday too! Our investigator, Sam, came to church and brought one of his best friends, a girl named Jessie. She is so super cute and they both really liked sacrament meeting! Since it was fathers day, they had to leave right after sacrament meeting, but they both said that they liked it and were excited to come back again. Yay, they also both said that they would try to come to FHE tonight to play volleyball with us (we play volleyball every monday night for the activity....I'm getting better! haha). I'm excited for them! And praying that Jessie wants to learn more about the church too. One of our members (Kira) also brought one of her friends to church. Her name is Liz. Kira has been telling us about Liz for a little bit, she's from Rhode Island and here for the summer and wants to make friends. Kira brought her to FHE last week and then Liz volunteered to bring cookies to FHE for this week. Cool! And she came to church yesterday. We are trying to get Kira to be her missionary and invite her to take the lessons. That's what we have been trying to get the members to do, to get brave enough to make the invitations. She hasn't yet, so I don't know if we'll have to step in but Liz is awesome and we want to teach her too. And then Samantha also brought one of her friends to church. Her name is Maria and she is from Pakistan. Maria has been able to see all the changes that Samantha has made throughout her conversion and she always states to her how much happier she is now and how she wants to find out why. So she came to church, enjoyed it, and told her that she wants to come again. Yay!!!! Prayers are being answered!!! I've been praying to teach some more girls, because I feel like we've been teaching so many guys lately. And now there are 3 potentials! Thank you Heavenly Father.
Last little thing I wanted to mention. We had zone conference on Friday and it was probably one of the top 3 I've had so far! In the beginning, President was talking about the last couple days that led up to Joseph Smith's martyrdom and then he sang acapella to "A Poor Wayfairing Man of Grief" Wow, it was wonderful! The spirit was so strong in the room! He gave us all a copy of his talk to us too, so now I can remember it forever! Now here's the final funny thing I'll write about today that happened at zone conference. Every zone conference after lunch, Sister Summerhays does scripture mastery with us. She says a reference, whoever raises their hand first gets to recite it, then the companionship gets a candybar each. I usually get very competitive with this! :) So we had won quite a couple candybars and then the final one came. Sister Summerhays just asked " Who wants to do something amazing?" Sister Dewey raised her hand and said "me and my companions will say the Living Christ proclamation" hahaha. so we all did (we say it every morning in companion study) and after we got done, President got up and gave us $20 and said "Wow, good job! I'm buying you lunch tomorrow!!!!" hahahahahahahaha, Sister Anderson gladly ran up to go get it! It was so funny! Good things come to those who work hard!! :) We also all got another candybar too.
It's been a great week. This next week is Sister Dewey's last week of her mission so we are praying hardcore to have the best week ever for this transfer! If you would like, please pray for us as well. Please pray that we can find 5 new investigators this week and have 5 member present lessons and stay busy all week long! Thanks for all your help. I sure do love all of you! Have a super week yourselves! And keep spreading the gospel to everyone!
Love, Holly
Hi again everyone. It was a great week for us. Lately, it's been pretty rough on the weekends with not a lot to do, but this week it totally changed around and it was a little rough in the middle of the week and SOOO much to do on the weekend! Ready for some stories? Good, I knew you would be.
Let's start with David first of all. As we met with him this week, we talked to him about the Word of Wisdom...which was probably a little premature because he's not sure if he has a testimony of the restored gospel yet.....but it truly was inspired because it helped us know what he needs. When we committed him to live the WOW, he said "Probably not" So that led into a whole lot of other stuff. Basically we told him that if he's only meeting with us just to learn and not to progress towards baptism, then we would have to drop him (not that harshly though) and then he got a little worried and was like "well, I want to learn more and I want to really understand this stuff." Oh ya, he also told us that he knows there is truth in the Book of Mormon but as he has prayed he feels he should stay in his church. That's why we talked about dropping him. So, since he got all worried about it and WANTS to progress, we told him to pray about if he should still meet with us, with him completely understanding our purpose. He called us later on in the week and said he really wants to understand and learn more about the foundation of the church and told us that after thinking about it for a while, he will try to live the word of wisdom. hahaha, he's so funny. He KNOWS the church is true, he's just so scared. I hope this can help him get passed it all.
We had a great day at church yesterday too! Our investigator, Sam, came to church and brought one of his best friends, a girl named Jessie. She is so super cute and they both really liked sacrament meeting! Since it was fathers day, they had to leave right after sacrament meeting, but they both said that they liked it and were excited to come back again. Yay, they also both said that they would try to come to FHE tonight to play volleyball with us (we play volleyball every monday night for the activity....I'm getting better! haha). I'm excited for them! And praying that Jessie wants to learn more about the church too. One of our members (Kira) also brought one of her friends to church. Her name is Liz. Kira has been telling us about Liz for a little bit, she's from Rhode Island and here for the summer and wants to make friends. Kira brought her to FHE last week and then Liz volunteered to bring cookies to FHE for this week. Cool! And she came to church yesterday. We are trying to get Kira to be her missionary and invite her to take the lessons. That's what we have been trying to get the members to do, to get brave enough to make the invitations. She hasn't yet, so I don't know if we'll have to step in but Liz is awesome and we want to teach her too. And then Samantha also brought one of her friends to church. Her name is Maria and she is from Pakistan. Maria has been able to see all the changes that Samantha has made throughout her conversion and she always states to her how much happier she is now and how she wants to find out why. So she came to church, enjoyed it, and told her that she wants to come again. Yay!!!! Prayers are being answered!!! I've been praying to teach some more girls, because I feel like we've been teaching so many guys lately. And now there are 3 potentials! Thank you Heavenly Father.
Last little thing I wanted to mention. We had zone conference on Friday and it was probably one of the top 3 I've had so far! In the beginning, President was talking about the last couple days that led up to Joseph Smith's martyrdom and then he sang acapella to "A Poor Wayfairing Man of Grief" Wow, it was wonderful! The spirit was so strong in the room! He gave us all a copy of his talk to us too, so now I can remember it forever! Now here's the final funny thing I'll write about today that happened at zone conference. Every zone conference after lunch, Sister Summerhays does scripture mastery with us. She says a reference, whoever raises their hand first gets to recite it, then the companionship gets a candybar each. I usually get very competitive with this! :) So we had won quite a couple candybars and then the final one came. Sister Summerhays just asked " Who wants to do something amazing?" Sister Dewey raised her hand and said "me and my companions will say the Living Christ proclamation" hahaha. so we all did (we say it every morning in companion study) and after we got done, President got up and gave us $20 and said "Wow, good job! I'm buying you lunch tomorrow!!!!" hahahahahahahaha, Sister Anderson gladly ran up to go get it! It was so funny! Good things come to those who work hard!! :) We also all got another candybar too.
It's been a great week. This next week is Sister Dewey's last week of her mission so we are praying hardcore to have the best week ever for this transfer! If you would like, please pray for us as well. Please pray that we can find 5 new investigators this week and have 5 member present lessons and stay busy all week long! Thanks for all your help. I sure do love all of you! Have a super week yourselves! And keep spreading the gospel to everyone!
Love, Holly
Week 60 - Fun adventures in PA
June 14, 2o1o
Hi again!
It's your favorite sister missionary! :) I'm excited to tell you all about the crazy week we had!!! Brace yourself. Just kidding. It actually was a bit of a poopy week. Our mondays and tuesdays are usually really really good days, but then the rest of the week just slides down a hill of yuckiness. From Wednesday to Saturday, we pretty much had all of our appointments cancel on us, so we had to be creative in what to do for our backup plans. I'm excited to share two of our backup plans we had, haha, it was actually quite funny. First of all, there is a girl in our ward, Amber, who we haven't been able to see at church or activities for a few weeks. She hasn't answered her phone calls either so we decided to go stop by her house and heart attack her door with cute little messages on pink hearts. (haha, such a girl thing). Unfortunately though, it was raining and her front door doesn't have a porch covering like most front doors do in Pennsylvania. So when we went to tape up the hearts, we noticed that all the messages were fading because of the rain. So I took one off just to see if there was something else we could do and here's where the adventure comes in..........her white door was dyed pink from all the hearts we put on!!! hahahahaha, oh man! We are idiots. Sister Anderson luckily had a Tide-to-go pen in her bag and I ran to all the neighbors houses trying to ask for cleaning supplies. BUT no one was home and the one man who did answer looked at me like a crazy fool and said he didn't have any cleaning supplies. Then, to add to it.....Amber opened her door and we found out that we had woken her up from her sleep because she had worked the night shift that night prior. You can imagine how terrible we felt. The tide-to-go pen worked pretty well though. We are going to go back and take a magic eraser or something to get it all off though. That was our first adventure.
The second was a girl in our ward-Kelda-has kind of a lot of health problems got admitted into the psychiatric hospital. She's doing well but every now and then she has an emotional distruption and needs to go. So she called us and asked us to come visit her. Sooooooo..........I took my first trip to a mental hospital!!!!! Oh wow, it was crazy! We walked in and there are doors and windows that seperate the waiting area and the area where the patients are. When we got in there, there was a women on one side of the window yelling at a lady on the outside. Good first impression, right? To get in, we had to ring a doorbell and tell the people we were visiting Kelda. At first they weren't going to let us because it wasn't during visiting hours, but we told them we were ecclesiastical and they let us in. But first, a nurse had to come out and meet us, we had to put our bags in lockers and we had to be scanned with a metal detector. THEN we were allowed to go in! What a process! But it was quite an adventure for me! haha.
Anyway, let me get back to some good stuff about the work. On Tuesday we met with our investigators, Sam and David. In Sam's appointment, he told us that at first going into the lessons, he just wanted to find out what the differences were from other churches. He said he soon found out though that we are a lot closer to Christ then any other denomination. So that was cool to hear. He still has some troubles knowing for sure if the Book of Mormon is true though. Then for David's appointment, we watched the Restoration DVD and he totally felt the spirit! We asked him afterwards if he knew that it was true and he said yes. haha, then Sister Dewey said, "well, you know what that means, right?" then he got all scared and tried to take it back saying he knew that joseph really thought he saw that vision. Funny kid, he's scared to move forward. He did tell us though, "Man, it's dangerous hanging out wit you three!" hahahaha, he knows it's true, he's just scared to admit it! He's super involved in his church and is scared of what will happen when he admits he knows its true. Everything will be just fine though, we'll help him understand that. And as for Erin, she is in Texas right now visiting her family. Please pray for her and pray that her mom will get along with Erin while she's home and that she'll still be strong to be baptized on the 26th! Well my family, I love you all. Have a super awesome week! Cant' wait to hear all the things going on next week! Keep up the member missionary work over there in Boise! :)
Love, Holly
Hi again!
It's your favorite sister missionary! :) I'm excited to tell you all about the crazy week we had!!! Brace yourself. Just kidding. It actually was a bit of a poopy week. Our mondays and tuesdays are usually really really good days, but then the rest of the week just slides down a hill of yuckiness. From Wednesday to Saturday, we pretty much had all of our appointments cancel on us, so we had to be creative in what to do for our backup plans. I'm excited to share two of our backup plans we had, haha, it was actually quite funny. First of all, there is a girl in our ward, Amber, who we haven't been able to see at church or activities for a few weeks. She hasn't answered her phone calls either so we decided to go stop by her house and heart attack her door with cute little messages on pink hearts. (haha, such a girl thing). Unfortunately though, it was raining and her front door doesn't have a porch covering like most front doors do in Pennsylvania. So when we went to tape up the hearts, we noticed that all the messages were fading because of the rain. So I took one off just to see if there was something else we could do and here's where the adventure comes in..........her white door was dyed pink from all the hearts we put on!!! hahahahaha, oh man! We are idiots. Sister Anderson luckily had a Tide-to-go pen in her bag and I ran to all the neighbors houses trying to ask for cleaning supplies. BUT no one was home and the one man who did answer looked at me like a crazy fool and said he didn't have any cleaning supplies. Then, to add to it.....Amber opened her door and we found out that we had woken her up from her sleep because she had worked the night shift that night prior. You can imagine how terrible we felt. The tide-to-go pen worked pretty well though. We are going to go back and take a magic eraser or something to get it all off though. That was our first adventure.
The second was a girl in our ward-Kelda-has kind of a lot of health problems got admitted into the psychiatric hospital. She's doing well but every now and then she has an emotional distruption and needs to go. So she called us and asked us to come visit her. Sooooooo..........I took my first trip to a mental hospital!!!!! Oh wow, it was crazy! We walked in and there are doors and windows that seperate the waiting area and the area where the patients are. When we got in there, there was a women on one side of the window yelling at a lady on the outside. Good first impression, right? To get in, we had to ring a doorbell and tell the people we were visiting Kelda. At first they weren't going to let us because it wasn't during visiting hours, but we told them we were ecclesiastical and they let us in. But first, a nurse had to come out and meet us, we had to put our bags in lockers and we had to be scanned with a metal detector. THEN we were allowed to go in! What a process! But it was quite an adventure for me! haha.
Anyway, let me get back to some good stuff about the work. On Tuesday we met with our investigators, Sam and David. In Sam's appointment, he told us that at first going into the lessons, he just wanted to find out what the differences were from other churches. He said he soon found out though that we are a lot closer to Christ then any other denomination. So that was cool to hear. He still has some troubles knowing for sure if the Book of Mormon is true though. Then for David's appointment, we watched the Restoration DVD and he totally felt the spirit! We asked him afterwards if he knew that it was true and he said yes. haha, then Sister Dewey said, "well, you know what that means, right?" then he got all scared and tried to take it back saying he knew that joseph really thought he saw that vision. Funny kid, he's scared to move forward. He did tell us though, "Man, it's dangerous hanging out wit you three!" hahahaha, he knows it's true, he's just scared to admit it! He's super involved in his church and is scared of what will happen when he admits he knows its true. Everything will be just fine though, we'll help him understand that. And as for Erin, she is in Texas right now visiting her family. Please pray for her and pray that her mom will get along with Erin while she's home and that she'll still be strong to be baptized on the 26th! Well my family, I love you all. Have a super awesome week! Cant' wait to hear all the things going on next week! Keep up the member missionary work over there in Boise! :)
Love, Holly
Week 59 - From Sun to Showers
June 7, 2010
Hellooo!
I remember that last week I wrote you and told you how hot it was all week long. This week, it was still a little hot, but there were thunderstorms like CRAZY!!!! It was absolutely beautiful!!! I am in love with the thundershowers here. Last monday night, we were in a lesson at the church and it was just pouring down like crazy. After our lesson was over, we were planning on street contacting on the way home, but we had to stay in the church because it was so crazy outside. Tuesday night was decent. Wednesday it poured even more then monday night! Again, we were at the church, waiting for an appointment to come and our appointment, Dave, called us and told us that he was on his way, but the traffic was so bad because of the weather he was going to be half and hour late. So we waited and watched the beautiful rainstorm.....and tried to be productive and made phone calls. Even by the end of his appointment, it was still pouring and thundering. Our zone leaders called us and asked us to stay inside and not go out because I guess there was a tornado warning......someone had seen one touch down somewhere. haha, so how were we going to get home? We were just about to ask permission to have Dave take us home, but luckily our relief society president stopped by the church for something and then was willing to take us home. Such a tender mercy! Thursday was decent, THEN friday was nuts too! We were walking home for dinner and it started pouring. Using an umbrella was not even useful either! I still got soaked. Although it was all crazy, I had the funnest time! hahaha, again, I love the thunderstorms.
Now as for some of the people we are working with, Erin is still looking forward to her baptism on the 26th!! :) I will always stinkin love that girl! (yes Erin, if you read this, You Are Loved) haha. She is going home to Texas next week to visit her family, so please pray that everything will go well for her and that her family will talk to her and be supportive!
Our other investigator, David, is progressing pretty well. It's like he just soaks in everything we tell him and talks about how it all just sounds too good to be true. He told us that he still needs to gain a testimony about the truthfulness of the gospel, but Sister Anderson invited him to be baptized once he knew it was true (the first invite she's done! :) I'm so proud of her!) And he immediately said yes. Cooool! Then for our other investigator, Sam, he is so knowledgeable in the bible and so intune with the spirit! He also said that he's not sure yet if he can trust the Book of Mormon but he's praying about it. He also said once he recieves an answer, he would also be baptized. I just love how the Lord puts all these amazingly cool people into our path! Speaking of amazing people, Joan Downing is moving to Baltimore this week, so we only have one more appointment with her :( I'm so sad to see her go, but also so glad to have her be a part of my life! She has been so great! I don't remember if I've told you, but I've been able to see a complete transformation with her since January. From wearing immodest clothes and a nosering and not really reading her scriptures, to changing her wardrobe and taking out the nosering and reading not only the scriptures but a whole bunch of church books, studying intently the gospel principles manual before Sunday and being just a completely different, happy person. I love hearing her testimony!!!! Seriously, the gospel can change lives for the good and I am so glad to have it a part of my life! Thank you for raising me in the gospel and teaching me how to live it. There is no place I would rather be. Anyway, I love you all, have a fantastic week! Tell Grandma I love her too!
Love, Holly
Hellooo!
I remember that last week I wrote you and told you how hot it was all week long. This week, it was still a little hot, but there were thunderstorms like CRAZY!!!! It was absolutely beautiful!!! I am in love with the thundershowers here. Last monday night, we were in a lesson at the church and it was just pouring down like crazy. After our lesson was over, we were planning on street contacting on the way home, but we had to stay in the church because it was so crazy outside. Tuesday night was decent. Wednesday it poured even more then monday night! Again, we were at the church, waiting for an appointment to come and our appointment, Dave, called us and told us that he was on his way, but the traffic was so bad because of the weather he was going to be half and hour late. So we waited and watched the beautiful rainstorm.....and tried to be productive and made phone calls. Even by the end of his appointment, it was still pouring and thundering. Our zone leaders called us and asked us to stay inside and not go out because I guess there was a tornado warning......someone had seen one touch down somewhere. haha, so how were we going to get home? We were just about to ask permission to have Dave take us home, but luckily our relief society president stopped by the church for something and then was willing to take us home. Such a tender mercy! Thursday was decent, THEN friday was nuts too! We were walking home for dinner and it started pouring. Using an umbrella was not even useful either! I still got soaked. Although it was all crazy, I had the funnest time! hahaha, again, I love the thunderstorms.
Now as for some of the people we are working with, Erin is still looking forward to her baptism on the 26th!! :) I will always stinkin love that girl! (yes Erin, if you read this, You Are Loved) haha. She is going home to Texas next week to visit her family, so please pray that everything will go well for her and that her family will talk to her and be supportive!
Our other investigator, David, is progressing pretty well. It's like he just soaks in everything we tell him and talks about how it all just sounds too good to be true. He told us that he still needs to gain a testimony about the truthfulness of the gospel, but Sister Anderson invited him to be baptized once he knew it was true (the first invite she's done! :) I'm so proud of her!) And he immediately said yes. Cooool! Then for our other investigator, Sam, he is so knowledgeable in the bible and so intune with the spirit! He also said that he's not sure yet if he can trust the Book of Mormon but he's praying about it. He also said once he recieves an answer, he would also be baptized. I just love how the Lord puts all these amazingly cool people into our path! Speaking of amazing people, Joan Downing is moving to Baltimore this week, so we only have one more appointment with her :( I'm so sad to see her go, but also so glad to have her be a part of my life! She has been so great! I don't remember if I've told you, but I've been able to see a complete transformation with her since January. From wearing immodest clothes and a nosering and not really reading her scriptures, to changing her wardrobe and taking out the nosering and reading not only the scriptures but a whole bunch of church books, studying intently the gospel principles manual before Sunday and being just a completely different, happy person. I love hearing her testimony!!!! Seriously, the gospel can change lives for the good and I am so glad to have it a part of my life! Thank you for raising me in the gospel and teaching me how to live it. There is no place I would rather be. Anyway, I love you all, have a fantastic week! Tell Grandma I love her too!
Love, Holly
Week 58 - Hottest Week of my life!
June 6, 2010
As the subject of my email is, I'm pretty sure you can guess that it was a scorcher this week! Oh my goodness!! I've gotten a pretty nice farmers tan though and a pretty nice foot tan from my shoes :) On Saturday and Sunday it was probably 90 something degrees, humid, no wind, no clouds, and we had no appointments so we walked around and talked to people all day. hahaha, I have to be honest, I was miserable! But Sunday night, as I was thinking about what a bad attitude I had that day, I thought to myself......man, Krista's mission was probably like this everyday! Hot sun, humidity, no car to drive in.....Krista, I give you major kudo's!! haha. You are a strong, strong girl! If you could do it for a whole year and a half, I can do it too for a few months.
Well, let me tell you a little bit about what went on last week. It was a good one. We got a new investigator named Sam who is pretty awesome. We met him in downtown Pittsburgh and he was willing to drive all the way up to Oakland where we are and the church is to meet with us. We did something a little bit different with him and it turned out awesome. Since we teach at the church building, we've talked for MONTHS about doing church tours with the first lessons. We've roleplayed it and practiced it, but just have never done it for some reason. But we did it with Sam and it actually turned out really well. It got him familiar with the church building, it gets him introduced to the three hours of church because we walk through it with him and he had a ton of questions. For sure, we are doing that with every lesson now. I don't know why it took us so long, but we've got it down now!
Saturday was a pretty amazing day too. We had Joan come out street contacting with us and each of us took a half an hour with her. She was pretty nervous at first, but who isn't when they've never done it before. I was the lucky one who got to take her first while Sis. Anderson and Sis. Dewey went in another direction. Joan did so good too! The first person we stopped, she shared her testimony about how getting back on the path of the gospel has made her such a happier person. It was soooooooo strong and powerful! There is nothing like a testimony of a member, especially one who has been able to really see the changes in their life because of the gospel. I loved it. I was probably a happy, beaming fool with a silly smile on my face as I listened to her, hahaha. But as we each went out contacting with her, we had a lot of people commit to come to church.....and three of them actually showed up! It's a miracle to have 3 brand new people come.
I can't wait to hear from you ALL next week :) (natalie, thank you for being the only one to write to me!) Have an awesome week, love you guys!!!
Love, Holly
As the subject of my email is, I'm pretty sure you can guess that it was a scorcher this week! Oh my goodness!! I've gotten a pretty nice farmers tan though and a pretty nice foot tan from my shoes :) On Saturday and Sunday it was probably 90 something degrees, humid, no wind, no clouds, and we had no appointments so we walked around and talked to people all day. hahaha, I have to be honest, I was miserable! But Sunday night, as I was thinking about what a bad attitude I had that day, I thought to myself......man, Krista's mission was probably like this everyday! Hot sun, humidity, no car to drive in.....Krista, I give you major kudo's!! haha. You are a strong, strong girl! If you could do it for a whole year and a half, I can do it too for a few months.
Well, let me tell you a little bit about what went on last week. It was a good one. We got a new investigator named Sam who is pretty awesome. We met him in downtown Pittsburgh and he was willing to drive all the way up to Oakland where we are and the church is to meet with us. We did something a little bit different with him and it turned out awesome. Since we teach at the church building, we've talked for MONTHS about doing church tours with the first lessons. We've roleplayed it and practiced it, but just have never done it for some reason. But we did it with Sam and it actually turned out really well. It got him familiar with the church building, it gets him introduced to the three hours of church because we walk through it with him and he had a ton of questions. For sure, we are doing that with every lesson now. I don't know why it took us so long, but we've got it down now!
Saturday was a pretty amazing day too. We had Joan come out street contacting with us and each of us took a half an hour with her. She was pretty nervous at first, but who isn't when they've never done it before. I was the lucky one who got to take her first while Sis. Anderson and Sis. Dewey went in another direction. Joan did so good too! The first person we stopped, she shared her testimony about how getting back on the path of the gospel has made her such a happier person. It was soooooooo strong and powerful! There is nothing like a testimony of a member, especially one who has been able to really see the changes in their life because of the gospel. I loved it. I was probably a happy, beaming fool with a silly smile on my face as I listened to her, hahaha. But as we each went out contacting with her, we had a lot of people commit to come to church.....and three of them actually showed up! It's a miracle to have 3 brand new people come.
I can't wait to hear from you ALL next week :) (natalie, thank you for being the only one to write to me!) Have an awesome week, love you guys!!!
Love, Holly
Sunday, May 30, 2010
week 57- Erin Jonas is my hero
May 25, 2010
I completely forgot to tell you guys that I'd be emailing on Tuesday this week! I'm sorry I forgot! We had President interviews yesterday, so they moved our P-day to today. I'll probably be emailing on Tuesday next week too since it'll be memorial day and the library will be closed.
I have some AMAZING news that I need to tell all of you!!!! Get excited!!!! Erin Jonas has a baptism date!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) She is scheduled to be baptized on June 26. I am so stinkin excited for her. So this is what happened, our ward is having a 40 day fast for missionary work and I was telling her in our lesson on Sunday how I've been praying and fasting for her mom to sotfen her heart and that some miracle may happen. Then Sister Dewey came in and said that she thinks it'd be a good idea to exercise some faith and set a baptism date at the end of the 40 day fast and we'll all continue to fast and pray for her mom. Erin was totally ok with it! She told us how she is finally ready to just move on and do it. We are really praying hard core for her and praying that she'll be able to be baptized on that day, no matter what happens. Please pray for her too!! She's such a great girl and she deserves to recieve all the blessings the Lord has in store for her. Despite the trials and stumbling blocks she has had to and still has to go through, the Lord is going to seriously pour blessings over her head for going forward and trusting in Him. Yay for Erin!
Now, as for Mario.....we've had a little bit of a crazy thing happen. Last Monday night we met with him and had a great lesson about the plan of salvation and he just soaked it up and loved it! It was great!!! We were scheduled to meet with him on Wednesday, but for some reason he didn't show up. So we called him and left a message, then he called us back at about 10:15 that night explaining why he wasn't able to make it. I guess he's just had a lot of troubles with things going on in his life. He actually told us that he had a court case the next day and might have to go to jail for 6 months. Scary!!!! We've been praying for him a lot this week, but we are afraid that he did have to go to jail. When we call, it goes straight to his voicemail and the elders also stopped by his home to invite him to church and his family said that he wasn't going to be able to make it. Sad huh??? I don't think anything is really sketchy or shady with him. I truly feel like he is sincere in his testimony......he's just having to pay the consequences of things he has done formerly. I hope he is able to join the church later on down the road though!
Some other fun, exciting news......this is more for Krista and Jorge, but we met a lady from Sao Paulo named Giovana the other day and I absolutely fell in love with her!!!! She is soo soo soo cute! hahaha, I talked to her a little bit in Portugese, for as much as I could remember. But she accepted a visit from the missionaries and I can't wait!!! She's married though, so we'll have to pass her on to the elders, but still, she's so stinkin cool. I told her how Jorge is from Brazil and is coming up to the US in about a month and she was excited for him, haha. She said she didn't know any english at all when she first came, but she watched a lot of TV to learn the language, and talked with everyone she could and now she is very fluent. That's the tip she gave for him, funny huh?
It's been a good week! Thanks for all your prayers and support! And mom, thank you for the package!!!!! I got it at just the time I needed it :) And please thank Natalie for the cute candy bowl, I absolutely love it!!!! It's so cute. My companions love it too and we eat the candy out of it all the time. I love you all so stinkin much! Have a wonderful week! And have a fun, happy Memorial Day!
Love, Holly
I completely forgot to tell you guys that I'd be emailing on Tuesday this week! I'm sorry I forgot! We had President interviews yesterday, so they moved our P-day to today. I'll probably be emailing on Tuesday next week too since it'll be memorial day and the library will be closed.
I have some AMAZING news that I need to tell all of you!!!! Get excited!!!! Erin Jonas has a baptism date!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) She is scheduled to be baptized on June 26. I am so stinkin excited for her. So this is what happened, our ward is having a 40 day fast for missionary work and I was telling her in our lesson on Sunday how I've been praying and fasting for her mom to sotfen her heart and that some miracle may happen. Then Sister Dewey came in and said that she thinks it'd be a good idea to exercise some faith and set a baptism date at the end of the 40 day fast and we'll all continue to fast and pray for her mom. Erin was totally ok with it! She told us how she is finally ready to just move on and do it. We are really praying hard core for her and praying that she'll be able to be baptized on that day, no matter what happens. Please pray for her too!! She's such a great girl and she deserves to recieve all the blessings the Lord has in store for her. Despite the trials and stumbling blocks she has had to and still has to go through, the Lord is going to seriously pour blessings over her head for going forward and trusting in Him. Yay for Erin!
Now, as for Mario.....we've had a little bit of a crazy thing happen. Last Monday night we met with him and had a great lesson about the plan of salvation and he just soaked it up and loved it! It was great!!! We were scheduled to meet with him on Wednesday, but for some reason he didn't show up. So we called him and left a message, then he called us back at about 10:15 that night explaining why he wasn't able to make it. I guess he's just had a lot of troubles with things going on in his life. He actually told us that he had a court case the next day and might have to go to jail for 6 months. Scary!!!! We've been praying for him a lot this week, but we are afraid that he did have to go to jail. When we call, it goes straight to his voicemail and the elders also stopped by his home to invite him to church and his family said that he wasn't going to be able to make it. Sad huh??? I don't think anything is really sketchy or shady with him. I truly feel like he is sincere in his testimony......he's just having to pay the consequences of things he has done formerly. I hope he is able to join the church later on down the road though!
Some other fun, exciting news......this is more for Krista and Jorge, but we met a lady from Sao Paulo named Giovana the other day and I absolutely fell in love with her!!!! She is soo soo soo cute! hahaha, I talked to her a little bit in Portugese, for as much as I could remember. But she accepted a visit from the missionaries and I can't wait!!! She's married though, so we'll have to pass her on to the elders, but still, she's so stinkin cool. I told her how Jorge is from Brazil and is coming up to the US in about a month and she was excited for him, haha. She said she didn't know any english at all when she first came, but she watched a lot of TV to learn the language, and talked with everyone she could and now she is very fluent. That's the tip she gave for him, funny huh?
It's been a good week! Thanks for all your prayers and support! And mom, thank you for the package!!!!! I got it at just the time I needed it :) And please thank Natalie for the cute candy bowl, I absolutely love it!!!! It's so cute. My companions love it too and we eat the candy out of it all the time. I love you all so stinkin much! Have a wonderful week! And have a fun, happy Memorial Day!
Love, Holly
Week 56- Week of Miracles
May 17, 2010
Hi my loved ones!
It's been another wonderful week out here in Pennsylvania! We got to see a lot of amazing miracles that I can't wait to tell you all about! But I guess I have to start from the very beginning. Sister Droge went back to temple square on Tuesday.....it was probably the most saddened I have been to be separated from a companion my whole mission! She's seriously been one of my absolute favorites! I'm glad I got the opportunity to serve with her here though. But Sister Dewey is here to replace her and it has been so much fun! Sister Dewey is so full of faith and hope and she is stinkin hilarious so every day is a party for us. Let me tell you some of the miracles we have been able to see. First of all, we had a first appointment with a less-active girl named Heather who accepted us to come back and teach her all the missionary lessons. She's so sweet. So that is miracle #1. Miracle #2 is on Thursday, we had an appointment with Bryan and he accidently locked his keys in his car. So we were all trying to help break into his car with wire hangers and bobby pins and everything (it probably looked a little sketchy to see missionaries trying to break into a car....woops) but this girl named Bridgette who lives close by saw us struggling and came down and offered to call AAA for us to come unlock the car for him. It was so sweet of her. She sat and talked with us until they came and we were able to set up an appointment with her. We had the appointment the very next day and unfortunately she didn't want to learn more, but she said that she wants us to invite her to different activities and everything. So hopefully if we keep inviting her to different church things, she'll become a little more interested. Miracle #3, we got a new chinese investigator named Yandong who is really cool and asks the most perfect questions and is really interested. He even came to see a baptism that was going on yesterday and had tons of questions about that too. They say a certain percentage of people who see baptisms end up being baptized, so we'll see! We are praying for him! Miracle #4, an investigator we worked with a couple months ago randomly showed up to institute on Friday night and we were able to get another appointment with him! Yay! Miracle #5, as we were out contacting on Saturday we talked to this kid named Fred. We introduced ourselves and started talking to him for a little bit, he told us that he was actually swithching from one church to another, but kept walking. So we handed him a pass-along card with the mormon.org website on it and he looked at it and said "hey, this is the church I'm thinking about switching to." haha, cool huh? He knows a member of our ward who invited him to come so we should be seeing him at church next week :) Miracle #6, we contacted another less-active girl that we have been trying to contact for weeks and she invited us right up to talk with her for a little bit and gave us her phone number so we can call her. She's super sweet and probably one of the better first contacts I have ever made with a less-active who hasn't had contact in a really long time. Miracle #7, an older lady that we have been working with, Rose, said that she would pray about being baptized. She worked with sisters years ago but they had to drop her. As we have been visiting her now, she seems a lot more prepared. We taught the plan of salvation and asked her what she thinks of all of it. She said she loves it and loves our church but that she's already been baptized and doesn't want to be again. Easy concern to fix.....Sister Dewey just plainly said, "Rose, I know you love the Lord and will do what He tells us. If he told you to be baptized into this church, would you do it?" And of course she said yes. Yay for progression. Miracle #8 and probably the biggest miracle of the week.........the elders brought a young man, named Mario, to church for us who has read all about the church and is completely soaking it in. Right after sacrament meeting, he plainly just asked us "when can I get baptized?" hahahaha, cooooool! They only had one meeting with him and this is the first time we have even met him. So he is set to be baptized on May 30th. :) I love it, miracles really do come! We've been praying soo soo soo hard, especially this week to see so many miracles and the Lord has blessed us tremendously! We have been fasting a lot, the ward has been fasting in the ward 40 day fast and miracles have abounded. I feel so blessed. Yesterday, we were fasting for gratitute for what the Lord has given us and he blessed us even more! I am forever in debt to all he does. I feel like I should fast for gratitude again, haha. But I know I can't starve myself all the time!
So as you can see, it was a GREAT week. And great things to come too! Please keep praying that we'll be able to help lots of people and see a lot of success. I love this work and am so grateful to be a part of it! I love you guys all so much! Have a fantastic week! Stay strong and work hard! LOVE YA!
Love, Holly
Hi my loved ones!
It's been another wonderful week out here in Pennsylvania! We got to see a lot of amazing miracles that I can't wait to tell you all about! But I guess I have to start from the very beginning. Sister Droge went back to temple square on Tuesday.....it was probably the most saddened I have been to be separated from a companion my whole mission! She's seriously been one of my absolute favorites! I'm glad I got the opportunity to serve with her here though. But Sister Dewey is here to replace her and it has been so much fun! Sister Dewey is so full of faith and hope and she is stinkin hilarious so every day is a party for us. Let me tell you some of the miracles we have been able to see. First of all, we had a first appointment with a less-active girl named Heather who accepted us to come back and teach her all the missionary lessons. She's so sweet. So that is miracle #1. Miracle #2 is on Thursday, we had an appointment with Bryan and he accidently locked his keys in his car. So we were all trying to help break into his car with wire hangers and bobby pins and everything (it probably looked a little sketchy to see missionaries trying to break into a car....woops) but this girl named Bridgette who lives close by saw us struggling and came down and offered to call AAA for us to come unlock the car for him. It was so sweet of her. She sat and talked with us until they came and we were able to set up an appointment with her. We had the appointment the very next day and unfortunately she didn't want to learn more, but she said that she wants us to invite her to different activities and everything. So hopefully if we keep inviting her to different church things, she'll become a little more interested. Miracle #3, we got a new chinese investigator named Yandong who is really cool and asks the most perfect questions and is really interested. He even came to see a baptism that was going on yesterday and had tons of questions about that too. They say a certain percentage of people who see baptisms end up being baptized, so we'll see! We are praying for him! Miracle #4, an investigator we worked with a couple months ago randomly showed up to institute on Friday night and we were able to get another appointment with him! Yay! Miracle #5, as we were out contacting on Saturday we talked to this kid named Fred. We introduced ourselves and started talking to him for a little bit, he told us that he was actually swithching from one church to another, but kept walking. So we handed him a pass-along card with the mormon.org website on it and he looked at it and said "hey, this is the church I'm thinking about switching to." haha, cool huh? He knows a member of our ward who invited him to come so we should be seeing him at church next week :) Miracle #6, we contacted another less-active girl that we have been trying to contact for weeks and she invited us right up to talk with her for a little bit and gave us her phone number so we can call her. She's super sweet and probably one of the better first contacts I have ever made with a less-active who hasn't had contact in a really long time. Miracle #7, an older lady that we have been working with, Rose, said that she would pray about being baptized. She worked with sisters years ago but they had to drop her. As we have been visiting her now, she seems a lot more prepared. We taught the plan of salvation and asked her what she thinks of all of it. She said she loves it and loves our church but that she's already been baptized and doesn't want to be again. Easy concern to fix.....Sister Dewey just plainly said, "Rose, I know you love the Lord and will do what He tells us. If he told you to be baptized into this church, would you do it?" And of course she said yes. Yay for progression. Miracle #8 and probably the biggest miracle of the week.........the elders brought a young man, named Mario, to church for us who has read all about the church and is completely soaking it in. Right after sacrament meeting, he plainly just asked us "when can I get baptized?" hahahaha, cooooool! They only had one meeting with him and this is the first time we have even met him. So he is set to be baptized on May 30th. :) I love it, miracles really do come! We've been praying soo soo soo hard, especially this week to see so many miracles and the Lord has blessed us tremendously! We have been fasting a lot, the ward has been fasting in the ward 40 day fast and miracles have abounded. I feel so blessed. Yesterday, we were fasting for gratitute for what the Lord has given us and he blessed us even more! I am forever in debt to all he does. I feel like I should fast for gratitude again, haha. But I know I can't starve myself all the time!
So as you can see, it was a GREAT week. And great things to come too! Please keep praying that we'll be able to help lots of people and see a lot of success. I love this work and am so grateful to be a part of it! I love you guys all so much! Have a fantastic week! Stay strong and work hard! LOVE YA!
Love, Holly
week 55- 6 days till I talk to you!
May 3, 2010
Hi again!
How is everyone doing? I'm doing pretty well here! This week was not very eventful, more no-show appointments, but again that's missionary work! But we did have a couple of amazing things happen this week, let me tell you ALLLLLL about it! :)
First of all, I don't remember if I told you about Urie. He showed up to church two weeks in a row so we got an appointment with him last week. We met with him on Tuesday and asked how he had heard about the church and what made him want to come. He said he had met sisters about a year ago or so and they gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon. He hadn't really read it, just flipped through some of the pages but he read a lot online. And on good sites too. We asked him what he knew about the restoration and this is basically what he said, "Not a whole lot, but I do know....." and then he went off on Joseph Smith's story and the first vision and the gold plates and how Joseph translated him. He even talked about how he knows about all the anti stuff that the church faces but this is what he said about that "That's what the ingorant people think" hahaha, he is SOOOOO cool! So we set him with a baptism date :) He's getting baptized on May 29. Unfortunately though, he was going to the University of Pitt and they are done for the school year so he's moving home (another part of Pennsylvania) for the summer. But we told him to meet up with the elders there and continue meeting with them. We also called the elders who are in his hometown and gave them an AMAZING REFERREL!!!!!! How often do we get referrels from other missionaries that have baptism dates? Never!!!! So they were pretty stoked. I hope everything works out beautifully and he does get baptized on May 29.
Another cool thing!!!! Erin Jonas came up to me after Relief Society yesterday and had some amazing news!!! She had just talked to her mom, and I guess her mom had been having a bit of a hard day. So Erin shared some scriptures from the Book of Mormon with her mom and she said that she didn't yell at her for that! I guess her mom said, "although I don't agree with those scriptures, thank you anyway" or something to that effect. Cool huh??? Her mom's heart is slowly, very slowly, becoming softened. One small step at a time, but it will happen! :) Erin is so awesome and so strong! She seriously is such an inspiration!
We also had interviews this week. Yay for interviews! We talked a bit about my schooling for when I go home. So I'm still trying to figure all that stuff out. It's stressful and I wish I didn't have to do it. But if I don't, I know I'll never get around to doing it once I'm home. It didn't happen before my mission! haha. Might as well do it while I'm still motivated :) I also mentioned to President how I would absolutely LOVE to serve in Hershey with a sister named Sister Dewey next transfer, haha. It's Sister Dewey's last transfer and I have always wanted to serve with her!!! I love that girl so much, she reminds me of Krista a lot :) So he said he'd consider it. So I may be going to Hershey next transfer??? Who knows, but that would be awesome!!! Eastern Pennsylvania feels like home to me :)
Alrighty, well I'll be done now. I'll save more news for you when I talk to you on SUNDAY!!!!!!!! I can't wait! I love my family!!!!!! Oh, and I'll probably be calling at about 5:30 your time. So be ready to have lots to talk about and good laughs! :) Have a good week and mom, have a happy happy mothers day!!!! Love you all!
Love, Holly
Hi again!
How is everyone doing? I'm doing pretty well here! This week was not very eventful, more no-show appointments, but again that's missionary work! But we did have a couple of amazing things happen this week, let me tell you ALLLLLL about it! :)
First of all, I don't remember if I told you about Urie. He showed up to church two weeks in a row so we got an appointment with him last week. We met with him on Tuesday and asked how he had heard about the church and what made him want to come. He said he had met sisters about a year ago or so and they gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon. He hadn't really read it, just flipped through some of the pages but he read a lot online. And on good sites too. We asked him what he knew about the restoration and this is basically what he said, "Not a whole lot, but I do know....." and then he went off on Joseph Smith's story and the first vision and the gold plates and how Joseph translated him. He even talked about how he knows about all the anti stuff that the church faces but this is what he said about that "That's what the ingorant people think" hahaha, he is SOOOOO cool! So we set him with a baptism date :) He's getting baptized on May 29. Unfortunately though, he was going to the University of Pitt and they are done for the school year so he's moving home (another part of Pennsylvania) for the summer. But we told him to meet up with the elders there and continue meeting with them. We also called the elders who are in his hometown and gave them an AMAZING REFERREL!!!!!! How often do we get referrels from other missionaries that have baptism dates? Never!!!! So they were pretty stoked. I hope everything works out beautifully and he does get baptized on May 29.
Another cool thing!!!! Erin Jonas came up to me after Relief Society yesterday and had some amazing news!!! She had just talked to her mom, and I guess her mom had been having a bit of a hard day. So Erin shared some scriptures from the Book of Mormon with her mom and she said that she didn't yell at her for that! I guess her mom said, "although I don't agree with those scriptures, thank you anyway" or something to that effect. Cool huh??? Her mom's heart is slowly, very slowly, becoming softened. One small step at a time, but it will happen! :) Erin is so awesome and so strong! She seriously is such an inspiration!
We also had interviews this week. Yay for interviews! We talked a bit about my schooling for when I go home. So I'm still trying to figure all that stuff out. It's stressful and I wish I didn't have to do it. But if I don't, I know I'll never get around to doing it once I'm home. It didn't happen before my mission! haha. Might as well do it while I'm still motivated :) I also mentioned to President how I would absolutely LOVE to serve in Hershey with a sister named Sister Dewey next transfer, haha. It's Sister Dewey's last transfer and I have always wanted to serve with her!!! I love that girl so much, she reminds me of Krista a lot :) So he said he'd consider it. So I may be going to Hershey next transfer??? Who knows, but that would be awesome!!! Eastern Pennsylvania feels like home to me :)
Alrighty, well I'll be done now. I'll save more news for you when I talk to you on SUNDAY!!!!!!!! I can't wait! I love my family!!!!!! Oh, and I'll probably be calling at about 5:30 your time. So be ready to have lots to talk about and good laughs! :) Have a good week and mom, have a happy happy mothers day!!!! Love you all!
Love, Holly
Week 54- It's a hard knock life for us.
April 26, 2010
Hellooooo!
How is everyone doing? It's all going pretty good here, but let me tell you about our crazy, crazy week! I think it just gets crazier every week I am here! hahaha. I told you about all those new investigators we found last week, well, none of them came to their appointments this week. We had found a lot of new potential investigators too, but again, they didn't come to their appointments. Kind of depressing! But here is the reason why.....it was finals week. Everybody was super busy and super crazy! It was even hard trying to get members coming to our appointments because they all had to do finals as well. We had to get older women from the family wards to come to our appointments.....which ended up with the investigators not showing up. So it was pretty hard and Sister Anderson hasn't had a week like this yet, so she was like "what the heck is going on? Is the mission always like this???" hahaha, poor girl. She has to experience it sometime I guess. But despite the rough, rough week with almost no appointments, we had an AMAZING Sunday!!! People showed up at church that we were not expecting at all! Just comes to show that when you work hard and remain diligent and faithful throughout the harder times, the Lord blesses you with wonderful things! It's always worth it. So this boy, Urie, randomly came to church. He actually came last week too and Sister Droge talked to him and I guess she thought he was a member who was visiting. But he came again yesterday and this time Sister Anderson talked to him and found out that really, he wasn't a member. So she set up an appointment with him AND invited him to stay all 3 hours of church, and he did. Pretty cool blessing! Plus, a member brought her boyfriend who is interested in learning more and some less-actives came as well. So it was a good way to finish off the week.
Last night, we were also invited to come to one of the counselor in the bishopric's home for dinner and a meeting. He invited us and all the ward missionaries and ward mission leader, as well as the stake president and his wife. We brainstormed and we talked about different-out of the box- finding ideas we could do for the summer. Since the majority of the students are going to be leaving for the summer and there won't be as much to do, he wanted to find a way to keep the missionary work alive. It was so good to get everyone's insights and ideas and even helped the ward missionaries see how important missionary work is and how they need to invite their friends. :) AND, I've had this great idea brewing in my head for a little while that I shared with the stake president. The idea is to get Gladys Knight here to sing and invite tons and tons of members and non members :) Maybe it sounds a little crazy, but he actually really really liked it! So he's going to work on it. I think it takes a while before she'd actually make it here, so I'd probably be out of the area, but still. Someone could benefit! One other cool idea we are doing for the month of may is having a 40 day fast for missionary work within the ward. Every day for 40 days, someone will be fasting, so it will be a continuous thing. Sounds pretty cool, huh? I'm excited to get this rolling, and the ward members seem pretty excited about it.
One last thing, we met with Erin yesterday after church and I decided, well we all decided, that something AMAZING is going to happen. That is why she has to be patient for so long before she can be baptized. I don't know what it is, but something really good. There has to be a huge blessing for her to be so patient! So we'll all have to be patient with her because we have no idea what the Lord has in store for her and her family.
I hope you all have a fabulous week and guess what? I get to talk to you pretty soon! :) Love you and miss you lots! Have a great day!
Love, Holly
Hellooooo!
How is everyone doing? It's all going pretty good here, but let me tell you about our crazy, crazy week! I think it just gets crazier every week I am here! hahaha. I told you about all those new investigators we found last week, well, none of them came to their appointments this week. We had found a lot of new potential investigators too, but again, they didn't come to their appointments. Kind of depressing! But here is the reason why.....it was finals week. Everybody was super busy and super crazy! It was even hard trying to get members coming to our appointments because they all had to do finals as well. We had to get older women from the family wards to come to our appointments.....which ended up with the investigators not showing up. So it was pretty hard and Sister Anderson hasn't had a week like this yet, so she was like "what the heck is going on? Is the mission always like this???" hahaha, poor girl. She has to experience it sometime I guess. But despite the rough, rough week with almost no appointments, we had an AMAZING Sunday!!! People showed up at church that we were not expecting at all! Just comes to show that when you work hard and remain diligent and faithful throughout the harder times, the Lord blesses you with wonderful things! It's always worth it. So this boy, Urie, randomly came to church. He actually came last week too and Sister Droge talked to him and I guess she thought he was a member who was visiting. But he came again yesterday and this time Sister Anderson talked to him and found out that really, he wasn't a member. So she set up an appointment with him AND invited him to stay all 3 hours of church, and he did. Pretty cool blessing! Plus, a member brought her boyfriend who is interested in learning more and some less-actives came as well. So it was a good way to finish off the week.
Last night, we were also invited to come to one of the counselor in the bishopric's home for dinner and a meeting. He invited us and all the ward missionaries and ward mission leader, as well as the stake president and his wife. We brainstormed and we talked about different-out of the box- finding ideas we could do for the summer. Since the majority of the students are going to be leaving for the summer and there won't be as much to do, he wanted to find a way to keep the missionary work alive. It was so good to get everyone's insights and ideas and even helped the ward missionaries see how important missionary work is and how they need to invite their friends. :) AND, I've had this great idea brewing in my head for a little while that I shared with the stake president. The idea is to get Gladys Knight here to sing and invite tons and tons of members and non members :) Maybe it sounds a little crazy, but he actually really really liked it! So he's going to work on it. I think it takes a while before she'd actually make it here, so I'd probably be out of the area, but still. Someone could benefit! One other cool idea we are doing for the month of may is having a 40 day fast for missionary work within the ward. Every day for 40 days, someone will be fasting, so it will be a continuous thing. Sounds pretty cool, huh? I'm excited to get this rolling, and the ward members seem pretty excited about it.
One last thing, we met with Erin yesterday after church and I decided, well we all decided, that something AMAZING is going to happen. That is why she has to be patient for so long before she can be baptized. I don't know what it is, but something really good. There has to be a huge blessing for her to be so patient! So we'll all have to be patient with her because we have no idea what the Lord has in store for her and her family.
I hope you all have a fabulous week and guess what? I get to talk to you pretty soon! :) Love you and miss you lots! Have a great day!
Love, Holly
Monday, April 19, 2010
week 53 - Hallooo
April 19, 2010
Hi my wonderful family!
It has been a week full of craziness and business!! haha, I'm tired! But we had some pretty cool things happen this week. Like I told you before, we were struggling finding new people to teach last transfer and I was afraid once our current investigators were baptized, we would have no one to teach. Well, we had a miracle week! I love having Sister Anderson here! We got many new investigators, ones who seem pretty solid too. This one girl we met named Alex is super awesome! She's from Alabama and she is just the sweetest girl in the world. She loved hearing about the first vision and is excited to read the Book of Mormon. We'll be meeting with her again this week :) We also met a few men who seem pretty interested in learning more, they are at a point in there life where they are searching and trying to find out what they truly believe. I'm glad the Lord led us to these people! Hopefully we can find more amazing people who are ready this week.
We had another zone conference this week, those are my favorite times of the transfer! I love zone conference! So our mission is getting pretty young now! Just this year, we've probably gotten 50 or more brand new missionaries, which makes it almost half of us. Plus, a lot of missionaries will be going home this summer. Sooo, our zone conference was all about being prepared to take on leadership positions and getting these newer missionaries prepared to be trainers and district leaders and zone leaders early on in their missions. They all seem like a pretty prepared bunch of missionaries too.
We also had a pretty cool thing happen last night. This lady named Rose called us up randomly and invited us over to her house. She had visited with the sister missionaries like 4 years ago. She enjoyed the visits and came to church a couple times but liked her church too much so the sisters had to drop her. Well, a few weeks ago, she ran into some of the elders and she asked them for the sisters phone number. We went over there and she wants to meet with us again! I'm not sure how interested she really is in learning about the gospel but she had her 18 year old son sit in with us :) So we set up another time to visit with both of them so we could teach him more about the church. yay! Cool and amazing things always happen with a little faith, hard work, and diligence. I truly feel blessed in this area right now. It was pretty rough when I first got to the city, but I am so thankful for all the wonderful miracles we have seen here!!! I was reading in Alma this morning when Alma goes and teaches the people in Zarahemla, then Gideon, then Melek, then Ammonihah. I was just noticing all the differences with the people in the different areas and the different trials that he went through and different situations and ways he had to teach them. We all know Ammonihah was pretty rough for him, but he was so blessed with the people in Melek who wanted to hear the word. And that's the way missionary work goes. Some areas are great and we see many miracles and others are so hard that you want to just walk away. But faith and diligence and hope make everything worth it! Alma was led back to Ammonihah where he was blessed with his companion, Amulek. I dont' know if that makes as much sense to you guys as it did to me this morning, but I really liked it. Well I hope you are all having a great spring and I'd love to hear of any stories you have had lately where you have gotten to share the gospel with someone. Have a wonderful week! I love you all!!!!! Miss you!
Love, Holly
Hi my wonderful family!
It has been a week full of craziness and business!! haha, I'm tired! But we had some pretty cool things happen this week. Like I told you before, we were struggling finding new people to teach last transfer and I was afraid once our current investigators were baptized, we would have no one to teach. Well, we had a miracle week! I love having Sister Anderson here! We got many new investigators, ones who seem pretty solid too. This one girl we met named Alex is super awesome! She's from Alabama and she is just the sweetest girl in the world. She loved hearing about the first vision and is excited to read the Book of Mormon. We'll be meeting with her again this week :) We also met a few men who seem pretty interested in learning more, they are at a point in there life where they are searching and trying to find out what they truly believe. I'm glad the Lord led us to these people! Hopefully we can find more amazing people who are ready this week.
We had another zone conference this week, those are my favorite times of the transfer! I love zone conference! So our mission is getting pretty young now! Just this year, we've probably gotten 50 or more brand new missionaries, which makes it almost half of us. Plus, a lot of missionaries will be going home this summer. Sooo, our zone conference was all about being prepared to take on leadership positions and getting these newer missionaries prepared to be trainers and district leaders and zone leaders early on in their missions. They all seem like a pretty prepared bunch of missionaries too.
We also had a pretty cool thing happen last night. This lady named Rose called us up randomly and invited us over to her house. She had visited with the sister missionaries like 4 years ago. She enjoyed the visits and came to church a couple times but liked her church too much so the sisters had to drop her. Well, a few weeks ago, she ran into some of the elders and she asked them for the sisters phone number. We went over there and she wants to meet with us again! I'm not sure how interested she really is in learning about the gospel but she had her 18 year old son sit in with us :) So we set up another time to visit with both of them so we could teach him more about the church. yay! Cool and amazing things always happen with a little faith, hard work, and diligence. I truly feel blessed in this area right now. It was pretty rough when I first got to the city, but I am so thankful for all the wonderful miracles we have seen here!!! I was reading in Alma this morning when Alma goes and teaches the people in Zarahemla, then Gideon, then Melek, then Ammonihah. I was just noticing all the differences with the people in the different areas and the different trials that he went through and different situations and ways he had to teach them. We all know Ammonihah was pretty rough for him, but he was so blessed with the people in Melek who wanted to hear the word. And that's the way missionary work goes. Some areas are great and we see many miracles and others are so hard that you want to just walk away. But faith and diligence and hope make everything worth it! Alma was led back to Ammonihah where he was blessed with his companion, Amulek. I dont' know if that makes as much sense to you guys as it did to me this morning, but I really liked it. Well I hope you are all having a great spring and I'd love to hear of any stories you have had lately where you have gotten to share the gospel with someone. Have a wonderful week! I love you all!!!!! Miss you!
Love, Holly
Sunday, April 18, 2010
PICTURES
Here are some pictures for you to enjoy!
1. An elder that was in my district, Elder Landires. He reminds me of Jorge and looks like him a little bit. He's from Ecuador.
2. A boy that we are working with, Bryan Rae. He reminds me of Ryan :) Their personalities are so similar!!
3. Our easter fun :) We went frog-hunting with all the kids
4. My companions now! Sister Droge and Sister Anderson (she's the tall one)
Have a great week everyone!!!! Love you!!
Love, Holly
1. An elder that was in my district, Elder Landires. He reminds me of Jorge and looks like him a little bit. He's from Ecuador.
2. A boy that we are working with, Bryan Rae. He reminds me of Ryan :) Their personalities are so similar!!
3. Our easter fun :) We went frog-hunting with all the kids
4. My companions now! Sister Droge and Sister Anderson (she's the tall one)
Have a great week everyone!!!! Love you!!
Love, Holly
week 52 - I love my companions!
April 12, 2010
Hi Everyone!
Wow, what I crazy week has been!!!! Let me tell you all about how training is........it's a bit stressful! haha. I feel more tired then I probably have my whole mission! Except for maybe when I first came out. Well let me tell you a little bit about my greenie, her name is Sister Anderson and she is from Salem, Utah. And she is absolutely AMAZING!!!! The first day, we went back to the apartment after transfer meeting so she could drop her things off, we talked about the lessons we were going to do and roleplayed a little bit then she was ready to go! She didn't even want to unpack her things first! She was like "Ya! Let's go street contacting!" hahaha, she stopped the first person we saw, and he was quite a bit awkward and just walked away, but it was good for her. It was good that she jumped right into it! She has just been on fire. And it's sooo true when they say that greenies have a fire they bring with them! So many miracles have happened since she came. First, Pritish's baptism was on Saturday. It was such a wonderful baptism service! President Summerhays was able to come and share their testimony with him, and after we said the closing prayer, Pritish even got up himself to thank everyone for coming and thank everyone for their prayers for him. It was so tender! And his confirmation was great too! I'm so excited for him and his new journey.
One thing I was worried about though, once Pritish is baptized, we have Erin as an investigator (which she is still doing amazing! Erin, if you are reading this, you are stinkin awesome!!) but other then that, our teaching pool is not very much. We really struggled last transfer trying to find new investigators. BUT, here comes that greenie fire again, we have been able to gain a pretty strong potential investigator pool. We found a chinese boy early last week who set an appointment with us and when he came, he brought a friend with him. So we got two new investigators and they seem pretty cool! We'll see them again next week. Last night, we had a pretty cool miracle too. We had an appointment fall through and I was kind of bummed out because I didn't want to street contact all night for 3 hours. But we went for it anyway and as we were walking we stopped and talked to this guy and girl, the guy immediately was like "oh, you want to talk about Jesus? Ok, let's go sit down!" hahaha, it kind of took us by surprise. He is a nice guy and he wasn't really too serious about it, but he likes to have discussions. But his girlfriend, we believe, was the one who really needed the message. When we started sharing the message of the restoration, she started crying. She told us about some experiences that she has been going through lately and how she's really been needing to find God and feel his love. We really had a great, spur of the moment, lesson with them. They said they are very weary about mormons so they didn't want to set up another time as of yet, but we talked about priesthood blessings and she really wants one to help her out. They also seemed pretty interested in prophets and apostles, so they said they would check out general conference online. I gave them our number, so hopefully she'll want to give us a call soon! It was a great experience, and now of course I understand the reason of why we needed to be in that place at that time. Even if she doesn't become an investigator, that's really what she needed right then. Such tender mercies!
Anyway, sorry I went on and on again about stuff. But missionary work is great. I love you all and I hope you have an amazing week! Guess what, it's almost time to talk to you on the phone again! Time just flies by so fast! Love you!!!!!!
Love, Holly
Hi Everyone!
Wow, what I crazy week has been!!!! Let me tell you all about how training is........it's a bit stressful! haha. I feel more tired then I probably have my whole mission! Except for maybe when I first came out. Well let me tell you a little bit about my greenie, her name is Sister Anderson and she is from Salem, Utah. And she is absolutely AMAZING!!!! The first day, we went back to the apartment after transfer meeting so she could drop her things off, we talked about the lessons we were going to do and roleplayed a little bit then she was ready to go! She didn't even want to unpack her things first! She was like "Ya! Let's go street contacting!" hahaha, she stopped the first person we saw, and he was quite a bit awkward and just walked away, but it was good for her. It was good that she jumped right into it! She has just been on fire. And it's sooo true when they say that greenies have a fire they bring with them! So many miracles have happened since she came. First, Pritish's baptism was on Saturday. It was such a wonderful baptism service! President Summerhays was able to come and share their testimony with him, and after we said the closing prayer, Pritish even got up himself to thank everyone for coming and thank everyone for their prayers for him. It was so tender! And his confirmation was great too! I'm so excited for him and his new journey.
One thing I was worried about though, once Pritish is baptized, we have Erin as an investigator (which she is still doing amazing! Erin, if you are reading this, you are stinkin awesome!!) but other then that, our teaching pool is not very much. We really struggled last transfer trying to find new investigators. BUT, here comes that greenie fire again, we have been able to gain a pretty strong potential investigator pool. We found a chinese boy early last week who set an appointment with us and when he came, he brought a friend with him. So we got two new investigators and they seem pretty cool! We'll see them again next week. Last night, we had a pretty cool miracle too. We had an appointment fall through and I was kind of bummed out because I didn't want to street contact all night for 3 hours. But we went for it anyway and as we were walking we stopped and talked to this guy and girl, the guy immediately was like "oh, you want to talk about Jesus? Ok, let's go sit down!" hahaha, it kind of took us by surprise. He is a nice guy and he wasn't really too serious about it, but he likes to have discussions. But his girlfriend, we believe, was the one who really needed the message. When we started sharing the message of the restoration, she started crying. She told us about some experiences that she has been going through lately and how she's really been needing to find God and feel his love. We really had a great, spur of the moment, lesson with them. They said they are very weary about mormons so they didn't want to set up another time as of yet, but we talked about priesthood blessings and she really wants one to help her out. They also seemed pretty interested in prophets and apostles, so they said they would check out general conference online. I gave them our number, so hopefully she'll want to give us a call soon! It was a great experience, and now of course I understand the reason of why we needed to be in that place at that time. Even if she doesn't become an investigator, that's really what she needed right then. Such tender mercies!
Anyway, sorry I went on and on again about stuff. But missionary work is great. I love you all and I hope you have an amazing week! Guess what, it's almost time to talk to you on the phone again! Time just flies by so fast! Love you!!!!!!
Love, Holly
Week 51- New transfer calls and a great week of conference
April 5, 2010
Hey there my dear loved ones!
How is everyone doing? How did everyone enjoy conference this past weekend. Wow, it was sooooo good! I was just amazed how EVERY single talk was about raising righteous children in the home and the parents responsibility of teaching children the principles of the gospel and helping them find there own testimony. It was so good! And I loved how all of it started out with President Packer talking about righteous priesthood holders, and then going into Sister Beck's talk about righteous mothers and relief society, what a good way to start it off. Then I loved at the end when Elder Andersen began by talking about how the theme of this conference was not planned but that every talk given added to the truth of the talks given before. You know inspiration was given to each one of these speakers! And that this must be something us members of the church really need to listen to!!!! I love conference! My favorite talks......Elder Bednar and Elder Holland! I love the boldness of Elder Holland! :)
We had a really good easter! We were invited by the institute teacher, Brother Webb's home for conference and dinner. They live about 30 minutes away, out of the city. It was so beautiful to see the countryside again! I miss it! And it was cute because in between sessions, their children took us on a little easter egg hunt. haha, they have children that are 8, 7, 4, and 18 months. The 4 year old hid my "basket" (a cute bowl with candy in it) and when it was time to find it, she just took me by the hand and led me straight to it. haha, I love those kids! They are so adorable! They also have a lot of land in their backyard with a little swamp/river area. The kids took us down to it to go frog hunting :) And yes, we did find some, and yes I did hold one, and yes I did take a picture of me pretending to kiss the frog. Once again, I forgot my camera cord though, so I'll add the picture to the list I want to send you in my email next week. So it was a great easter holiday. And THANK YOU MOMMY for the easter package!!!! It was such a fun surprise and I LOVE the headband you put in it! I wore it the very next day :)
Ready for transfer calls??? Here it is......Sister Westbrook is finally leaving the city. She's been here for 9 months so it's time for her to get out but I will miss serving with her. It's been such a fun transfer. But Sister Droge and I are staying together AND we are training a new missionary. Another threesome in the city, YAY! It'll kind of be like I am greenie-busting Sister Droge too, but she has trained at temple square, so she'll be able to use her expertise with that. Thank goodness!
Pritish's baptism is this upcoming Saturday!!!!!!! :) It's a little bit surreal to me, it's snuck up on us so fast! It's been hard to make steady appointments with him and we still have a little more to teach him, so please pray that everything will go well!! He says he's excited and ready for it though. He's been looking forward to this day since we set him with it and gets more and more excited as it comes closer. So I'm sure everything will be just fine, but still pray! Thank you!
Alright, I've rambled long enough. I hope you guys all had a great week and a great easter! I love you all lots and lots!
Love, Holly
Hey there my dear loved ones!
How is everyone doing? How did everyone enjoy conference this past weekend. Wow, it was sooooo good! I was just amazed how EVERY single talk was about raising righteous children in the home and the parents responsibility of teaching children the principles of the gospel and helping them find there own testimony. It was so good! And I loved how all of it started out with President Packer talking about righteous priesthood holders, and then going into Sister Beck's talk about righteous mothers and relief society, what a good way to start it off. Then I loved at the end when Elder Andersen began by talking about how the theme of this conference was not planned but that every talk given added to the truth of the talks given before. You know inspiration was given to each one of these speakers! And that this must be something us members of the church really need to listen to!!!! I love conference! My favorite talks......Elder Bednar and Elder Holland! I love the boldness of Elder Holland! :)
We had a really good easter! We were invited by the institute teacher, Brother Webb's home for conference and dinner. They live about 30 minutes away, out of the city. It was so beautiful to see the countryside again! I miss it! And it was cute because in between sessions, their children took us on a little easter egg hunt. haha, they have children that are 8, 7, 4, and 18 months. The 4 year old hid my "basket" (a cute bowl with candy in it) and when it was time to find it, she just took me by the hand and led me straight to it. haha, I love those kids! They are so adorable! They also have a lot of land in their backyard with a little swamp/river area. The kids took us down to it to go frog hunting :) And yes, we did find some, and yes I did hold one, and yes I did take a picture of me pretending to kiss the frog. Once again, I forgot my camera cord though, so I'll add the picture to the list I want to send you in my email next week. So it was a great easter holiday. And THANK YOU MOMMY for the easter package!!!! It was such a fun surprise and I LOVE the headband you put in it! I wore it the very next day :)
Ready for transfer calls??? Here it is......Sister Westbrook is finally leaving the city. She's been here for 9 months so it's time for her to get out but I will miss serving with her. It's been such a fun transfer. But Sister Droge and I are staying together AND we are training a new missionary. Another threesome in the city, YAY! It'll kind of be like I am greenie-busting Sister Droge too, but she has trained at temple square, so she'll be able to use her expertise with that. Thank goodness!
Pritish's baptism is this upcoming Saturday!!!!!!! :) It's a little bit surreal to me, it's snuck up on us so fast! It's been hard to make steady appointments with him and we still have a little more to teach him, so please pray that everything will go well!! He says he's excited and ready for it though. He's been looking forward to this day since we set him with it and gets more and more excited as it comes closer. So I'm sure everything will be just fine, but still pray! Thank you!
Alright, I've rambled long enough. I hope you guys all had a great week and a great easter! I love you all lots and lots!
Love, Holly
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