Week 34- Happy Birthday to ME!

December 8, 2009

Hi Family!
Can I just start off to say this has been a GREAT week so far. The work has been a little rough but just random things have been so good here. First of all, we had zone conference yesterday. Hence the fact that I'm writing these emails on Tuesday. P-day will be normal again next week though. So don't forget to write on Sunday night! Zone conference was amazing though! It was all christmas-y and motivating. They have a year end video of things that have gone on throughout the mission during the year and we all got a copy of it. It's a way good video! Can't wait for you to watch it someday!!! And of course they sang happy birthday to me and the other missionaries who have birthdays in December.
Our first district meeting with our new district was last week. And surprise.....I'm the only non-spanish speaking missionary! hahaha. There is one elder that comes straight from Mexico-no MTC or anything-and he is trying to learn english. I can't really talk to him a whole lot, except the few words he knows. He's a good elder though, really tries so hard! So to make it fair for this elder, we sing and pray in spanish. My district leader had me say the closing prayer too!!! :) hahahaha. Sister Ferguson had to whisper in my ear with what to say, but I'm excited because I'll get to learn a little more spanish! I'm happy! Plus, Sister Ferguson is starting to take spanish language study in the morning, so I'll be able to learn right along with her.
We also had our first snow here on Saturday. It pretty much snowed ALL DAY LONG......but now it's all melted away. Makes me feel like I'm at home in Boise. Usually I just need to wear sweaters and I'm ok. Now here is the WAY cool thing that just happened today! We had an appointment with a less-active this morning, Sis. Peterson. She's way cool, I love her! As we were talking, we got on the topic of cutting down our own christmas trees and where they got theres and everything. Then she asked us if she could take us to cut down our own christmas tree! Since today was P-day, we told her we could go today. Her and her husband just happened to be doing nothing too! So they took us to a tree farm and we cut down our very own-----7 foot----christmas tree!!! For only $15 too :) Amazing right? So we have a real tree in our apartment! I'm so excited, it will be a real christmas....sort of. Minus being with you guys. But I can't wait to talk to you all on Christmas, it's going to come up so fast.
I love you all, thank you SO SO SO SO SO much for the birthday package! I absolutely love it. Have an amazing week and I will talk to you soon. Love you!
Love, Holly
P.S. When does BSU play in the Fiesta Bowl??? That is stinkin awesome, I'm excited for them. We went and worked with a sister in Hershey last week and met one of their investigators. He is actually a HUGE Boise State fan! He even loves Ian Johnson so much. I told him I'd try to get him a #41 Jersey for him and I'd give it to him at his baptism :) (He doesn't have a baptism date yet) So.......do you think I could get Chrissy's address please????? thank you! Love you!

Week 33- I'M STAYING IN LITITZ

November 30, 2009

I'm SOOOOOOO HAPPY I get to stay in Lititz for another transfer!!!! :) If you all were praying for me to stay here, thank you so so so much! I was praying hard core too! haha. We are just having so many wonderful things happen here, working with great people, and this ward is so amazing. I did NOT want to leave. Sister Ferguson and I are staying together for another transfer too! We get to spend my birthday, christmas, and the new year together!!! I bet you could already picture this, but when I found out I was staying, I started doing cartwheels around the apartment because I was so happy.
Greg is still doing really well. He slipped again and smoked a cigarette :( He has to be smoke free for 2 weeks before his baptism. He is still set and excited for Dec. 19th, so I really hope he stays strong! I'm so excited to see him get baptized though! He's awesome and he knows the church is true! Greg even gave us a referrel a couple weeks ago. He had a friend named Gwen that he was very concerned about and wanted us to give her a call. But he didn't want us to tell her who was concerned. So Sis. Ferguson cold called her and told her who we were, told her a friend was concerned for her and asked if we could meet. She said yes, so we met her this past Friday. Greg also didn't tell us what he was concerned about, but we had a feeling it was going to be about money. BUT it wasn't! :) She is so prepared for the gospel in her life! She told us she just felt like something was missing in her life and she felt so alone. She cried as she was telling us too. I then asked what she felt she was missing and she said God. PERFECT! We shared all about the restoration with her, focusing it around how much the savior loves her, individually. She said she was really excited to read from the Book of Mormon and find out more. I am so excited for her too!
Thanksgiving was really good! We spent the day with a less active/nonmember family, the Rodriguez family. We actually invited ourselves over, but they were happy for us to come. They love us! But Sis. Rodriguez had a 21 lb turkey, 20 lb ham, 5 different desserts, and every thanksgiving food you could imagine! SO MUCH FOOD! It was really yummy though. We also went to two other homes and had dessert. Lets just say that I was full all day Friday and Saturday too!
Hope your thanksgiving was good too! Happy Holiday Season!!!! I love this time of year. Oh, one more thing. The day after thanksgiving, an older woman in the ward (who's husband is less-active, so it was legit) asked us to come put up her christmas tree and decorate it :) She made us cookies and hot chocolate and played christmas Mo-Tab. Then we shared a message about angels. Perfect way to start off the christmas season! Alright, I've really got to go now. I love you all and can't wait to hear from you! I'll talk to you REALLY SOON!!!!! :) Have a good week.
Love, Holly

Week 32- Awesome Week!

November 23, 2009

Hi!
This has been such an awesome week! We really have a lot of good, exciting things going on here in Lititz!!!! Transfers are in a week so, PLEEEEEEAAAAASSE keep praying that I stay here!!!! I am praying that I will! haha, and I keep hinting to President that I need to stay here too. Hopefully his will, my will, and the Lord's will are all in line with eachother! :) :) :) Greg is still progressing so awesomely! He did slip and smoked one cigarette this past week, but I think it really shook him and he learned his lesson. Right when we got to his home, he told us right away what had happened, but then he was all gung-ho about making sure all of his baptism plans were still in order. haha. He's great. He bought his church clothes. He just needs them hemmed and he is all set to get baptized! We finished all the lessons with him last week, now it's just in limbo kind of. We want him to feel completely comfortable and ready to get baptized, but we are also like "what are you waiting for??" haha. He IS ready! Maybe we should tell him that he shouldn't procrastinate! haha, jk.
At church yesterday, we had a GREAT turnout! We had 5 investigators at church and 13 less-actives! :) That is the most I've seen my whole mission! We have also been working with a less-active family, the Lay family who has been consistentley coming to church now. They have 2 overaged youth so we just asked Sister Lay if she wanted us to teach her children towards baptism. She said yes, so we will begin teaching them tonight.
We did a sisters exchange in Hershey this past week too. That was a lot of fun! For part of the day I worked with one sister (Sister Villa from Mexico) and then in the afternoon I worked with another sister (Sister Wolfgramm). I had a lot of fun, got to meet some of their investigators. I taught this old man they are teaching, who is about 90 years old and he is a member of the RLDS church. They have a struggle trying to get past the whole authority to baptize but he was a great old man! haha, so funny and so nice!
I am out of time on the computer so I gotta go real fast! I LOVE YOU AND MISS YOU ALLLLL!!!!!! Have such a happy week and
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(I'll probably be having 2-3 meals, haha, expect me to be fat when I come home from my mission)
Love you!
Love, Holly

Week 31 - Hola Amigos!

November 16, 2009

Hi my favorite family!!
How is everything going at home? Hope all is good. Is it staying warm for you? Yesterday was a VERY nice day here in Pennsylvania. I actually went out tracting in just a short sleeve shirt and I was fine! That probably won't be lasting very long though. The computer system is being extremely slow today, so I'm sorry that I can't write all of you individually this week. I actually couldn't read Kelsey's email either! Next week, hopefully I can read two from you! :)
This week has been pretty good. First some very good news, at least for me anyway. We had zone conference on Thursday and I told you that some things were going to be changing. Well I'm loving these changes! We are now no longer counting how much tracting time we've done or how many people we talk to. We are now just focusing on increasing our number of people set with baptism dates, progressing investigators, and investigators at sacrament meeting. I think this is a great focus because it really bugged me before that we had to count exactly how much time we've tracted and how many people we've talked to. That's not really what we should be focusing on, we should be focusing on helping people progress towards baptism and making and keeping commitments. Of course I understand that finding and sharing the gospel with people is important, but it now gives me a new sense of excitement. I felt like before I was just doing it because if I didn't, our leaders were going to get on our cases and make us feel bad. Now I can go out and tract because I really, really want to find someone who is ready to hear the gospel. I don't know if that makes any sense, but I'm stoked about it!
Two quick stories of the week.....Sis Ferguson and I were tracting a couple days ago and we ran into one of the general managers at CiCi's Pizza. Now you have to understand that Cici's pizza is in a central location where ALL the missionaries in the area go. So this guy see's us A LOT! haha. At first we didn't recognize him but once we remembered, he opened up to us a lot. He told us of some things that have been going on in his life right now and that it was such a miracle that we showed up right then. Missionaries have never really shared the gospel with him before but we shared the whole message of the restoration with him and gave him a Book of Mormon. In return, he gave us a HUGE stack of coupons to Cici's pizza for free lunch buffet!!!!! Sweet huh????? We'll follow up when we see him at Cici's :) Yummy.
We also got a referrel for a girl who actually called up the church building so she could learn more. We contacted her and set up an appointment to meet her at the church building. Unfortunately she didn't show up (we'll have to try to contact her again) BUT it was a blessing that we were there. Another ward was having a clothes drive/clothes exchange. Greg pushed back his baptism because he didn't have nice clothes to wear to church. SO, we found him a whole bunch of nice shirts and nice pants and they fit him!!! Maybe he'll be ready to move his baptism back up :)
That's all for this week. Can't wait to hear from all of you next week! Transfers are coming up again on Dec. 1st, so keep praying for me that I'll stay in Lititz next transfer. I love it here and I want to be able to be there for Greg's baptism! (p.s. amanda's baptism was this past friday!!!!!) Love you all and hope you have a fantastic week! Stay strong!
Love, Holly

Week 30 - New P-Day

November 9, 2009

Hello my family!!!!!
I just wanted to write a quick email and let you know that our P-day has changed......yet again. It's officially been moved BACK to Mondays. So you can write me Sundays after church and never have to forget about it again. :) It actually came as such a surprise last night. This coming Thursday, we have a zone conference so we knew that P-day was going to be a different this week. But last night, our district leader called and told us that it is offically changing back to Monday. I guess we are going to be having a whole lot of new changes that we will find out about on Thursday.
So not a whole lot to update you on these past couple days since I wrote last, but Sunday was a very eventful day at church! It was the Primary Program so OF COURSE tons of non-members would be coming! We actually had about 9-10 less-actives come that we are working with, 3 of our own investigators, and LOTS of non-members that we met. We stayed pretty busy. Have you had your primary program yet?? I love it, it has officially become one of my absolute favorite sundays of the year.
This email is short, sorry! But here are a couple pictures from Halloween. I hope you enjoy them :) We had some fun! Have a great week! I love you all and miss you all tons and tons.
Love, Holly
Pictures:
1. Sis. Ferguson and I with a family we work with. The Doyle's. Bro. Doyle (getting baptized on dec. 19) is cookie monster! haha.
2. Our halloween costumes and making carmeled apples on Halloween!
3. Our district combined with another district LAST transfer......(back row) E. Juarez, Neerings, Clark, Blasco, Ferguson, Me, DeYoung (front row) Naeata, Warren, Bullock.
4. Our current disctrict...starting in back row....Clark, me, Ferguson, Blasco, Eregera, and Gamez.
5. Beautiful flaming red tree!!! :)
6. A covered bridge. They are everywhere and I LOVE them!

Week 29- Happy November!

November 5, 2009

Hi There!
I'm not really sure what to share with you this week! It's been kind of a blur for me, but it's been a good week too.
Halloween was a blast! For some strange reason, Lancaster County decided to do all their trick or treating on Friday night instead of Saturday night. Of course we couldn't go trick or treating or anything, but we had dinner at a young couples house on Friday and they were dressing up to take some kids trick or treating! haha. Bro. Doyle was cookie monster and Sis. Doyle was a ladybug. So cute! I'll send pictures of it next week too. We went to our wards trunk-or-treat that night too which was pretty fun. Not a lot of people showed up since it was on Friday night but there was a decent turn out and some non-members came that we got to talk to. Kids are so fun when they get candy! haha. And being the missionary that we are......we handed out candy and pass-along cards. :) Genious right? haha. On Saturday night, we were required to be in our apartment at 6:00 pm. Sister Ferguson and I decided to have a little fun and make some carmeled apples, carmeled popcorn, and dress up! Since Ryan sent me a bat headband in his package, I dressed all in black and was a bat for halloween :) Sister Ferguson got the great idea to put hangers behind her back to make fairy wings, and she was a fairy princess. We took a lot of pictures of that too, so I'll send them next week.
Greg is still doing well. Hasn't smoked for over a week! :) Thank you for all your prayers for him! It's really helping and he is still stoked to keep coming to church. One sad thing though.....he wants to push back his baptism. He still really wants to be baptized but he doesn't feel quite ready yet (he wants a haircut and church clothes before he is baptized). So he is now set for Dec. 19th. That will be in the next transfer, so I'm hoping and praying, again, that I'll get to stay in Lititz next transfer. So pray for me for that too......PLEASE!!! :) Bro. Doyle is set to be baptized the same day. He's in the same situation, he needs to stop smoking...but he's getting closer. The bishop even offered to buy him a prescription that cuts back the cravings. Hopefully that works!
I'm almost out of time but I have one crazy thing that happened yesterday to tell you. We were visiting a less-active woman and she was complaining of having seizures all morning long. When we walked in her home, she was even hunched over on the couch. It wasn't the on the floor, shaking and trembling seizures, but she would just kind of start looking very tired and dizzy and she said her arms and legs would go numb. So while we were there she had to call an ambulance to come get her and take her to the hospital! That was quite an experience. She called us later that night when she got home and said the doctor told her she was having seizures due to some of the medication she was taking. So....be careful with medications that you take! haha, don't overdue them!
Anyway, I hope everyone is having a fantastic week, and has a fantastic coming up week! I love you all and miss you all tons! Can't wait to hear from you again. Love you so much! :)
Love, Holly

Week 28- Crazy and Busy!

October 29, 2009

Hello again!
Thanks for all the emails this week! I love getting lots :) It makes me feel loved! haha. Well let me jump right in to what we've been up to this past week. Which is a lot! Like I told you last week, we took over the elders area that we shared a ward with. So now our area is huge!!! We practically spend most of our time in their area now.....maybe we should move our apartment over there? No, not really. I like ours too much. Anyway, we've still been trying to contact all the people the elders had been working with. We're still working on it. They did a lot of less-active work, so we are really trying to contact everyone! We had a pretty cool experience yesterday. Actually, on Tuesday we tried to stop by a referrel that the elders had gotten but hadn't contacted yet. So we stopped by and she wasn't home, but her ex-husband was there. We talked to him for a while, shared the restoration with him and he totally accepted a Book of Mormon. He even said he felt something special as he was looking at a picture of the first vision. Pretty cool huh? Unfortunately he's going to jail soon (woops), so we couldn't get a return appointment with him. But we DID contact this girl yesterday! She is so awesome! She was actually referred by her mom who just recently got baptized a couple months ago. As we were talking to her (her name is Alicia) she was telling us what a change her mom has made since she joined the church. She said it was a complete 180 degrees and she really likes the change she sees! So she is really interested in learning more. We are going to see her again next week! I'm so excited about it! Plus she her mom can motivate, encourage, and excite her too as she continues learning! YAY! Plus, I don't remember if I told you before, but Amanda, who I was teaching over in Dover, is getting baptized!!!!!! :) :) :) I'm so excited for her! I wish I could go! She's one of my favorite people so far! Now...as for Greg, he's still doing really great too! We visited him on Monday and he only did one puff of cigarette in two days! He's doing so well! Keep praying for him that he'll have the faith and the strength to quit all together! We're seeing him again this evening, so let week I'll let you know how he's still coming along. Oh and mom, thank you so so so so so much for the package!!!!!!!! It was such a fun surprise and soooooo cute!!! I'm wearing the cute aqua sweater with the satin bow right now :) I love it, thank you! Will someone also do me a favor? Will you get me Angela, Josie, Sabra, and Katelyn's addresses for me please? I want to write them, but have no idea what their addresses are. Thank you! Hope you all have such a great week. I love you all tons and miss you tons and tons too! Bye
Love, Holly