Monday, July 29, 2013

FAMILY AND FRIENDS OF THE WEST COAST,

Nice to hear all is well! This week has been the busiest week of my mission thus far-- I hope I have time to even outline it all!

First, we had two exchanges this week from Wednesday to Thursday and Thursday to Friday.  One with the Jamacia Sisters and one with the Training Sisters! I was with Sister Gonzalez and I went to Jamacia, while Sister Lee stayed in Lynbrook with Sister Powell.  For the other, I was with Sister Nielson and Sister Lee was with Sister Chipman this time, but we both stayed in Lynbrook! This ended up being a huge blessing to have two more hands helping us here with all our projects!

The city was a BLAST! Fearlessing is so great there, and it is so much easier to talk to people, because there are people to actually talk to on the streets haha. Lynbrook is essentially like your average west coast town.  Jamaica is more like what you would think of New York being. :) Sister Gonzalez was on her last 2 weeks of her mission and has a wealth of knowledge! I learned good planning techniques, and had the opportunity to teach my first impromptu lesson on the restoration!  The family soaked it up and they went back the next day- so I hope it went well! You can just feel when people are prepared for the gospel and when they aren't.  After our lesson that night, we blitzed with their zone I think, or maybe it was district- but there were a lot of them. But it was my first time knocking an apt complex! It was a great experience!  Since the front doors of a complex are locked and we have no one specific we are seeing what we do is drag our hand down all the buttons and hope someone lets us in... it works pretty good! hahaha It was fun to go there too, because Elder Nugent was there from my MTC district! Apparently his grandparents started the church in the "real Jamaica" in the West Indies- cuz he’s 1/4 Jamaican. So he fits right in in Jamaica! haha He has family on mormon.org- his name is Spencer Nugent, I believe. After knocking we went home.  It’s a little more dangerous there so they go home at 8:30 instead of 9:00, so that was weird. The next day we arranged for a member to go with us to some less actives but they weren’t home, so we tried one more and it ended up being an answer to their prayer. The people live amazing lives, very humble homes. This man was blind and the wife was trying to go to church but one of the members had a car and she offered to take her to church. :)

The next exchange we did was a lot of preparing for our blood drive and Restoration Fireside that went SUPER great!  Heavenly Father sure helped us on that one!  We had so much to do! The majority of that exchange was just cleaning the church, prepping signs, getting materials to hand out and getting the projector figured out! Needless to say- it went better than I could have asked! We really tried to get members involved and that happened. The whole zone was involved and so we got members from the whole district [stake] to come as well! We had been handing out flyers for both of these for about 3 week prior and we know that investigators came because they clapped after all the musical numbers hahaha. I about died. :) Sooo funny! The 4 of us sisters basically put it on, the elders doubted- but they can’t deny that it went perfectly. The members read from a script, (basically from our restoration pamphlets) and then because we were telling nonmembers it was a concert we had a ton of musical numbers that went amazing! :) The spirit was so strong when we played a clip from the hour version of the restoration video and then had our branch missionary's son, whose name ironically is Joseph Schmidt, play on the violin Joseph Smiths First Prayer. It was phenomenal. The other time that was a tear jerker was when all the missionaries from the zone sang the EFY medley with the sisters singing the new missionary version of "As Sisters In Zion" SO good. Our 130 cupcakes were basically the cutest thing you've ever seen.  We will be the best sisters in Relief Society if you ask me ;) haha We were told by a lady in our branch that "Sister missionaries do things that Elders can't do" so, that’s our new sister missionary quote. :) Another favorite from an elder is [as he eats a chocolate kiss] "this is how elders do kisses on the mission [as he sticks it in his mouth] they devour it."

The blood drive went well.  We got a lot of people there! :) Both members AND nonmembers! The lady that was checking my iron asked me before pricking me if I’ve ever had trouble with low iron. I told her that it’s never been a problem at all.  So she proceeds to prick me and says... "Well now it is, I guess." Sooooo she pricked me again and same thing. She told me it was because I was already losing 2 pints of blood a day that week.... haha. I found out that the 43 mosquito bites on my legs were because I have O- blood though. That’s kind of interesting... haha

Transfers are decided this week- we'll see what happens. I love Lynbrook so much- I would love to stay, but I’m sure thankful it’s up to the Lord, then I know I have nothing to worry about!

Thursday is our designated FHE.  We try to get families involved and investigators as well.  So this week since it was Pioneer Day, we had the cutest activity! We had a few families there and we played pioneer games. We went in the "assembly hall" since we don’t have a gym and played the stick pull (with a broom stick) tug of war (with a jump rope) and made a "fire" (out of cellophane and a flashlight and brown paper for our logs) hahaha We even had stars (white Christmas lights)! The highlight was the taffy pulling that we did. We got a recipe and had each person pull taffy!  It really was a hit! We tried to make a second batch but accidently burned it! But it made butterscotch! I plan to keep the recipe and burn it on purpose! It was perfect!  Now that we are getting it rolling a little bit more, we hope the word will get out and families can learn how they can have their own FHE :)

President Calderwood came to our church building this week and said that Bishop Davies from the Presiding Bishopric was coming shortly after we left :) I was sad I missed Bishop Davies, it would have been cool to meet him!

Our investigators are doing well! Sister Lee taught Nick on their exchange and she said he is progressing!  We hope to get him to attend church soon! Linda is doing well- she was sick and her car broke so we couldn't meet, but this week will be great I’m sure! The lord is blessing them. I pray that they can see how He is blessing them as well!

I finished another Journal this week- so I have like 2 more, I have a feeling the 9 I bought won’t last me my whole mission. haha

I’m having a member fix my skirts! I am so thankful she offered- it was getting ridiculous! I am thankful for the selfless people that serve us. I hope to be one of those people one day.

Today for p-day I plan to take a nap. :) It may be my best one yet ;)

Love you all! I really do! Those of you that promised to write, but haven’t- should. ;)

--Love Sister Freeze