The Quest for the Brass Plates

Life in Norwich is fantastic. :) I am absolutely loving my mission. The people here are incredible. The Lord has blessed me so much and I could not imagine being anywhere else. I still have moments where I am thinking in my head," it would be so cool if I could tell my future kids and grand kids that I went on a mission." Then it hits me that I will be able too. :) It's funny to me. The only bad thing is that it is so cold!! We have no snow, but we have wind chill and humidity.  Blah. 

 

We are going to three different houses for Thanksgiving.  AHH!  So much food.  We are going to a members home first, then the next two are at potential investigators houses.  It will be worth it. :) 

The past few days have been good. :) We got to see our investigator, Roxanne. She is the one that wrote you that sweet letter. We taught her about covenants.  It was really good to see her, we love her. 

 

We got a new elder in our ward. His name is Elder Orgill.  He is a lot quieter than the last elder we had here. :) haha 

 

We had a lesson with our investigators Kassy and Gordo.  They are both really energetic kids.  I absolutely love them! We got to see them at church on Sunday too, which was so good.  SUNDAY WAS THE BEST! I'll tell you about it in a second.  

 

I have learned to clean really well on my mission.  I may be a neat freak when I get home, you may not believe me, but I am thinking that's my future. :) 

 

We found an awesome Book of Mormon board game in our library.  I think it is from the 70's or 80's.  It is called The Quest for the Brass Plates.  It is actually really fun even though it's cheesy.  We played it with one of our recent converts and her mom.  I lost. :) haha 

 

We met some people this weekend that we haven't been able to in the last three months.  It was SO good.  

 

I ate venison again.  This time in a stew.  It wasn't terrible. :) 

 

Okay, now for Sunday.  Here are four reasons why it rocked.

1. Lori came for the first time in years.  She is a potential investigator. She makes the coolest cards and has the most adorable house in the world!  You guys would love her.

2. Like I mentioned before, the Dunns came to church.  They stayed all three hours!  The Young Woman were so welcoming and sweet to Kassy. :)  I need to buy them all candy bars. 

3. We were really worried about who would be the speakers in Sacrament.  We didn't want to scare Lori away and we were nervous about it because a few weeks ago one of the speakers stood up and talked about how much families stink and that he hates them.  He said that he is afraid of having a family, because his was so disfunctional as a kid.  (not the greatest message in the world)  He meant well, but it was interesting. The Lord loves us, so He sent us President Coates from the stake presidency to speak. :) It was great.

4. Miriam just got baptized and her family isn't super excited about it, but we went over there and her husband actually sat down and talked to us.  Which he has never done before.  It was cool. :)  She has two boys. The older one is not happy about her joining a religion. I have no idea what they are teaching in the schools over here, but it is SCARY. There has been more than one kid we have come in contact with that has had a huge problem with religion when before he was fine. They aren't "allowed" to teach religion but they are allowed to bash on Christianity. Not cool.

The people in New England are the best!

These last few weeks have been a blur, but good news is, is I wrote it down. :) 

 

I am not getting transferred! WOOOOO! 

 

I finished Jesus the Christ!  WOO!  It is such a good book. I think I am going to read it over and over for the rest of my life.  

 

We went on exchanges with the Sisters in Scituate.  I got to spend the day with Makelle Bailey.  She is awesome! I love her. :) 

 

One of our members, Sister Sullivan, had surgery on her hip.  We went and visited her in the hospital and she was up and walking the next day!  

 

I have come to love apple cider.  It is so good over here because of all the apple orchards. 

 

We stayed the night in Franklin, Mass. so that we didn't have to get up at 3:30 in the morning to be at a Mission Leadership Council meeting by 7.  Elder S. Gifford Nielsen from the 70 came and he requested a special meeting with all the mission leadership. :)  It was so cool!!  He just spoke in conference about exclamation points.  He is six five.  His wife is adorable.  We drove home with Elders Batts and Brimhall. They are hilarious! I am going to miss being stuck in traffic with elders. They are hilarious. We spent Saturday in Westerly. One of the sisters has been pretty sick, so I stayed and took care of her while the other sisters went out to catch up on the area. It was a good day.  I got to study a lot.  We spent Monday in New Haven.  New Haven is pretty big.  I thought Central Falls was sketchy.  New Haven is worse, but it is such a cool city!  We were there to train sisters.  Yale is right across from the church building. :)  

 

The people in New England are the best. I get to meet so many of them from all different walks of life. :) I love it. 

Picture Week

No official update this week.  Just stories by pictures :)  Love it!

Our Pumpkins!!

(Blurry) Pie Eating Contest

Trunk or Treating dressed as each other :)

Beautiful sunset

Go Stansbury!! I wore my stallion colors on Friday to support State Playoff Football Game :)

Go Stallions!

I just live in this beautiful place!

Miriam!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Bishop's Wife

ME!!

Sister Giblette!

I am really so very blessed to be a missionary serving at this time

I am doing well. :) Sister Giblette and I found out that we have two more sister companionships that we are in charge of.  So the next two weeks of our lives are going to be insane!  Tomorrow we will be in Bridgeport, Wednesday we will be in Boston, Friday we will be in New Haven.  Next week we will be in New Haven again and then in Scituate. :) whoa.  So much fun though!!  It will be a party.  Heavenly Father is continually throwing His children at us. :)  I am really so very blessed to be a missionary serving at this time. So blessed.

Our Bishop's wife, Sister Seal, took us up to New Hampshire for Sister Giblette to get her crown put on. While we were waiting for her to go back, President Packard walked in. :) It was good to see him.

We had to be in by 6 on Halloween. We carved pumpkins and watched church movies from the 80's. We only watched the movies that we hand out to people.  So we watched Together Forever and The Testaments.  It was fun! :)  We did get some trick or treaters.  We handed out candy to them.  One of them was dressed up like and old person and I thought it was a real old person!  I was so impressed.  At the trunk or treat we gave out pass a long cards. :)

We had our ward Fall Festival on Friday.  We had over 30 non-members come!  We have a lot of work to do with those non-members. :)  I dressed up like Sister Giblette. :)  I entered into the pie contest (never again).  We got to help our investigator, Roxanne, at her Harvest Bazaar on Saturday. We got to meet her mom and her son. :) It was so much fun!  We went to the adult stake conference that night. It was so good! We drove in with one of our investigators, Miriam. She is getting baptized on Sunday :) I got to see so many people from Central Falls.  It was awesome!

We were asked to be a part of a phone conference last night with Pres Packard and all the zone leaders. Our phone died in the middle of it, and it didn't just lose power.  It is full on dead.  Oh well.

This is silly but, the other day I was looking for a rag in the church kitchen and I couldn't find one.. I couldn't find a sponge either and I needed to wash some dishes.. So I stopped in my tracks and said out loud, if I were my mom what would I do. :) 

I forgot my cord so I can't send you any pictures this week. :( Sorry!

Time is FLYING by

My week was good, nothing too exciting. We met with some new people from our ward, which was really good. I tried fried plantanes. They were pretty good, interesting. 

 

We went on exchanges with the sisters in Westerly, RI.  They have no heater, wood floors and so many windows.  I feel so bad for them!  We ended up turning the oven on to heat the apartment. 

 

We spent some time making invitations for our investigator Miriam's baptism. She is getting baptized on November 10th. 

 

We went to visit a less-active in Plainfield.  When we pulled up she was outside with her kids.  The minute she saw us she booked it inside.  It was so funny!  We won't bother her anymore.

 

We helped some women in our ward move.  They had about two weeks notice and 19 years worth of stuff to move.  It was good fun. :) 

 

Okay, so on Saturday we had a baptism of an 8 year old named Chloe.  After the baptism there were six boxes of 16 cookies each left over.  They always make us take the cookies home!!  So we decided to hand them out as we did stop bys.  Towards the end of the night we stopped by Sister Stiggle's house and she told us that the primary were eating cookies the next day and that they had already brought them to the church.  Sister Giblette and I left that lesson freaking out!  We gave so many of those cookies away.  So I went home and made some cookies.  We brought them to church the next day and the primary said that they had their cookies.  The ones we took were extras!!  We gave boxes of them away at church.  It was funny. :) 

 

Sister Kendall and Chloe

 

 

I have a bruise on my nose from blowing it so much. -.- 

 

The cider is so delicious. :)

 

 

I can't believe that I am almost half way done! Time is FLYING by.

Fresh apple cider and famous cider donuts

I am doing well. :) Life in Norwich is good.  It makes me really happy that Boston reminds you of me. It is such a cool city! I am so excited to show you around. :) Get ready for some walking.

We got to go on Wednesday to make cards at a potential investigators house.  She made us the most delicious apple cider! It is SO good out here. I made some pretty cool cards. :)

We got to go and be apart of Stake Reporting.  The missionaries go and report on the work in the wards. :)  I think it was the first time sisters were invited.  It was a lot of fun!  Afterwards we went to dinner at 5 Guys.  I love being on my mission because I have a million guy friends. :)  It is good. 

There was a lady in our ward, Sister Wilbur who had her apartment flood a few weeks ago.  She is on the six floor.  So it was weird, nobody knew where she was for a few days.  But we found her and she is back home safe and sound. :)   Oh she was in a hotel.  Safe and sound except she had no car and was only fed breakfast.

We ate dinner at a really cool old school mansion. It was beautiful! It is from the 1700s.

We read D&C 50 with a woman in the ward, Sister Sullivan. It is such a good chapter!

The elders in Waterford had a ton of winter stuff for girls because sisters used to live in their apartment. So we now have a ton of coats, scarves, and gloves to help us attack the cold.

On Saturday we were asked to sing at a baptism.  I can't sing to save my life and neither can Sister Giblette.  It went alright, one of the elders recorded it. -.- not cool.  It was a 9 year old convert and her 8 year old friend. :) Molly (9) and Olivia (8). Molly waited a year so she could be baptized the same time as Olivia.  Funny. :)

Yesterday was such a good church day! We had 10 non-members at church! Whoop!  We got a new investigator, Nashmere, he has so many good questions.  We also had such a good lesson with our investigators the Dunns. They have two kids. Cassie (12) and Gordo (9). So it is hard to get them to focus but yesterday we talked about the restoration and they asked so many good questions. :)

Roxanne is one of our investigators. She is an incredible woman. Today is actually her birthday. She grew up Catholic, but has always been searching for more. Her older brother joined the church 4 years ago or so and the family was not happy about it at all. He passed away 3 years ago from cancer. Which is so very sad, and she still has a hard time with it. She is good friends with our ward mission leaders wife, so she never got too far away from the church. Sister Lewis (the wife) invited her to meet with us and she has been with us ever since. :) I love her SO much. You would love her too. She wants to be baptized and loves what she is learning. Her husband is very supportive, but is happy Catholic. She can't see herself worshiping without him. But we are all pretty sure that her entire family will be baptized eventually. :) There is no way they won't be.

 

Today we are going to the cider mill to get fresh cider and famous cider donuts.  We are going with our zone to the Cider Mill in North Stonington. :) They have a famous old steam engine mill that crushes the apples and makes cider right in your face and straight into the bottle.. :) YUMMY! They also make famous cider donuts, I have heard they are delicious.

 

We got to go to the Temple on Monday

My week was good. :) We are having a Fall Festival on November 1 so we have been inviting everyone we see.

I had a hard time staying awake on Wednesday because the doctor told me to take 2-3 benadryl for my hives and those things knock me out.  It was a struggle to stay awake.  I fell asleep in the middle of planning.  It was good though. :)

The people over here love to make BBQ ribs. I have found a new love for banana peppers. They are SO good.

Last week we went to CentralFalls to help out the sisters, they were stressin'.  The sisters there are stressin' because all of the good solid members in the ward are moving.  So there has been a lot of strain put on the few members who are solid enough to have callings.  It was good because I got to see Heaven, Carmen, and Jocelyn which made me super happy.  I miss those girls. :) I really love that area.

We went to a dog park with our  recent convert, Katie. It was cold, but we watched some huge dogs attack each other. It as freaky!

We taught the Gospel Doctrine class at church on Sunday. We thought we were teaching the youth so we came up with a game of jeapordy.  We decided to still play it.  I almost had to break out into the song, Love at Home. :)

We taught a Bible class on Tuesday to people in an old folks home.  That is one of the best things we get to do! They are awesome. :)

I can't wait to see you on Christmas either!! WOO!


Missionary work is so much more than baptizing and handing out BOM's.  It is about making a positive difference in the lives of others.  That's how we bring others closer to Christ. :)


We got to go to the temple on Monday.  It was incredible!  I love the temple!!  We had to wake up at 4:50am.  Soooo early.  I drove, but it was alright. :) We had a lot of fun, the elders we drove are hilarious. We then got to spend the day in Boston. It was kinda crazy because the last time I walked around Cambridge was the day of the bombing.  It was a lot of fun though. We saw some cool historic stuff. :)  I'll send pictures.

Sister Giblette and I in action :)

Walking on North end of Boston

Coolest bridge in the world

a suh-weet stadium/train station

Boston

Paul Revere

my companiero

where the Boston Tea Party was planned

The blocked up window is where Paul Revere and his friend jumped out after they lit the lanterns warning the people that the British were coming.. Super cool. :)

You can imagine my excitement when I saw this building. SO COOL

More of Boston

Couple of older pics:

Sister Mariano's house.. It was SO hot so I look like I am melting..

This is Tori and she is now in Utah at BYU