Two Month Mark

Transfer week was crazy! We spent three days straight cooking and cleaning for 35 or so people. We used a lot of crock pots and cut up a ton of fruit and veggies! I had so many little cuts on my hands from peeling potatoes and cutting up food.  It was fun though. :)  It was a lot of fun, but we were pooped afterwards.  I napped already today and our mission President let us nap on Friday.  He is awesome. :)  In the last 7 days we have had 12 different Sisters stay with us. :) haha  it was insane!  I barely made it out alive. Girls are ornery. :) Most of them were good though.

Monday was the only day we weren't helping out. We went and planted flowers with the Elders at De De's house (she is our recent convert).  It was a lot of fun!  Her husband taught us how to fly fish and apparently it's my calling in life.. I guess I am good at it. :)  We didn't get to actually fish. :)  We just practiced in his yard.. So I guess that's not as cool.. haha  That night we went over to a member's house and had a three hour dinner appointment with the Elders.. Their kids had so much energy and were all over the place.. My chicken was pink (I knew it would happen one day mom!) :) haha.. The kids were all really adorable, we had a lot of fun with the family.  I had so much food on my clothes afterwards though, the baby kept climbing on the bench I was sitting on and used me as a napkin. :) haha  The little girl put presents in Sister Calder's and I's shoes. :) We laughed so hard when we got in the car.. It was an adventure.

Tuesday is when all the new missionaries came in, we were putting stuff in our car, getting ready to leave when we noticed our investigators water bottle was sitting on my chair.  It had exploded!  We let the juice sit in there for too long, it was a nice plastic water bottle too.  It smelled so bad, and we spent hours scrubbing it out of the ceilings and the seats. :)  We haven't told our investigator what happened yet.  We're buying her a new water bottle today. :)

The rest of the week flew by.  We got mini missionaries on Friday and they stayed until Sunday.  Mini missionaries are anyone 16 and up that want to come out with the missionaries.  They can come for a few weeks, or just a weekend it depends on the stake.  They live mission rules and get a taste of missionary work. :) It was supposed to happen the last two weekends, they both got cancelled though.  They were so cute and had a lot of fun with us, which is good.  They are deciding if they want to serve missions or not, hopefully we convinced them that missions are the bomb.com.  We recite D&C 4 everyday, so I have it memorized. Have you memorized it yet momma?  Yesterday I had to teach gospel principles all by myself.. Scary.  It went surprisingly well I think. :)

Can you believe I have already been gone two months?

Life after the bombs...

I know I told you that I wouldn't be emailing on Monday, but here I am. :)

So this week was crazy! We were on lockdown Friday because the suspect of the bombings was in a town close to us. 7 1/2 million people couldn't leave their apartments. He was hiding in a boat, bleeding because he was shot in the neck. I am glad that they caught him and that hopefully the scary part is over with.  Friday was really bad.  I have never been so scared in my life.  They are so concerned for our safety.  It's good.  The unknown was scary, especially because he was running wild next to us and he was armed and dangerous.

We were finally able to teach a family that the members have been working with for forever. They finally wanted to meet with us. :) It was awesome. They are so solid. 

I am not being transfered. :) So I will be in Needham until at least June.  My companion will be with me until June.  I think I am training in June, which scares me. We'll see how that goes. We live really close to the mission home, so we will be cooking and cleaning most of the week.  It should be fun. We also are having six missionaries stay with us. :) We get the six missionaries tomorrow. :) and they will be with us until Thursday. They are all brand new. :)  One shower, it will be fun I think.  I'll be home in no time and I have to tell you that I might be awkward when I come home haha I already feel the effects of being totally removed from the world.. haha

Yesterday, some of my district and I got to go and hand out copies of the Book of Mormon outside of the Book of Mormon musical. It was so much fun! A lot of people were impressed that we had the idea to do it and responded well. We ran out of copies really fast. I have some idea what the musical is about, I heard last night that there is a ton of swearing and some parts were pushed a little too far. I guess the main guy is a gay missionary.. I also heard that they mention that the LDS church is the true church.. I don't know about that one. It's from the creator of South Park. It's funny how hard the church is persecuted. Ironic. :) Satan is working hard on us, and not really on any other church. I wonder why.. ;)

We did have the baptism, it went wonderfully.  :D  She is 22 and in the military.  She grew up catholic kinda.  She has a really good friend who is LDS and he introduced her to the missionaries.  We are trying to convince her to marry him.  He is a cutie :)  Her parents are members, but they came to her baptism and took home a copy of the BOM.  She is so solid and a cute girl. 

Hopefully we get to go fishing today!  The investigator who was baptized Easter weekend's husband is taking us with the Elders.  She told us she can't wait to see us today so she can give us huge hugs and kisses for brining the Holy Ghost into her life.  She is such a sweeheart!!  :D

I called my companion "momma" yesterday in front of an investigator!  HAHA

I honestly think that being on a mission was one of the best decisions I ever made.  It is hard, but everyday I love it more. 

Holy Ghost and Blessings!

Yesterday was crazy! My district and I were going to go to the end of the finish line (of the Boston Marathon) and the freedom trail, but we decided last minute to not. We were walking around cambridge, which is about a minute outside of Boston, we were going to cross the bridge that heads into Boston. It was so cold and windy and I had a strong desire to not go into Boston. If we had continued across the bridge we would have been there, at the finish line of the marathon, when the bombs went off. Five minutes after we got into our car and started to leave, we got a call from Sister Crane (Konrad's cousin) and her companion that they had seen two bombs go off! They weren't hurt, but they witnessed it. We listened to the radio on the way home and it is so tragic. You always here about these kinds of things, but you never think they will happen so close to home. It was so scary. :( Out of all the missionaries in Boston that day, not one got hurt. THANK GOODNESS. I am so grateful we decided to leave Boston when we did. We were red dotted for the rest of the day, which means we couldn't leave our apartment. A member brought us dinner, which was so sweet of her. You probably know more of the details now than I do though. So so tragic. :( We had an investigator who ran the marathon and she was 1/4 mile away from the finish line before the bomb went off. We couldn't get ahold of her, because she didn't have her phone. It was terrifying. She is okay though, really shaken up. I am honestly scared to go into the city. 

 

Before any of this happened we were walking around Kendall Square. I have a ton of pictures for you!

 

The Elders from our district, we made them all sit in back :)

Elders having fun stealing my camera and being goofy

Boston is my town!  Kendalls are famous here

 

 

 

On Sunday we were asked to speak at a cat's funeral. I didn't find this out until about 5 minutes before we went over there.. My companion and I were so afraid that we were going to just laugh the whole time. That would have been so bad! The lady was so sincere and loved that cat so much, that the Spirit was so strong! Interesting. :)  We talked about God's love for all creatures and that we know she will see her cat again. She isn't a member though.  We were invited to speak because the members whose house it was at thought it would be a good way to expose her to the missionaries. :)

Memorial for the cat

Things here are good. The work is great. We have a baptism this Saturday and two of our investigators told us that they are going to pray to know if it is true (which it is, so they will get an answer) and if they get a yes they are going to join the church! :D  Also I think that it is great that no matter where you go in the world, our doctrine is the same. We teach the same great stuff no matter what. :) 

The time is flying by for me! I have almost made it through my first transfer. Whoa. I keep you in my prayers as well, i appreciate the prayers. :)  

Next week is transfer week, so I don't know when I will be able to email.. Just watch for it. :)

Janica's new skirt - look out the old folks are wearing off on her, they have the skirt hiked clear up as high as it could go!

Converting the whole complex...

So this past week has been fun! I was fed food from Africa and I am pretty sure the sauce that was put on my rice had chunks of squid in it. -.- It was yucky, but I tried to eat it and the lady was really sweet. :) She said thank you for trying, I guess she could tell I was struggling. haha

We went on splits with some of the sisters in Boston last Thursday and it was so much fun! I love the city! Who knew I would ever say that? It is so gorgeous and I love all the people.

I rode the T-train and the sister I was with challenged me to sit next to someone she picked out, I was so nervous! She picked this cute old woman and we had a great conversation! I gave her a mormon.org card, I don't think she will check it out anytime soon, but you never know. :) Someone who had lots of missionary friends talked to me also. I love wearing my name tag. :) We were walking home to our apartment and we ran into three people that live in the complex and we started to talk to them about what we were doing. They thought it was pretty cool. :) They were all so sweet and we have an appointment with one of them on Thursday. While we were talking to them a man who lives two doors down from us was walking passed and one of the ladies was like,"we are just learning about the Mormons." He stopped and looked at us and said,"I have some serious problems with Joseph Smith." We offered to listen to what he had to say, he declined. Which is okay, we send good vibes his way every time we walk past his door. :) One day he will know how cool Joseph Smith is. Another day, we were heading up to our room and we met an Indian family and they have the cutest little boy! (we are going to convert our whole complex btw) He has autism, but he is so loving. :) He gives us big hugs whenever he sees us and his dad appreciates us keeping him in our prayers.

The Elders who live in the complex next to us were throwing something away the other day and next to the garbage they found a mini washer machine! COOLEST THING EVER! :D I know it may sound gross, but they took it home and have been using it ever since. We borrowed it last night and it works wonders. The washers we have are expensive and break a lot. This one hooks up to our sink. :)

The youth in our ward are incredible! They invite people to mutual, seminary, and church. The cool thing is that the kids they invite actually come and love it! They are such great examples. :)

We had return and report the other day and our President spoke to us a little before it got started. He was talking about how Satan is not happy about what is happening in our mission and that we need to be careful about taunting him and things. He said that he got a letter from a missionary that said something like"Satan is going down." President was not okay with that. Even though we are on the winning team and we know that Satan will fail in many aspects, he will take as many people with him as possible. As Latter-Day Saints we have to always be on our guard and never let it down. Oh and we are teaching a lot of members about decoupling. :) You all should try it out.. It is when you want to invite a friend to something religious, but you're afraid of how they will react. You decouple the relationship by telling them that they have every right to say no to your invitation and that if they do say no that nothing in your relationship will change. Explain to them that this gospel is so important to you and that's why you are inviting. :) I am really sorry this email is all over the place.

CONFERENCE WAS SO AMAZING! Neil L. Anderson gave a wonderful talk. My favorite was Elder Holland and Elder Eyring. :) We were with an investigator. :)  She loved it. :D She had so many great questions and even took notes.

Oh yes, sharing the Apostasy and Restoration is all I do. :) haha One thing I really try to do is explain the Apostasy in way that shows we had to have a Restoration because there is no way that God's power was on the earth. There were many different people who wanted to do things their own way and they believed that religion should adapt to the times. It's important for people to know that we believe that many had good intentions and many good things to share, they just didn't have the fulness and they changed things to fit the world. Religion definatley does not change to fit the world. :) A Restoration was needed so that God's power could return to the earth and we could have the gospel exactly how Christ organized it.

We were going to go do the Boston Freedom Trail, but we ended up not.. We are just sleeping, hanging out, and writing letters. Then tonight we are teaching two lessons. :) Next pday we are going to the Boston Marathon! :D  Our neighbor had his jockey shorts out drying on the balcony.. Oh what it would be like to be old and free. :D hahahaha

Baptism Success!

The baptism was wonderful. :)  I felt the Spirit so strongly and seeing the way this gospel changed that family's life is a confirmation of why I am here. :)  It was incredible.  She was glowing and it was a night and day difference.  Her husband was baptized about 2 years ago, he is such a funny person.  He makes so many funny comments, and one of those guys who has a really tough exterior.  When his wife said yes to baptism he got up and went into the kitchen because he was crying.  He was so happy and kept saying he couldn't believe this was happening.  He was bawling at the baptism and kept saying how excited he was to be sealed to his wife in a year. :)  I willl definitely be at that sealing. :)  He made a joke about how Utahn's always bring green jello to every special occasion, so I made him green jello. :)  haha It was so funny.  They brought their dog Frankie. :)  It was hilarious. 

All of our investigators were in Florida for their kids Spring break and Easter.  We didn't see many of them.  Cool thing that happened for Easter though.  We went over to our ward mission leaders home for Easter dinner.  (they served lamb and ham, lamb is one thing I can not make myself try.)  They had wheat rolls and they told us about how it is really hard to find genuine wheat that is still healthy and not full of hormones.  They said that someone went over to Egypt so they could bring back real life wheat from the olden days and grow it naturally here in Boston.  So I had wheat all the way from Egypt. :)  I'm so cool. ;)  Isn't that wonderful? I am basically a Pharoah now and Joseph is my best friend.. ;)

I also have a scripture case that is made out of kangaroo! :D  It is a red kangaroo.  What I know, greatest thing ever! 

I tried avocado, nasty stuff.  The avocado was awful, I knew this and that's why I avoided trying it. :)

You should read, and tell everyone you know to read, the Power of Everyday Missionaries by Clayton Christensen (smartest man in the world.)  It is fantastic.  The Clayton Christensen thing is a book. :) He is in the Mission Presidency, so they give all the missionaries one when we get here.. The Atonement really hit me this Easter too, stronger than ever before.

I have never prayed so much in my life. I have found that if you truly pray for those who don't want to listen their hearts may soften, even though it may take awhile. My companion and I have a goal to never give up on anyone. :) I came to the realization the other day, and this is something I don't want to happen. I imagined myself in my judgement with God and He looks at me and says," Do you remember this child? I put them in your path and you did not speak to them. You had the chance to bring them blessings and unimaginable happiness. You chose not to." That would be so hard to hear! So I have made it a goal to talk to everyone, even the ones I don't feel prompted to. 

The Reeses was an Easter treat to ourselves. :) 1/4 pound.. haha

One final thought:

This sign is hanging up in my apartment lobby. :)