Feb 24,2012

Dearest Family!! 

Hello!!! How are you all doing? It's so fun to hear all of your adventures! :) The President's Day/Temple day sounded like a huge success! That's so great! Ha ha, at least you were warm this year! That was fun last year- memories that i will never forget!  Before i forget, i wanted to let you know that i won't be writing you all next Monday. We are taking our p-day on Thursday so that we can go to the temple. So instead of e-mails on Monday expect it on Thursday! (I think that is how it works. . . . i guess we will just play it out and see!) 

This week has been another great one! I am getting more familiar with the members, the area and our investigators. We have one Lady, her name is Gloria. She is Mexican and only speaks a little bit of English so every time we go we take a translator. It makes it kind of a slow process, but we at least KNOW that she can understand what we are saying through the translator. We each take turns leading out in lessons so that we all stay involved and participate. This last week it was my turn to start in Gloria's lesson. It was really hard to teach very simply and know when to stop and let the translator do her part. . .  it was really neat though! The spirit doesn't have language barriers and we were all touched by her simple testimony of prayer and knowledge of the savior. She has had a difficult time the last year or two. Her husband was killed just over a year ago and she has 3 kids to take care of. She works as a waitress at a restaurant and makes tamales for people every Friday for some extra cash. She is a very hard worker, but what amazes me is how happy she is all of the time! We visited her on valentines day and she was obviously missing her husband very much, but yet she was still happy, laughing and working hard! She is really an example to me of how much attitude can effect your life! If we look at the glass as half full then everything looks a little bit better! We had a really great lesson on prayer. At the end we invited her to say the closing prayer which she did, again i have to say how thankful i am that the spirit doesn't have any boundaries!!!! I don't speak Spanish, AT ALL, but i felt her love for our Savior and her faith as she talked to her Father in Heaven! It was great! I'm so amazed at how easy it is to love some people! I guess especially as a missionary, that love just kind of flows from you! What a blessing it is to be a conductor of that love for so many of God's children. There is no better way to feel it than being a missionary!

In our companionship we have really tried to focus on listening for and acting on promptings and this week has been so incredible!! We found 17 potential investigators and 7 new investigators!!! I hate to say we found them. . . . i think that a better way to say it was that we were guided to them. Every day we talk to so many people and the majority of them has never even heard of the church! There are so many people who don't know the truth because they have never had the chance to hear it! I am the one who gets to introduce them to it!! :) It's so great!

So, I can't believe that we are already in 3 week of the transfer! That means this transfer is almost half over!!! It's gone way too fast! I am learning so much from Sister Klingler and Sister Hoopes. They are such great teachers! I have loved serving with them! Last  night we went to the Bishop's home for FHE. We had planned on giving them the missionary lesson we have prepared for all the ward members but Sister Day texted and told us that their daughter had a friend over that she had just given the Book of Mormon to. She asked us to give a different lesson kind of introducing the B of M without really singling him out. Well that was like 30 mins before we were supposed to be there! Ha ha, we talked about it, prayed for guidance and decided to talk about how the spirit talks to us. We showed the mormon message on the voice of the spirit, talked about tuning in to the spirit and how the B of M can help us to do that! It was so neat!! The whole family was involved, and we felt like it went really well! It was so sweet!! Hopefully he will continue to read the B of M and recognize the holy ghost as he prays and ponders on it's message!  :)

Well Family! I'm out of time!! I love you all super mucho!!! Thanks for the letters and prayers! You are the best!! 

Lots and LOTS of love,

Sister Bishop!

Feb 12,2012

Dearest Fanily,

Hello!! Wow- this week has been so GREAT!! The last few days have “Lit-rally” ;) flown by! First of all you know that now I’m in a trio, I LOVE it! J I’m with Sister Klinger who is from Rexburg, Idaho. This is her last transfer and she is one of the best missionaries ever! (Seriously I’m pretty sure she is right up there by Ammon in the book of Mormon!) She is very in touch with the spirit and I feel  like I have so much that I can learn from her! I’m so glad they put us together for her last transfer, then I can be a sponge for the next 6 weeks and be a much better missionary. She has 8 kids in her family and she is the youngest, she is really great! J My other companion is Sister Hoopes. She is one of the missionaries that we spent Christmas night with, the super tall skinny one. She is from Star Valley wyoming. (She is the one that knows Ian!) I went on exchanges with her a few months ago and had a blast and ever since then I have been wanting and praying to serve with her. She is super cute and so funny! She actually reminds me a lot of Di- we get along really good! J Her mom actually was the one that served in Canada (same area and about the same time as Dad.) She has 5 kids in her family and she is the 2 oldest. The first week in a new companionship is always still like the “Nice” stage, but I feel like we are all going to get along really good. Sister hoopes makes us get up early (at 6:10) to go running every morning, which has been really good, and like I said earlier sister Klingler is the ideal missionary! We are in for a great transfer! Here is the scary news though: President Holmes basically told us that after this transfer Sister Klingler will be going homw, and sister Hoopes and I will both be training!!! We have 4 new sisters coming in!! That is all super scary, but such a powerful learning experince! The scariest thing though is that with Sister Hoopes and I both training, one of us will have to leave Walled Lake and whitewash a new area! SCARY!!! But, I’m confident that the lord will qualify and help us each as we look forward with faith. This is going to be great!! (Sister Hoopes and I are already fighting for who gets the Austrailian companion and who gets to stay in walled lake! Ha ha, I think I’m gonna win on both accounts! LOL! JK, but that would be so sweet!)

So, this week I was able to meet the Walled lake ward. They are so cool! Mom do you remember ever reading the Mafia to Mormon book by a (Somebody)  Faccionne?? Then when we went to the Salt Lake temple and the one temple worker told me to watch for the mafia guy who works in the temple now, yeah!! HE IS TOTALLY IN MY WARD!!! HA ha! This is so great!! (I actually thought of Dona all day in church after i met him! Thinking how awesome it is that i actually got to meet him!) He is going to make us spaghetti dinner in a few weeks!  The ward here is great though! The Bishop is Brother Faccoinnes' son in law and we have an awesome ward mission leader. We are trying to meet with all the members and get them excited to invite their friends to the Gladys Knight Fireside. So i will be able to get to know them fast, that will be great!

 

So my time always goes way too fast, but i wanted to share a really cool experience this week. Working with Sister Klingler has really helped me to pray much more often and rely on the spirit. Each night when we do our daily planning we sppend much more time because we pray constantly! It takes time, but the things that have happened have been MIRACULOUS!! SO, the other night it was my turn to pick the apartments we would tract the next day, i prayerfully considered and picked a few, then we all agreed on 2 to try the next day. That night it was super cold and windy but we headed to the apartments. We pulled up, parked and prayed like usual, then SIster Hoopes was like, "I feel like we should start on the top floor!' We were really trying to obey any little prompting so of course we climbed those 3 flights of stairs. Then guess what . . . . THE VERY FIRST DOOR WE KNOCKED ON LET US IN!!  Ha ha, we taught him the restoration and set up an appointment to come back in a few days! I love it when those little promptings bring us such wonderful miracles!

 

This is short, but the computer is going to kick me off any second, so i will write you a snail mail! I love you all so much!! Thanks Di and Ang for the package and the tape, I loved it!! Ha ha, super great!! Choose the right, and all the important things!

 

Lots of love!!!

 

Sister Bishop

Feb 6, 2011

Dear Family!

Hello! So here is the BIG news for the week: Sister Burnham and I have been on pins and needles all week waiting for the call Saturday night to let us know what was happening with transfers. . .  Saturday we went around to most of our investigators and took pictures just in case AND after all of that. . . I’m BEING TRANSFERRED!!! AHHH!! I’m leaving my Chelsea family! To tell you the truth, I have kind of known for the last 3 weeks that this was going to happen. It was only a little surprise, one that I am very excited for!   I have really come to love the people here: My companion, my investigators, my members, the Bishop and especially all of the people that help us out so much every day!  I’m sad to leave all these wonderful people and I will miss them all like crazy, but I just know that God has plans for me elsewhere. I am excited for the challenges ahead that (like Di said) make us stronger! We spent the day yesterday visiting mostly ward members and families and taking pictures. They were so sweet, Sister Taylor (one of the people we spent Thanksgiving with) told me, “Come back and visit me sometime, then I can actually call you by your real name!” J I know that there are wonderful people everywhere, but this ward was so much like our home ward! What a blessing it was to start here, I’m so thankful for a loving heavenly Father who knows what my needs are and what he can do to help me stretch and grow a little more! J So, that’s the big news but the bummer is that I don’t find out where I am going until transfer meeting tomorrow! But  I will have a few minutes tomorrow to shoot you all a quick e-mail with my new address, so you can watch for that! J

This week we had a lot of success with our Jessica Hall’s! J  (We have 2- One 17 year old that we call Jessie, and the other is like 24 and we call her Jessica. It gets a little confusing sometimes, but it keeps us on our toes!) So, with Jessie she is praying about when to be baptized!!! We fasted with her yesterday and had a really good experience. At least I did! She didn’t make it to church yesterday so we haven’t talked to her yet. But hopefully we will see her tonight before I leave and we can chat and get some pictures. We told her that transfers were coming up this week, and there was a possibility that one of us would be leaving. After the lesson we were getting ready to go and she came up, put her arms around me and asked, “You aren’t leaving me, right?!” It seriously made we want to start bawling right then and there! It was definitely a “PM!” At that moment she was just like my little sister! I totally flashed back to when you all dropped me off at the MTC and Hannah gave me one last hug before I walked away.  J She really reminds me a lot of you Hannah! You are almost the same age, super cute, very involved and so dedicated to what you know to be true! J She is one of the people that I will miss the most! But hopefully I will be able to come back to her baptism in the next month or two.

With Jessica Hall this week it was a very special spiritual experience. We were at the Temple’s home and Brother Schulte was also there, we had lunch then she had a lot of questions! (I LOVE QUESTIONS- A BUNCH!!) So, we answered her questions and basically ended up teaching her the gospel lesson. (You know, faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end.) Last week part of her commitment was to write down what she believed and what she hoped to believe. It was AMAZING!! We talked about baptism, how Christ was baptized, then she shared what she hoped to believe; the spirit was SO STRONG! She was crying and told us, “I’m so sorry, I don’t know why I am crying!” We all smiled through our tears and explained that was the Holy Ghost helping her to know that she was headed in the right direction! J After that it was totally natural to invite her to be baptized and she said yes with no hesitation!!!! Her husband is less active because he works a lot and is so tired that he spends Sunday trying to catch up on his sleep. But she is working on getting him to take her to church and I just hope and pray that he will be the one to baptize her in the next few months! She is so ready, and SO golden! I really love her so much! J Once again, I will really miss her, but hopefully I will be able to come to her baptism in the next few months.

Oh, so the other good news with transfers is that Sister Burnham is training again!! J President Holmes called us Sunday to tell us that news and we all agreed that Chelsea is a wonderful place to start a mission! The next couple of transfers we are getting a sister from Australia and one from England, so Sister Burnham is hoping for a companion with an awesome accent! Ha ha, I’m sure she will be great though, no matter where she is coming from!

The Wrathall’s son, Ryan is coming home in like a week! (Brother Wrathall is the Ward Mission Leader.) They are SO excited! It is so fun to hear them tell us about his experiences!  He is in California but I think that he has had more near death experiences than anyone I know! Ha ha, good thing that he is a missionary! The Wrathall’s are the GREATEST! We spent Christmas with them, they are the ones who got us a Christmas tree, they gave us each a new shirt and a pink snuggie for Christmas and they feed us dinner practically every Sunday night! We look forward to correlation every Sunday night because we know we can always count on them for anything! Even if it is just Brother Wrathall making us laugh off some of the stress we have acquired during the week. What a great family that has been a huge blessing for me! I love them so much! J

Mom, you asked what we do all day every day? Well, it’s hard to say! Sometimes I feel like we do the same thing over and over, but each day is so different! Each person we see is different, and it keeps life interesting! All I can say is that we TEACH!! We LOVE and we SERVE! J

So, funny thing of the week; we have started going to the church to exercise every morning and it has been really good for us. But to get to the church there is a short cut through the cemetery. It’s only a little scary driving through all the headstones in the dark and watching for the deers that jump out when you least expect them! (Yes, Michigan has deer too! J) The funny thing though is that we drive through Hell to get to district meeting and we drive through the cemetery to get to the church! Ha ha! (Okay, so it sounds super lame in writing, but we thought that it was pretty hilarious!J)

Well family, I think that is about all of the excitement for the week! I love you all super mucho! I probably won’t have time to write you all today because I have to pack all of my stuff! (Wish me luck, you all know how much I LOVE packing!) Watch for my e-mail tomorrow with my new address! I love you all so so so much!!! CTR!!

Love,
Sister Bishop!

P.S.  Thanks everyone for the letters! I LOVED the one from Dad! I had to smile though; this winter has been pretty mild so I don’t know if Hell is going to freeze over! LOL I have some pictures of us there with snow on the ground though, I think! I will try to find them and send them to you!  I want a share of the bonus from which ever customer is paying you for it thought! HA ha, JK! Letters from Dad are always special though! J Lot’s of love!

P.P.S Di- sorry you probably won't get a snail mail from me this week! You are FANTABULOUS THOUGH!! Keep up the hard work with school, it will pay off eventually! You are such an awesome example! Thanks for the reminder about faith and fasting, it was just what i needed to hear! Tell Ang happy birthday and fix her an awesome cake! :) I LUFF YOU!! 

Diamond Diamond Heart Heart!!! Diamond Diamond Heart Heart!!! Diamond Diamond Heart Heart!!! Diamond Diamond Heart Heart!!! Diamond Diamond Heart Heart!!! Diamond Diamond Heart Heart!!! Diamond Diamond Heart Heart!!! Diamond Diamond Heart Heart!!!

Jan 30, 2012

Dear family-

Well HELLO! J It’s Monday morning again, can you believe it?! I got all of your snail mail this week and it basically was the BEST thing ever!!  I loved the stories from the blogs- Becky wasn’t kidding when she said Bishop’s middle finger was not the longest finger anymore! Ha ha! (Not really funny, but what a story! My goodness!) Tell Bishop to be careful around those power tools! And I have to agree with Matthew, I think that trying to be in Bishop’s Owie Finger Club was a dumb reason for Dad to hurt his hand! J I guess I’m just thankful that nobody was hurt too seriously and that you are all doing pretty good. Di said something about Tim’s ear drum bursting- OUCH! Poor kid- just know that I’m thinking about ya and praying for all of you! This week was like a jackpot in the mail room! I think that I got like 7 letters! It was so awesome, thanks guys- YOU ARE THE GREATEST!!! I loved the pictures and Kite pen from Goosie, Prom sounds like a load of fun for Ben and Hannah, (When is Prom? Will Mark be old enough to go this year?)  And of course I loved the letters from Mom and Di. 

So, this week started out a little rough. We have what we call the “Standard of Excellence” which is a set of goals that we try to reach every week. There are different categories of course, but it is there to help us see what we can accomplish. The standard of excellence for total lessons is 20. This week by Thursday we only had like 7 lessons! I’m not sure why we were struggling so much, but I don’t think our total has EVER been that low. Anyways, this week our whole zone has been trying to achieve a “Zone of Excellence” so to do our part we really wanted to get all the standards. Well, Friday morning started out with interviews with President Holmes- can I just tell you, I LOVE PRESIDENT HOLMES! He is so tender hearted and close to the spirit. We had a great talk, and I was able to set some goals. One of those was something that I have been trying to do, but has been really hard. I was reading in 1 Nephi chapter 5 or 6 the other day and it talks about putting your “Whole heart into the work.” I feel like I am catching on to the missionary stuff, and that I really do try to follow the spirit, but I’m not as focused on the work as I could be. Sometimes I find my thoughts wandering and as I read that I realized that if I could have my WHOLE heart in the work, then I could see many more miracles.  I told that to Pres. Holmes and he just smiled and said, “Sister Bishop that is a WONDEFUL goal! I know you can do it. All you have to do is DO! Just throw yourself into it and don’t look back.” So, with that in mind I am going forward in faith! My new motto is, “Faith not fear!” I think that I repeat it over and over every day as I’m knocking doors, making phone calls, and teaching with the spirit. When we have faith, there is no room for fear! That day we saw many miracles and we ended the week with 22 lessons!!! J It’s amazing what can happen when you turn yourself over to the lord! I am only scratching the surface- but from now on for the next 18 months I am ALL Sister BISHOP! I am a missionary who is called of God, has the spirit, LOVES the work and does her best every single day. I love the gospel so much! I love what it has done for our family, the blessings that come from keeping the commandments and the peace, joy and comfort that come as you come to know your savior better.  THAT is why I’m here- there are so many people who need what I have and I can’t wait to find them and help them realize it!

We are teaching a 17 year old girl named Jessie Hall. She is the one that went to girl’s camp and really loved it. Since then, missionaries have been teaching her. The last few weeks we have had dinner with her at member’s homes which was great, but we could never seem to share everything that we wanted to. We were too short on time, or she had to go. . .  one thing after another. Well finally yesterday we were able to really visit with her. We had dinner with the Edward’s family and then we had a really good lesson. We talked about how she expected to receive an answer. Brother and Sister Edwards were perfect! They were able to share powerful testimonies and experiences and at the end we invited Jessie to be baptized in February.  She was quiet for a few minutes, and then said, “But, I can’t! I’m not 18 yet.” Her parents just want her to be really careful and not jump into anything. She is going to try to talk to them again, but if they say no we will have to wait until her birthday in March.  We are fasting with her this weekend too and hope that she will be able to recognize her answer as she reads the Book of Mormon, prays and fasts.  She is such an amazing girl, I really think that she will be baptized here in the next little while! J

Another neat story was with Jessica Hall. (Two different investigators! Yup- we have a Jessie Hall and a Jessica Hall.) So Jessica is in her late 20’s early 30’s and is married to a less active. Her in-law’s are so great though! We had dinner with them a few weeks ago and had a great time!  So, we teach Jessica at a member’s home on her lunch break. She has a lot of questions, which is GREAT!! It’s interesting teaching her because she doesn’t have any religious background. She hasn’t been to church very much and doesn’t really know who God is. The members are really great, but He likes to talk a lot. It makes it really hard to give the lesson that we prepared when he goes off on the organization from the 1^st presidency down to the deacon’s quorum! ) HA HA, for real! J  So I had been thinking a lot this week about how we can get her in-law’s more involved. I felt like I should talk to them, so after church yesterday I found Sister Hall and asked her if she would like to be a part of our lessons. She looked at me, got a little teary eyed and said, “I was just complaining to my husband that this is MY daughter-in-law and that I wanted to be a part of teaching her the gospel! YES- What can we do to be more involved?” It was amazing!! I just love it when I follow through and act on promptings! J We decided that we would plan on seeing Jessica once a week, every other week we would do it with the members and on the off week we would do it with the in-laws. They were SO excited, I feel like they will have a HUGE impact on Jessica. I am so excited to help her learn more. She is wonderful, last time she prayed out loud with us for the first time ever! What a sweet feeling!! I just love her, I love the work- this is the greatest! J

So- funny story of the week! We were tracting in an apartment complex and knocked on this lady’s door. We introduced ourselves and she told us, “I’m way too busy right now and I’m NOT interested. Besides, soliciting is not allowed here so you have to leave!” Sister Burnham tried one more approach, “I like your sign!” (She had a silly sign on her door.) She looked at us and was like, “LEAVE NOW!! Or I’m calling the cops! NOW GO!!!”  Then she slammed the door! Ha ha, needless to say we did leave.  I got my first calling the cop’s threat! Ha ha, now I feel like a real missionary! LOL

Well Family, this week has been another good one! I have seen lots of miracles and the lord has really blessed us! This week we find out what happens with transfers, I’m excited and only a little nervous! But I know that no matter what happens- the lord is in charge! He qualifies those that he calls! I KNOW that I can do anything with his help! 

I love you all SUPER-MUCHO!! J Have a wonderful week! J

Love,

Sister Bishop

Jan. 23,2011

Dearest Family!

HELLO HELLO! Ha ha, I feel like every time I start a letter the greeting and the first sentence get cheesier and cheesier!  This is gonna be good . . .  so I had to laugh when I read your letters and the comments about how every letter starts with, “this week was so AWESOME!!. . . “ Ha ha, well that’s just how it goes I guess, cause guess what?? ANOTHER AWESOME WEEK! J

We met with the Rowe family like 3 times this week to get Wyatt already for his baptism yesterday. They loved it and so did we. (Except maybe Pat- he might have been a little overwhelmed! J) But the good news is that we got it all done! We had the district leader come to interview Wyatt on Saturday and that went really good. The elders were really excited because this is the first baptism we have had in our district since I’ve been out. And let me tell ya- It was quite the baptism! We invited EVERYBODY and so did the Rowe’s. The chapel was like half full AND it was mostly full of non-members! You should have seen Sis Burnham and I, we thought that we had died and gone to heaven! IT was so great! The program was really good and the spirit was definitely there. Wyatt was so happy and so ready, it was just perfect! Even Pat was smiling, happy and talking about what a great experience it was! Sister Burnham and I and a couple other girls sang, “A Child’s Prayer” and as we sang I couldn’t help but get a little teary-eyed looking at the smile on Wyatt’s face and being so caught up in this special moment with everyone that was there! AWESOME!  After the baptism we had refreshments and Sis Burnham, Sis Rowe and I walked around with pass along cards and Books of Mormon for anyone that was interested. We will just have to wait and see how that goes, but I think that there were definitely some seeds planted and hopefully those people will have the faith and courage they need to ask questions and learn more. J

So, on Wednesday we went to dinner and the Grove family’s home, they are SO CUTE! I LOVE them! They have 7 kids and the oldest is only like 17, so it was just like spending the night with all of you! The kids were so polite and well behaved and adorable. The little boy named Gideon who is like 7 reminded me SO much of my little cowboy! J He gave me a great big hug and stayed right by me all night. We went out to see their green house, (which is so interesting! They have a fish tank hooked up to this garden thing and they grow tomatoes all year round! They don’t ever have to water the plants, they get all the nutrients they need from the water that cycles through the fish tank. I wish I had taken some pictures, maybe next time!) Any ways- so Sister Grove showed us the green house and Gideon was right there with us, on the way back to the house he grabbed my hand and held it the whole way back! Ha ha, adorable, right!? Like I said, I was thinking of Matthew all night!  Man, I miss you all like crazy! But it’s so fun to see how much these families LOVE the missionaries! Two of the little girls made up their own name tags so they could “Be missionaries too!” What a fun family night! They even argued about who got to sit by us at dinner! Ha ha- so much like home, I loved it! J

We went to see Martha this week which we were SO excited for, cause we haven’t seen her since before Christmas. She told us her grandson had been sick and when we first got there he was sleeping. We were just talking and catching up when he woke up. When he woke up though he was NOT a happy camper! He screamed and cried the whole rest of the time that we were there and we couldn’t get a word in! It was really sad! We didn’t get to have a lesson cause we couldn’t even hear each other.  We are going back on Tuesday though, so hopefully he will be all better by then and we can get going! I feel so rushed for time! AHH! Transfers are sneaking up on us! Sis Burnham and I both feel like there is a change coming, but we don’t have any idea what it will be. I guess you never know until we get that phone call! J That’s one thing about a mission, things are ALWAYS changing!

This week we stopped by to see Tom again but we didn’t have a third woman so we couldn’t go in. We got to see his (are you ready for this. . . .) FLOCK OF WILD TURKEYS!! Ha ha! IT was so great! I never realized how HUGE wild turkeys are! Especially compared to all of the ones you see at home, these were huge! I bet the biggest ones came almost up to my arm pit when they stood up all the way. J After that we went to dinner with the Hall’s. Funny thing, we thought about inviting Tom to come to dinner but then we remembered how he is vegan and thought he would be difficult to cook for so we decided against that. (He is so dedicated to veganism that he doesn’t even eat marshmallows or jello cause they have some sort of animal product in them! CRAZY!!) So at dinner we were telling the Halls about Tom and they were so shocked! They couldn’t believe it! Come to find out, the Halls are big time hunters! We went into one of their rooms and they had to have had at least 8 of those stuffed deer heads hanging on the wall! Ha ha, Sister Burnham and I both agreed that if Tom had been there he would have broken down and started crying uncontrollably! Good thing we listened to that warning! J

We have such a great ward here, I have really come to love all of the members! I have to say though, I really admire Ben and all the boys that go around before Sacrament starts and shake everybody’s hand! I have had to learn to do that and I just keep thinking, I had such a great example at home, why didn’t I do this before! It would make it so much easier now!! But, that’s okay, I’m still learning! We had so much help to get everything ready for the baptism and everybody just pitched in and helped, it was great!

Oh- guess what!?!?! Gladys Knight is coming to DETRIOT!!!! Not only is SHE coming, but she is bringing her choir and they are doing a mission fireside for us! I think it is something that the missionary department is sponsoring and we have heard how other missions have done it and seen so much success. We have a bunch of people that are already putting it on their calendars and it’s not even until march! At church yesterday they announced it in Sacrament and I turned to one of our investigators and was like, “Mary, do you know Gladys Knight?” “Yeah . . .” “Well that’s what they are talking about, She is coming to Detroit!” “Wait, the REAL Gladys Knight is coming to DETROIT!?!?!” Yes!! Would you like to come?” She looked at me like “DUH!!!”  LOL! This is going to be an awesome missionary tool. One mission said that they got so many referrals from this, so we are all pumped! J

Well Family! I love you all SUPER MUCHO A LOT X’S 5!! J I pray for you every day and think about you all of the time!  Dad- that sweater sure comes in handy! I have used it quite a bit! (Everybody that I show it to is so impressed that you made it!) J Keep up the good work!

Have fun dress shopping- I can’t wait to see pictures! JJ LOVE you all the BESTEST!

Love,

Lisa

Jan18,2011

Dearest family!!

 

HELLO!!! This week had been so amazing!! Since the library was closed yesterday we weren't able to e-mail, but i wrote a lot os the miracles in the snail mail letter that i sent. We were able to get 4 new investiagators this week! We have continued to increase our faith and be more united as a companionship (especially after specialized training this week) and we have seen miracles come from it! We have been studying a case study from Pres Holmes. We learned the importance of loving the members. When the members know how much you love Them, and the Lord then they are excited to be missionaries and help us to find people to teach. We tried this out with Sister Grimmette.She is AWESOME!! She loves us super mucho and we can always call her if we need anything!  She is very supportive and comes to lessons with us. We stopped by her home and shared a message, then we told her about some of the spiritual gifts that we see that she has. We told her how much we loved her and how much her savior loves her! She really opened up and recommitted to help us with missionary work! She was so excited to share the things we had talked about and be a missionary too!! She totally related to Pat and not being able to understand the Atonement, and she promised that she would come to his lessons with us and do her best to share her experiences and hopefully help him to find peace. 

 

Another miracle we saw came from acting on a prompting from the Holy Ghost. I am always very humbled as we act on promptings the tender mercies that always follow. We had planned to stop by Tom's house on wedneday evening, but that afternoon he called and told us that he wasn't interested and not to bother. We were going to Manchester anyways so we decided just to stop, check on him and see what happened because last week he was really excited to learn more. As i was thinking about it, the thought came to mind that he had been researching on the internet and it had scared him off. Well, we stopped by and chatted with him. He brought up some concrens and . . .  admitted that he HAD been on the internet and the things he saw about our religion really scared him. (I was grateful for the prompting before hand so we could ask questions and be prepared to help him see the truth.) We answered his concerns and he invited us to come back next week and continue to teach him! :) YAY!!!

 

I am so thankful for all of you! I have been so blessed to have you all as my family! I just count my many blessings every day and you guys are always at the top of that list. I LOVE this gospel! It has changed so many lives and i continue to see it touch people every single day. Being a missionary is the BEST! :) Who wouldn't want to talk about Jesus all day every day! Ha ha! It's so funny, we do this 24/7 and it hit me the other day, we even do this work on the sabbath! We are doing the lord's work and resting from "Our labors." It's a wonderful time to reflect on the blessings that i hav witnessed as they come from serving the lord. I'm so thankful to have this time to really focus on the work and take a break from the world and all of it's problems. I pray for you all every day! Keep up the good work, I LUFF YOU ALL!!

 

I don't know if Dona gave up on the package, but if not tell her it would probably be best to use regular mail. Even if it's insured they leave me a card in the mailbox and i can pick it up at the post office any time! (That might be a little easier!) HAPPY BIRTHDAY DI!!! Man! 20 years old- you are practically an old woman!! :) I'm glad that you are all doing so well with school, work and everything! Thanks Mark and Yum Yum for the letters! I loved them!!

Well chillens! I gotta go, I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!!

 

Love,

Lisa

Jan 8,2011

Dearest Family, HOLA!!!

How are you all? From the sounds of it, it had been a fun couple of days the last week or so . . .  with all the flu and colds going around! Hopefully that is all behind you and you are all feeling MUCHO better this week! J

This week has gone SO FAST I can’t believe that it is Monday already! I have been studying a lot about faith this week and how I can increase my faith to find the people that Heavenly Father has prepared for me to teach. Alma 32 has some really good insights, but this is kind of the things that I learned: 1-You have to have a desire. This leads you to the next step: to ACT! So this week has been spent working on increasing my desire and acting! It’s been so amazing!! Some days it is hard to get out of bed at 6:30 in the morning whether you are wide awake or not, it’s intimidating to go tracting and talk to people that you have NEVER met before in your life and teaching lessons to people who are twice your age it scary!! J (Not to complain, but I wanted you to know where I’m coming from!) This week to increase my desire instead of dreading getting up I wake up and think how excited I am to be a missionary today!  I think, “Today I only have 10 hours to find the people that heavenly father has prepared for me! “ We leave our apartment at 11:00 and don’t go back usually until 9:00 at night. It sounds silly but that way I am excited to see the miracles that can happen and I give it my best to work hard every minute for those 10 hours!  This attitude has really made a difference this week! WE FOUND 4 NEW INVESTGATORS!!! This is HUGE!! J We count someone as a new investigator after we have taught them 1 lesson and have a return appointment or after 2 lessons with a return appointment.  Lots of miracles this week!!           

1-      We were able to teach Tom this week even though we thought that we wouldn’t be able to see him for 2 weeks! We were in Manchester having dinner with the Schulte family and then they were going to come to an investigators lesson with us. That investigator cancelled on us and so we decided to give Tom a call.  He didn’t answer, but we left him a message and decided to just show up! We pulled up with Bro and Sis Schulte and see him running frantically around his house turning off lights! Ha ha, at first we were a little worried that he was going to pretend like he wasn’t home, but he did finally answer the door! J  Tom is the vegan guy that we stopped by with the “trespassers will be shot” sign. We left him a book of Mormon last time but he hadn’t had time to read anything. We taught him about our purpose in life and a little about the restoration of the gospel. We were SO glad that the Schulte’s were there, they were really able to relate and share testimonies! (Lessons with Members there are always so wonderful! And the Schulte’s are basically the GREATEST!! (Bro Schulte said that he does know Bishop Olsen, but he wasn’t really sure where he remembered him from!J) Anyways- so we were able to give him some things to think about and set up a time to come back! It was incredible! The spirit was definitely there and we were SO EXCITED!!!

2-      Shirley was our next miracle. She is an older lady that we tracted into and is Lutheran. She is very close with her pastor and very dedicated to her faith. We talked a little about the Book of Mormon the first visit and left her a copy to read. When we went back this week she told us how surprised she was that it was very similar to the bible! She was really excited that we had a lot of the same basic beliefs! She said she was going to continue to read the Book of Mormon and wants to see us again this week! J HOORAY!!

3-      Mark was another tender mercy! We were in Stockbridge and were stopping by former investigators. We stopped by one apartment and a man answered, we asked for the lady that the elders had taught and he told us that his dad had recently moved in and the last lady was long gone! We didn’t even skip a beat! Ha ha! We introduced ourselves as missionaries and told him about the book of Mormon.  At first he wasn’t interested, but then he reconsidered and told us to come back in a few days. We did and were able to get to know him more that night. We taught him about the restoration and the importance of prophets, we explained that we had proof that we have a living prophet today who is called of god! This proof is the Book of Mormon.  He said that he had never really thought of it before but having a prophet really made sense.  He doesn’t read very well, but we are praying that he will read the Book of Mormon and really give God a chance to tell him that it is true! We will see him this week too!

4-      Our last miracle was a man named Jerry. He was another person in Stockbridge, but we had tracted into him. He is older and likes to think abstractly. Ha ha! In other words he uses really big words and sometime some really strange ideas! J We didn’t have a lot of time at his visit but we invited him to read the Book of Mormon and pray to know if it is true. He really likes our visits and knows that we have something that he wants; I just pray that he has the faith to pursue it.

We have been so blessed this week! We were able to have more members at our lessons which helps not only the investigators to see that there are normal people living the things that we teach, but also helps the members to get more excited about missionary work. We have a great ward and it’s so fun to get to know them better and use their talents to help us spread the gospel! J

Okay- so I know this is getting long and I’m running out of time, but I have a funny story! J Our heater has been acting funny the last few weeks and this week it finally gave out on us! We don’t see our manager very often to tell her cause we are NEVER at our apt. But finally one night we ran into her and were able to ask her to send in the repair guy. It was like 9:15 and she was like, “Oh yeah! No problem, we will have him come over soon to fix it!” Little did we know how soon! J We were in our pj’s and snuggies (The Wrathall’s gave us both a hot pink snuggie for Christmas!! We use it every night! Especially with the heater out!) Anyways, so we are in our pj’s and snuggies and we hear someone knock on the door! Nobody ever knocks on our door, especially at 9:30 at night!! We peeked out the peep hole and there was this sketchy looking man. Sister Burnham recognized him as the repair man so we let him in. It was really funny! He saw us in our snuggies and just kind of shook his head as he headed to the back room to check on the heater. So he figured out what was wrong and told us he couldn’t get us the part until Monday.  He said he could manually turn it on and let it heat the house but then he would have to come back in like an hour to turn if off! Mind you- now it’s like 10:00, and we are super tired!! We told him that we would just bundle up and make it work. We did NOT want to have to worry about this guy coming back at like 11:00! I’m pretty sure that he thought we were crazy but he shut the heater off and left. He said he would be back in the morning if he thought of anything else to try! We joked all night long about him coming the next morning while we were doing our companionship study! How he would feel as we were singing and praying and talking about scriptures. . . .  Well lo and behold!! The next morning right as we were getting out our hymn books guess who shows up!!! Ha ha! We both couldn’t believe it when we opened the door and he was standing there! J We just cranked up the Mo-Tab and read those scriptures extra loud! J We said something to him about it and he was like, “No worries ladies, you just do what you do! I have faith in Jesus too! So, I don’t mind one little bit!” Good news is: we had a really great companionship study with an audience!  Bed news is: I don’t think he is really interested AND the heater is STILL broken! Ha ha! Hopefully it will get fixed today! J

So- I’m not sure if I will have time to write another letter today, so just know how much I love all of you! J You are the GREATEST EVER!! I pray for you every day and show your pictures to everybody that will look! I JUST LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!! J

Remember that with faith, you can do anything!! Heavenly father will bless us with miracles as we strive to increase our faith.

Mom- please tell Dona that I’m NOT in Africa!! Ha ha! It shouldn’t be this hard to send me a package! LOL! J Tell her that I love her though and I’m super excited to see what is in this package if it EVER gets here! J

Lots of Love to all of you!!

Love, Lisa