28 - Beautiful Creations

"Why do you where the name tag?"

"Because it bears my savior's name, my church's name, and my family name, but not my own name." 
-Elder Nash and Sister Whittwer

Yes, I'm still stuck on the Trizone Conference we had with Elder Nash. It was so good!

At the MTC in April, 2014

But this week, I was actually able to go on exchanges with Sister Hawkes! 

My goodness! It was so awesome to be companions with her again for a day, from twelve days together in the MTC with no experience doing 'missionary' work, to one day six months later out in the field! 

At the Butterfly House in Nov, 2014

So cool to see the improvement in teaching and know-how and everything like that!

And also on exchanges, we were able to go into the butterflyhouse! 

YES! I've wanted to serve there since day one! But... Sister Burt dispises butterflies... So we serve elsewhere. But ah! 

It was so beautiful!

It's just an awesome room filled with about 1000 butterflies! And one even landed on me! And I got a sweeeeeeet picture! So proud of that picture. So glad I was holding the camera, because those big butterflies don't stay for long! And it's my like, my favorite butterfly to see flying around, because when their wings are open, they are a bright blue, and Sister Hawkes even got one to land on her skirt with its wings open! Whoa!

And there were little adorable quail! And they were so cute! And a butterfly JUST emerging from its cocoon and so many butterflies! I had lots of fun. And there was one butterfly that was on Sister Hawkes for like, half an hour, just chillin'. 
Doing service, sitting in a room filled with butterflies and just making sure that people don't have any butterflies on them when they exit basically, is like, the most awesome thing in the world.

Sister Burt and I always serve in the marine cove portion though. 

Which is still fun.

I usually man the bins, with the starfish and sea urchins and sea cucumbers and triton snails that you can touch. 

Sister Burt usually mans the stingrays. It's a good job too I suppose.

So many pictures these last two weeks! 

Anyway, we had dinner with a lot of cute families this week. I love going over to dinner with crazy kids! It makes me laugh and it's a great stress reliever. People apologize for crazy kids all the time, but I love it. In moderation, crazy kids are refreshing. They are so funny and cute!

We had a good zone training meeting this Friday. We focused a lot on bold statements and letting our light shine in this dark winter. For an object lesson to demonstrate that we should be bold, the zone leaders did a role play, wearing plastic bags as protection, and they told the elders at the table to pelt them with water whenever they used weak phrases and words, like 'kinda' and 'we think' and whatnot. It was great fun.

Sister Burt threw me under the bus by saying, "Sister Sanderson was super bold! She called someone to repentance!" A recent convert of almost a year took us to lunch at Olive Garden (got super full on their awesome soup) and when we were placing our orders she ordered green tea. Our hearts were weighed down when she did so. She must not have understood that green tea was against the Word of Wisdom. So after the waitress was gone I asked this Sister, "Did you know that green tea is against the Word of Wisdom?" 
"Really? Oh, no I didn't." 
She thought it was just black tea. She said she would repent. She ordered camamile tea to drink instead. I know if I was this recent convert, I would have appreciated being told this. I was just doing what a good friend would do. That's how the gospel works. We call people to repentance because we love them. It was a good experience.

Also a good experience, Sister Burt and I basically interpreted the Sunday school class yesterday. It was very simplified, but a success nonetheless! It was for the two deaf people who were there, one a recent convert, one a not so recent convert. It was a success because we were able to teach them and they understood us and would help us because they can read lips and yeah, it was great. 
The lesson was about the spirit world.

Also, the changes in this ward have been kinda crazy. During stake conference here, they called a new stake presidency, and they called the bishop of this ward into the stake presidency! So we called him "prishop" for awhile. lol 
But now a new bishop has been called, and a new bishopric, with one man who has never really been in the bishopric before. And then the new bishop was out of town Sunday, so poor never-has-been-in-the-bishopric guy had to conduct. But he did great.

And last thing, I would just like to share with you my planner cover. We make covers for our planners, just taping them over the original planner covers and hole punching the little holes for the spiral thingy. Many missionaries, especially sisters, decorate their planners to make them less boring. And I just really like mine haha, and I wanted to share it.

There are so many times in the scriptures where it lists many attributes and you read them and they kind of go 'in one ear and out the other' sometimes. I saw an ensign talk that spoke about putting a name of a person to a certain attribute, and it did that in the talk for this scripture, D&C 4:6 (Remember faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience,brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, diligence.), but it didn't give a person for all of the attributes. 
SO, I finished it. 
And I love it.

faith, The Brother of Jared

virtue, Ammon

knowledge, Abraham

temperance, John the Baptist

patience, Joseph Smith

brotherly kindness, Nephi

godliness, Jesus Christ

charity, Mormon

humility, Jonah

diligence, The Pioneers