63 - Grenora the Great

A recent convert in Dickenson

Darn no time! Well. You have a bunch of pictures. haha.

At the beginning of the week there was MLC. 

That's the meeting that all the leadership in the mission goes to, aka Sister Barrett goes and I'm stuck with someone else for a day and have a blast doing missionary work with them.

Sister Capson (Left) and Sister Shaver

Sister Shaver and Sister Capson serve in Dickenson. Sister Capson is STL.

Sister Shaver and Sister Sanderson

So I was companions with Sister Shaver! 

And I don't have time to talk in detail about this awesome lesson that we had with this guy who was African. But we got in because we were with a member and we shared the restoration film with him and we committed him to come to our church and he comitted us (them) to come to his church. 

It's Sister Shaver's dream to get invited to the black church! 

She's so excited!

Our Grenora trip on Thursday was awesome. Grenora is kind of like Ray, except for it's in 1st ward.

Our Relief Society President and her councilor took us up there on Thursday. 





First time I've been.

The trip up there was fun!

And then we arrived

We went there to see all the people listed on the ward list. 




We met one of the ladies outside her house and that was a good visit. 


No body else on the list answered. But!

We knocked on the door of this one trailer. No one answered the door we knocked on, but there was a boy next door who heard and poked his head out of the door and said:

"Whatcha doin'?"

"We're seeing if this person's home."

"Oh, ok." and he went back inside.

Well, no one was answering and so we decided to knock on that door that the boy poped out of and see if they knew anything about their neighbor (and perhaps teach them about the gospel)!

"Hi, is your mom home?"

"Yeah. Are you selling cookies!?"

He noticed the plate in our Relief Society President's hands.

"Moooom! Mom! I love cookies! Mom!"

When short little less than five foot mom came to the door on the phone she stopped.

"Oh..! The missionaries are here! ..I'll have to call you back. The missionaries just showed up at my house."

So, we didn't meet the member that lived in that listed house, we found another lost sheep, Chelsea. And her step son, Melvin Adam Johnson the Third! haha. He's a cute one. As well as her younger step son and her youngest, her toddler of a daughter.

"I was wondering with the oil boom how long it would take for you to find me."

It's been hard for her to stay active because she has moved a lot and she has had bad experiences with members attending church in the past.

We shared with them the Because of Him Video. Melvin was just asking all sorts of questions, so excited at this video about Christ, and he wanted to watch it again. We went around and told what we liked about the video. Chelsea said she liked it because it helped her remember the lessons she was taught as a kid. And the video of Because He Lives started playing automatically. As Melvin watched, he was so intent, tears were in his eyes. He leaned to the 1st Councilor Sister.

"Why am I crying? I feel so happy."

"You are feeling the Holy Ghost."

I looked over and gestured to Sister Barrett to look too. Melvin had his eyes closed, his hands pressed together.

The first councilor asked him why he did that. He said, "I don't know. I just do it sometimes at night when I need help or something."

Sooooo close to the spirit.

We gave the two boys book of Mormons and they wrote their names in them.

Chelsea knows it was not a coincidence that we came. She was actually thinking beforehand that she needed to come back to church.

She didn't come to church because her husband made surprise family plans. We will be in contact with her. It was such a blessing to meet her, and that she knows the relief society president too now! How AWESOME!

Passing through Zahl...Don't Blink!

P.S. Lots of pictures with captions.

Young man reading his mission call...UGINE OREGON!

Williston Pride!

The Cambodian Book of Mormon and Church Literature

Magaizine written by the man who's moving to Montana

Dandillion? Be FREE! Go grom More Milkweeds!

Funny License Plate

Accoding to our calculations, this IS the right address!

62 - Fireworks in Williston

So, there have been explosions all over in Williston! It has been an insanely packed week, and I'm afraid I won't be able to talk about all of it...

This is like, my favorite. 

So, on Monday I bought a bean bag. You know why? 

To make a cozzy woman cave!

Why do I have a woman cave? 

And why is it in the little tiny bathroom you ask? 

Because Sister Barrett as Sister Training Leader has a lot of calls that she makes that I'm not to listen in on because I'm not part of leadership. 

But we only have one big room... and the only place that I can't hear what's going on it, you guessed it, in the bathroom with the fan on. 

So I get a lot of quality time with the toilet, at least three hours each week. lol. 

Yay time to study more and write letters and do whatever! I've definitely made the most of this.

Hello President Hess! 

So excited to meet you next week!

On Monday we had a regular P-day! FINALLY! So we went to Sister Awesome's house. And she has an awesome dog.

This is George, the punk dog. lol

He's super chill. He let me use him as a table.

And the other Sister awesome across the street has puppies!

And one of them fell asleep in my hand! so cute!

President and Sister Anderson left the first of July. SAD! They finished their three-year mission! And President and Sister Hess took their place. Sister Barrett is going to meet them today. We get to meet them next week. Crazy!

We just put someone on date for baptism on August 1st who is so ready to receive the gospel! She's the one we started teaching her because a member signed up on our dinner calendar and when we called to confirm she told us that her less active son and his nonmember wife would be there! So we taught the restoration after dinner, and we just put her on date the week on her second lesson, and we had another dinner and a lesson on her birthday this week with more family over (who were members) and we taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but at the end the subject switched to temples, and it was all of the family and kids just testifying of eternal families and experiences they've had and everyone was crying because the spirit was so strong and it was amazing! The only thing that could have been better was if she kept her commitment to come to church. She will have to come next week.

We almost had someone else on date this week, but the date is just set tentatively for the last week of August, what with family coming in during the middle of august she wants to be baptized after that. We will set it more solidly with a for sure date next lesson.

We found out some concerns of people. One of our investigators who has stopped progressing because she hasn't been reading the Book of Mormon and hasn't come to church even once, her family has told us it's not a good idea to meet with us. When she asks why though they can't give an answer. We are working on getting her friends so she doesn't feel alone.

About Korwa, we had an awesome lesson with her about Jesus Christ! 

And the day after we got this in the mail!

We were so excited! 

It must be the Cambodian Book of Mormon!

We went over to take it to her and lol she said that it wasn't her language. It was Indian. Darn, haha. 

But it turns out she had something to tell us. From what we understand, the monks in a dream told her she can't be "baptized or blessed in the head" is how she explains it (or receive the holy Ghost). but she can still continue to learn and go to church, just not to change so much. She is gaining friends in the ward though! And still eager to learn! We are still so excited for her. After all, our Philippino investigator took a year to be baptized!

These two boys are recent converts and we taught them the word of Wisdom and they are awesome.

This is the guy who was baptized in March just before I got here and who sent us that text and who also is moving to Montana for work and who teaches himself basically and is fully on board for attending church in Montana. Yay! We will miss him.

We had some awesome dinners, this family was awesome.

Man... why no time.

Well, we taught a lot of lessons this week and I don't have time to talk about all of them!

I will talk about the 4th of July.

Cool Shirts, Ladies!

We decided to stay in one area and find all the less actives on the ward list that were supposedly living there.

It was super hot at first! 

It was muggy and in the 90s and just hot.

Yes, That's the address alright...just nothing there!

That awkward moment when the address that your looking for doesn't exist in the trailer park because the trailer is uprooted! hahaha.

Then a storm was looking to happen. Super random BUT super an answer to prayer, because it has been so dry here in Williston and with all the fireworks about to happen (and happening because people even shoot fireworks off during midday and as soon as it hits July) Williston was probably going to catch fire and burn! We already had a fire in Canada that blew the smoke all the way here, let's not have more!

So it rained! A lot! And super fast! It was like monsoon season in Arizona!

But that awkward moment when you get caught in it and get soaked.

And it's even more awkward when the list that we were using got wet because it was in my skirt pocket... but it was still readable! Yay!

And after that rain, yes, we were soaked, but we it was an awesome adventure, and it was the perfect temperature after that!

We didn't find any of the less actives on the list, but instead we found out that a lot of people moved and two of the addresses didn't have the people in them that were less active, but they were other people, and we had lessons with them and gave both addresses a Book of Mormon. They are both very busy, so I don't know the likelyhood of us getting back in with them, but hey, they have the Book of Mormon in their hands, they have our number, we have theirs and they know where the church is and when we meet. Yay!

We ate dinner at the Gentry's house, the Bishop of third ward. I miss being in that ward. Bishop in his wife are so awesome.

We had an awesome title of liberty lesson with them.

They had so much fun shooting off their own fireworks, some of them going rouge! haha

So many cool fireworks!

They had such a cool view! 

You could see all of Williston and all the fireworks going off around town. 

EVERYONE shoots off fireworks

They were still going when we were driving home at 11:30. 

When we got in bed at midnight it still sounded like somebody was trying to blow up our apartment, somebody was shooting off fireworks so close! 

But man, I was out like a light. I was tired.

61 - Faith, Hope, and Charity

So much to say in so little time!

I have to be brief in some points of this week. This week was just so jam packed it seems!

We helped someone move on Tuesday. 

She's an awesome member. 

She needs to move to Utah so that she can have heart therapy there. 

We will miss her, but we want her heart to get better, so we are glad that she is getting help for that.

You know what was super cool this week? 

We were scheduled to eat with a member for dinner and they informed us that their less active son and his as of February non-member wife would be there. 

They are super awesome, and the son is super spiritual, and after doing the restoration cups lesson and inviting Hope to read the Book of Mormon to see if it was 'good fruit of a true prophet,' she became a new investigator! 

And they apparently they almost came to church the member told us, but they backed out last minute, but she asked her mother in law for help in reading the Book of Mormon because she wanted to fulfill her assignment! 

And she is excited for our return appointment tomorrow, and we are too!

So a crazy crazy story. 

Transfers were this week and Sister Barrett has an additional set of sisters she's going to be in charge of, and both of the sets of sisters she is over are companionships that have a fresh missionary straight from the MTC! 

So that's going to be fun!

These poor sisters... what a rough day for Sister Miles first night of the mission!

Sister Miles and Sister Park came and took the place of the Elders in Sydney. They got to the apartment and there were many things about the apartment that were NOT things that should be in any missionary apartment. I will just say this, that the elders there were not obedient elders. The spirit was NOT in that place. And they were freaking out and hyperventilating and crying and calling people to see what they should do, and long story short, we were called past 10:30 (bedtime) and told that the Sydney Sisters needed to stay with us that night.

Convinently we live in a motel and there were extra cots downstairs! 

They arrived around midnight and filled us in on the crazy details before we went to bed, so we didn't go to bed till after one...

But hey, they are safe now and we got to meet Sister Miles (in the front)! 

Yay!

We didn't have studies that morning though. 

And it seriously effected our spirits. 

We did have an awesome lesson with this recent convert that was baptized just before I got here. 

He's African and sent us this awesome text.

So that was a good lesson, because he basically taught himself. But man, we were kind of on edge, or grumpy, and just, done with lameness, so we went out of town a little bit because we wanted to just get away so we came up with the excuse of trying an out-of-the-way family. And it turned out to be inspired because they are moving soon turns out. 

I just feel so loved because the Holy Ghost was still able to work through us grumpy sister missionaries.

We took a little tiny road trip this week. 

Had some time and miles to kill.

And this little gem was at the end! Isn't it cute???

And a road side fire!?!? 



Korwa! 

She is doing amazing! Her husband is still out of town. But we had a lesson with her earlier in the week and she wanted to pray properly and the member helped her and she has such a desire to learn! When we checked on her an hour before church she was already in her church dress! 

She is flourishing in the fellowship people give when you are seen at church. Yesterday was the second time for her coming to church and she stayed all three hours. She just loves all the people she meets. When she was called on to introduce herself in class she said:

"I'm here, I'm from Cambodia. This is my second time coming to church here in America. I meet so many awesome people and I here with my best friends." Awww! I love her! And when we were sitting down in class she said, "Maybe I sit in the middle so you can both teach me." Awww! Man, she is just so sweet and so awesome.

We took a picture! 

That's not her baby, but she thought he was so cute. 

Then she told us, haha, that she sent a message to Flinn saying she found a boyfriend at church, followed by this picture. 

Hahahaha, so funny!

I love her so much and she has loosened up so much in the past week! We just need to get her hooked up with a friend that can actually spend down time with her! haha. She has such a desire to learn! To learn English, how to pray, and just to learn about the gospel in general! It has truly been a blessing to find her and to be teaching her. Oh! And she is willing to be baptized! She said that she needs to ask Flinn still, but that he never says no to anything. haha.

Oh, we also found two less actives that are not on the ward list. Got their full names, but not their birthdays, darn. Williston is absolutely FULL of less active members. We weren't able to set up specific return appointments with them, but we made good impressions and they are alright with us coming back.

It's been great to have so much time in our area! (What with all the MLC and Zone Conference stuff that went on a bit ago.)

Oh, also in sacrament meeting yesterday Sister Barrett and I performed "Behold Thy Handmaiden," the song that mom and I sang for my farewell. It was absolutely great, and I've always wanted to be able to perform it on my mission, and now I have! But unfortunately, Sister Barrett and I unintentionally bought a recorder that seems to be practically useless now. There's no way to plug it into the computer and send of the sound bites! So that is really really really unfortunate......

Sorry!!!

P.S. We totally met someone named Faith and someone named Hope this week. But didn't find a Charity. lol