Life in a Nutshell

Well, this week sure has been a better one than the previous! I'm getting situated in Elgin and I'm really loving the members here more and more! We are certainly seeing miracles and blessings are being poured out everywhere (literally)! Even with a bug bite from a Buffalo Gnat that swells up to the size of a baseball on your arm and keeps growing! Haha This past week, we were out riding our bikes and we were able to see a huge miracle! We past a couple who were outside and had a bicycle laying around. We stopped at their driveway and started talking to them about biking as we walked up and if they competed and they did! So we were easily able to talk to them and bring it to why we were biking in skirts and how we are missionaries. After we brought it to a religious conversation, the man, Todd, started asking questions about our "celestial temples", then he asked more questions about Moroni, mentioned that he has read quite a bit of the Book of Mormon and then aske...

A little about my new area- I'm here in Elgin but my area is called Anadarko South. We split the Anadarko Branch with the Elders who are actually in Anadarko. Elgin is the cutest little town, with a whopping 5,000 people ish. Haha it's as country as you can get and there is like one little stop-light in the middle of town. (: Anadarko on the other hand is about 4 Elgins, and supposedly has the highest murder and suicide rate in Oklahoma/USA? I'm not really sure about that. But Elgin is made up with mostly military families while Anadarko is made up of mostly Native Americans from all of the different tribes, mas o menos. Our church is in Anadarko and it isn't part of our area, but our Branch President, President Sylvester, has asked us sisters to work as much as possible in Anadarko so we work in the Elders area as well. We haven't tracted there since supposedly the sisters aren't supposed to- it's just not safe enough? but I haven't felt worried about...

Transfer calls! So.... Last Monday were trainer's calls and to be honest, I was kind of feeling like I would be training this next transfer.  Each transfer, I have known beforehand if I was leaving/staying/getting a new companion etc. until trainer's calls didn't come. So now, that you all know how prideful I am, transfer calls were last night and they were highly anticipated! Sister Nelson has been here for 6 months now in her first area, so we thought she would definitely be leaving. And she did! Haha she's going to Ada with Sister Lindsey (or something like that...)! And so my other feeling for transfers that I had about 4 weeks ago was that we would be getting white-washed here- Elders taking over a Sisters' area, since it's been pink-washed in the past- Sisters taking over an Elders' area. Sister Nelson thought I was crazy. But.... We are being white-washed! The Tuttle Elders (Elder Chamberlain and Elder Hoyle- our district leader and his companio...

Our Bishop has been really focused on the missionary efforts in our ward and has talked to our Ward Mission Leader, Brother Skidmore, about his vision for missionary efforts in our ward. One of the things that he has asked Brother Skidmore to do is set up lessons with each of the active members of our ward and visit them with us missionaries to go over their family mission plan and we as missionaries are coupling this with talking about phase three missionary work (missionaries helping members with their missionary work- most effective missionary work) and trying to help inspire the members to be excited about doing their missionary work! So we are doing this right now, and Sister Nelson and I are planning to visit ALL (or do our best to) of the part-member families in our area this week and we are seeing some really good visits together with less-actives/part-members and hopefully we can start seeing more changes in their desires to follow Christ and stop being shut-down by the ...

​ My first Sister Training Leader, Shea Hamm, came to visit and she came to our church to watch General Conference yesterday so I got to say hi! She's the best! This weekend was the best with General Conference and everything that I was able to learn! President Walkenhorst mentioned in the email in reference to Elder Holland's talk, the application part will be the hardest part (listening is the easy part) because Satan will be there telling us that we can't do it and continually trying to discourage us! One of the biggest themes that I saw in General Conference that I need to focus on is helping those we teach understand the first point of chapter 3- that God is our loving Heavenly Father. I felt like that popped out at me several times and I kept asking myself, "how well do those we teach understand and really feel like this principle applies personally?" I don't think very many of them do which is our fault. And to take that another step, "how...

Wow! We are seeing our area begin to pick up! We have been having members come out with us so much this past week and we have been seeing success through it! The Mustang 1st Ward is very willing to help in missionary work, they are definitely a phase 2 missionary work ward (Members help missionaries with missionary work) and we hope to help them push to phase 3 (Missionaries are helping the members with their missionary work). We are getting our area organized so that we have plans to have Oklahoma Initiative (visiting ALL members in our area every 6 months) up and running more than it has been and in a way that the next set of missionaries will be able to utilize it to its fullest! We are excited to see the fruits from having that working! Sister Nelson and I have been working on improving our lesson preparations to include specific verses that will help our investigators and less-actives learn more through the scriptures. We have been able to use the scriptures more to teach and...

So, everything is happening this week and I couldn't possibly name all of them in the email title! Happy Spring! General Conference Women's Broadcast this Saturday!!!!! Why Do People Keep Bringing Up 9 Month Mark?! Not cool. haha Zone Conferences This Week! Sabbath Day is Revelation Day! (I don't know if that one is sacrilegious or anything...) I Almost Got Hugged By A Man! :0  Ay ya ay! ​Mad dash biking to get home before 9:30 (we got home at 9:18) (a 45 minute bike  ride in the dark- bad idea... haha)   Haha so this past week has been the best week yet! Nothing super amazing or out of the ordinary happened (I even got sick and wasn't feeling too up to par) but my attitude was a lot better than it has been about this area and about the people and the ward. Why do I have to be so stubborn and prideful sometimes? It's always so embarrassing after the fact.  Haha well, the Mustang 1st ward has the best Ward Council and Ward Missionary Correlation...