Inspiration to find those looking for the Glad Message!

A printed owl decoration/mask
since she LOVES owls!

Notes: Red commentary from Mom as a means of explanation.

 

 

Our Trunk-or-Treat isn’t until this Wednesday, and it’s only going to be that, no party. (Trunk-or-Treat is a congregation-sponsored event for younger kids to dress up and Trick-or-Treat to decorated/parked car trunks in the church parking lot.  It’s safe and fun! Often, there is a party to go with it, but not this time.) Sounds like they're going all out for the Christmas party instead. We'll see if I'm actually around for that or if I'm getting moved as of Dec 17th(I'm betting on getting moved, honestly. They don't typically keep you with your trainer for longer than the training).

real seasons.....aaaaahhhh...

(We sent a box with her cold weather clothes, Halloween Candy, and a loaf of Nick’s homemade sourdough bread, as requested.  It was sent directly to her, by-passing the Mission Office, so the bread would be fresher; 3 day ground took almost 6 days. Sigh.) It’s all good. The bread wasn't stale (we're still picking at it mmm). (Glad it was wrapped well!) The winter box did come! :) Very pleased!

My companion and I occasionally faun over the few scouting things we run into, since we're both camp kids. (Sounds like they both worked Boy Scout camps!)

It poured rain this week, and the lightning did at one point get bad enough to knock out the power on the block we were on and was close enough to spook both us camp kids into finding cover. Yikes! Safety first.

We're starting to collect ads from stores earlier in the week to coordinate our purchases on P-day a little better. It means a few more stops but a better use of our money: I have a lot of pasta now. Mm. (They don’t get fed by the members on a regular basis in this particular area.)

We found someone new to talk to during an hour of 8pm-9pm knocking. She said it must have been a sign from God. Hopefully we can see her again. We also were inspired to linger in an area with a less active we were working with. She lives in a locked apartment building and apparently wasn’t home when we got there. Our lingering guided us to a maintenance man who told us she just got home and was in the garage. Nice. Then later that day we went to go check up on another less active we'd never met before. We ended up parking in front of the neighbor's house because I was being obnoxious about parking and teasing S. Marsh,... the neighbor yelled us for our parking and said, “Okay. Sorry.” :( She came out to talk to us when we went to the door of the address we had... Turns out the address was wrong and the woman coming to talk to us was the lady we were looking for. She was thinking about trying to find us and talk to us once a week or so. Wow. So inspired. The Lord really does guide His missionaries.

One of our investigators accepted a date of Dec 5th! (A baptism - yay!) Now she need to marry her boyfriend of 5 years since they're living together.

We had two investigators at church! Miracles! One cried and asked if she could come back next week after the 3 hours were over (we were just impressed she was willing to stay the whole time!)... (Church is 3 hours each Sunday – 1 hour each for Congregational meeting, Sunday School, and one more class.)

We also went on exchanges this week (Companionships trade companions to work different areas, and mix it up a little). I spent a lot of time pretending to know Spanish with the Hermana (Sister Missionary) I was with, and the two of us had some good talks about family and Heavenly Father. It was just hard because it really tore down a lot of walls I had up about a lot of other stuff, too. But the Lord lets you break down so he can build you back up better than before!

We have permission to go to the temple next week. :) It will be Sister Marsh's first time to the Nauvoo temple. Always excited to give the tour (I like being a tour guide I guess?)

SO. MUCH. POPCORN.

Also Sister Marsh has insisted we sing in the choir, so I bounce between tenor and alto. Glad other people know how to sing that so I can just copy what they're doing. I can read music, but have a really hard time actually doing it by myself.

A member took us to Kalona today, which is an Amish colony. They had a lot of discount food (we bought a million boxes of mac and cheese for $.50) and bulk items. Look at all this popcorn! Wat. Craziness.

 

An exciting week all around. Thank you for all the things. :)

Love you. :) Miss you and the tribe. I'll share your love with my companion too.

Christine

Winter is coming

 

Real seasons...yaay!

Christine the trainer

I miss the Haunt (Knotts Berry Farms Halloween event). ): Next year! Thank you for the photos.

I like being a trainer so far- my companion is very enthusiastic in that she has lots of new ideas and really has nothing to dampen them, so she's always asking about inviting members and putting on events that require much more planning and such. It’s good to have that enthusiasm - I just rein her in. Perhaps too much. I'm learning to just accept and go with the flow because I'm a little more controlling than I really need to be. So it’s been a lot of learning for me too. (Good for her!  Teaching is a really good way to learn!)

Sisters Marsh and Kurt

We're inviting more of the members out to our adventures and they often say, “oh yeah you haven’t been over in a while. Come over this week...” and then we plan meals. It’s mostly been about building member trust and interest in us and the work. We're also trying to do more interactive lessons.

Yay! Looking forward to boxes. :) I love boxes.  I was going to ask if you sent my cold stuff (I did…the box should arrive this week…cold weather clothes and candy!) - it’s beginning to get cold here (below 30 the other night), but yay. :) I don't remember if I said, but the last box did arrive two weeks ago (finally). The weather is dipping down here- lows in the 40s, highs in the 60s mostly (though today is a little warmer). We're not knocking quite so much - more people are letting us in to teach them. So we have a few new investigators this week. We're also doing our best to get more people out with us (especially since some of them speak almost exclusively French and we... do not. At all.)  We're teaching two Indians right now, so we ordered a copy of the Book of Mormon in Bengali. International in the mid-west. Weirdness. (Who knew?)

Warhammer nerd pin...shhhhh!

We had a lady answer the door and let us in. She was just a friend so she went to get the owner of the house.
And one is yelling to the other- “there's some girls here to see you. It looks like they're holding Bibles in their hand.” We were holding Books of Mormon!  The other yells back - “Are they Jehovah's Witnesses? “

They had this whole conversation about whether or not we were JWs in the other room... Eventually she came back and more or less dismissed us, but we made sure she knew we weren't Jehovah's Witnesses. Woops.

A friend mailed me a nerd pin. It’s from Warhammer (my faction!) (A game she likes). I love it a lot and wear it under my name tag sometimes. :) We found a pretty tree to stand under too.

Thank you for all the love and support.
Christine

Knotts Haunt....and Christines face

Mom is weird.... yes. She knows.

The ghoulie broke character when he saw the cardboard-backed face of Christine.... and he laughed and laughed!
He thought that was great - and was very accommodating in our photo-taking.  He came back around to tease us about it during dinner.

Mom and Dad Kurt, a ghoulie, Christines face, and some friends

New investigators!

Our Mondays are some of the busiest, which is hard. ): Get all the temporal things done so we can be spiritually minded during the week and all that... Sometimes (most of the time) it doesn't feel like an hour is enough to get everything I want to say to everyone...

We’re trying very hard to get members more involved; in a lot of places the members are super helpful, but in a lot of places they also aren't... Hard to get people to be gung-ho. Our meal calendar gets passed around here, but we have no meal coordinator, so no one tries to fill in the significant gaps... Maybe one or two meals a week here, in an area with a lot of members. Hm. (we try to feed the missionaries in our ward about once a month – the calendar is always full…the coordinator is very good).  We've been counseled to call members ourselves to find time to meet with them (since it’s not really about feeding us; it’s about getting into their homes and meeting them and getting to know them and getting them excited about missionary work)...

Speaking of which, we've had missionaries in our home many a time, but I can't really remember anything that they shared or any of it really sticking with me. What are some memorable things missionaries have shared? Why did they stick with you? We want to get better about sharing things with families that get them to think, to reach, etc. Thoughts?

We got 5 new investigators this week. Two Catholic couples and a woman who sat in on a lesson with one of our other investigators (she's a little along for the ride - good). One of the couples is from Africa and speak French and Ewe (I'm not sure I can explain how that is pronounced). They're both super active in their church, but were so dedicated to God and following him that they essentially said 'We will do whatever God directs us to do". Super powerful experience I think. There are some people out there who are just SO willing to do whatever the Spirit directs. I wish more people were like that. The other couple was a little more quiet. It seemed to be a pretty surprising assertion that God called a prophet again on the earth today and that they would need to look into it more... Curiosity perhaps, but it may go from there. Now the trick is to see them again. \ o /

I was reading a Marvelous Work and A Wonder and I loved it; finished it this week. I'm fascinated by the assertion that either the Catholic church or the LDS church is true, because if the Protestant movements are correct in their assertion that the Catholic Church (their mother church) was apostate, then essentially they inherited that Apostate condition and reformation isn't going to put it back exactly the way it was (especially if the number of protestant churches is any indication)... So they're pretty much automatically not the correct church? Woops. And it (in the intellectual sense I guess, since this doesn't really include revelation from God through prayer, etc.) comes down to, did Peter pass his authority on to his assistant (I forgot his name! ;-; The one that the Catholics believe their authority through.) or did he not? And I think that the revelations (literally the book of Revelation) given to John (the apostle with the most seniority of the surviving ones- wasn't he the last remaining one by that point?) instead of the other guy is rather telling? There’s so much more on the logical argument honestly, but that’s really not what a testimony is founded on anyway. 

We're trying a local cream soda I was telling you about last time around. Apparently bottled by the Amish community here. Sounds like heresy but delicious all the same.

Thank you for the miso recipes! :) (as requested…they wanted to make a wonton soup that we made at home before she left.  LOTS of miso paste left over, so I sent a few recipes).

<3 (heart….love)

Christine

A new companionship!

her beautiful braid again

OWL jammies!

Sisters Kurt and Marsh - they both look happy!

(General) Conference was really good. One of the newly called Apostles was supposed to be our speaker in a couple of weeks, so I'm going to guess that’s going to be changed, but it would be super cool to meet him (Renlund I think)... Some of it I found really inspiring. (General Conference is a twice-a-year worldwide gathering of the highest leaders of the church - they speak to us and teach us how to be better followers of Jesus Christ.  Listen to Conference HERE - stream to listen, watch, or download video, audio, or PDF)

I'm sure the movie is priceless. Cubs are a special bunch. (Mom, the Den Leader, made a movie with the Cub Scouts representing points of the Scout Law)

Looking forward to pictures of all the improvement stuff! The house will be so different by the time I get back.

I did end up getting pretty sick but not enough to stop working... just enough to look pathetic at every door we came to. Wooo.

My new companion is doing well. Occasionally she has moments where she's lost or discouraged (this area is particularly rough - we STILL haven't had any real investigator lessons),  and my being sick hasn't done her any good, but she's adjusting quickly and we get along super well. She did a study abroad in Japan (JEALOUS) and she worked at a boy scout camp (incidentally, with her mom) for a couple of years (both her parents are school teachers)...

Speaking of the work, lots more knocking, lots more rejections. Some are definitely more polite about it than others and I do appreciate the ones that have conversations with us before sending us on our way. Normally the conversationalists are very polite, ask us where we're from and stuff. I guess those ones are little more familiar with missionaries, but don't want to hear about our church regardless. It’s also really interesting to meet people who have lots of good things to say (they're the nicest, politest people I've ever worked with!) but still won't try to find out why/get that happiness for themselves. Logic at its finest?

(Last year they receive LOTS of Halloween candy, so I inquired as to whether or not I should send some.) I don't know how much love we'll get here from the members, but candy is always welcome. We figured we'd at least wait until all the candy went on sale at Walmart in Nov.

On a side note, we went shopping today- got a nice set of pans for 35$ (they were on sale from 70$ and are Farberware and steel, so it seemed good) so we don't have to try and brave the Teflon-flaking plans, so I can try and make wonton soup! Now I know why you had so much Bok Choy- they only come in the big bushels. Hm. Hopefully it goes well, because you end up with a lot of supplies for it! There's an Asian market too, so we found us some miso paste.

Please send us recipes for udon!  They sell udon noodles at the asian market. Specifically, any with Shrimp (my companion loves shrimp, but I am way okay with chicken too)... Anything that sounds relatively reasonable to make on the supplies list. As it is, I have sesame oil, oyster sauce and miso paste now, it'd be cool if we could use some of those too. (so, that's what I'll do this week!) 

Love,   Christine