MIRACLE WEEK (9/7/15 email)

Hey, loved ones! How has everyone been?

Well I've been loving the mission still. At our last zone meeting, our
zone leaders had us each set a goal to have three of our investigators
on date for baptism by September 6. Well a long time went by and
Sister Floyd and I have been praying about which people we should ask
about a specific date and what those specific dates should be. We
never felt like we received a for sure answer...until last week that
is! We were fasting and then we decided that four of our investigators
that week are ready. We asked this one adorable woman, Doris, on
Wednesday at 2 and she said she would prepare to be baptized on that
date! Then, at 3, we asked another adorable woman, Karen, and she said
the same thing! Then, we were planning on asking Rajan the next day,
but he had to reschedule the appointment so maybe that means he's not
actually ready...haha we'll keep praying and I guess we'll see. Then,
just last night, we met with this guy, Ross, and before we could even
open the lesson with a prayer he had an experience he was dying to
share! This was only our second lesson with him and the first time we
asked him to pray to know the things we're saying are true, and he
said he would be baptized if [when] he received an answer that they
are true. Well last Friday he received that answer and he was so ready
to accept our baptismal invitation. The Lord was definitely working
miracles to help us reach that goal!

I know that God is just waiting to "open you the windows of heaven,
and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to
receive it." I have found that to be very apparently true in this past
week!

Also, one more scripture. This is what we let with Ross after our
first visit: "And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort
you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ,
if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere
heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the
truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power
of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things." That's a
huuuge promise were given, but Ross and I both know it to be true.
It's crazy to think about just how much God knows, but it's even
crazier to think about how we can also know the truth of all things
through Him. God is great!

We randomly found this thing to test your vertical in a neighborhood, so we had to try it out.

Happy birthday shoutout to my dad!! I love you! We were in a lesson and the woman we were talking with had to go answer her door, so I took that opportunity to snap this picture.

A member of our ward gave us brownies and wrote notes on them so we can feel like our moms are still with us <3

After our first lesson with this guy who's had a very hard life, he sent this to us :)

Friends and fam! Hey! (8/31/15 email)

3 Nephi 13:31-33 "Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." Don't worry about anything, guys! As long as you are following Christ's example and you put your faith in Him, you literally have NOTHING to worry about! Isn't that amazing? Heavenly Father knows what we need and exactly when we need it.

Well I finally took a picture with the Nehalem sign this week. I can't tell you how much I love serving in the Nehalem ward/area. The people are just amazing!

Here's me making my way up there haha it was pretty treacherous. I had no clue that's how you spell treacherous until spell check helped me out, by the way.

My comp and I moved to another member's home, and we just love her! She is seriously so much fun and I want you all to meet her. I'll take a pic so you can see her next week. She works at Costco and buys too much food for herself, so we help her out with that. Here's a picture of us moving all of our belongings in one little Ford Fusion car ride.

We went on exchanges last week with our Sister Training Leaders, which was so much fun! I LOOOVE the people I was able to meet with in their area, too. Here a pic of us after our exchanges. My companion was Sister Singleton (from Georgia) and Sister Floyd's companion was Sister De Leon (from Texas).

The sister we're living with got us an amazing mint chip gelato so we took selfies with it. Here's what I look like when I'm not sure if the selfie timer is on or not.

Last week we had a ward activity that was a Tongan version of a Luau (Kai-something, meaning "feast"). A few of our investigators came to that and it was a blast! This is a family were teaching and we just love them. We can't share any personal information, but I really wish I could tell you all about them because they're great!

Well I can't tell you how happy I am here! Of course I definitely miss everyone and I can't wait to see you all again, but this is such a great opportunity. The knowledge of the gospel has blessed me so much, and I love that I can be out sharing that blessing with anyone willing to listen!

One month??? (8/24/15 email)

I've already been out for a month? It honestly feels like it's been a few days maybe. This is such a weird feeling.

Well this week I learned that some churches have lessons that specifically teach about the LDS religion. What confuses me is the fact that people attend other churches to learn about the LDS church. When I have wanted to learn more about other people's beliefs, I have gone to their mass or temple. But this woman on the street the other day told us that she already knows that Mormons are members of a cult because she learned about us at her church. We invited her to look at Mormon.org to settle any confusion there might be, so hopefully she checks that out!

A quote I really liked from this week from a member of my Mission Presidency: "God has the power to deliver us IN difficulty, not just OUT OF difficulty." Why do you think God didn't just take Daniel out of the lions den? He obviously has the power to do so. It means so much more to us and helps us to grow so much more when we make it through the hard times because of Him, rather than having Him just take away those hard times. Sometimes we may be praying for deliverance out of difficulty, when we should be ready to rely on our faith and have him give us the help we need from day to day - or even from hour to hour.

We have a few new investigators from this week (keep them in your prayers), but here's a story of the most random one: We were introduced to a young family a few hours after they baptized their baby at their church. After we shared a brief spiritual thought, they invited us to come back and they're interested in learning more about the Restoration of the Gospel. We honestly were thrown off when we heard they just got back from baptizing their baby and we didn't want to intrude or anything, so the fact that she invited us back to learn more was a very pleasant surprise!

This weekend was stake conference for our zone and at the Saturday night session we had not only our Mission President and his wife there but also Elder Call, a member of the Seventy. Near the end, Elder Call randomly turned to President Taylor and said, "Give me your finest." Well...Sister Floyd and I were called up to the stand! We were pretty dang nervous bc we had no clue what to expect, and we're both such new missionaries! But when we got up there, we were asked to share a brief lesson and testimony of the First Vision. I honestly don't think we did very well in speaking at all haha but we invited the Spirit and that's all that matters. So many people came up to us afterwards and introduced themselves and thanked us for sharing the message we did. This one woman even asked us for our number and said she had six friends she wanted to introduce us to and invite them to take the missionary discussions. Holy cow we are more than grateful for that experience!

My companion made someone for us to practice teaching together. We both like to talk A LOT so we really struggle on giving each other any time to share any other thoughts. We are getting better about asking more questions to the investigators and getting to know them, though! Just gotta keep practicing on this balloon.

Here's where the balloon came from. We surprised Brother Privett for his birthday and the first thing he said when he woke up and saw it was, "You dropped a sock." Apparently Sister Floyd left a sock on the floor. Haha thanks for appreciating our hard work and love! Once he really woke up, though, he was so grateful for the surprise. Haha we love the couple we live with!

We're actually moving houses tomorrow, though. We'll be living with another member. So if you would like to write to me (which I would greatly appreciate), my new address is:
10803 NE 103rd St.
Vancouver, Washington 98662

Shortest week ever (8/17/15 email)

Hello again, friends and fam! I have got some stories for you.

I'll start with the weirdest story. My companion and I were walking down the street and we saw this old woman in her driveway cleaning out a motor home so we stopped and asked if we can help with anything. Her husband came out from behind the motor home and we got talking and had a very long and amusing conversation. Also, he didn't have a shirt on at this time and he had a decent sized, hairy beer belly and was missing most of his teeth. Ok now that you have the picture in your head, I'll continue. After we introduced ourselves as missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, he said, "I'm above all of you. I know more about the Bible than anyone else. I'm #1 at everything I do. I'm the #1 bass fisherman in the world." If that is true, then I'm proud that I was able to talk to him, but I'm feeling a little skeptical. He just continued to tell us how he knows more than anyone else in the world and is the best at everything. Also, he was born and raised in Wisconsin and the schools in Wisconsin are #1 in the world and other states are dumb. Everyone in the mission talks about the interesting Portland people and apparently there's a saying "Keep Portland weird," which made me a little jealous that my area is in Vancouver for now, so I'm glad I got to meet a Portland-type of person here in Vancouver. Oh also, he said that God just wants us to be more relaxed about religion and God doesn't want us serving missions; He wants us two girls to open up a can of Blue Ribbon beer and go the fair to "chase boys around." Then, after we tried to slip in a spiritual message one last time before leaving, he invited us to come back another time.

There is something weird about how time is altered on your mission. The weeks feel like days but the days feel like weeks. At the end of the day, I look back on the morning and can't believe how recent that was, but then I look back on what happened a week ago and it feels like it was yesterday. I've had such a hard time sorting through the order of events in my brain haha so bar with me.

My companion and I didn't bring any CDs to listen to in the car so her family mailed us about 8 CDs and my favorite by far is the 2015 efy CD. There's the main song, Here Am I, and I can't help but feel like a million bucks after listening to it. Go listen and sing along to it and try not to feel empowered. It's impossible.

Something a little creepy but so true that my companion quoted is, "Satan knows your name, but calls you by your sins. God knows your sins, but calls you by your name." Satan knows us better than we know ourselves, which is creepy to think about, but God does too and He is way more powerful than Satan. It's our decision who we want to give ourselves to.

The power of prayer is so real! I've been trying to pray more specifically now and my prayers have totally been answered! We always pray before we plan our week out and we ask to know what message we can share and how we can help people to the best of our abilities. Then, for the times that we don't have appointments, we pray and ask where we should knock on doors. Well boy does God help us out! One week the bishop told us he had been praying and felt like we should go down this one street. We prayed about it and asked, "Please have the people were supposed to talk to be outside at this time." Boom. The third house we walked by had this lady sitting outside who apparently had met with the missionaries that were in this area before us and she said she was trying to find us. Her phone broke so she didn't have our number anymore so she had been praying that we would come by her street again. We were the answers to each others prayers! Also, another night, we prayed and asked where we should be. We went by this one guy's house that we talked to earlier that week and gave a Book of Mormon to. He answered the door and said he's been having a hard time since his mother in law just had a bad fall and broke her leg (she's 104 I think). He was so happy we came by and invited us to come back this Tuesday to have our first official lesson with him. So, everyone, God is always listening and just waiting for us to ask for His help. Sometimes He won't answer our prayers right away or in the exact way we expect, but He knows exactly what'll help us most so trust Him.

So I'm loving this mission so far. The couple we live with is amazing and it's the husbands birthday tomorrow so we're surprising him with a balloon that says, "So many candles so little cake," and we're gonna try to make white chocolate covered popcorn. Also, the humidity here is perfect for my skin. And the people are amazing. I LOVE VANCOUVER!