It all just seems like a blur.....

I really don't know how to start these things off anymore..... :)

So... hello family and friends! :)

I am now in week 5 of the transfer... it is amazing how fast time is going by! It feels like I just got to Oakville and yet it has been about a month and a lot of good things have happened!

We are still teaching Joe and he is good to go for his baptism on June 1st. He is really excited about it and it is so fun to see him learn and grow and change as he is hearing more of the Gospel. He is such a funny guy and I am so glad we met him that night on the street. Every time we come over to teach Joe he will always give us some chocolate or one time this week we had some watermelon. He has also enjoyed going to Family Home Evenings that are held weekly. He really was so prepared to meet us and I am really excited for his baptism. 

Yesterday was Victoria Day, I am still not quite sure what that means... but what I do know is there were a lot of fireworks... we didn't see any of them because we live in the basement.... but we sure heard them all Sunday night and all last night! :) 

I really wish I could think about more things that happen throughout the week! Honestly by the time preparation day comes it just all seems like a blur!

I really am doing well, though! :) This week I will definitely try to take more pictures! 

I hope everyone has a great week! 

For P-day we went to a little place called, "Little Ray's Reptile Zoo & Nature Centre"  Elder So'o,  Elder Aquino, Sister Green, Sister Herfort (in front), and Sister Mendenhall and I

Meet Sister Fragapane !

Hi everyone!! Meet Sister Fragapane, my new companion! 

St. Patrick's Day - we decided to wear the same outfit !

So first off.... I bet you are wondering how you pronounce her name... I will try and explain it here. "Frag-a-pawn-eh" It is an Italian name and most people have a hard time saying it, but the ward is slowly starting to figure it out. Sister Fragapane was born in Argentina, then moved to Germany when she was 5. So she speaks both Spanish, German, and English (which she only learned her English in the past 9 months since being on her mission and her English is SO good, it is very impressive!)

Sister Colvin and I drove to Brampton on Tuesday morning and got our new companions. 

Sister Colvin and I 

Transfers are always fun in the sense that we get to go and see a lot of missionaries that we haven't seen in a long time. It is always a nice reunion, hence all of the pictures from the day! (See more pics at the bottom of the post)

Elder Washburn, Elder So'o, Sister Colvin and I

Elder Vanderstel, Elder So'o, Sister Fragapane, and I

The MTC...........

Sister Zerkle, Sister Lamb, Sister Colvin and I

I haven't seen Sister Lamb since the morning that we arrived in Canada, so it was fun for all of us to be together again!

And ONE YEAR LATER !

After transfers,  we got back to the area and got to work! Things are going well! We are needing to work on building up our teaching pool again, that is the problem when you baptize people.. there is no one left to teach. haha But... as Elder Prochnow once told me.. it is a good problem to have. :) 

The weather is still pretty Canadian here.... We went from +7*C Tuesday to.... 5 inches of snow Wednesday and about -10*C... and then it has been pretty cold ever since. Some of the snow is starting to melt. I saw some grass for the first time in what feels like a century so that was good. :) But really is is still freezing when we are out working. I have the faith that someday it will warm up but.... just not sure when.

So I have some pretty sweet news... At our last Zone Conference President Scott told us that there was going to be a Special Meeting March 22nd and they told us all to prepare spiritually and that all the missionaries would be able to go and that we would need to look out best... So we knew that someone pretty "high-up" in the church must be coming.. but we didn't know who. Well... now we know who is coming and we are all pretty excited about it. Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum 12 Apostles will be here... in Brampton... this Saturday.. and we all get to go and listen to him speak! I am really looking forward to this once in a lifetime experience! It is going to be pretty amazing so I look forward to letting all of you know how that goes next week. :)

Elder David A. Bednar

Things are good here! Lovin' my new companion and am grateful to still be here in Kitchener Waterloo! 

Elder Lasley and I
He got transferred to another part of the mission. I served with him in Hamilton and then here in Kitchener.

Finally got Elder So'o to do a real smile in a picture :)‏

          Sister Taylor and I‏

              Sister DeRuvo and I‏

                                 Sister Raymer and I‏

 I never see her enough but I love this girl! She was in the same ward as me my freshman year of college, I never really knew her, but then we met each other in the MTC and we knew that we knew each other from somewhere. She is so great. She is going home in July to go back to school as well. 

                              Sister Willoughby and I‏

She is no longer a roomie here in Kitchener.. she was transferred to London

1 Year Mark !

Well... it has officially been a year since I gave my farewell talk.. and tomorrow it will have been a year since I was set apart as a full time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.. and Wednesday it will have been a year since I put on a name tag and entered the MTC... and that is pretty crazy. :) It doesn't feel like that long ago that all of that happened, but a whole lot has happened in that year! It is fun to look back on how far I have come.. I could have never imagined how great and also how hard a mission would be, but I don't regret for one second coming on a mission and I am so grateful for all of the things I have learned in this past year.

Last time i took a picture here it was SO hot‏

So since Sister Colvin and I started out our missions together in the MTC and are now here together a year later we are going to do some celebrating this week! Not exactly sure what we are going to do but... hopefully next week I will have some pictures of nice adventures we will have! 

This week was good. Janet and Norm are still on track for baptism this Sunday.. Elder So'o interviewed them yesterday and said the interviews were probably the most spiritual interviews he has ever done. Janet and Norm truly do love the Gospel so much and are so grateful for it in their lives and I am very excited for their baptisms this Sunday! I even agreed to sing a song with Sister Colvin at the baptism.. I am turning into a little singer here! 

Well, once again, I wish I had more time to write... but I don't :) so..... Have a great week! And everyone go and do something to celebrate my "1 year Mark!" 

Skogstad Family

This is Anne, I just thought this was the cutest picture ever. She is 78 and I feel like she is one of my best friends! 

Brother and Sister Sellars

Busy Crazy CROWDED Week!

February has arrived! And... in 10 days it will be my year mark!! We are trying to plan some fun things to celebrate.. Crazy that Sister Colvin and I started out together in the MTC last February and now we are together this February... My how time flys!

Sister Tofa and I last pday... She went back home
 to Australia this week. :(

The Rowden's had a "Welcome Back" party for us when they found out we didn't get transferred! The party was complete with a banner, balloons, tiaras, feather boas, and cake with candles! They are the best! It was so much fun!

This has been another busy/crazy week! 

Thursday we got a phone call from the Chinese speaking sisters saying that they would be moving in with us.  Apparently they were supposed to be living with another set of Chinese speaking sisters, but the apartment manager wouldn't let them so... we were the next choice.  Sister Colvin and I hurried and tried to make the apartment so everything would fit, and then about an hour later Elder Parker and Elder Prochnow show up and they just start hauling loads of huge furniture into our house. Being a missionary really teaches you how to "go with the flow".  One minute we were living in an apartment all to ourselves and the next minute we were cramming beds into a room.

It was pretty stressful and it has been a weird couple of days,  but things have settled down and it feels like we can move on with life. It has been fun having Sister Willoughby and Sister Mak with us! They have been teaching us some Chinese and that seems to make the whole "sharing a bathroom with 3 other girls thing" worth it. ;) We don't know how long they will be staying here, but.. I am glad they are here so... It will be good if they stay forever. It makes things more fun to have more people around! And... you know me.. I love to have fun! :)

Sister Willoughby, Sister Mak, me and Sister Colvin
after moving all of the stuff in

During all the chaos of the Thursday move, the Bishop called us and asked us to meet him at the church because he had some good news that had to do with Janet. So we hurried to the church! Now a little background.. we had been praying and doing everything we could to figure out how we could find Janet a place to live. Nothing seemed to be working.. Both Norm and Janet had been praying and none of us could think of anything... but.. our prayers worked because the Bishop said that there was a sister in the ward who would let Janet rent a room and so... just like that.. Our prayers were answered! Now another cool part to this story is that the night before Elder So'o had been on the phone with Elder Prochnow and Elder Parker and they were brainstorming how this could all work out so that Janet would reach her baptismal date. They weren't coming up with anything until out of nowhere Elder Prochnow goes, "Woah, I just had an impression that there is someone in the ward who has a place for her to stay." And he couldn't have been more right. :)

We went and told Janet and she was SO excited! And Norm too was so excited... Now Norm has moved his baptismal date to February 16th and they both will be getting baptized! It has been a serious blessing and I am SO glad to still be in this area so that I get to be a part of it. They are amazing people and I am very, very excited for them!

It snowed some more this week... everyone here is amazed that there has been this much snow. It has been a fun week, just very busy. Things are still going very well with the area. We have hit our goals again this week and are seeing a lot of great things happening. 

Just staying busy, which I guess is what it is all about! :)

11 whole months !

Does anybody know what today is??? Nope? Well... I will tell you... today marks 11 months since my cute parents dropped me off at the MTC... 11 whole months!! It is a strange strange thing, and pretty exciting to look back on what has happened in the past 11 months.. I have met so many new people and have done things I never thought I could do and have learned so much! 

The day that the thermometer said -21 and it was apparently -40 with the wind chill... and also they said if your skin was exposed to it for more than 5 minutes you could get frost bite... and then... it rained Friday. Go figure!

 This week was good. The weather got crazy cold Tuesday and Wednesday. Everyone said it was -40*C with the wind chill so... that is pretty darn cold. Thankfully we had quite a few appointments so we tried to stay in a house or in a car most of the day. On that Tuesday we got a funny phone call from Elder Prochnow and Elder Parker (the Zone Leaders)... It started out with a," Hey Sisters..... ummm..... do you think that you could come and jump our car??" Their battery was going bad and even in their underground parking the car was way too cold and was not starting. So... we went and helped them with that... This is now twice I have had to jump a car on my mission.. Heavenly Father really was preparing me for this when my car would die ALL THE TIME back at home. Glad that it wasn't all for nothing. :)

My outfit on a freezing cold P-day

So after we made it through the freezing weather things were good. We had a Zone Training Wednesday and then we did exchanges that night. Sister Tofa came here with me and it was a lot of fun.. She leaves at the end of this transfer and it will be sad to see her go. She will go back to Australia and I am going to have to convince her to move to the states at some point so that this isn't the last time that I see her ever. 

Ice cream cake that Elder So'o had made for
Sister Willouhby's birthday

All of the sisters with the cake

We had some good lessons this week. Janet and Norm are progressing SO well. Norm has really started getting in to the Book of Mormon and I cannot believe how fast he is reading through it. Norm even committed to baptism which is pretty amazing. Three months ago you would have never even seen him wanting to sit down to talk with missionaries. It really is a testimony to me of how much power is in the Book of Mormon. He really has a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon and you can see it working in his life. We are really excited for them! 

We had a really great week! We hit "standards" which I haven't done since the first transfer of my mission. So this means that we have 2 progressing investigators, 2 investigators with baptismal dates, 2 investigators at church, 4 lessons taught with members present and 2 new investigators. It was pretty great to see our work paying off and also seeing the tender mercies. We were quite blessed this week!

Transfers will be coming up soon and... I really have no feeling as to what will happen but... If I do leave I already know that I will be so sad about it. I really love this ward SO much. Since we have had a lot of dinner appointments lately I feel like I have gotten to know the members more and more and it makes me sad that I will have to leave! It is a great thing about missions that you get to meet so many new people but it is a sad thing that you have to leave and that some people you may never see again. Oh well... I guess it is all a part of it!

Brother Mitchell (the vet) brought this cute thing home from work the other day.. She had broken her jaw and the farmer didn't want to pay the money to fix it so Brother Mitchell said that she would take her and then he just did the surgery and now they have her so... if at any moment you want to buy a mini horse that would be GREAT. :) 

Oh and yesterday the new Stake Presidency came here for ward conference. They spoke and taught all of the classes and it was really cool. The Stakes theme is, "Feed the Spirit, Nourish the Soul" and they talked a lot about how important it is for all of us to be continually "feeding" our Spirits. So... if you haven't read your scriptures lately... try that. :) If you haven't said a prayer lately... go do that. :) There are so many things we can do to feed our Spirits and it really does help! 

Well... I hope this was a bit more of a "substantial" email then some of my others have been. I hope everyone has a great week! :)

Have a ever mentioned that there are squirrels EVERYWHERE here??

We play this game where we see how long it takes to see a squirrel when we leave the house and it usually only takes about 10 seconds... Case in point.. looked out the window... squirrel sitting on the emergency exit stairs outside our apartment

Karly Palooza :)

Well..... Karly Palooza (or Sister Prescott Palooza as I had to refer to it this week) was.... less than spectacular. haha  Don't get me wrong, it was a good week... but we really did nothing too out of the ordinary, and I don't even have any exciting pictures to post soooooooooo I am kind of a failure. (actually Karly was able to get some pics when her zone met together at the church - see pics below) It was a good week though! And now I just have something to look forward to next year... making it the best Karly Palooza to ever be paloozed!

Hermana Sandall got me a HappyBirthday necklace and pin that says birthday girl...She is wearing one of those things catchers wear when they play baseball.. haha we found it in the gym

Elder Washburn and Elder So'o got me stickers and candy!
And they are making me a cake for my birthday. They are the best!

The Zone on Karly Palooza P-day 

So I have another cool service story this week that kind of goes along with the story from last week. Saturday morning we went to drop by someone that we had met the other day. They were not home and so I decided that we should walk down a different road that we hadn't been on before. We talked to a man who has family members in St. George who are members and then we kept walking and down the street and I saw a woman raking her leaves. So.... we went to this lady and asked her if we could help her and her face lit up and she said, "would you really help me? that would be so nice." So... we grabbed some rakes and went to town. After we had raked for about 15 minutes she stopped and looked at us with tears in her eyes and said, "I am going to tell my son that two angels were sent to me." And then she told us that her son was supposed to help her but that he threw out his back and that he had all of these bad things happening. She knew that she shouldn't have gone out to rake the leaves herself, but she figured she would try and that is when we showed up. She was so so grateful for our help. And I was so so grateful that I could be an answer to someone's prayers. The whole time I was just thinking about how God really is so aware of us. This woman needed some help and luckily we were able to go and help her. It was really cool... and people are loving to call us Angels these days. :)

We spoke in sacrament yesterday and it went really really well. I seriously LOVE LOVE speaking in Sacrament. This is the first time that I got up there with just a list of bullet points and not everything written word for word and it went a lot better than I thought. 

I wish I had more time and energy to write more this week but..... We are going to go and play volleyball (see pics above) in honor of my birthday so I don't have much time!

I hope everyone had a great week and I will write more and try to have more pictures next week!

#theycallmesister

*saw this on a journal (minus the hashtagging) and laughed out loud... so... I will use this phrase now. :)

So this is the card that Shawn (my brother) sent me for my birthday. The day I got it I wore my Duck Dynasty shirt to bed that night in honor of the card.  Anyway... we were doing follow up calls with Elder So'o and I was telling him how I had gotten a Duck Dynasty card from my brother and I also told him about my Duck Dynasty shirt... He said that he had seen the show enough to know what it was about and then just laughed and said, "I find it odd that someone would bring a Duck Dynasty shirt on their mission" and I just said, "Oh I didn't bring this on my mission, I bought it after I got here."
To which he laughed again and said, "I think that is even worse." haha
So.... let's give it up for being red neck. #proudtobe :)

You two must be angels !

And..... there goes another week here in mission land! And good news everyone... KARLY PALOOZA begins today!! For those of you who are not aware of "Karly Palooza" I will fill you in on the details... Basically it is a week long celebration up until my birthday on the 19th. So everyday I will try to do something fun to celebrate and I invite everyone else to do fun things for this week and you can go ahead and use the excuse that it is Karly Palooza! So go ahead... go crazy! :)

 Me, Elder Ikeda, Elder Healey and Sister Colvin before the Elders moved last Monday. The Elder in front is Elder So'o... he is my new district leader. I will have to get a better picture of him at some point. haha

This week we had a pretty cool service opportunity. We were walking to an appointment and were just planning on doing some finding up until the time of the appointment. As we were walking I looked across the street and I see this old couple and in front of them a HUGE pile of chopped wood that had just been dumped in their drive way... We kept walking for a bit but then I just felt that we REALLY needed to go help them. We went over and started talking to them and asked if we could help. They were a little hesitant but eventually let us.

They were the sweetest couple. Both of them are 90 years old and they were just planning on moving that big pile of wood!   I was not about to let that happen so we stayed and helped them for an hour. The cute lady after a few minutes said, "You two must be angels!" I just had to laugh... we are not exactly angels, but we are probably the closest thing to that at this point as missionaries. The woman also said that she has seen Elders from our church but they never offered to help with anything. I told her that is probably because she didn't have a huge pile of wood in the middle of her driveway. :) She insisted on feeding us lunch, but we had to leave so we will be going back soon to take her up on that. She said that they always enjoyed talking with the missionaries so hopefully we will have the opportunity to share the Gospel with them. It is amazing how many incredible people are out there and yet we miss their stories because we don't talk to them. I love being a missionary and being able to walk up to anyone and find out about them!

Elder Kopischke

This weekend was Stake Conference in the Kitchener Stake and they reorganized the Stake Presidency so we had a General Authority here which was sweet. Elder Kopischke of the Seventy came and led a discussion on Saturday night and then spoke Sunday. He is a really good speaker. Sunday he talked about "Remembering" in honor of Remembrance Day that was Monday. He basically said that if we are not remembering to live the Gospel or remembering our testimonies then we are forgetting so we always have to remember. Before the session on Sunday he was walking around shaking peoples hands and we just so happened to be sitting in a place to get a handshake and he said, "Missionaries!" So... I am practically famous? haha I have met SO many great people here in this mission life. That is now 2 General Authorities... that is 2 more than I ever met while living in Utah. haha

Well it snowed and actually stuck so that is lovely. It is also freezing. We are also getting a lot more dinner appointments lately... I seem to have that effect on people. :) That, or I am the biggest mooch in town. haha either way.. I love dinner appointments. :)

Well I think that is all for this week! Oh, well except for tomorrow it will be my 9 month mark... 9 whole months since I left home!!!!! This also marks the week that I got home from Ecuador and started my mission papers so... that is crazy. Time really is flying faster and faster everyday! Seems crazy to look back on where I was a year ago and where I am now and all of the amazing experiences that I have had in between. It will be fun to see what can happen in the next year!!!

Have a great week!

 I got to see Sister P at Zone Training and then at stake conference

 Our oven was broken so we told the landlord and they just came and took the old one out to the street and gave us a different one