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

A bit of a shock - I'm staying in Kitchener Waterloo !

Transfers!! 

After thinking that I was a goner for sure... giving a "farewell" talk in Sacrament meeting yesterday... and saying goodbye to everyone...... I am not leaving! I will be staying here in Kitchener Waterloo for at least another 6 weeks! It is pretty crazy! I am still in a bit of shock about staying. For the first time in 4 transfers, though, we did have a bit of a change.  Sister Colvin will be headed to Mississauga and I will be getting a new companion here.  She is from Germany and  has been out about 7 months..  I hear she is super funny.

It is pretty crazy... I am excited! It will be different to be here without Sister Colvin.. that will be a big adjustment! It will be good... I love this ward and this is going to make it even harder to leave when I finally do have to. Because that day will inevitably come.... but until then. Kitchener for a bit longer. :) Pretty exciting! 

Today we have a fun P-day planned to say goodbye to everyone who is leaving so I will make this short..

I hope everyone has a great week! :)

With a cute little girl from our ward

We had the largest District in the mission, but now after transfers our District is going to be much different and probably a lot smaller.

With the Mitchell Family

With Henry Mitchell
He and his mom and little Brother and little Sister left for Utah yesterday for 3 weeks so he was saying goodbye to us at church because he didn't know if he would see us again. He is the cutest little thing. He kept asking when he would see us again and he didn't want to have to say goodbye. He said he was going to miss us if we left. He also asked me if I liked "rainbow loom" bracelets, I said yes, and then right after Relief Society he came in and gave me one that he said he had made the night before. I am going to keep it for forever! 

With Sister Rowden (ward member)

All our name tags on the fridge.  Both Sister Colvin and Sister Willoughby will be leaving. Sister Mak will be staying and getting a new companion and we will all still live together.

With our Ward Mission Leader, Brother Olsen and his wife.

With the Despain Family

This mission really has changed my life

This was another great week full of a lot of exciting things!!

First off I hit my year mark and so we did some fun things to celebrate that. (I don't have much time so I will just let the pictures explain some of the things that we did. :)

It still blows my mind that I can now say that a year ago I was a missionary. That is a long, long time!

Janet and Norm were baptized this weekend, and it was the greatest experience. The day before the baptism we met with them, and hearing both of their testimonies brought me to tears. They are so amazing and so grateful for the Gospel in their lives. I can honestly say that if not one good thing happened on my mission except for meeting them and seeing their progress, I would have still said it was all worth it. I could not stop smiling and was so happy to see them so happy. Thankfully I have had a lot of wonderful things happen throughout my mission but it is amazing how just one thing can really make all the hard days 100% worth it.

Sister Colvin and I have really started to see so many blessings in this area. The work just continues to progress and I feel like the ward has been pretty excited about it. We were able to achieve the "standards of excellence" again this week and we saw a lot of really great things happen. It almost feels like I worked hard for a year and then the week that I celebrated my year mark Heavenly Father just poured out the blessing upon us. Pretty great!

For Valentines we bought some roses to give away to people and then someone had given the Chinese (speaking) sisters roses so we decided to take some pictures

So I feel like this is all over the place and the computer here at the library tells me I only have 18 minutes left, so I will wrap this up for this week and then when I am back to the Family History center Monday I will write something longer. But I DID take a lot of pictures this week so that should make up for it, right? :)

Burning stuff at the Mitchell's to celebrate my 1 year mark

Only they would leave dead ducks hanging in the tree. haha Brother Mitchell says if I ever need a good dose of Redneck that I just need to come on by. haha

Brother  and Sister Weber - members of our ward

Good old Canadian Humor
These houses have "a" and "b" sides.. a member lives on the B side of this and their neighbors are apparently pretty funny. haha They said missionaries always get a picture of this

This mission really has changed my life and I am seeing that more and more lately as I compare where I was a year ago and where I am now. I don't know what I would do without these experiences and all the wonderful people that I have met!

I hope that everyone has a great week! :)

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

Staying in Kitchener Waterloo for Christmas

Our District BEFORE transfers

Transfer calls were last night and Sister Colvin and I will be staying in Kitchener Waterloo again, in spite of the fact that basically everyone else in our District got whitewashed. haha We have a lot of good things happening with this ward, though, so we are happy to be staying. :)

It finally snowed a decent amount this week and it has been super cold. It has been nice, though. The snow is pretty and makes me happy so I am ok with it. At least it looks like Christmas!

I sang in sacrament meeting again yesterday.... yes, I don't know what has come over me. haha Sister Colvin, Brother Olsen (our ward mission leader), Brother Shulske (who is actually from Idaho and taught Sister Colvin primary), Amanda, Sue and I sang the song "Virgin's Lullaby" by Katherine Nelson and Jason Deere... Click on the video below and you will be able to listen to it. It is super pretty and everyone said it went really well. There were lots of people in the congregation crying... that is when you know you have done well. :)

Janet came to church again and is still loving everything! We have set a baptismal date for February 16th, but we will keep working with her and I am sure she will move it up. We weren't in Relief Society because we were helping the Bishop out with his sharing time in Primary, but apparently Janet announced to all the Sisters that she is getting baptized. She is such a wonderful Spirit!

Starting to get excited for Christmas (even though it still feels weird that it is next week...) It will be nice to be here with all of these ward members that we already know for the Holidays! They are wonderful and it will be a lot of fun!

I hope everyone has a great week preparing for the Holidays! And remember..... we celebrate Christmas because of CHRIST.... not because of all the parties, food and gifts.. So everyone take a step back and think about what the Savior has done for you and focus a little more on that and a little less on the things that aren't exactly that important in the eternal perspective of things. :)

Haha , Cat's paws remind me of mittens and that is

why this is even remotely funny

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

Attitude is Everything !

Well it is a beautiful, cold Monday morning here in Canada! Transfer calls were last night... we didn't get a call so Sister Colvin and I will be staying here in Kitchener Waterloo for at least another 6 weeks. The big change came in the fact that the Elders are leaving the ward, so now Sister Colvin and I have the whole ward to ourselves. That will be different, but it will be nice because our area is now double what it has been and more importantly.... the whole ward can feed us now... not just the people in our area. :) Oh and the other great news is that Elder Prochnow is going to be my Zone Leader again. I am obviously so pumped about that! The Morgan, UT team has been reunited!

Our District for this transfer

      Me, Hermana Reid, Sister Colvin, Hermana Sandall, 

Elder Healey, Elder Ikeda, Elder Williams, Elder Mangum, and Elder Howell

This week was good! Monday night we had dinner with a Sister in the ward who served a mission with her husband in Nigeria in the 80's. She showed us slides and told us more about her experience there and it was pretty incredible. The people there live such humble lives and are so willing to learn about the Gospel. She said that it was a hard experience, but that it really put things into perspective for her. We really are so blessed to live where we live and have the blessings that we do. It would have been tough to serve in an area like that, I couldn't even believe most of the stuff she was telling us because it is just so foreign to me. She is a pretty amazing lady and I learned a lot of her and her experiences. 

Halloween also took place this week.... it was pretty lame if I'm being honest. haha We just had to go in early and do our weekly planning, I didn't even see anyone in costumes so..... that was great. :)

We have some people that we are teaching now. They are a couple that the Sisters in the other ward were teaching, but then they moved into our area so now we will be teaching them! So that is exciting. Also.. we should have a baptism this month of a 12 year old boy whose family members are members, but he just hasn't been baptized yet. So that will be good for them. :)

We did exchanges this week and I was with Sister Tofa. It is always a blast with her. She is awesome. She is the Sister Training Leader that I have done the most exchanges with. It just seems like she follows me around! haha

Sister Tofa and I making waffles at Sue's for dinner

Sister Tofa and I. During our exchange and she accidentally brought the phone from her area into my area, so we were joking that we were the Assistants to the President because they are the only companionship in the mission where both missionaries have a cell phone so.... AP Prescott and AP Tofa

Sue fed us ribs... I was in Heaven. #iheartribs

Yesterday Sister Colvin and I were asked to speak in sacrament meeting on the 17th and the topic is tithing. So what I would love is if you wonderful people who read my blog would send me either some experiences about tithing or talks on tithing that I could incorporate into my talk and share with the ward. It has to be 15 minutes long so... we better start preparing asap. :) 

I was REALLY loving Canada this day

It is crazy that it is November. Next week is Remembrance Day so Pday will be on Tuesday. (There are SO many holidays on Monday's here in Canada... it feels a little excessive) 

FYI... my birthday is not too far away.. the 19th to be exact. :) So... feel free to send me Happy Birthday emails. haha I will be the big 23... I am getting OLD. 

Well... I think that is all for this week! 

Things I have learned this week... attitude is everything! If you want to have a crappy day... you will have a crappy day... so..... tell yourself that you will have a good day everyday and things will work out.  Even when it is tough. :)

Love you all!! (even though I am not exactly sure who reads this every week... I probably love you anyway.. ;)

Random Pic - The dog is huge!

Where did October go?

Well.... where did October go? I cannot believe it is the end of the month.

This week was the ward Halloween party and it was a lot of fun. They had so many cute games and activities for the kids and there were so many great costumes.

Halloween Party

Spider Race

This is brother Mitchell... and.... I think all the boys need to go to Walmart and get this get up and dress like this on Halloween. I WOULD DIE. haha So really they should do it. They wouldn't even need to wear the fake beards. just borrow some cammo from someone. haha

The same day as the Halloween party we had what they call a "mini mission" So for that Saturday morning Sister Colvin and I had two youth with us and we were able to take them out and do some missionary work.

Mini Mission 

The girls that were with us were so cute and they were more brave about sharing the Gospel than I was even in the first 6 weeks of my mission. I was really so impressed by them. We visited a few different members and tried to have as many appointments as possible because it was snowing that morning. It was a good day for me because it helped me to remember why I am here doing missionary work. Sometimes all days just seem to be the same and so we can get in a rut, but this bit of a change really helped me to see what a special spirit there is that surrounds us when we are doing missionary work.

On Sunday was our big singing moment in Sacrament. I was nervous but we had practiced a ton and it turned out really well. Sister Colvin has helped me practice with my singing and I was actually pretty confident to get up there. We sang the song "Army of Helaman" and I think the ward liked it. So that was a highlight of my week! Singing in sacrament meeting was something that I wanted to do while I was on my mission so I can now cross that off the bucket list. :)

It got cold this week and I had to bust out my winter coat. Not really looking forward to the freezing cold weather and it getting dark early, but I guess that is all part of the process. It couldn't be summer  forever! :)

I should have never taken the advice of not wearing the fur thing last winter because... this has been saving the day! haha

This week marks Week 6 of this transfer which is the last week. Transfer calls will come on Sunday and I don't have any sort of feeling as to what will happen. So with that I will be ending my 6th transfer which means half way! So... this Sunday will be "hump day" (If i come home in 12 transfers, which would be in time to make it back to school, which is what I am planning on.) So... feel free to celebrate hump day with me!

Sewing at Sue's

Turns out I miss sewing!

 Will have to get back into that when I get home

This is funny because Ephraim is the tribe that I am from...
haha Mormon jokes!