Toilet Papering in the Bible

Hello Everyone,

So we had dinner at our Bishop's house last night and he told us about where it talks about Toilet Papering in the Old Testament! Zechariah 5:1-2 is where the toilet papering is and the consequence is in Ezekiel 3:2! Look it up!

This week has been good, but hard! We have one solid investigator who believes in the gospel. She believes that the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith is a prophet. She also believes that her Catholic baptism is valid. She is 84 years old and is the sweetest little thing, but she just does not know whether or not she should be baptized. The missionaries have been teaching her for 6 months! We don't know what to teach her any more either. She has been praying about baptism for a while now and hasn't received her answer or doesn't realize she's received it. Her niece is a convert and has done her parents temple work so Sis. Dewald has also said in the past that her niece can just do it for her after she dies. They told her that it doesn't work that way, but she is old and doesn't quite understand it. I think next time we see her, we are going to talk to her more about the Holy Ghost and focus on the feelings she's felt during the lessons, because the spirit is so strong in those lessons! Other than Sis. Dewald, we don't have other investigators because they don't return our calls or texts or they cancel at the last minute. It is hard and discouraging but all we can do is invite them to listen. It's not on us if they don't. I think that's the hardest thing to remember out here. We can't make them listen.

On Saturday we had 2 lessons with potential investigators but when we got to their houses, they both weren't home. It was really hard and discouraging. We had been trying people at their houses all week as well and no one was home! Looking back Saturday was still a good day because we did some service and even though we didn't teach the lesson, I learned so much about faith and trusting in the Lord. The sacrament talks on adversity yesterday really helped as well. Missionary work is always changing and we just have to roll with the punches and keep going! I am using the planner that Sister Falkner decorated for me and one of the things she wrote in in really helped me. It said "No force in the ENTIRE world can stop the word of God." After reading that I knew that was true and if i wallowed in self-pity, then Satan would win that round and I don't want that to happen!

Yesterday Sister Knight and I taught young women. We taught about Temple Ordinances and the importance of a temple marriage. It was like talking to a brick wall. So to any of my YW leaders, I am so sorry for those lessons where I did not participate as much! I now know how hard that is! The lesson was really good though. It was a cool experience and made me miss YW a little bit! It was fun to watch the girls before giggle and flirt with the boys out in the hall before! Fun stuff.

So there is a family in the 2nd ward who cut hair and wax eyebrows for free! So this morning I went and got a free eyebrow wax! It was great and now I don't have to pluck anytime soon! Woot woot! Also there is this really good ice cream place here called Handels! It was good!

So that's been my week! I hope you all are doing great! I would love to hear from you! Love you lots!

-Sister London

The Sisters in Fishers-Sis London, Sis Vidmar, Sis Knight, Sis Barrett

Abbie and Sister Knight at Handels

Abbie with President and Sister Cleveland

Sister London's nicely shaped eyebrows...

Fishers Indiana

Sister London pointing to her mission

 Hey Everyone!

My first area is Fishers Indiana! It is pretty close to the mission office and home, I think. I think it is the town next to Carmel. I am in the Fishers first ward with my companion Sister Knight! She is amazing and has an amazing testimony! But I'm getting ahead of myself so let's go back to Tues.

I was the only sister on my flight to Indiana with about 30 Elders! The visa waiters were on a diff flight so it was nice to get to the airport and have sis Cleveland waiting. We spent that night in the Mission Home with the sisters up in the rooms and the Elders down stairs. We had a welcome testimony type meeting where we all shared our testimonies and Pres. Cleveland spoke to us. A basketball story about touching all the lines was what he told us, so that is kind of his mission motto I guess. I like it a lot and it's been helping me! Wednesday was the transfer meeting where I met sis knight and we then went to lunch with some of the other Sisters. We had another meeting and then the sisters in the Fishers 2nd ward came and picked us up because we share a car with them. So we bike one day and then drive the next. We have some bikes that ward members have donated and I am going to have awesome leg muscles from all this biking! We biked for only 3 hours last night and I think we went like 5 miles. It was crazy and I felt like I would die at times but there were some angels around helping me peddle. I could feel them as I went! We have mostly been trying to find potentials here. We have taught one lesson to an investigator and that's it. We don't have any progressing investigators yet and many of our investigators don't get back to us so we can't schedule an appointment. It is exciting though and I love it here so far!

Sister Knight is from Cali and she is short!!! Shorter than me, which is not something you see everyday! She has an amazing spirit and is so great! She is the youngest in her family and lives with her mom. The 2 sisters that live with us are sis Barrett and sis Vidmar. They are super funny and great as well! When we are home, it's always a party! 

Sis. Knight and Sis. London

One of the less-actives we visited last week is from Sandy. She was really good friends with Katie Wright(the one in our ward) in high school. Her name now is Ashley Sylvia, I don't know her maiden name though. 

The ward here is fantastic! We have had a dinner apt every night since I've been here and the sister in charge of scheduling those makes sure we are taken care of because then it's one less thing that our mothers have to worry about! 

I would love to get some letters and maybe even a welcome package from you! Especially letters though, because it's hard to read all your emails and have enough time to respond to all of them. If you send a package through the mission home though, make sure it's express or priority mail because then they can forward it on to me. If it's just a regular mail, they wait until someone is coming this way or until the next zone meeting. Speaking of that, the Indy North Stake (which I'm in) is getting a new stake pres. next month and Elder Holland is the one coming to do that! So he will be at our stake conference! i don't think he is doing anything with the missionaries but i hope he does! That would be way cool! I am so excited for that stake conference! They aren't having it at the stake center though because they want to make sure there's enough room for everyone. It will be at Butler Stadium. It will be a really cool experience! 

Um I don't really know what else to tell you because I can't remember all the questions you asked....hopefully i answered them all. If not write me a letter with them so I have more time to read it!
Oh and family, will you please send me some of the family pictures and just some other pictures? I miss your faces and want to have some pics to look at! Love you all!!

-Sister London

Sister London's MTC District

Some of Abbie's SUU friends at the MTC

Another friend from SUU, who is serving in Indiana while she waits for her visa

Sister London's favorite picture at the MTC

A sunset in Indiana 

Week 2 at the MTC

Hey ya'll!

This week has been crazy busy, but I have loved every moment! So my usual daily schedule is wake up, breakfast, classroom instruction where we teach for an hour then go over one of the lessons in PMG and go over another fundamental (one day we talked about stress relief which was really great!), zone teaching where we review a lesson we talked about as a zone instead of district, lunch, study time, some days we get gym time, then dinner, class time, planning, and then it's time for bed to get up and do it all over again. I say "usual schedule" because it is not always the same everyday. Tuesday morning we had a service assignment where we cleaned the bathrooms of another residence and then yesterday we had this In-Field Orientation where we went over lots of stuff that we will be dealing with in the field that we don't deal with now, like working with members. the first couple days went by so slowly and seemed like they would never end, but after Sunday the days really have just zoomed by! It was really nice to be here on fast Sunday! The spirit was so strong (as always) and made it so that I didn't even realize that I was hungry until I was standing in line for dinner. Every fast Sunday here they do a Mission Conference with the whole MTC so it was really cool to be able to go to that!

On Monday we had a lesson with one of our TRC investigators (TRC is teaching resource center). She had been going to church with her husband but wasn't a member. We met with her not really knowing what to teach her about because we didn't know how much she already knew. Once we started talking with her we learned that she was Catholic and did not know much about the church. So we started out with the Restoration and the Book of Mormon. We probably invited her to read the BOM about 5 times but she was dead set against it. We did not expect the lesson to go that bad but we did get to go back and talk to her again on Wed. When we left the room we were all so upset. It was just a very bad feeling in there, very contentious. Not good. We thought and prayed A LOT about what to talk to her about next. In class we had just gone over "How to Begin Teaching" and a lot about our purpose, so we decided that we needed to make it clear with her what our purpose was. On Tuesday night when we were planning, we had thought to talk to her about the Atonement. I had written in my notes next to that section in PMG "The Doctrines of Christ." So I turned to 2 Nephi 31 and knew that this was the message that we needed to share with her. We met with her the next day and went through them and she knew them but not as the doctrine of Christ. We talked about faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. She told us that the scriptures we read in the lesson were exactly what she was going through in her life. At the end all 3 of us bore our testimonies and invited her one more time to read the Book of Mormon and this time she agreed to! It was a completely different feeling in that room! The spirit was so strong and I know that she felt it too! It was such an amazing experience, probably my favorite one yet!

I have been able to have some gym time this week which has been fun! The first 2 times, I played four-square, but don't worry...I didn't get hurt! HAHA then yesterday I played speed with almost everyone else in the zone! It was fun and I held my own pretty well. Got some of the Elders out and my companion. At one point I was in the final 3 and then got one of the Elders in my district out! He couldn't believe that I did that! It was funny! So then it was just me and another Elder, but he played basketball in high school and got me out like 5 seconds later...it was pretty awesome though! I could hear Pops telling me "That's my girl" just like he did when I hip checked some boys in my OYSA soccer days!

I got my travel plans and the end of last week! It was pretty crazy how soon I got them! I have to meet at the MTC Travel Office at 3:30 AM Tuesday morning to go up to Salt Lake. My flight leaves SLC at 7:30. I fly to Detroit and have almost an hour layover there before flying to Indianapolis! My companions don't leave until Wednesday though so they get to wake up early 2 days in a row because they have to walk me over. There are 29 people in my travel group so maybe there will be another Indianapolis Sister in there so I don't have to be all alone! I will probably be calling home...I am just not sure when we will get to the airport so I can't be more specific. I can't believe that it is already almost time for me to leave here! It was only a week ago that I came!! I saw Sister Spainhower here on Wednesday! It was nice to see someone I could actually hug because before that I had only been seeing Elders that I knew from school!

I am glad Dads birthday went good, I was thinking about him all day wishing I could call and wish him a happy birthday! I also was thinking about grandma on Sunday wishing her a happy birthday as well!

I miss you all so much and love you all! I will be leaving here soon so if you are sending a letter or something, either send it to the mission home or make sure that I will get it by Monday so I won't miss it! I will e-mail you as soon as I can with my new address and information, but again...don't know when that will be...

Love,
Sister London

PS sorry there are no pictures, the laundry room computers were super busy that I didn't have time to get one today! I will send lots when I get to Indiana though!

At the MTC

Friday July 5, 2013
(The first e-mail we received from Sister London)

So far, I am the only sister that I know of going to Indiana. There might be more somewhere who just had to learn English first. I don't know. My companions are both going to Des Moines Iowa, as well as 4 Elders in my district and all of another district is going there as well. The Elders in the picture are in my district. The five of us are going to Indiana and the 6 others are Iowa.

The missionaries who will be serving in Indiana

We watched the fireworks last night after the program. The program they had for us was real quick but then they let us watch 17 Miracles! It was so cool and I found a couple of little quotes from the movie that I think will help me a lot. I realized again how important faith is. All of the pioneers had such great faith! They are such a great example of faith. Even though we don't have to trek across America, we need to have that level of faith so that in case anything came our way, we would be able to jump completely into it!

They keep us so busy here! There is a lot of study time but it is hard to figure out what to study! They tell us so many different things to study but we don't have enough time to get it all done! The typical schedule here is 6:30 AM wake up 7:15 breakfast, then we usually have some study time before class and then classroom instruction. Lunch, study time, classroom instruction. I think I get gym time 4 or 5 times while I'm here starting tomorrow, I think. We get 55 minutes of gym time. I am excited to go play volleyball and hopefully I can get my companions to come play soccer with me!

Sister London and her companions-Sister Nye and Sister Geiger

Since we don't get temple time today and also next week, I think we will probably take a quick nap. It is odd because we have so much afternoon time open because there's no temple time. Today we had to wake up a little earlier to get to the laundry room and then we got breakfast and went to the bookstore. I had forgotten workout pants so I needed some gym shorts. Then we went back to the room and showered! It was nice to shower at 9:00 instead of 6:30! We had personal study time and I read in Alma about Korihor and when he was struck dumb! It made me chuckle a bit because he really was just saying he believed in order to speak again.. which is not good. Making God angry is not good! We then ate lunch and now here we are! We have class time later tonight where we teach a lesson to this progressive investigator we have. It is really one of our teachers who is being an investigator, but they say that it is really cool and they are really good at it! I am excited to see how it goes!

I have seen some people I know around, which has been fun! I miss you all and love you all! My time is really up now so I hope to have many emails to read from you next Friday!

Love, Sister London

"super excited about the name tag"

The Very Beginning...

Abbie decided she wanted to serve a mission last fall. As a family we were all so excited for her, and for her decision to serve the Lord in this way. Although she is the baby in the family, she is the first (and possibly only) kid to serve a full time mission. We are all so happy for her, and support her fully in this decision.

Abbie eagerly anticipated her mission call. She opened it Friday March 1st surrounded by many friends and family. Prior to opening her call everyone submitted guesses of where they thought she would serve, but no one got it right. She smiled as she read that she had been "assigned to labor in the Indiana Indianapolis mission". No one was more surprised  or excited, than our dad-who served in that exact same mission some 30 years ago. 

The whole family the night she opened her call 

 After a few months of missionary preparation, temple attendance, and a lot of scripture study the time had come for Sister London to embark on this great journey. She was set apart as a full time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on July 2nd.

Abbie had the opportunity to speak in church before she left, and we were all so excited to hear her speak about why she wants to serve the lord as a full time missionary for the next 18 months

The family after Abbie officially became "Sister London"

The next day we all took her down to Provo, where she reported to the Missionary Training Center. It was so exciting as she met a host missionary who welcomed her, gave us all some final hugs, and then headed in.

And she's off...

On this blog we (Sister London's family) will post the e-mails and pictures that she sends home! We will also work hard to make sure her address is updated on the sidebar. We would encourage any of you that would like to do so to send Abbie mail during her mission, and to always include her in your prayers. Thanks for all of your love and support for Sister London!

We sure love this girl, and the only way we could bare to see her gone for these next 18 months is because of our faith in and love for our savior Jesus Christ and his gospel.