He Is the Gift

Hello Everyone!

Happy December! :D I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! It was a great day here in Greencastle, everyday is a great day here in Greencastle! So first things first, we got transfer calls this weekend...well I should say a transfer text since Sister Munoz and I are staying together here for another transfer!!!! Yep, I get to finish it off here in the land of the blessed and I am sooooooooooooooo excited about that! :)

So this week was good! We had a really cool church tour this week with a less-active sister and her nonmember kids. It went really well. The spirit was there and some big steps were made in their conversion process. We are going to hopefully start teaching 2 of the kids this week! :) Last Monday we had a half p-day so at one, we started out in doing missionary work! We visited lots of people and were able to do some good teaching both on Monday and Tuesday. Sadly, I woke up last Monday with a nasty cough that has been hard to work through so the rest of the week wasn't as productive as the beginning was. #missionaryprobs Luckily I am serving in a branch with awesome members who have many ideas and solutions for helping rid the cough that have been working pretty well! Slowly am I getting better which is great because then I can focus more on sharing the gift!

For those of you who don't know about it yet or haven't watched it, the church has put out a new video for Christmas called "He is the Gift." It is a very, very good video that can help us remember the true meaning on Christmas. Why we really celebrate this special time of year. The church is encouraging all to share the gift with everyone. So as missionaries, we have a big role in helping spread the word about the gift. We have been given pass along cards specifically for the video and are working our hardest to share the gift because it is so important to share! I am really excited for the miracles that will come these next couple weeks as we as a mission work on getting the message out there to those in Indiana. It is so important to remember why we are all here, why we are celebrating Christmas, and what is possible because of Jesus Christ. He really is the greatest gift that has been given and we need to remember and be grateful for that gift everyday of our lives. That is where true happiness lies. If you haven't seen the wonderful video yet, you can find it here: http://www.mormon.org/christmas

We had a great Thanksgiving full of fun and food! In total last week, we had 4 Thanksgiving dinners, 1 on Sunday, 1 on Wednesday, and 2 on Thursday. All of them were very yummy and I felt very loved and taken care of! On Thursday we had our p-day, so when we weren't at the members eating, we were at the church playing card games with the elders! It was such a fun day, we played a lot of Hearts. It was nice to be able to relax and it helped me realize how truly blessed I am in my life. I am so thankful to my Heavenly Father for so many things and am so blessed. Being on a mission has completely changed my life and I am so grateful for the experiences I have had here and the ones that await me these next 6 weeks!

I love you all and don't forget to #ShareTheGift! Have a wonderful week!

love,

Sister Abbie London

1. My awesome companion made stockings for us!

2. Thanksgiving card games

Golf

Hi Everyone!

Sorry this email is coming at you all so late in the day! We went golfing for p-day today...yep golfing. One of the ELders is pretty big into golf and they wanted us to tag along with them...since neither Sister Munoz or I had been golfing it took a lot longer than normal to golf 9 holes....like all day! It was fun though and I actually enjoyed it sometimes... I am not good like at all! But I was able to hit a couple good swings and get the ball farish! On one hole I actually made it in the hole in 5 shots! :) It was pretty thrilling!

So for transfer news, Sister Munoz and I will be staying together in Greencastle for another 6 weeks! :D I am super excited to be able to stay here and get to continue working in the great branch with such amazing members and a great companion! We had some cool experiences this week! A recent convert from another ward in the zone had to move in with her dad due to some stuff. Her dad and his girlfriend live in our area and we have been able to meet them and start teaching them! The girlfriend is super solid and we met her 11 year old daughter yesterday, who is also super solid! we left them with a Plan of Salvation pamphlet and the 11 year old texted us last night at almost midnight telling us that she read the pamphlet and hasn't felt closer to God in her life as much as she did after she finished reading it! It was so cool! She is excited to come to church and wants to be baptized!!!! It is awesome! I am super excited to be able to keep getting to know them and to teach them more about the peace of the gospel!

Library closes....see you later. Try to email another time.

love ya

Plays and Olympics

Hello Y'all!

It has been a good week here in Greencastle, Indiana! I got a new companionon Wednesday! Her name is Sister Muñoz. She has been out for 3 transfers now and is awesome! We have been having lots of fun the past couple of days. She is 24, from St. George, and is licensed to do hair! I don't do very much with my hair anyways, but if I want to, I have someone who will do it free! Haha the Elders like it all more since they need their hair cut more than I do but it is still fun! She is funny and I am sure we will have a good transfer!

This week was really slow with our missionary work....like super slow. It was hard to teach lessons due to transfers and various meetings/service opportunities. So I will talk about some of the cool things we got to do this week! So the Branch Mission leader here decided that he wanted to go out in the community more and try out for a play with the community theater! So all of last transfer he was going to rehearsals and what not for that. He got permission for the missionaries here to be able to go and watch on the free family night! It was really funny! It was called "The Man Who Came to Dinner." It was really, really funny! Since it wasn't an actual performance and was technically a rehearsal, we were able to take pictures. It was an exciting night and we were able to enjoy a night of laughs and giggles, which is always nice to get sometimes!

We had transfers on Wednesday and then had a zone meeting on Friday, which took up a lot of our day. It was a good meeting though and I really like the zone. There are lots of good missionaries here! We talked more about how we can better use the Game Plan in becoming more effective and powerful missionaries! It was a good one. Then on Saturday we had a really cool service experience in Indy! They were having the finals for some of the Special Olympics games this weekend. It was the softball and corn hole finals and we got to go up and  help out! It was so fun! There were about 80 missionaries from Indy and the surrounding areas who were able to come help out. I really enjoyed it and chuckled that in Indiana corn hole is considered an Olympic event! For those of you who don't know what corn hole is....well it is basically tossing a bean bag into a hole on a board across from you. Sounds simple right? Well, there are actually 4 pages of rules to it and it is pretty intense! We were assigned to help with scoring the corn hole games...but Sister Muñoz and I didn't think we could remember all the rules so we announced things on the microphone. Obviously what they told us to announce. It was pretty fun to have the microphone! It was also fun to watch the games going on around us! When a lot of the games started to die down and there were empty...courts maybe is the right word...I went out and played a game with an Elder. I made an epic toss right into the hole! It would have been a perfect swoosh in a basketball game! It was legend....wait for it...dary! Legendary! Super fun day and it was so great to be able to see all the excitement on the athletes faces when they got their medals! It was an awesome day!

Sorry there was not too much to say this week! I wish I had more to tell you about lessons and investigators this week, but we just didn't really get a chance to see them. :( Hopefully next week can be more exciting! I love you all and hope your week is just magical!

Love,

Sister Abbie London

1. Corn hole games

2. Me and Sister Muñoz

Wonderful Watermellon

Hello Everyone!

I hope you had a wonderful week! It was a good one here in Indiana too! So as far as transfers go, Sister McCombs will be transferred on Wednesday and I will be getting another companion! I am really excited to be staying here in Greencastle for another 6 weeks! It is crazy to me though that this is my 11th transfer here....I only get 13 of them...no worries, only minor freakouts going on! Haha but seriously I am so grateful to be here in Indiana and to be able to serve in this little branch a little longer! It is a wonderful place to be! I absolutely love it here!

So this week was a good one for a couple of reasons! We didn't find too many new people to teach or anything but we were able to meet one of our investigators from DePauw. She is from China and has been there all summer but since school started back up, she is back! It is kind of hard right now because her family does not want her to be baptized Mormon, so she is trying to figure out what Heavenly Father wants her to do. She is an honest seeker of truth so I have no doubt that she will receive an answer to her prayers! The key will be to help her have as many spiritual experiences as possible so she will be able to see her answer better and know for a fact that it is from Heavenly Father. She is super awesome though! I am way excited to get to work with her more!

So this week I mowed a lawn for a member, which may seem like no big deal to all of you, but let's remember that I have been a missionary for 14 months where most people only let the Elders do the heavy lifting and "hard work"....so this was a big deal for me because it was the first time in 14 months that I was able to mow the lawn! And to make it even better I did it in my skirt! It felt so good to push a lawn mower again and to be able to help someone at the same time! :) Also on Friday we had dinner at a members house with the Elders. It was a fun dinner but I left there almost having to be rolled out. I was soooooo full and here is why! So we get there and sitting on the table are two HUGE pizza boxes, each with a 20 inch pizza inside. So the 6 of us, the missionaries and the member couple, sit down to eat and Bro Evans tells us about the watermelon he got that day. We are finished with our dinner and he asks if any of us would like some watermelon. If any of you truly know me, then you know that the answer to that question would be, "YES!!!!!!" Watermelon is my favorite, it is the reason why summer is so great. So he has the elders go out and help him carry in all the stuff he got that day, some tomatoes and 2 big watermelon. One of the watermelon's was pretty big, maybe like an average large sized watermelon. The other one that he got was about the size of a toddler. It was huge, probably about 30-40 pounds...that is the one he cute into to share with us! I had told them how much I love watermelon and he asked what size piece we all wanted. They decided to give me a big piece, me not truly knowing what big is to this family. He walks over and puts a chunk of watermelon that does not fully fit on my plate....it was so big!!!!!!!!!!!!! I sadly was not able to finish it but if it would have come before dinner, maybe I could have accomplished it. My piece was bigger than the other missionaries slices put together! I ate over half of that thing before feeling like I would explode. It was awesome! And they sent us home with more! Let's just say I am in Watermelon Heaven right now!!!!! 

This week we did some service, tracted, and personal contacted some people on campus. We laughed and had some funny moments with members and missionaries. Life is going good here and I am loving being a missionary! I am hoping that with the new transfer we will be able to find some new investigators. We have been kind of struggling to find and really need to find some solid gators. Well, that is about all I can think of to share with you all! I hope your lives are all well! Have a wonderful week!

love,

Sister Abbie London

1-Mowing along
2- Watermelon love
3- A Sign Into a Neighborhood

4- This is/was our district. 3 of them are getting transferred. 

5- Really cool door we knocked on! 

Greencastle!

Hello!

Hi everyone! So I have been transferred to the Greencastle Branch! My new companion is Sister McCombs! She has been out for almost a year, meaning she came out the transfer after me! Greencastle is a tiny little town....like really tiny! It is the smallest town that I have ever lived in...I haven't lived many places but it is small! I like it though! It has a cute little small town feel that I imagine Stars Hollow would feel like! Depauw University is in Greencastle so I am pretty excited for school to start here in the next couple of weeks! The branch is pretty awesome, it is strange being in branch instead of a ward...I'm not used to such a small congregation. It is fun though! We have a set of Elders who are also in the branch so we aren't completely exiled...just a little bit! Greencastle is actually fairly close to my old ward in Terre Haute! We are in a different stake so I won't really get to go down there until some of the people we were working with get baptized.

I haven't really gotten to meet too many of the investigators that we have here yet but most of them are out of town. There is a lot of work to do here, none of the gators are showing much potential or willingness to progress. So we will need to do a lot of finding! Yay! I am excited! Let's see....nothing super exciting or funny has happened since I have gotten here...

It was very bittersweet leaving Terre Haute! It was such a great area and ward and I was very sad to leave. My last 2 days there were mostly spent visiting members and teaching some gators one last time. I miss Terre Haute but know that I did all that I was supposed to do there. A new adventure awaits with new laughter and new trials. Come what may and love it!

So the bugs here in Indiana just love me! For some reason I am just too sweet and they keep coming back for more...it happened last summer too but it is annoying! I had gotten a lot of bites last month in Terre Haute but they all healed and stopped itching and the bugs seemed to be sick of me. Then I got transferred and the new bugs were excited to find some fresh blood....I have probably at least 20 bites on my legs. The itch so bad!!!!!!!!!!! I have some bug spray now and am going to make it hard for these pesky little suckers to eat me! I'm not gonna let them win that easy!

Well...sorry it is a really lame email...I wish I had more exciting things to write about this week...but sometimes, mission life is pretty uneventful! I love you all and would love to hear from you!

love,

Sister Abbie London

1. Me and Sis McCombs

2. might be hard to see...but it is all my bites. :(

Last Week in Terre-dise

Hello Everyone!

Well, as you can see from my email title...I am being transferred!  I am very sad to be leaving Terre Haute and Sister Faleono! I have enjoyed this wonderful ward and area so much! I feel so blessed to have been able to serve here for so long with 2 wonderful companions! Last night when we got the call, we were at our former bishops house talking after dinner to his wife and the Elders. All of a sudden, I heard the phone ringing and my heart jumped as I answered the call from the assistant. He told me I was leaving and my companion was staying. At that moment, our hearts broke a little. 2 seconds later the Elders phone rang, one of them is leaving too. The Honey Creek ward will be getting 3 missionaries transferred in this week. We are all very sad...but I know it is the Lord's will, so I will go and do what He needs me to do! I have worked hard here and have been blessed to see many miracles, so I feel like I have done my job here in the Haute!

So besides transfer news, we had a very good week! The highlight was being able to go to the St. Louis Temple with some members! It was so great to finally be able to go back to the temple after not being able to go for over a year! The spirit was so strong and I felt to so good being there! It was the best way to end my stay in Terre Haute! I also realized how much better Indiana is than Illinois...the drive through the part of Illinois was very boring...driving through Indiana is very boring too, but it is greener here and the corn is taller, which makes for a more interesting drive! It was exciting though when we got to the south part of Illinois and I saw some hills! It was great!

We taught a lot of people this week! We found and taught some pretty solid people! One person we taught is a young women who is friends with a member. This girl's family doesn't approve of the church so since she isn't 18 yet, she can't get baptized. That hasn't stopped her from gaining a testimony of the gospel however! She knows it is true and wants to be able to have the spirit with her always! She also even talked about maybe going on a mission one day! It is super exciting and I will definitely be returning to Indiana when she gets baptized! Her testimony and faith is so strong!

We also found some cool potentials this past week and were able to teach a couple lessons to them. It was a good week and we used our time effectively! I love being a missionary and being able to see the changes that people are willing to make for the gospel!

Yesterday, I spoke in Sacrament Meeting! I spoke on an article out of the June 2014 Ensign called "That We May Rejoice Together." I think it went pretty well! About a month ago, I felt a prompting to write a talk based off the article and to volunteer for a talk. I  skeptically obeyed the prompting and am glad I did. I don't know why Heavenly Father wanted me to speak on it but I do know that the spirit was in that room! There was a time in the middle of my talk where the room was spooky silent! It freaked me out a bit actually...but it was good. Sister Faleono told me that you could feel when the spirit came into the room and a couple people mentioned to me after that they were more inspired to do missionary work. So even though I felt a little off, I guess others were able to receive some guidance! We also taught the YW yesterday! We had 4 girls at church yesterday and no leaders. So it was us and them and we were able to have a nice talk about what it means to take Christ's name upon us and how we can better stand up, even if we are standing alone. I think it also went pretty well!

That is about all I can remember from the week....but I have a good couple days ahead of me! Tomorrow is basically already planned out with saying goodbyes to members and teaching some gators one last time. I hope you have a great week and I will talk to you next week from somewhere else!

love,

Sister Abbie London

1. at the temple! 

2. the craziest district on the planet...half of the group will be transferred... :(

Another transfer come and gone...

Hello All!!!

Happy Mothers Day and Birthday Mom!!! You are the best! Also Happy Mothers Day to any other moms reading this! 

So the exciting transfer news is.....I am staying in Terre Haute and will be training a new missionary! I am super excited!! Sister Ruth will be leaving her first area and will be moving on to new adventures. I just can't believe how fast that last transfer flew by. The longer I am out, the faster it goes by! 

So this week has been a good one. We did a lot of service, in fact all day Wednesday we were in our service clothes! It was nice to wear pants that long! We helped spring clean the church building and then on Thursday night the Boy Scouts had a Spaghetti Dinner fundraiser that we helped out with. We helped set up, cook, and then talked to the various ward members and community folks that were there. We had some less-actives show up and our investigator Amanda and her dad came. It was a good night. 

We had an interesting experience last night in Brazil, interesting in a good way! It was a neat experience. A couple weeks ago the Brazil Elders asked us if we would be willing to come to a Q&A with them and their landlord's church group. We accepted but were scared that it would lead to bashing. So we went up to Brazil last night and met the Elders at their landlord's. It was a little awkward at first but was a good experience. The landlord had one rule, they could ask any question about what we believed, except why questions. So they were not allowed to ask why we believe that way. It applied to us to. It turned into a good discussion and we were able to understand each other's religions a little better. I think that is something important for everyone. If you love Christ and want to be like him, then we need to love all of his children and not judge them. That is something I have been noticing lately here. Just a thought to keep in mind.

I'll end with a comment someone made last night about how you know where Indiana is. "From Utah you go East until you smell it, then you go South until you step in it." :D Haha

I love you all and hope you have a good week! 

love,

Sister Abbie Paige

1. Terre Haute Zone...yep, we're crazy! 

2. Gotta let the stress out somehow! 

6 More Weeks in the Haute!

Howdy Friends!

So we found out last night that Sister Ruth and I will be staying together for another transfer! :) I have been moved around so much recently that I forgot what it feels like to stay! It is nice not having to pack everything up and now we don't have to worry about calculating a trip to Fishers into our monthly miles! :) Woot woot! I am excited to continue to work with these wonderful people here and to get to know Sister Ruth better! It will be an exciting 6 weeks!

So this week has been good! Nothing too exciting except that on Friday we were doing some annual service at a less-actives house and helped her get started on Family Search. So we set her up and started putting in what she remembered about her family. Her mom's info was already up so we ended up just seeing how far back it went. We just kept getting farther and farther back. The farther we got back the more excited she got! She got more excited when we got back to all of the kings and then, we were able to follow her line all the way back to Adam and Eve! She was so excited, she started to cry! It was such a cool experience. She doesn't really want much to do with the church, Sister Ruth and I are the only contact she has with Mormons. We have been going over there every week to do service and to have dinner with her and it has been so amazing to see the little progress she is making. She has started to ask us questions about the church and some doctrines she didn't understand. It is very little steps and very tiny steps, but it is so amazing to be able to witness!

After getting her back that far, I decided that I could probably be able to trace my line back too! And I did! Yep, we are related to Adam and Eve. I found it off the Hunt line, then off of the King Henry line. There are lots of switches but I wrote down directions on how to get there...of course I forgot them at the apt, so I will just mail them to you mom and you can go find it! It's exciting!

So the ward here covers Brazil, IN. We have a set of Elders up there but we try to get up there once a week because there are some people we are supposed to be teaching and also names from the ward council we need to visit. So we spent the majority of our day Thursday in Brazil! It was great and I really like going to Brazil! The really fun part was that our RC Cheyenne and her little Brother were over at a members for dinner. So before heading home, we stopped by to say hi! They were doing some yard work, so we decided to help. I helped by driving the lawn mower and trailer of leaves back to the garden! It was oodles of fun and I really like driving those! I am a pro at driving it and hope we can go do some service for them again soon! :)

Our investigators are good. Nothing super exciting happened with them this week! We taught them, they listened, some kept commitments and some not so much. It has been fun to work with such wonderful people!

I love you all and hope you have a good last week of March!

-Sister Abbie London

1. Giraffe statue that someone has in their yard! We saw it on the way to a district meeting! 

2. Grandpa Adam and Grandma Eve
3. Me driving the lawn mower...and Elder Nyman photobombing me...

Terre Haute (Tera Hoe-t)

Hello friends and family!

Well it's been another exciting transfer week here in Indiana! I am now serving in the Honey Creek ward in Terre Haute Indiana! It is a little north of where I was in Bloomington but not too far, I am still in the Bloomington stake which means that at zone conference tomorrow I get to go back to B-Town! It is actually pretty funny because there will be 4 zones at zone conference tomorrow and out of the 4 I have now been in 3 of them! I am excited to see all of my friends and actually 3 of my last companions will be there too!

So I am serving in Terre Haute with Sister Ruth! Sister Ruth has been out for 3 months and is just awesome! She is a great missionary! It has been so fun serving with her so far. She is a great teaching and has such a strong testimony of this gospel! There are currently 6 missionaries in the Honey Creek ward, us and then 2 sets of Elders. Out of all 6 missionaries, I have been out the longest! I feel so old and I am still such a young missionary! It is crazy how quick the time goes when you are having fun and are on the Lord's errand!

We are teaching some really solid people here! We actually have an investigator who is getting baptized on March 2 after Stake Conference! She is awesome! Her name is Cheyenne, she is 11, and she loves the gospel! She is super excited to be baptized! We are also teaching a girl, Whitney. She is probably mid-20's and is on date for May 17! She has also just grasped the gospel and ran with it. She loves it and is getting into the Book of Mormon! There is one of our investigators who is taking care of her father who has Alzheimer's. She is amazing and has such a desire to learn and believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior! She grew up as a JW and over the years has drifted away. Right now she isn't quite sure what she believes but she prayed at the end of our last lesson and it was such a wonderful, heartfelt prayer! He dad is so funny! Because of his Alzheimer's he is kind of flirty. The whole time he kept telling Sister Ruth and I how gorgeous we were! He especially likes Sister Ruth. When we were leaving, he told her that he would have like to marry her and then he leaned in and tried to kiss her on the lips!!!!!!!!!!! It was so funny! Luckily he is old and moves slow so it was deflected. We had a good laugh about that one!

So Terre Haute is pretty good! It is more country than my other areas so I am slowly making it to those middle of no where towns! So one more funny story and then I'll go! So we were at our apartment(which is an old school) on Thursday doing our weekly planning, when all of a sudden we hear our door open! We had the door bolted with the chain so it didn't open all the way! We just sat there and then they closed the door. We were so scared! Then when we were leaving, we opened the door and a bag of food was hanging there! We are thinking the member who fed us accidentally opened the door but we aren't sure! It was pretty funny!

I love you all and hope you have a great week! My new address is:

803 E Springhill Dr.

Terre Haute IN 47802

I'd love to hear from you!

love,

Sister Abbie