Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Hello Friends and Family!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I hope you all remembered to wear green, Sister Ruth and I sure did! It has been a busy week here in Terre Haute! We taught a total of 20 lessons this week! Woot woot! We are supposed to teach that many every week but this is the first time since I got to Terre Haute that it's happened! Only took 5 weeks! Yep, that's right! I have been here for 5 weeks which means that we have transfer calls on Sunday! It is crazy how fast time flies out here!

So this week we taught some of our investigators, like usual. Nothing too exciting happened in those lessons. Mostly just teaching the Plan of Salvation. It seems like that is where most of our investigators are getting stuck on that lesson. Which makes sense because it is a lot of new information!

A couple cool miracles happened this week, one in particular that I want to share! So on Thursday afternoon, we were supposed to have back to back lessons. So one at 4 and one at 5. We show up to the 4:00 one, with a member and the investigator isn't there and won't be back for a while. So we decide to head to our next lesson a little early and as we pull up, that investigator texts and tells us that she can't meet that day anymore. So we are both pretty sad and decide to head to our back up plan. As we are driving to visit a less-active family, a inactive member calls and is almost in tears. She was having lots of pain and decided to take us up on having the Elders come give her a blessing. Which is amazing because she doesn't want anything really to do with the church outside of having us do service for her. We called the Elders and they came over and were able to give her a blessing. It was so cool to see the way that it all played out. It helped us realize that it is the Lord's work and we are just his messengers.If those 2 investigators would have been able to meet then we wouldn't have been able to help this sister. She wouldn't have felt comfortable to call anyone else and would have continued to be in pain. Another great thing is that since the blessing, that pain hasn't returned. The power of the Priesthood is so amazing!

Some fun adventures of the week include having dinner at a member's and getting paddled. The first time a missionary eats at their house, they get paddled and get to sign their name on the paddle. That was exciting! We got a free piece of pie with our meal on Friday for it being national Pi Day! Then on Saturday, we got fed homemade fried chicken and then this Arabic dessert thing! It was cut up strawberries mixed in Balsamic Vinaigrette salad dressing, sugar, salt, pepper, and lemon juice, served with vanilla ice cream. Yes, I tried it.....and yes, I liked it! It went well together and was enjoyable!

It was a good week with mostly beautiful weather in the 60's! There were a couple days where it went back down to 30's...however it was so great to not have to wear my coat for half of the week! :)

I love you all and appreciate you all so much! Have a fantastic week and Happy Birth-week Colie! :)

love,

Sister Abbie London

Getting Paddled

Pi Day

Where to Start...

Hello Everyone! 

So, this week has been super exciting! So many different things happened, which is super exciting because I usually don't have too much to report on! 

We'll start off with the most exciting thing, Cheyenne's baptism!!!!!!! Woot woot! On Saturday, Cheyenne got baptized! It was such a special day for her and her family and I am so excited that I was able to be a part of it! She was glowing and was just so excited to be baptized! She had the biggest smile on her face when she came up out of the water! It was funny, they had her pull the plug after and it was a little stubborn, so she actually got to do a little bit of swimming at her baptism just to get the plug out! Haha! It was just the perfect day! She bore an awesome testimony of the gospel! It is so cool that an 11 year old can have such a strong knowledge of the truth, but she sure does! She has such a bright future in this gospel and I am excited for her to continue to learn and grow in that testimony! She is wonderful! 

We had stake conference this week, which was good! Last night there was a musical fireside by David Glen Hatch. That was excellent! We had an investigator show up to that and it was exciting to see her feel of the spirit there! It was a great fireside and it made me wish I would have been a little more diligent in my piano practicing...sorry mom. I guess I should have listened to you! 

On Wednesday, we went on exchanges with the Sister Training Leaders in Bloomington! We got to go down and spend the day with them on the IU campus! It was so great to get to go back to Bloomington and work with Sister Nieman again! She is an awesome sister and went to SUU! She also loves Duck Dynasty, so there is always plenty to talk about! We met some cool students and even though everyone avoided us like we carried a very contagious disease, we were able to talk to a girl who had been baptized when she was younger! She hasn't been to church since she moved in with her dad but it was super exciting to talk with her and hopefully help her to get the church back into her mind! 

This week we did lots of service! We helped a nonmember in the area last minute on Thursday when she had a pipe break. She woke up that morning to an inch of water on her floor and a house showing scheduled at 11...so we headed over to help her try to save her floors (which didn't end up happening...) however, we were able to get them dry enough to have the house be showed. It was really a neat experience. She doesn't believe in God but comes to church sometimes because she is really good friends with a member, so she knows some of the ward members pretty well. The member found out about the pipe and called us, as well as some members to see if we could come help. We rushed over, as well as the Elders and a couple members. She had called a professional to come too but by the time he actually showed up 2 hours later, they were dry (on the top at least.) It was so awesome to see this act of Christ-like charity from these members for someone who isn't a member of the church.

I also wanted to brag about my adventurous eating that happened this week! On Saturday I ate Lebanese food....and like it! For the most part...my favorite part was the Baklava that we had for dessert! Yum yum! It was very good! I also tried Salmon last night! I wasn't a big fan but hey, the point is that I tried it which is a big improvement in itself! 

So real quick, we were looking at our family history and seeing how far back we could go, and I made it back to this dude who was born in about 79 BC and died in about 18 BC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Cool huh?! I wasn't very smart and forgot to write down the line of how I got there, but my goal is to figure it out again! It is down the Hunt line until King Henry VIII and then I went of off him...one day I'll find it again! 

So, that's about all I've got for you right now or that's about all I can remember! I love you all and hope you have a spectacular week! 

-Sister Abbie London

 

Us at cheyenne's baptism

My family history success story! 

Week 4 in the Haute!

Hello Friends!

How was your last week of February/beginning of March?!?! Well I hope it was good! This week we had some more crazy weather! Had some freezing rain yesterday which caused Stake Conference to be cancelled and the cars to be grounded! Never before in my life have I had church cancelled until I came to Indiana! I've had it cancelled thrice in the last 4 months! Crazy life! Anyway, it's all good! Life goes on and we now it's sunny and melting...somewhat, so I'm happy! 

We had a couple awesome teaching experiences this week! On Thursday we taught an awesome lesson to this couple! They are probably mid 20's and have a daughter. Not married (we think) but are open and want to learn. We finished teaching them the Restoration, which meant that we got to introduce the Book of Mormon to them! It went so we
ll! Everyone accepts the Book of Mormon differently so you never really know what to expect. These two had their eyes glued to it! The member we had asked them what they felt as we pulled out the Book of Mormon and they said that they were super excited to read it! They said that we must really care about them to want to give them the Book and that anything that has the name of Christ on it is taken very seriously, so they are going to read it! Sydney couldn't stop smiling and Allen was just as into it! It was the greatest thing! 

On Saturday we taught had a good phone lesson with Cheyenne. She is getting baptized (hopefully, we still need to figure things out for her interview) this Saturday! We were supposed to teach her during the day but her mom was sick so we ended up teaching her over the phone....probably one of the most awkward phone calls she has ever had! We taught her the Law of Chastity and Tithing! It was so funny! The joys of missionary work! Awkwardness at it's finest! That is one thing that I love about being a missionary, awkward things happen all the time and I just get to embrace the awkwardness and roll with it! She understood pretty well and she had her sister there with her and she also helped answer some questions. We are really excited for her baptism. She is so ready and has just accepted this gospel so well! She loves going to church and FIGS (Faith in God for Girls). She is so ready and so are we! Wohoo! We got permission to go to a play of hers last week too. It was like a 20 minute middle school comedy on the Trojan War! It was actually pretty funny and it was so fun to see her up there! 

Also on Saturday, we had a day full of service! It got up to mid 50's so we helped a former with some yard work and helped a less-active paint some stuff for her granddaughter! It was so nice to be out working! Growing up with no brothers and having to do yard work has been really helpful out here! It has actually been fun! :) (don't tell dad I said that! ) haha! We got nice and dirty kneeling in the dirt/mud cutting bushes and it felt so nice to have the sun out hitting my back! It gave me a new hope that winter will end soon! 

I love you all and hope you have a great week! Happy March!

love,

Sister Abbie

1. Sister Ruth and I at Cheyenne's play! 

2. The thick frozen rain on our car yesterday! 

3. We got rained walking home from an apt.

Weather... it's crazy

Howdy ya'll! 

It has been another exciting week here in Terrre Haute! I mean, when isn't it! To start off, we have had all the seasons this week. It was snowy last Monday, sunny Tuesday and Saturday (60 degrees and drove with the windows down), thunder storms on Thursday, and then back into the 30's yesterday and today...it's crazy! It was very nice to have those happy sunny days. It gave us hope that the end is near! I had started to forget that the ground isn't white! 

On Tuesday we headed down to Bloomington for zone conferences with the Terre Haute, Bloomington, Franklin, and Columbus zones. I have been in all but the Columbus zone so I had lots of missionary friends there including all but one of my former companions! We received really great trainings and some cool new information! We are now allowed to go to the temple once every 6 months with a member! So I can potentially go to the temple twice from now until I go home! It is exciting and we are all pretty happy about it! President gave a cool training on the Book of Mormon and how we need to have had our own personal conversion when reading the Book of Mormon before we can expect our investigators to have one. So he had us find a scripture and relate it back to us and our experiences as missionaries. He challenged us to study from the Book of Mormon at least 20-30 minutes each day and to find verses that we can put our names into and liken them back to us. A cool one that I found this week comes from 3 Nephi 5:13, "Behold, I, Abbie, am a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Son of god. I have been called of him to declare his word among  his Hoosiers, that they might have everlasting life." It has been so fun to relate the scriptures back to my life and to the place where I have been called! I have really noticed how much the Book of Mormon really does relate to my own life! So now, I invite you all to try this! Either add your name into the verse or replace some one else's name with your own. It works! 

Oh, fun story about zone conference! So all of the cars are inspected at zone conference by the senior missionary in charge of cars and they usually give a gift card to the companionship with the best car. So, Sister Ruth and I really wanted to win, so we just made sure we did a good job at cleaning the car last Monday. We won!!!!!! Elder Hodges was very impressed at how clean our car was! Yay! I was, and still am, pretty excited about this because for any of you who ever rode in my car back home, you would know that that car was not the cleanest car....it was pretty bad. So look, I am learning things everyday! 

We had a pretty slow week. We had some people drop us (one of which we picked back up 2 days later...) and lots of appointments fall through. We were able to get in contact with a couple less-actives that we've been trying for a while and were able to get 2 new investigators. We haven't really had anything too exciting, except last week I taught my first Law of Chastity lesson and it went great! It wasn't awkward and we didn't teach it horribly! :) SO that is a big accomplishment! 

Sorry I don't have anything too exciting to report this week. Other than bee's are pretty fascinating creatures! We had dinner with some members and they are bee keepers so I found out lots of cool things about bee's that I never knew! I still do not like them but they are pretty cool! 

I love you all! 

-Sister Abbie London

This is my new companion, Sister Ruth!! She's awesome! 

 There is this place in Bloomington and Terre Haute called Square Donuts and they have donuts that are square! there are actually very good! We just went there...yum yum! 

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

Bye Bye Bloomington!!

Good Afternoon!

So, sadly after 6 weeks I am leaving Bloomington. Yep, that's right...Sister London is on the move again! It is crazy to be leaving after such a short amount of time. I am sad to leave. I have really come to love Bloomington and the crazy Hoosiers here! It has been such a joy these past 6 weeks to serve around so many awesome missionaries, including the wonderful Sister Jones! I am going to miss being her companion but know that the Lord needs me more somewhere else. It is always so crazy right before a transfer. The not knowing where I am going mixed with the stress of trying to fit everything back into the suitcases! It is exciting stuff! 

This week has been a good week! It is still pretty cold here in B-Town which I don't like. Odds are, where ever I end up going won't be much warmer...to bad. We got a new investigator this week! She is great! She is so sweet and we are exciting to teach her some more! We haven't been able to get in contact with the investigator we committed to be baptized last week, so hopefully we can see him this week. He wasn't able to be at our last lesson for some reason, so we were able to focus more on Amber and trying to meet her needs. It ended up being a great lesson and she has so much potential that she doesn't quite realize yet. I know that this gospel will help her so much and am excited for the day when she will be baptized! 

We have been teaching an awesome lady, who used to be a member and is wanting to be baptized again. She has such a sincere desire to repent and come back into the gospel. She knows the church is true and is working so hard to be able to turn her life back around. She is amazing. She is a single mom with a disability and doesn't let it slow her down. Her testimony is so strong and I can tell that she knows that this is the right path for her. She actually doesn't live in our ward but the ward she lives in doesn't have sisters serving there and she would rather be taught by sisters. The good/bad news is that her ward will be getting sisters on Wednesday at transfer meeting! It is great because I think all wards need both Elders and Sister, but it is bad news for us because we (not me by then) probably won't teach her anymore. :( I am just glad that I was able to meet her and get to learn from her! 

It was a great week, nothing too exciting happened though. So, I'm sorry if this weeks email has been boring! I will have more to tell you next week after I've gotten to my new area and gotten to know my new companion! I love you all! 

Have a great Valentines Day! 

-Sister Abbie 

Oh, we had a masquerade themed zone meeting on Friday! That was fun! We wore masks, Sis Jones and I had the best ones, and then received awesome training! It was epic! 

The Sisters of the Bloomington Zone

 Our awesome "Hoosier Sister" shirts! Get it? because we are Sisters and Hoosiers! haha

Happy February!

Hello y'all! 

I hope you had a good week last week, I know I sure did! It was a good week of missionary work and Birthday celebrations! (It is me we are talking about...of course I made everyone celebrate!) We will start out at the beginning of the week with District Meeting on Tuesday!

So we do themed district meetings here (they are awesome!) On Tuesday we had Birthday themed district meeting...for Sister London! Because it was Birthweek, it obviously needed to be birthday themed! Even better was that it was a combined district meeting with the Bloomington District, so there were 16 missionaries at my Birthday Party...I mean district meeting...opps! Haha anyways it was fun and they gave me a "Happy Birthday" balloon to wear on my wrist and sang hymn #215 1/2...it was Happy Birthday! It was fun, but the best part was the training we received from the 2 District Leaders. They were so great and really helped me get pumped about the work! One was on teaching with the Gospel of Jesus Christ pamphlet and the other was on fulfilling our individual roles as missionaries. We all have specific roles or reasons why we were called to this mission. Some are here to plant seeds, some are here to baptize, whatever your role is, you need to work your hardest to try and fulfill that role! It really helped me feel better about the work I have been doing here! Even though I've been out for 7 months and haven't had a baptism doesn't mean that I am a "bad" missionary. It just means that maybe my role right now isn't to baptize! It was a great training! 

On Wednesday, we had exchanges! So Sister Jones went to Campus and I stayed in Highland with Sister Nieman! We had a great day and did go up to campus a little bit to try and PC but everyone was either too cold or in class, so we weren't out there long! It felt weird to be on a campus again...I liked it! We had a great miracle happen that night as we taught 2 of our investigators. Chris and Amber are awesome! We have been teaching them in a members home who they are friends with. They both have committed to be baptized, but on Wednesday they committed to a date! They are on date right now to be baptized on April 19! We are super excited to work with them more and to help them along this path towards their Heavenly Father! 

My Birthday was Friday! It was just a normal missionary day. Appointments fell through and not everyone wanted to listen to us. However, it was my birthday so it was a great day! We started off by doing some service and then ordered Burritos from Taco Rocket....it is a place that delivers! So we had our burritos delivered! It was awesome! We took some people cupcakes with the cake mix my family sent! That was good and helped us get into some people's homes. People are more inclined to let you in when there is food involved! We had dinner with an awesome member, Sister Frick! It was a good day and ended with a 10 pm cookie delivery sent by Colie! That was a fun surprise! It was a good day! 

We fasted as a mission this week to find people. It was such a great experience and I know that so many great miracles are going to come from it! We have already met some pretty cool people the last couple of days! I love this work and love being a missionary! These Hoosiers are the best! I definitely enjoyed being in Bloomington for my 20th Birthday because missionary work is just the greatest! I love you all! Thank you for your love and support!

-Sister Abbie London, the 20 year old!

Birthday themed district meeting 

Cool mailbox we saw the other day!