Crazy Missionary Life

Hi Everyone!

Due to Columbus Day yesterday and our little library being closed, I finally get to email! We have come to the library 3 different times today in hopes of 2 computers being open...third times the charm and we were able to snatch a quick email sesh before dinner tonight! So forgive me for being scatter-brained in this email....I have not really thought about what will be going in it...so yeah. It has been a crazy couple of days for sure though! We had a fun P-Day yesterday and spent from about 12-5:30 playing board games! We played Risk and Monopoly. I was not good at Risk but was not the first person killed off....and I was doing pretty good at Monopoly! Thanks to the Elders and the member for telling me when I should invest in houses and even hotels! If we would have had time to finish the game, I probably would have won! It was a good game...some competitiveness crept in but for the most part it was fun!

Last week we did the usual and visited less-actives. That has been our focus lately and we have been able to contact some pretty awesome LA who are wanting to get back into church! It is great! We just came from a lesson with one and I am super excited to continue in our quest of becoming a ward! Hopefully Sister Muñoz and I will be able to stay together another transfer and continue to work on it together. We get transfer calls on Sunday and I really don't want to leave Greencastle yet!

We had a really cool opportunity on Wednesday to watch "Meet the Mormons" and it is just awesome! I loved it and will be excited to watch it again someday! I think it will be a great way to get people to know more about the church and we heard that it was #11 in box office hits this weekend~! That is awesome since it isn't even playing in all theaters! I would definitely recommend it to all you of! Go watch it! 

Also, last Monday for P-Day we went bowling! It was pretty fun and was the first time in a whole year that I had been bowling! I didn't pretty good and managed to finish in 2nd the first game with a 103! I got 3rd the second game with a typical score of like 90's....still it was a lot better than what I played last year in Fishers! It was fun to relax and go bowl! We had a member give us a giant watermelon last night at dinner....yep, the same one who gave me all the watermelon before! It is pretty good watermelon! I guess when you tell someone how much you love something, they are more likely to give it to you....anyway, we decided to seatbelt the melon in the car and last night/this morning proceeded to make a face on it. Her name is Teri and she is currently living in our fridge. It was pretty fun!

We met a really cool potential this week on campus so hopefully something will come of that soon! She is awesome and was pretty excited to take a Book of Mormon! We can tell that she will be a member some day! Sorry this is all so scattered...can't really think right now! I hope I made sense and I love you all! Have a wonderful week!

love,

Sister Abbie Paige

1. Our Risk game...by this point we were all doomed so as the one Elder was resting his head, i was making the picture #2. And this #3 was after I had been cleaned off the board. #4-Teri the watermelon

 

 

Hay, it's General Conference!

Hello Everybody!

Wasn't it such a wonderful weekend with General Conference?!?! It was so great to be able to hear so many inspired talks to help us all become better! I really enjoyed how so many of the talks went along with each other and it was fun to notice some of the themes of conference! One that I noticed was how we all need to follow the council in Helaman 5:12 and build our foundation on Jesus Christ. I really enjoyed all of the talks on how we can do that and on making the atonement a part of our lives, the most important part! I also enjoyed the talks on overcoming challenges that life throws at us. I thought it was pretty cool how many of them spoke about the principle of agency and how "decisions determine destiny." I also learned a lot from those who spoke on obedience. That is one of the hardest things in life and on a mission! The principle of exact obedience is hard to follow sometimes so it was nice to get some reminders and ideas on how I can be more obedient! Probably one of my favorite talks was by Elder Korg Klebingat of the Seventy. It was a quick, powerful talk and I loved when he said, "selective obedience brings selective blessings." That one really stuck out to me. Sometimes it seems easier to just obey some of the rules and not others, but really in the end is it going to be worth it? Will the limited blessings get you all the way to where you want to be? I also really liked the idea that Elder Carlos Godoy had with the question, "if you continue living the way you are living, will the blessings promised in your partriarchal blessing be fulfilled?" It was really neat actually because something that we have been working on as a mission is beginning with the end in mind, which is something that Elder Godoy mentioned in his talk....I could go on and on but I am sure you and I both don't have time for that! Conference is such a wonderful time to receive guidance in our lives, now the trick is to keep reviewing the things that we learned throughout the next 6 months. It is now time to apply what we learned and see some of those wonderful blessings that come from following the council given. As Sister McConkie said, "following the prophet is ALWAYS right!"

Now to my week as a missionary! It was a good week! We were able to get in contact with some of the less-actives on the list and have appointments with some this week! I am excited to go get to know them better and am hopeful that we will be able to start to see some progress with them soon!  We also gave one of our investigators a church tour. She is a junoir at DePauw and is from China. Her family doesn't really want her to be baptized so she is trying to figure out what she wants. I believe that she knows the church is true and has felt the Holy Ghost testify to her on many occasions but she is afraid of what might happen in her family is she is baptized. The church tour was good and the spirit was strong...she is still at a stand still right now. We are kind of unsure about how to help her right now. We had another investigator who lived downstairs but her and her boyfriend broke up and she moved out...so we haven't been able to get her new address to meet with her yet. Hopefully we can get things picked back up soon.

This week we also got to assist some members in hauling some hay! We got to be farm hands again and serve! It was really fun and a good work out! I got a nice bruise on my leg...not quite sure how it happened but it did and it looks cool! It was really fun to help with the hay and we got pretty good and tossing it....hay is a lot heavier than you might think so there is a little trick to tossing it! So basically I am now a pro and can help in any of your hay moving needs! :)

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

love,

Sister Abbie London

1. My cute new fall outfit from home! Thanks family! :) 

2. Indiana Fall!

Mission Conference and Milking

Hello Hello Everyone!

This week has been a busy one! It was wonderful and even though we didn't teach a whole bunch, I had my spiritual glass overflowed with revelation and guidance! It was awesome!

We will start with probably the highlight of the week, spiritually...I have a non spiritual highlight later on....So this week we were able to have Elder and Sister Perkins come to the mission for a mission tour! Elder Perkins is a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy. It was such a blessing! We gathered in Fishers on Wednesday with the missionaries from the Indy West and Indy North stakes to have our meeting, or as Elder Perkins had us look at it, our revelatory experience. He started off the meeting by talking to us all about the importance of coming to any type of meeting with a question. By doing so we are then taking control of the meeting and it becomes up to us if we take something away from it. He had us all write down 2 questions, one pertaining to missionary work and the other could be any personal question. It was really cool to see how through out the conference I was able to receive answers to my questions. It was great to be able to have that time to sit and listen to him speak to us. There was a point in the day where he came down off the stand and stood up front for a question answer about missionary work. There we were able to ask him some questions and get answers from him and his wife, President Cleveland and other missionaries! It was really cool to be able to ask a question about how to help on of our investigators and have a general authority help answer it! The are an awesome couple and have a super missionary minded family! All 6 of their kids have or are about to serve a mission! They love missionaries so it was great to be able to have them there! It was just a wonderful day!

On Thursday we had exchanges at IUPUI in Indianapolis! IUPUI is a college downtown that stands for Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis....at least that is what I think it stands for...either way it is easier to say IUPUI! haha it was a fun day and was kind of nice to be back in the city and on a college campus! It was a little strange too though since I have been in the country for a while now and am not as used to city driving! It was really fun! We talked to a lot of people and found some pretty interested ones. It was a beautiful day outside, perfect for walking around campus and Indy! We taught someone a lesson in the library back in a little study area and it made me think back to my college days of studying....it was a fun little moment and actually made me a little excited for when I go back to school! But I am more excited to share the gospel so no worries! :)

It was great to be able to watch the General Women's Conference this weekend and I really enjoyed the talks that were given there! We had our mission wide fast yesterday and I am positive that we will begin to see the miracles come from that soon! So now to the non spiritual highlight! So last night we were about to come in for dinner when we got a call from a member inviting us and the Elders over for dinner! So we went and had some pancakes with the Weiss family! They own and live on a farm so there is always something exciting going on there! As we were finishing up dinner they start talking about how they need to milk the cows so they can feed their new calf. We asked if we could help since we had never milked a cow before....so I got to milk a cow! It was awesome and was surprisingly easier than I thought it would be! The cow I got to milk, Daisy, just had a baby so she was a little sore and was scared of all the people so she didn't let me milk her for very long, but I got a couple squirts out! It was so fun and one of the calves in stall they just bought, so Daisy isn't the mom. His name is Stud Muffin and he was very hungry and impatient. He really wanted the milk, so we learned that a way to help him while waiting for the milk is to let him suck on a couple of your fingers....be a cow pacifier! So Sister Muñoz and I took turns being a pacifier! It was such a weird feeling! Sometimes he would "moo" while my fingers were in his mouth! That was a pretty strange feeling! It was such a cool experience and now I can say that I have milked a cow! It was awesome!

So it's been a great week with another great one to come! I love you all and hope life is good with you! :)

love,

Sister Abbie London

1. Milking

2. being an Indy missionary

3. cow pacifier

​4. the speedway!!!

Timber

Hello Everyone!  How are you?!?!?! I hope you all had a great week! I know we did! it was a good week where we did some more teaching, finding, and fun! :) To start off, we got a new investigator! She is pretty awesome! She has gone through a lot in her life and is dating a less-active in the Branch. She is really in need of the gospel and is pretty open to learning and listening to what we have to share with her. She has had Mormon friends before but doesn't remember all that they have shared with her, so she has some questions. She really wants to start coming out to church! I think that this will be a pretty solid one, what we are trying to do now is find out a way to be able to teach her and her boyfriend at the same time and work on reactivating him too. It would be so great to be able to work that out and help them see how the gospel will bless their relationship! We also had a cool experience with another investigator this week! She is from China and has been praying about whether or not to be baptized. She likes learning and meeting with us but her parents don't want her to join the church so she is torn between what to do. We met with her on Friday and talked about the Holy Ghost. It was pretty cool too because there was a baptism on Saturday that we were able to invite her to! She was super excited to come and see what a baptism was like and told us that she was excited all day Saturday! I was standing next to her at the baptism and she was just so happy! We explained some things after and talked with her a bit about how she felt and what she thought! she told us that baptism was a good thing. She really enjoyed being there and was able to feel something there! Sadly, we won't be able to meet with her this week because she has to go up to Indy for something but are excited to give her a church tour next week so she can get back into the building and feel that spirit there again! This week we also have been trying a new way of finding. We went through the branch list and have marked all the less-actives in Greencastle and are going to visit all of them, then move on to the less-actives in the other towns. We have a lot of them in the branch and really want to figure out why. We have a couple members who want to help us contact them and are pretty excited to see what this will bring! We have met lots of nonmember family members of the less-actives and feel like we will be able to do a lot of good with this idea! It will be good. This Sunday as a mission we are going to be fasting together. The fast is for every unit to be able to find a family. It will be a special day and I feel like it will really help and bless the mission and help us find those who are prepared to receive the gospel! we did some service on Saturday at a members and we helped them cut up logs to prepare for winter! It was fun to use the log splitter and also to watch the trees come falling down! There was one tree that would not come down! It was very stubborn and thought it could get caught on the tree behind it instead of come down! It was pretty funny. It finally came down though once they started pulling it with a tractor and had someone cut while it happened. Who know tree cutting could bring so much entertainment! I love you all and hope that you are all doing well! Have a wonderful week and remember that there is a missionary in Indiana who loves you! :) love, Sister Abbie London           1. the sunrise one day this week!  2. playing at the park with the YW

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! 

My Brain or the Spirit

Hi Everyone!

It has been a good week here in Greencastle! We have had a lot more rain and I completely understand the "green" part of Greencastle...but there are no castles so...awkward! Haha! Anywho this week has been a really good one! We have been able to keep fairly busy and have enjoyed the work!

We had Zone Conference this week which was re
ally awesome! Last time we had zone conferences, we were introduced to a Game Plan on how we can be more powerful missionaries, so this zone conference focused on how we can more effectively use the Game Plan in our teaching and finding. We did  a lot of role plays, which are not my favorite but the way that we did them, I had a lot of fun! We had someone actually record our role play and them we were able to go back and watch it to pick out what we did good and how we can improve. It was really cool and I learned a lot! Something that we have been focusing on is teaching a 5 minute Restoration lesson with an invitation to baptism. It is a lot easier to teach the Restoration in 5 minutes than you might think. It is pretty exciting!

On Friday night we had a really cool experience! It was about 8:15 and we didn't have enough miles to drive and go visit someone. So we parked at our apartment and I had the thought that we should walk down to one of our investigators house to schedule another lesson with her. We started walking down the street and as we walked, we started walking past a yellow house with a lady out on the porch smoking. We had just had zone conferences the day before and had been committed to talk with every single person who crossed our path. So, trying to be as obedient to that commitment as possible, I said hi and started talking to her. It was typical conversing at first, how's your day? How are you? That sort of thing. She had heard some false things about Mormons so we cleared some of that up and were going to go on our way when she invited us up to come and sit with her and tell her some more. When we got up there, we noticed that she was drinking too but we still went and talked. Once we started talking to her, she really opened up! She told us all of the crap that she is going through in her life and how hard it is to try and do it alone. She mentioned how she wanted a better relationship with God and realized that meeting us was the way for that to happen. It was actually a roller coaster of a lesson since she was drunk and kept contradicting herself...but that is not the point! We were able to leave her with a Plan of Salvation pamphlet and a Book of Mormon. We prayed with her and as we did, her kids who had been out playing both came up to the porch and were quiet. They could feel something special about the prayer. We wanted to leave her with something because we were pretty worried that she wouldn't remember us...but she did! Sadly the return appointment we had set fell through because of various reasons but we called and she still wants to meet with us!

The moral of this story is that sometimes, the thoughts that we have are really promptings from the spirit. We may not realize it at that time but Heavenly Father is able to work through us in many miraculous ways. A simple thought that came from trying to stay effective with our time, lead us to find a daughter of God who is struggling to know if He is even there. never question the thoughts of the spirit and when a thought you have leads to a miracle, odds are that the thought was really the spirit prompting you and make sure to give him the credit.

I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week! I would still really love to receive some letters from you all and want to hear how your lives are!

love,

Sister Abbie London

1. Perfect hair day! 

2. Sister Jackson loves, loves, loves, loves you! Sister Jackson is a member of the Branch and is just a hoot! I promised her I would put this in the email!