2015

Hi Everyone! 

Well, it is now officially 2015! The year I thought would never actually come. Haha I hope you all had a great time ringing in the new year and are having a good one so far! This week has been a pretty good one! I guess you could call it a week of some more firsts as a missionary. 

So last Monday we had a half p-day since it got moved to Thursday for us, so we went out at 1:00 and visited some people! We have a less-active whose husband passed away the day after Christmas. It is a really tender situation with them because she was recently diagnosed with stage 3 cancer and was told she has about 6 more months to live. Her husband passed away the 26th and she is in a nursing home right now trying to regain her strength from being in bed at for 3 weeks at the hospital and what not. She is such an amazing person who has such strong faith! Her husband was a hoot too. Always telling us story after story when we would visit and would grumble about this or that. She wanted us to come by and read the scriptures to her, so we have been visiting her a lot, going over and reading to her. On Tuesday it was her husband's funeral. The first funeral I have attended on my mission and not only that but it was my first time personally driving in the funeral processional, with an orange flag and all. 

We met with a lot of less-actives this week. We almost got one to church yesterday but they ended up not being able to come, so hopefully we can get them there for our last week in the branch! We had a really awesome district meeting this week. Our district leader gave an awesome training on not judging others and stopping the gossip. It helped me realize better how even just the thoughts we have that we might not say effect other people's moods. I have been struggling with some stuff this past week on not letting my thoughts get annoyed and so this training on better understanding others and their situations helped me see how I can improve and become more Christlike in my thoughts. 

On New Year's Eve we found out that we reached our mission goal of 400 baptisms in the year 2014! :D woot woot! We got to celebrate by being permitted to stay out until 10:30 as long as we were with members! It was fun! We spent our time with the Hale family, eating dinner, playing games, and just enjoying the time together! It was really a fun night! The 1st was our p-day and we had made plans with the Weiss family and the elders to go play some games over there! So we headed over and just hung out with them. Ate lunch and played some games! We also went on a squirrel hunt with Brother Weiss since he said he would try to catch a squirrel for me to eat...but we didn't catch anything. We played catch phrase with them and I played Friends trivia game with Bro. and Sis. Weiss for a little bit! haha it was a fun day over there and made me excited to play catch phrase with the family again! Hopefully next time we play, people will know that it is racetrack and not racetrack! :) haha 

The rest of the week was pretty normal, nothing super exciting or new going on. We got some snow and cold temperatures but other than that everything in Greencastle is just the same it always is! I am looking forward to this next week as a missionary and am also excited to see you all next week! Hope you have a wonderful week! 

love,

Sister Abbie London

1. Chillin on New Year's Eve

2. Greencaslte District

Family Christmas Call

It was great to see Sister London on Christmas. She is loving being a missionary!

For those who haven't heard yet, she has just over two weeks left. She'll be home January 13, 2015!!

Her family couldn't be more excited!

Happy 2015!

Hi Everyone!

I just wanted to start off by wishing you the best of these last days of 2014 and the happiest of 2015! :) I hope your year is full of wonderful, exciting things!

Well, looking back on the year 2014, it was absolutely the best year of my life so far! I am so grateful for the year full of sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ and serving him! It has truly been life changing and I will forever be grateful for the things I learned! I am excited to see what this next year has in store for me as I continue in new adv
entures and grow in the gospel!

Well, this last week was wonderful! It was a little slow with Christmas as whatnot but we had a really great time! The first couple days of the week were fairly normal in missionary work. A couple weeks ago when we had our Christmas mission conference, we were encouraged by President and Sister Cleveland to go around to nursing homes and sing Christmas carols to them. So that is what we decided to do here on Christmas Eve! Along with the Elders, we made some cookies and went around to the various nursing homes and the hospital in Greencastle and spread some Christmas cheer to others! It was so great to be able to go around and sing of the Savior's birth! It made my Christmas mean so much more!

This year on Christmas we got permission from President to watch Disney or Christmas movies! :) So after a nice talk with the family Christmas morning, I finally was able to see Frozen! After a whole year of hearing about it and listening to the soundtrack, it felt good to finally be in the loop about all this Frozen hoopla going on! I really liked it. It was a cute movie! It was also great to watch it with the Weiss family! It was fun being able to hang out there most of the morning and afternoon and just be with their amazing family! We had Christmas dinner with another amazing family, the Stewarts! It was a really good meal and we had fun with them and their family! We were able to watch the Tinkerbell Pirate movie and Shrek the Halls with them. It was a wonderful Christmas where I felt very loved and taken care of by the Greencastle hoosiers!

Other than all that, we had district meeting where I gave a training and we did a gift exchange, white elephant thing. That was interesting....it was funny though so that is all that matters. I also had the opportunity to speak in sacrament meeting yesterday on the birth of Christ. It went really well I think and it was really great preparing for it! I am really glad I got that topic. The other speaker did and amazing job and it was such a spirit filled meeting!

I am looking forward to see what this week will bring. I love you all!

love,

Sister Abbie London

1. selfie in front of our homemade tree

2. hallway selfie with elders 

More Pictures!

Pictures from the mission Christmas devotional/party!

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Hey everyone!

Just wanted to start off by wishing you all a Merry Christmas! I hope you all have the best day! I know mine will be amazing, full of fun with members and talking to 5 of my favorite people! :) So it has been a pretty exciting week here in Indiana! We didn't teach too many lessons but we did see some awesome things happen!

I would say one of my favorite things that happened this week was our Christmas Mission Conference! It was so great! We spent the first couple hours of the day receiving trainings from the Mission presidency, assistants, some missionaries, and Sister Cleveland. It was a really good meeting, where all the trainings focused on developing Christlike attributes that will better help us in sharing the gift of Jesus Christ. I really enjoyed President's training on humility. Humility is probably the Christlike attribute that I have been thinking the most about throughout my mission, well that and patience. We sang Christmas songs and just enjoyed being able to feel the spirit! After that part of the conference, we had lunch and watched a slideshow of all the missionaries holding up a sign that says, "I pray when..." and we all wrote in when or what we pray for. We played some bingo and then gathered together to watch all the talent that our mission has! There were some pretty awesome and funny things in the talent show this year! A very sassy Santa came and shared some gifts with some missionaries! He said that we had all been good so to decide who won, they would draw names. I was one of the names drawn so I got a nice little package of stuff from Santa! Then they opened up the overflow and we all got our Christmas packages from our loved ones! It was such a fun day and it was so awesome to be able to have a chance to go around and catch up with my missionary friends! Especially since it was my last opportunity as a missionary to see most of them. I was able to go around and take pictures and catch up with some of the amazing missionaries and friends I have made over the last nearly 18 months! I realized again how blessed I am to be serving in this mission and I know that the people I have met here, I have met for a reason! I am going to miss these people so much! It was just a great day all around!

Another really cool thing that happened this week was the wedding, baptism combo of a couple in the branch that the Elders were teaching! Tristan and Laney are just awesome! The elders met them about a month and a half ago and they were super prepared and on Saturday they were married, then right after their marriage they were both baptized! It was such a neat experience to witness their baptism! We have seen their progression and their testimonies grow as they have come to see the blessings and truthfulness of the restored gospel! They both were just glowing yesterday in church! It was so great!

I hope you all have a great week and are able to continue to remember the reason for the season! One of the speakers in church yesterday said, "without Christ, Christmas would just be mas, and who wants to just celebrate mas?!" So as you are opening your presents and doing whatever you do on Christmas, just take a moment to remember why you are celebrating! I love you all and wish you the best of Christmases!

love,

Sister Abbie London

1. got a fun little Candyland game from the fam! It was a fun one to play! :)

2. us with Tristan and Laney after they got married! :)

Oldest Sister

Hello Everyone!

It has been an interesting week here in the land of the blessed aka Greencastle Indiana! A new transfer started last week, meaning it is my last one. Along with the new transfer, I became the oldest (longest out) Sister Missionary in the mission, except for Sister Cleveland...she's got 3 weeks on me! It has been so weird to think that this is my last transfer. People ask me how much longer I have and 5 weeks just sounds so strange. I am excited to be able to be out here for such a wonderful time though! There is so much excitement going around the mission with He is the Gift and shooting to reach our mission goal of 400 baptisms for the year of 2014! I am so lucky and blessed to be a missionary at such a great time and hope that these next few weeks will be just as exciting and meaningful and all the previous ones have been! :)

So this week was kind of a slow week. We had a pretty fun p-day last week, just eating food and playing games at the church! Since on the the Elders got transferred, we got to eat dinner at some of our favorite places which is always wonderful! :) It seems like lots of our people were sick this week so we had some trouble getting to meet with them. When winter comes, everything starts to travel from place to place and inflict people with the nasty flus and colds and whatnot. I am hopeful that all the crap I had is gone for good and we won't have to worry about that anymore. We did have a pretty good scripture study with Hanah this week. She is the less-active who is really skilled in make-up stuff and gave us the acid burns a while ago! Things are going well with her and we are really enjoying being able to go over every week and read the Book of Mormon with her. The Book of Mormon is such a wonderful tool and helps us so much, sometimes with out realizing it!  It was pretty cool also this week in some of our lessons with less-active members who are also a part of part member families! We had 2 lessons where the non member joined us and sat with us the whole lesson with the member! It was so awesome and they were pretty open to talk with us. I am not sure if anything will come from it yet but just the contact is progress in itself! It is great!

We tracted and did normal missionary things this week. We met a cool potential who was kind of skeptical and not super open but agreed to let us come back. We started talking to him about He is the Gift and the conversation led to talking about the atonement. He kept saying how he can't be forgiven since he is a bad dude or a bad seed, but I think he felt something as we testified about the power the atonement has. We gave him a card and mentioned something about church and he said, "well I am an adult and haven't gone to church yet, what makes yours so different?" The golden question that everyone wants to be asked! Sadly he didn't have much more time so we didn't get to share the restoration with him but we were able to bear strong testimony of the truths that have been brought back! I know I felt the spirit and I am hopeful that we will be able to meet with him again soon and teach him more about this amazing gospel!

We also were able to get in contact with our investigator Natalie and have a lesson with her! That was great! She is awesome and really wants to be baptized. We are working things out right now to try and figure out who should teach her though and how to work everything out since she lives in the Plainfield boundaries during the week and in our boundaries on the weekend. Hopefully it can be handled smoothly and calmly...we will see though. Anyways, life is good! I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week! :)

love,

Sister Abbie Paige

P.S. I sucked at taking pictures this week...but I took some random ones of my Christmas stuff around the apartment! So...you can see my Christmas desk and the awesome advent tree my family sent! :)

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