Happy Thanksgiving Week

Hi everyone!

This has been a wonderful week, all of them are usually wonderful! Just like every week we have some bumps along the way but when you are doing your best and on the Lord's team, it works out!

So we had a slow start to the week and weren't really able to get into to many homes. This week we saw a lot of less-actives and are seeing some progress with some! There is a less-active we are working with whose kids aren't members and we were able to sit down with her and the kids and teach a restoration lesson to them! They seemed pretty interested and we should be taking them on a church tour tomorrow, so that will be great! We are hoping to have the Branch Mission Leader and his grandkids, who are the same ages as the la kids, come with us! We are trying to get some fellowship over there! It will be good.

It was really cold at the beginning of the week but we endured and spent some time tracting out in the elements...I don't really like tracting but we need to do it so we do...even though we have lots of awkward things happen! Hey, the awkward makes the best stories I suppose! We met a couple cool potential investigators that we will hopefully be able to meet with soon.

Our Friday was a little rough....we were just sitting there finishing our companionship study when the elders called. They were wondering if we were coming to district meeting. We told them yeah at 11, we will be there since that was the usual time we had it. Then they decided to inform us that it was at 10. Everyone else in the district was there waiting for us...luckily the meeting was in Greencastle and not Plainfield so we weren't as late as we could have been. Sister Munoz and I were both a little angry about it and it was pretty hard at the beginning of the meeting to pay attention. After sneaking away to pray for some help, I was able to focus more and actually get something out of the meeting. To add to it all, we were apparently supposed to bring a lunch to the church to all eat together but we didn't get informed about that either...we were feeling pretty good about ourselves after that meeting! (Sarcasm in my voice) Everything worked out though and we were able to still have a fun time together and learn lots. It was a bit of a struggle though.

We had a really cool experience on Saturday to go down to Terre Haute and help out with a service opportunity! :D I was super excited! The zone leaders down there called on Tuesday or Wednesday morning to see if we would be able to come help out at the NCAA Division 1 Cross Country Championships! So we headed down and got there a little too early, another miscommunication. So since we were an hour early and I was in my old area, we went down into town more and got Square Donuts! :) It was such a great feeling to drive through Brazil and Terre Haute again! I was able to talk to the elders in the great Honey Creek ward and get the update on everyone! It was pretty fun! They didn't really have us do anything until after the races were over, so we basically stood around and watched....let me tell you that cross country spectators get about just as much running in as the participants! I had no idea that it was such an intense thing! People were running all over to be able to watch their people run by! I was a little scared for a bit but we survived just fine! It was fun to see the teams from Utah playing! There were some from BYU, they were excited to see missionaries, and I even saw some SUU Thunderbirds out there running! :) It was a fun experience. WE walked around the course at the end picking up trash left behind....that took a while! It was super fun though!

The talking in Sacrament Meeting yesterday were all on gratitude and during the second talk I did a lot of thinking about what it means to be grateful! He shared a story about a man in the world's largest garden show. He was a gardener and was super excited to see the world's largest flowers. He spots some of the flowers and starts running over when he gets cut by a giant thorn. He see's all the thorns around and grabs a branch and starts cutting down the thorns. People gather all around and are staring at him. He is all done when he realizes they are looking at a sign that says, "World's Most Beautiful Rose Bush." He was blinded by everything else and missed out on the beauty around him. The speaker then talked about how we all have the opportunity to notice the roses or the thorns in our lives. Our attitude shapes us. If we chose to be grateful for the thorns we face, like our trials and hardships, we will be able to better see the beautiful roses at the end of it. So I want to encourage all of you to keep this in mind throughout your lives. You chose what to be grateful for. In True to the Faith it says, "You cannot be bitter, resentful, or mean-spirited when you are grateful." Having a grateful heart really is the best thing to help you become more Christlike! It is something that should occur all year, not just this week! I love you all and hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving! I am thankful for you all and the love and support you give me!

love,

Sister Abbie

PS I failed at taking picture this week so here are some that we took during studies this morning !:)

Sunshine and Snowballs

Hi friends!

It has been a good week here in Greencastle, the land of the blessed! That is what it is known by in the mission...the land of the blessed and after being here, it doesn't take long to find out why! This is such a wonderful branch and I am so blessed to be able to serve here and get to know so many wonderful people! Well, I guess I have felt that way about the whole state of Indiana. Haha So this week has been good and here is why:

First off I will start with the beautiful blanket of snow that is outside right now! Not only is the ground white, but it is also sparkly because the sun is out and making it absolutely beautiful outside! I have sort of mixed emotions about the snow right now...it is really pretty and it is always fun when the first snow comes but I also know what is to come here. I experienced one of the worst Indiana winters already and am a little cautious about what is to come this winter! I am loving it because yesterday when it was snowing and actually sticking to the ground, we had 3 separate snowball fights with the Elders! :) It was pretty fun! The first one was outside of a members house after lunch with them...that started it all and we took a little break to go and be missionaries and teach the gospel but then resumed before we ate dinner. We took another break to eat and go to a fireside but by the time that was over, our cars were covered in snow again so the best and most logical way to clean it off was to make snowballs out of it and continue the fight! haha it was a fun time!

This week we had a lot of lessons but not really with nonmembers. We met with lots of less-actives and with active members. We did meet a couple people who seemed interested in learning more but sadly haven't been able to see them again. We had interviews with President this week, which were really good! I have always enjoyed interviews but this one was probably my favorite! He had us come prepared with a scripture to share that has helped us on our missions and then shared a thought with us on having the right mindset. We are working hard as a mission right now to reach 400 baptisms by the end of the year and really need to have a positive mind in order to reach that goal. He asked us how we get our minds back into a good mindset when we are having a negative one. My answer was that when I feel frustrated or negative the thing that helps me the most is writing in my journal and just venting to it! Let it all out and then look back and read it...usually it makes me laugh at the weird things I said and at how ridiculous I sound! Haha it helps a lot though. I have been thinking about that question a lot lately and have come to realize even more at how important a positive attitude is. As we were talking in our interview President mentioned how having a positive attitude is one of the best Christlike attributes that someone could attain. Being positive will help lead you to better charity, which when you have charity all the other Christlike attributes are being shown. Attitude really does shape our future and how we view our lives.

This week was also so great because a 9 year old in the branch got baptized this weekend! Brenden is awesome! We taught him a little bit when I first got here and then the Elders took over and continued in teaching him! It has been so cool to see the change in his heart the past couple months and was even better to see him make that covenant on Saturday and be baptized!

So, as you can tell, life in the Castle is still going good! We are working hard and have had some great trainings here lately to help us even work harder and be more effective! I am still loving being a missionary and am so glad that I still have time here to work and serve my Heavenly Father! I love you all and hope you have a great week, and if you don't....well maybe a simple change in attitude will make it better! :)

love,

Abbie Paige London

1. At Brenden's baptism

2. The snow that has made Greencastle white

Another Week in my Little Castle

What up my peeps?!?!

Haha yep...I seriously just said that! So now that you know how much of a g I am....how's your week been? Mine has been great, thanks for asking! I know you are all dying to find out so here it goes!

This week we have done a little bit of everything! From leaf raking to tracting in the rain and even a little bit of playing! We worked hard and saw some cool things happen! To start off I will talk about Hanah! She is super cool! She is the 18 year old less-active that we had dinner with last Sunday. The one who is super cool and amazing! We did our first scripture study with her on Tuesday and it went pretty well! We read Ether 12 and talked about faith. We had some good discussion and some giggles...it was a room with 4 girls in it, of course there was giggling! It was pretty fun too because after we did our scripture study, we got acid burns put on us! :) Not real ones obviously because that would not be fun. Hanah is really interested in doing like Hollywood make-up stuff and is getting a portfolio made to submit to a school in LA. So she needed people to try out the different things on! So last week it was acid burns and tomorrow night after the study, it will probably be knife wounds! It was so cool and looked pretty intense! We grossed out the Elders later when they saw it and almost tricked someone else into thinking they were real!

We have been seeing some success with some other less-actives that we have been working with too. There are a couple families that we have been trying to meet with more consistently and were able to get in contact with one of them a couple of times this week! The wife is pregnant, just started a new job a couple weeks ago that is an hour away, and the husband works nights in Terre Haute which is also about an hour away...so they are super busy with work and their other 2 kids. It has been hard to get in contact but having a companion who is licensed to cut hair really helped out with this one! The boys needed hair cuts so we were able to get over and do that as well as help clean a little. It was a big help and we got invited to go to their 10 year old son's birthday party! So we went to that yesterday and met her mom who is apparently anti-church and she really liked us! It is great to see the power that having a little charity can do! When you show someone a bit of the love of Christ you help them more than you can ever really know! I am now being able to see that more with the people that I am around!

We met with Natalie again this week and had a good lesson with her on the Plan of Salvation! She is praying to know if the church is true and if this is where she needs to be. She is only 11 but it impresses me and how sincere she is in her desire to do what is right and follow Heavenly Father. It is amazing to see! We had an awesome lesson and were able to put her on a baptism date ofDecember 20th! It is awesome!

We did some fun service this week with raking leaves and helping stack fire wood! Sadly the winter is creeping up on us and it is starting to get pretty chilly...well some days are and some aren't too bad. Like right now isn't super cold. It is fun to be able to be out and help people. Service is one of the greatest ways to show and share the light of Christ. It is getting to that time of year when everyone starts thinking about all the things they are grateful for. I think that the holiday season is more than just having gratitude. It is a season of Christ. I want to encourage and invite all of you to think about how you can help others more this next couple of months and then do it. Serve those around you and help them see a bit of the love through you and your deeds. Spend these next few months more focused on the true spirit of it all and less on the wants of the world...I can promise you that it will last a lot longer than all the presents and treats will last. I love you all and am excited to hear about how your service experiences go!

love,

Sister Abbie London

1. our acid burns...me, sis Munoz and a recent convert named Tori

Halloween Happiness

Hello Everyone!

So I just realized now that I have been out for 16 months how hard it is getting to come up with a subject line that I haven't already used that is still catchy enough for you all to want to read my emails....haha the struggles of becoming an old missionary...anywho, this week was awesome! It was such a wonderful week and we got a lot done!

We had a pretty normal beginning of the week, nothing super new and exciting. On Thursday we had exchanges and that was awesome! It was nice because the Sister Training Leaders blitzed our area, which means that all 4 of us were working in Greencastle. So by the end of the day, we had taught 8 lessons for the day bumping our total lessons up to 13 and it was only Thursday! :D It was really nice! I was with Sister Tua. She is a really cool sister. She has been on her mission for 9 months and is just an excellent missionary! It was a fun day and we got some cool potentials that day.

Friday was Halloween and it was a pretty relaxing day. We  have our district meetingson Friday so we had our district meeting. Since it was also the last day of the month some of the other missionaries in the district were tight on miles so we had our meeting in Plainfield, about 35 minutes away. It was fine though since we had enough miles to make the trip. It was a good meeting! I always love district meetings though...they are probably my favorite of the meetings we go to. I always learn so much! We went to lunch after the meeting, we usually do...haha but this time one of the Elders in the other ward left his lights on as we ate so by the time we left their car was dead...so we had to drive the other sisters back to their apartment so they could get their jumper cables and take it back and jump the elders car. So by the time we actually got back to Greencastle it was like 3:00ish and we had left at 10. We met with a less-active before going to dinner with a member. Halloween as a missionary is kind of different than any other day. Since so many people are out and about, they don't like us to be out tracting or teaching people. So unless you were with a member, you were supposed to be doing your weekly planning. Lucky for us, we had a member invite us over to carve pumpkins! It was really fun! I enjoyed it a lot and made a cute owl pumpkin! It was a fun night and I am glad we were inside since it was freezing that night! There were snow flurries...which just shows us that winter is right around the corner!

We had a good weekend. Natalie came to church again and had a much better experience this week! We got a new Brach Mission Leader who is ready and excited to get the work moving better in the branch! It will be a nice change! We also had a really cool lesson last night after our dinner. We had finished eating and were just chatting with the member family...well I guess it is part member family. So the members have their non member daughter and her 2 girls living with them. One of the granddaughters is a member but is less-active. As we were planning on Saturday night we felt like the scripture we needed to share was Isaiah 1:18, which is about the atonement. It was the perfect lesson! After we shared that the conversation took off and we were able to find out the less-active granddaughters concerns about why she isn't coming to church. She really opened up and it was a really great lesson! We are going to start going over and having like a scripture study class with her! It was just the perfect lesson! It also really helped me get a better testimony of the power of effective planning! Bro. Evans (the member) told us as we were leaving how it was the best night of a missionary dinner that they have had! It was so spiritual and just so awesome!

That is about all I've got for you this week...well it's more like it is about all I can remember! Haha I hope you have a wonderful week! Love you all!

love,

Sister Abbie Paige!

1. the things you can find in a small town!

2. Pumpkin Carving