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! 

Baptized Like the Early Days...

Hello lovely family and friends!

How are you all on this fine Monday afternoon! I hope it is fine where ever you are, as for me in Indiana it is hot and muggy out there so we try to stay in the AC! :) So this week was just wonderful for a lot of reasons! The first being that on Saturday at 1:00 it was baptism time!!!!!!!! Woot woot! Yep, Cameron, Bree, and Emma were all baptized on Saturday in the creek by their house! It was such a cool experience! It was really hot and humid out there and there were big bugs flying around, but it was such a great day! They were all super excited and after the baptism Emma and Bree, who are 11 and 10, went back in the creek to go swim! It was really funny! i love being able to see people make this step along the path! It is such a wonderful thing to witness and the spirit is just so strong there. As they were being baptized it made me think back to the early days of the church when everyone was baptized in creeks and rivers and lakes. I had a nice time reflecting back on how much things have changed since then and how much the church has grown since then! This really is such a great work and I am so lucky to be able to be a part of it now and for the rest of my life. Being on my mission has helped me see the importance of always sharing the gospel even without wearing a name tag in Indiana! We all have so much we can do to help those we love come and see the truthfulness of the gospel!

We had some crazy rain this week! There were many storms throughout the week and then on Saturday evening, the biggest one hit! It was crazy! We were really happy that it hit after the baptism seeing as it flooded most of the streets in Greencastle! We were in a members house talking and eating cake and were about to share a message when we noticed how dark it had gotten outside. Then the thunder started and we saw the lightning begin to light up the sky! It was pretty cool but the member told us we needed to leave before it got worse....so we didn't even get to teach her! Haha it was raining pretty hard when we opened the door and our umbrella's were in the car, so she ran back in and came out with a cowboy hat for me to wear and a cloth hat for Sis McCombs! We drove home to drop something off and were going to teach more people before dinner but as we drove we noticed how much water was in the road so we went home and ran inside! We were almost soaked by the time we got in the apartment so we decided to go play in it for a quick minute! It was so much fun! It was very relaxing and fun to be able to run around in the rain and jump in a couple of puddles...we went inside when we heard the loud cracks of thunder again though and enjoyed the rest of the storm inside! It was a fun adventure!

This weekend was a week of teaching for me! I was asked to give a training in district meetingon Friday, had to teach Relief Society yesterday, and will be teaching the adult FHE group tonight. It was pretty fun to be able to learn so much about the different topics I was assigned!On Friday my training was on finding and I focused on finding through faith, with confidence. It was a really good meeting because all 3 of the trainings seemed to flow together very nicely and it was a very inspired meeting! One of my favorite district meetings yet! The lesson in Relief Society yesterday was "The Cost-and Blessings- of Discipleship" by Elder Holland. I really enjoyed being able to teach that lesson as I have had many experiences within the last couple months that have helped me better understand what it means to be a disciple of Christ. I think it went well. It was strange though since the Relief Society in the branch consisted of 9 women yesterday...it was very small. I liked it though! Definitely lots of experiences to teach as a missionary! I feel like I have learned so much just in the past 3 days! :)

Other than that, my week was pretty routine. Met lots of people who didn't want to listen. Talked to some strong Catholics and Baptists...semi friendly but not interested in listening other than trying to compare. We did some service and ate some food with people. We got a couple new potential investigators that we will be meeting with this week. I think the most exciting thing is that classes at DePauw University start up this week so the students are all headed back into town! I am excited to personal contact on campus and find some new people there! College life in this town is definitely very different than it is in Utah, we will just leave it at that. haha!

I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week! I would LOVE to hear from you though out the week! My address is
501 Elm St. Apt 1

Greencastle, IN 46135

love, 

Sister Abbie London

1. Baptism time!

2. swimming after

3. Playing in the rain

4. Playing cowgirl

Many Mighty Miracles

Hi everyone!

This week has been so great! We saw so many wonderful miracles happen and were able to do a lot of good work here! It was fun and we worked hard, what could be better?!?!

On Tuesday we had a lesson with 3 of our investigators. We only had one more lesson to teach them before they had been taught everything. They are 12,11, &10 and all have been wanting to get baptized for a while. It was hard last transfer I guess to get a hold of the parents to set stuff up but we were finally able to go over for dinner and a lesson. While we were waiting for dinner, they mom of 2 of the kids asked us if the branch was having any activities on the 23rd, we said none that we knew of and she then told us that she would like to have the baptism that day! The kids were super excited to be able to finally get on a date and were interviewed yesterday! All three are set to be baptized this Saturday at 1:00 in their POND!!!!! Yep, that is right! They have gotten permission to be baptized in their pond since it is a family tradition or something like that! I am so excited for the baptism and am glad that they are finally able to make this commitment with their Heavenly Father! It was such a wonderful miracle! Oh, and the best part is that a couple weeks ago when we were doing our weekly planning, we had felt that the 23rd was the date that we needed to extend them! Coincidence....I don't think so!
 

We also had exchanges this week and saw lots of cool miracles then too! I was with Sister Mumford, she is 20 and has been out one transfer longer than I have. We had some good teaching experiences and got a new gator! His name is Mike and he was watching Heaven is For Real a couple months ago and just knew that God really is there. He grew up going to lots of churches and doesn't really like how there are so many churches that don't teach the same things. Every church has different things claiming to be true. So we taught him the restoration on his porch and had a really good lesson with him. He said that if he found out that what we are teaching him is true, that he would be baptized! We have another appointment with him tonight, we are hoping that we will be able to teach his whole family tonight too! We had a good fun day, even though Sis Mumford hit her head on a tree branch really hard....yeah...that wasn't good! But she is fine and we were still able to get stuff done!

Yesterday we had Branch Conference and a member of the Stake Presidency taught our 3rd hour lesson. It was a really good lesson. He talked about 2 different things. First he started out by sharing a cool experience he had during a study of his recently. He was reading in the Book of Mormon, Mosiah 5:7-9, and it talked about being a child of Christ. He talked about where we got our names from. Like I am a London and got my last name from my dad. He talked about how he was adopted and when he was adopted, he took on the last name of his new parents. When we follow Christ and make covenants with him, we become sons and daughters of Christ. We are adopted into his family and can better take his name upon us. It was a really cool lesson and something I had been thinking about lately. He also talked about how we can all be a part of the Hastening of the Work. There are so many ways to help in the Hastening and we all need to figure out how we can best do our part. It is Heavenly Father's work and we need to get behind him in accomplishing it. It will be so much easier if we do.

I love you all and invite you to figure out your part in the Hastening this week!

love, 

Sister London

1. I realized yesterday how long my hair is getting! I love it! 

2. Thanks for the new headband mom! I love it! 

Catching Lightening Bugs

Howdy!

Hi y'all! I hope you have all had a wonderful week and are enjoying life and what not! This week was my first full week i
n Greencastle! It was a good one too! Lets see...where to begin!

So on Tuesday night we were coming in for the night when Sister McCombs looks at me and says, "Look, I caught a lightning bug!" Sure enough there in her hands was a lightning bug! Since I am from Utah and have never had the opportunity to catch these little suckers, we decided to go out and catch some more! So, a little while later, we had 6 lightning bugs in our jar. Laman, Lemuel, Sam, Nephi, Jacob, and Joseph...missionaries are weird okay... It was a fun experience! Another fun thing that happened this week is that we kind of learned to play Monopoly by the real rules, you know with the houses and hotels and stuff...last Monday for p-day we played some games at the church with the Elders. Both of the elders knew how to play Monopoly and one say that Sister McCombs and I had way too much money not to have houses/hotels...so we bought some! It was cool! I am still not super sure how it works...but I was making money faster, so thats cool! :)

We taught some gators this week and got dropped by an eternigator (eternal investigator). That was sad. This week we mostly spent our time trying to track down some of the less-actives. There are A LOT on our branch list and half are names of people that no one has even met before. So we are trying to track some down and are hoping to start teaching more part member families. It will take some work but there are so many LA here and if we can get them to start coming back, this little branch could be a ward! So as we travel around the county roads and such, we came to some pretty fun dirt roads! It made me want to go jeeping! Good thing Sid still owes us a jeep trip when we get back! ;) There are a lot of back country roads here and some pretty cool red covered bridges. They are cool except when driving over them and being able to hear them creaking underneath the car....I'm not the biggest fan of crossing bridges...

So some other random cool stuff from this week is that we have started giving out church tours officially to anyone! Before we were just giving them to people that we were already teaching, but now we are giving them to the members and we can now take anyone! So if we just meet someone and they want a tour we can take them or we can do the members friends. It is pretty exciting! I really like these church tours that we give. We show them 4 different paintings placed around the church and also the chapel and talk about the sacrament. It is a simple tour but so powerful! The elders took us on one the other night to practice and I was playing the nonmember. It was so spiritual especially when we were looking at the painting of Jesus Christ coming to America. It was such a powerful moment!

One final thought to end with. Next time Satan is trying to tempt you to do something stupid, remember this scripture from Ether 11:14, "...and Moron did that which was wicked before the Lord." Don't be a Moron! :)

love,

Sister London

1. our lightning bug friends

2. Abbie Potter doing some service! 

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. :(