January 26, 2015

The missionaries serving in their ward.
The senior couple just got transferred out.
They will be missed.

First, about the title of this email: don't worry, it was just a nerf gun :) We went to a family's house for lunch and the husband pulled out his nerf gun and his wife was screaming at him not to shoot the Sisters, but he did anyway... Yup, we got attacked by a grown man with a nerf gun. Good times.

As I mentioned last Monday, we went to the zoo with a family in our ward and it was super fun! The zoo here is really great, I guess since it's Florida and the weather is almost always nice, all the animals are outside and you can get really close to all of them, and there's some that you can even touch. The kids that we were with loved it, it was super cute. And we got to leave our area, so that's always exciting :)

K. and J. are finally back from North Carolina!! We're pretty happy about that, we missed them so much. J. said K. was talking about how she missed us the whole trip. We were making a lot of progress with them and then they just left for like a month! We knew they got back this week, but they weren't at church on Sunday and we were really sad, But they came at the very end of sacrament meeting and we were so happy! We're glad to have someone to teach again haha. 

Things are still pretty crazy with L. so he hasn't been able to meet for awhile. And we have one new investigator, E., who is really into her church, and just likes learning about Christ from anyone. She's also meeting with the Jehovah's Witnesses. 

Transfers are coming up again, I think we get the email this week! Ahh! Also, I've been here for 7 months now! The time is flying! People are telling me they're sad that I'm going to get transferred soon and I'm like hey, don't say that! Also, Sister Vanderhoff is having what she has labeled a mid-life crisis, because she's over halfway done now. Also, she's about to turn 20 so she freaks out a lot that she's getting so old :) It's pretty funny, but also understandable, I still don't even feel like I'm an adult, I don't know how I'm going to handle 20.

Sidenote (okay like half of my emails are probably sidenotes, I don't know what the actual "note" is, but oh well): this man just came in the room where we're emailing and said "Are you the Mormon girls?" We told him we were and he was like "Good luck with that" and then he left. Hahaha what?

Also, there's a lady in our ward who had us do yardwork for their non-member neighbors a couple months back. And yesterday she told us that their neighbors had been talking about becoming Mormon! Um, what? So yeah, we'll have to investigate that this week :)

There's a scripture that I discovered this week about sharing the gospel that I really like. It's Romans 10:14, it says "How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?" It just really struck me, for the millionth time, what a responsibility we had to share the gospel. That there are people out there who would believe if they could, but they just don't know. And we have to tell them. If we don't, who will? I'm so grateful for this gospel, I know that it's true. I know that our church is truly Christ's church restored on the earth, and I'm so grateful to be able to share that beautiful message :)

January 19, 2015

They got matching blankets for the chilly 60 degree weather.

"If I get eaten by something, you can have my skull!"

A little boy said that to me this week. Yeah, I don't know either...

Sorry, I don't have a lot of time today, a family in our ward is taking us to the zoo! :)

But this week, has been crazy! First of all, they changed our mission boundaries. The Fort Myers zone is in the Fort Lauderdale mission now. So all the missionaries that were down there are in a different mission now! It doesn't really affect me too much, except that all those people are gone now and I'll never end up serving there.

The mission president tok a pano photo of the
entire mission standing around the entire parking lot.  

They also took away all the senior companion's iPad's, so now we're both sharing mine. That's been kind of a hard adjustment because we have EVERYTHING on there, but we're trying not to act like spoiled brats because we're lucky to even have an iPad :) 

Also, I HELD A MONKEY THIS WEEK! A family in our ward has 2 pet monkeys! And they just climb all over you, it's really weird. They're so cute, but it's also kind of freaky; they're kind of way too intelligent for a not-human. But they even have little diapers and stuff, it's adorable :)

Our ward also had a 50's dance this week! It was really fun, or at least it looked fun :) Haha we couldn't really participate, but we served root beer floats and that was fun :)

Saddest part of the week: L. is not getting baptized :( Well, yet. Hopefully he will soon. It's been sad because he really wants to be, a lot of obstacles are getting thrown in his way. If you want to pray for him that would be really awesome, he could really use it. 

Most awkward moment of the week: teaching the Word of Wisdom while the girl's mom was sitting there smoking.

And on that note, I'm out of time! Thank you guys for everything! Have a fantastic week! :)

January 12, 2015

This has been an interesting week. We had interviews with President on Tuesday, which are always kind of scary. Okay, really scary. But they always go really well, he just tells me how sweet I am  And he was really proud of the four sisters in our ward. Apparently we're doing well or something, because he came to visit our ward on Sunday. Yeah, that was a surprise. He spoke in sacrament meeting and had us stand up while he talked about us. Not too fun.

But it was a really good Sunday! Hectic, but good, as Sundays as a missionary often are. L. and his daughters came, and a member brought her friend M., who we've been hoping would come for a long time. She's from the Bahamas and she's super awesome, and said she really enjoyed church. Satan did not want her coming, she got mugged at gunpoint this week, but thankfully she's okay.

One of our less-actives who's only come like twice since I've been here also came with her granddaughter. I think her granddaughter is a big part of the reason she came. She's 4 and probably the cutest little girl ever. She told me "Guess what I want to be when I grow up! A missionary!" Seriously, adorable. I felt like a celebrity at church, and not in a good way.

Anyway, more about L.: we had to push his baptismal date back a week in order to get through all the lessons and he was so upset! He's so excited for his baptism, it's awesome :) His twin 8-year-old daughters were there during one of our lessons and one of them asked if she could push her Barbie car down the stairs, and when he said no, she told him she saw it in a YouTube video. Which I think pretty decently represents the children of the rising generation.

We also had a lesson with a new investigator, J. He just lost his job and we're not sure what his intentions are yet, but he seems like a really great guy. He knows about the church because he was really good friends with a bishop down in Puerto Rico. 

Fun fact: everyone in Florida (it seems like it anyway) goes to North Carolina for vacation this time of year. Who knows why. I think they like to see the snow, but it like hardly snows there, so I don't really know. But I'm like take me with you! And they're all like okay, get in my suitcase :)

Snow in Florida
Not really. They had fake snow at a Christmas Party.

A family in our ward this week was telling us about their family mission plan and how every month that they do well on their missionary work, the next month is really good for them financially. Seriously, so many blessings come from sharing the gospel, it's awesome. I'm so grateful to get to be a part of it full-time. The church is so true, it's insane :)

Cuz I'm happy . . .

January 5, 2015

Happy New Year everybody! :) I hope it's off to a good start for all of you! Things have been kind of slow for us, but not too bad. How did we spend the New Year you ask? (Well probably not, but I'll tell you anyway:) ) Sleeping! We woke up at midnight and were like Happy New Year... and I think Sister Vanderhoff drank some sparkling cider she made from mixing Sprite and apple juice. And I heard a bunch of fireworks going off and stuff but I was like what is that? Let me sleep! Great way to start the year :)

A couple did invite us over New Year's Eve night and we ate and played Apples to Apples and Cranium (I may have won both:) ). It was really fun!

Life-size reindeer at some random home.

We had a really great lesson with L. the other day. We taught him the Word of Wisdom and he was like yeah that makes perfect sense, what else is there? And we're like that's it... Definitely never had anyone respond to the Word of Wisdom that way haha. He is so prepared, it's awesome. He asked if he would be required to serve a mission and we told him no and he was like well, I want to! Too bad he's too old. Another funny thing he said was "Do we believe that? Wait, can I say we yet?" And we were like yeah, you can say we. But on the inside we were like ahhhh he said we!!!! He like already considers himself a member of the church, it's great :)

My highlight of the week, other than L. of course, was probably that we went to visit this part-member family and they had these little newborn dwarf hamsters and they were the cutest things ever!!!! They pooped on us and it didn't even matter because they were so cute!!

A woman left treats on the sisters' car.

Oh, awkward moment of the week. We went to visit a less-active member and her boyfriend answered the door and he was like you can just go in. So we knocked on her bedroom door and needless to say, she was a little surprised. How would you like it if the missionaries knocked on your bedroom door? Yeah, it was super awkward, but thankfully she was still pretty nice about it considering. 

Last night we went over to visit some members and they had friends over because for one of their birthday's. We showed them all a Mormon message and they loved it, they were like let's watch another one! And another one! So that was pretty cool :) 

I'm just trying to love every minute of being here, since this is probably my last transfer here (although I did say that last transfer). I love the people here so much, and I love being able to share the gospel with them, it's the best :) 

The paper tree we sent Sis. Coleman with the ornaments
that family sent her with messages of love.  

Well, I gotta get going, have a great week everyone! Love y'all! :)