On Easter We Play Games

Hey everyone!

This week's been swell!  It started off with zone conference on Tuesday!  I always love zone conference.  It's so spiritually uplifting, and it's so fun to see all of the missionaries in the zone.
President Griffin gave such a good training. It was about our weaknesses.  He started off by asking us who gives us temptations, which would be Satan. Then he asked who gives us weaknesses.  That one's God. Just like it says in Ether 12:27.  You have to figure out how to make your weaknesses strong by being humble.

Then on Wednesday we went over to the wonderful Son Light Baptist church, and we helped them with their Easter egg hunt.  It was fun. They had us hide all of the eggs for them, which was about 200 eggs for each age group, so... Yeah, about 600 eggs in all.  But it was fun! We like them, they like us. It's awesome!

On Thursday we went over to an assisted living place, and we got to have an Easter lunch with them and sing a bunch of songs about Christ to them.  It's always so good to see all of the old folks. When it was done, we helped the awesome lady who works there, Carol, clean up. Right as we were about to leave, this lady who lived there came into the room we were in and talked for a little bit and then asked if we wanted to see her cat, Sassy, so of course, we did.  She told us all of these wonderful things. She said how she received prophecies, so she told us one that she got right then and there. She said that she got a prophecy that the three of us (us and Carol) all wanted to come closer to Christ. And hey, she was right!  Go prophesying!

After that we went over to see Harley.  When we got there, his two friends, Michael and Cameron, were there, too.  We were planning on teaching Harley the third lesson, but we wanted to catch his friends up so they weren't confused.  So, we went over the first two lessons as quickly as possible, which still took a good hour to get through because they were so interested and asked so many questions.  And we finally were able to get to the third lesson for Harley. At the end of the lesson, my fabulous companion, Sister Murri, soft committed Michael and Cameron to baptism! So, we are going to try and see both of them soon, too!

Friday was really good, too! Our day turned out nothing like how we planned it but just how God needed it. We started by going around with dear Sister Beal to see some of the people she visit teaches.  Then, after seeing Sister Rogers with her (which was also a visit led very much by the spirit), we realized we didn't have many miles left for the month, so we needed to find someone close by who we could see, so we went over to the Maret's.  Oh, that poor family; their lives have been in such shambles ever since Patrick left on his mission! Haha! ;) We went over and put all of the pieces back together.... Or we tried. It was really good seeing them.

On Saturday we started our day by going over to the Beal's house for the ward Easter egg hunt/ breakfast.  It was so fun!  We made our day really fun, too, with dear Sister Turvaville. We went over to her house for dinner and to watch the General Women's Conference, which I hope all of you ladies got to watch!  It was amazing and certainly made a difference in my life.

Sunday was the best, though. In case you missed the memo, it was Easter yesterday!  We had such a good Sacrament meeting!  We had a fast and testimony meeting, but it wasn't like every other fast and testimony meeting. The bishop specifically asked that when we go up to share our testimony, we have no travel logs.  Just sweet simple testimonies of what we know.  The spirit was so strong because it was all gospel truth!

After church we went over to Bishop Kemp's house with Sister Turvaville and the elders for lunch! It was so fun. Going over to the bishop's house after church is always one of my favorite things to do.
We got to play a fun game of Sequence.

After that we went over to see Beverly who has been in the hospital for the past few days, but no worries, she's doing well.  We just knew that of all the days, Easter, she needed a visit, and she needed a little comical relief, so we played some games with her, too. Charades and Hang Man.  It was pretty hilarious!  It was definitely what we all needed.  And I love the last phrase Sister Murri did for hang man. "It's just me!" which is Beverly's catch phrase. She says it every time we tell her how amazing she is.

After that we went over to the Maret's house for dinner.  It was a party, like always. They had a lot of their family over, and we felt just like a part of their bunch!  After dinner we played Wacky Six,
which is the funnest game ever. (Mom, I expect to play that game the night I get home from my mission, so go find it).  Every place we went on Easter we just wanted to stay all day. I wish that of all the days in the year, Easter would be longer.  I just hope that ya'll were able to remember and focus on the true meaning of Easter. I sure tried, too!

Sincerely,
Sister Shelton

The awesome stick huts they have at Ijam's nature preserve!

 Yeah, we know we're epic.

All the fun at zone conference!

Also, I met this cool elder, Elder Tutasi, went to T-ville with me, but I never knew him until a few days ago. He's super awesome!
 

Our Easter lunch with the Kemp's!

Sister Murri: Hey! Elder Stringham, you got a hair cut! It's the hair cut-iest.

Little Cannon Boy: Hey! Ask my Mom if Sarah is a boy or a girl!

Sister Murri: Is Sarah a girl or a boy? 

Sister Cannon: She's a girl.

Little Cannon boy: See!  She's a girl!

(The Cannon's just had a little girl Sarah two weeks ago.)

Me: I have a Pinterest board that is a DUI board... I mean, DIY....

Missionaries Here, Missionaries There, Missionaries Everywhere!

Hey guys!

We had a pretty good week. It started off with us going and visiting a member of the ward in the hospital.  She's doing good, just in recovery. She's actually a ward missionary, which is really fun
because that means we get to go and see her a lot.  Sister Murri, being the brilliant missionary that she is, decided to give her some pass-along cards.  It was pretty funny, because in church, the bishop just happened to tell a story about when he went to visit her, and give her a blessing, and one of the nurses was about to leave so they could have some privacy, but she told her to come back for a minute, and she gave her one!  It was so awesome hearing that story. She's actually passed them out to multiple people there. Just goes to show, you should always act on a good thought because you never know what's going to happen.

Friday was really fun! We got to go over to the church to help set up for Patrick's (a guy in the ward) farewell.  It's just been so interesting seeing him go through the process of going on a mission while being on a mission.  A ton of people came to say goodbye to him, and give him last minute advice.  He actually left the next day to head out to the MTC, so he's out and about being a missionary by now.... I'm so proud of him!  -wipe away a tear-

Sunday was awesome!  Our awesome investigator, Harley, decided all on his own that he wanted to go to church.  Believe it or not, we'd never even asked him if he wanted to come because his leg is in such bad condition from his car accident, and it takes a lot to get around, but he just told us he felt like he needed to come, which is funny because about an hour before the phone call when he told us he wanted to come, Sister Murri totally predicted he'd want to come way too soon for his
strength to allow, but hey, we're all about getting people to church, so we found him a ride with someone who had enough leg room, and packed him all up and brought him to church!  It was so great! Everyone in the ward welcomed him, and he's so excited to come back. The next time he comes back will actually be to see General Conference, and as soon as we told him about it he said, "I want to go to that!"  He's doing awesome, but his leg will have to heal more before he can be baptized.  His heart is there, but his leg is not.

Beverly is doing really well, too. On Monday we went over with Brother Ledgerwood and Brother Riggs to give her a priesthood blessing because she's been struggling with her health, and it's been making it hard for her to get to church, but it's okay. She's still moving along. She bought a skirt just the other day so that she can come, so that's really exciting! We also rescheduled her baptism for April 16.  It's gonna be an awesome day when she gets baptized!

We also got a new investigator, John.  We showed up telling him we got him as a Bible referral, and he was really confused at first, but still nice.  We talked to him for a couple of minutes, and by the end of it, he agreed to have us back in a week, and he remembered that he had ordered a Bible and that he "has a special purpose for it."  When we asked for a referral from him, he sent us down the road to Jimmy and Cassie.  When we told them he sent us, Jimmy just laughed, but they also agreed to having us come back in a week!  We'll see where all of this goes from here!

Sincerely,
Sister Shelton

While we had brunch with Millie (the spunkiest lady ever) she told us about this LDS church building that we didn't even know existed, and currently doesn't even have church held in it each week, so we went and found it!



These next four pictures are us just having a photo shoot.





Attempting to be models.



Patrick's farewell!

Quotes of the week:

Rachael's friend: Why does everyone have an iPad?

Rachael (Patrick's sister): They don't have phones.

Rachael's friend: What does that even mean?!



Six Months have Flown By!

Hey everyone!

So this week has been really good.  It started out with me freaking out about transfers.  I wasn't sure if I was going to stay here in Grove Park or not, but I am, and I'm so happy about it!

After we found out about transfers we went up to the Smokie Mountains, and went up to Cade's Cove with the Chillhowee sisters and one of the members in their ward, Sister Cupp.  It was so much fun.  On our way back we got boiled peanuts.  Add that to the list of southern food.  I approve of them.  They're different, but good.

On Tuesday we had a lesson with our investigator, Harley, and it was just so cool because he said that he wanted to get the priesthood so that he could help bring others to Christ with it. It was so cool! Nobody ever says that!

Later on that night we went over to Twiters to celebrate Trunky Twister Taylor Swift Tuesday!  It's the tradition of this area to go there the last Tuesday of the transfer to say goodbye to everyone
leaving.  RIP Elder Hoyt, Cook and Michaelis.

On Wednesday we went and had lunch with Amber, who is a cute recent convert!  I love hanging out with her.  We got Asian food which is a little hard to find good Asian food in the south, but that's okay. It just makes it even better when we do get it!  Later that night we went over to our lovely Son Light Baptist Church and helped them with AWANA.  It's a thing they do very Wednesday night for the kids. We got to help them with their games.  At one point we did tug o' war, and they got me and Sister Murri to go against each other.  They made their bets as to who would win, and wait for it...... Yes that's right, folks! I won!.... That is until all the kids ganged up against me and helped Sister Murri out.

Saturday was a pretty fun day!  We had stake conference, and it was really good.  Sister Griffin spoke about Satans D's, which are doubt, distraction, discouragement, disobedience, and depression.  I really thought it was a great list of ways he can get to us. At the end of it, it was just really fun to see all of the missionaries in our stake. It always brightens my day to see other missionaries! :)

The next day we had the rest of stake conference.  We were so lucky, and our ward choir got asked to sing in it!  I always love singing with the choir, but it wouldn't be possible without our awesome choir director, Sister Turvaville!  I just love her!

I hope y'ns have a great week! Keep keepin' on!

Sincerely,
Sister Shelton

The excitement that happens when you find out you're gonna be with Sister Murri one more transfer!

 

The excitement of Cade's Cove! Dis one's pretty!



Spring is in the air! Guys these tulip trees are all over the south! It's becoming so beautiful!

Here's us celebrating our six month mark!



Me burning some tights for our six months!

Celebrating our six month mark with the famous Sister Turvaville!



Music is the Thing that Brings Souls Together

Hey everyone!

So this week has been pretty good.  We have just been working with a lot of our investigators, which I guess is a good thing seeing as I'm a missionary.

We started off by going over to an old folks' home and singing hymns to them for an hour!  It was so fun.  They're all Baptists (or other Protestant religions), but it was really fun singing them songs from
our hymn book.  And we'd ask them if they wanted us to sing any of their songs, and luckily they only said one song that we didn't know, but it was just so fun!  I love that music really does bring people together.  Instead of people pushing us away because we're crazy Mormons, we were embraced in hugs by almost all of the old ladies there!

Later on we saw our investigator Jen who is the coolest lady ever!  She's always so fun to teach.  She really seems to want to come to church and learn more.  This time that we came to see her we got to meet her husband!  He's a really cool guy!  We had a really entertaining conversation with him.  He doesn't seem to like the church much, but hey, who out here does?  So, it was fun getting to meet him.  It's so funny, too!  She's gotten a call from him a couple of times in the middle of our lessons with her, and she'll stop for a minute to take the call, and at some point in the call you'll hear her say, "I'm just here visiting with my Mormon girls......  My Mormon missionaries." Haha!  It's great!

Later on we got to go see our new investigator, Harley!  He is so cool!  He got in a really bad car accident about a month ago, so he's just stuck in bed with pins in his leg.  It's crazy, every time we go over to his house it's packed full of people, so we are always teaching with people moving things around and people constantly walking in and out of Harley's room. And then we'll have to pause for a few minutes while someone comes in to help him change his bandage, but even with all of the chaos, the spirit is still so strong.  Harley is a spiritual giant, and he's not going to let anyone get in the way of his following God.  We were even able to soft commit him to baptism! We can't get a solid date with him for a long time because he won't be able to be baptized with his leg so messed up, but he's willing, and the best part is that not only is he willing, but you can tell that he just gets it!  He understands the priesthood and the great apostasy, which nobody in the south ever seems to get!  But get this, at the end of the lesson, Harley's friend, Cameron, came in and told us that the next time we come over, he really wants to be there for the lesson!  Oh yeah, and then we jammed out to their improv guitar music, but that's just life as a missionary. NBD....

I think the best part about teaching both Jen and Harley is that you can tell that they're interested, and they have sincere questions. That's the best thing!  I challenge all of y'ns to do that in your own
life, whether it's a spiritual question, or a calculus question. You're not going to learn and progress if you don't find those answers.  Keep going strong and don't get discouraged!

Sincerely,
Sister Shelton

We made a quilt together. 

These spoons are "cooler" than your spoons! They turn blue in the cold!

Here's our little buddy Gab! He's pretty awesome. Also, I got a new do. #thekingsfashionshow



Our district! Minus Elder Hiener and Elder Michles because they were at a meeting, and were too cool for the rest of us...

The lighting in this picture is terrible, but I just had to send it anyway because this is the blanket blanket! It says blanket in binary!

Do you have the faith necessary for one of these bad boys?

Me and my mission buds! We also decided we'd get some sparkling cider since Sister Murri just turned 21.

Those times you realize you've always secretly been Madonna. Sister Murri may or may not be getting me into make-up.