That Time We All Died

Hey er'body!

This week we've been the drivers of the struggle bus.  Everything was fine and dandy, and then BAM! We're sick.  Yup. Both of us.  We were going about our business on Wednesday, and actually it was looking up to be a pretty good day. We had district meeting, President even came to district meeting and we all got our interviews with him, then we had Quilts of Valor, and after that we were both just feeling so dead, so we ended up passing out, and when we woke up we both had fevers. So yeah, that's pretty fun.

We ended up not being able to do anything the entire rest of the week. We just slept and watched Bible videos, and colored in my awesome coloring book, and read the all the scriptures, which hey, those are all great things, but guys! I just wanted to be out saving souls! Instead I was stuck inside saving my body.... Or more like saving other people's bodies. Ours were already gone. There was no coming back for us. We were already burning. With fevers!

But hey, good thing the atonement is real, and we'll have resurrected bodies someday.  I'm looking forward to that!  But really though, some good things still happened.  When we first got sick, we needed the help of someone, so we called up Sister Beal to be our mom for a little bit, and it was just so cool because she came over to save us, and she said she'd been needing to feel like a mom, and coming over to help us was just what she needed.

So, there you go guys.  There is your spiritual thought for the week. Allow others to serve you because anyone who's ever done service knows that serving others makes you feel better, so let someone feel better by serving you.

Sincerely,
Sister Shelton

#faithwalking

Hellooooo theeeere everyone!

This week, like all the weeks of my mission, has been a good one. Remember my last email when I said we went to see Harley in the hospital three days in a row?  Change that to four.  After our
awesome P-Day adventures, we went and had dinner with a cute girl in our ward, Amber, and then we went to see Harley with her.  We were planning on going to see someone else, but we felt like we should hang out with Amber, and the person we were going to go see can be a little difficult.  We knew Harley would like a good surprise visit, too, but I think this last visit was more for her than him.  Let's just say the spirit does miraculous things. ;)

We also got two awesome new investigators this week.  Jamie, who we tracked into and is so sweet and is happy to have us come back, and Austin, who has been coming to church with his girlfriend for awhile. Not much to report on them, yet, but I'll keep yn's updated. ;)

On Thursday we got to do something really cool!  We started a Book of Mormon study class!  It's sooo fun!  I just can't get over my excitement for this class. It's for anyone who wants to come every
first and third Thursday.  It was pretty small this time just because it was the first time, and there wasn't much of a way to advertise since we had conference, but that's okay because the people who did come loved it, and we know more people will come.  It was kind of a test run this time, but from the looks of it, it seems like it's mostly just a discussion that we initiate and lead on the way. We read
over all of the stuff that comes before the actual Book of Mormon, like the testimonies and title page and all of that good stuff!  We talked about the books in the Book of Mormon and where they all
came from and all of that fun stuff, and the importance of reading it and finding out for yourself to know if it's true.  If ya'll want to read along with us at home and email me your thoughts, that'd be
awesome!  Next time, the first couple chapters of Nephi!

A few weeks ago when Harley came to church we were passing along our meal calendar, and Harley saw it and asked, "Do you have to be a member to sign up on that?"  We were happy to give it to him, and he's been so excited for this big barbecue he's been wanting to throw for us and all of his friends.  So, Saturday we got to finally go to it!  It was so fun!  We all just hung around and enjoyed each other's company.  He and all of his friends just jammed out, which is a very normal occurrence over there, and we loved it!

Anyway, I love all a yn's; keep living the gospel!  It's the way to be!

Sincerely,
Sister Shelton

P-Day Sun Sphere adventures!
 

 Hey guys! Look what musical came to town!

The beautiful Knoxville Theatre on Gay Street!

 

Those times Dee surprises you and comes back for a visit!
 

 This is a cake Harley made just for us when he had his barbecue!

Harley also gave us each this cute little cross.
 

 

And then he came to church! Wow.... He must be obsessed with us or something.... But then again, we're obsessed with him so who cares?!
 

Harley's Mom on the spoons, Cameron singing, and Harley on the guitar. This is pretty much how it always is when we go over there. :D
 

Quotes of the week:

Harley: I just want to be able to remember Jesus all the time, so I'm thinking of getting a Tree of Life tattoo.

Sister T: Verily verily, I have spoken from the book of Sister T first chapter third verse.

Me: I want him to live in my basement.
 

That One Weird Week of General Conference

Hey er'body!

This week has been quite the adventure.  On Wednesday we had exchanges, and for the first time in my entire mission, they finally let me stay in my area for the day! Woohoo!.... (Even though they almost had me go over to the other area and I had to tell them....) but it was so fun! Sister Sulivan came over here, and it was packed full of fun!  We first went over to see Carol, a less active member.  We taught her all about temples, and oh my goodness, does she want to go!  Right as we were leaving, we heard something in the distance. The ice cream truck!  We went and hunted it down!  It was kinda interesting, when we got up there, the ice cream man called us sisters, and nobody who doesn't know us knows to call us that. He comes around all the time, so I think he might have talked with missionaries before.  We'd better track him down the next time he comes by.  We ended the night by going over to the Son Light Baptist Church for AWONA, having dinner with the Petersons and having their famous pizza, and going over to see the wonderful Hutchens.

On Friday we were going to go over to give Harley a lesson, but then he sent us a message saying he had to have a surgery on his leg, so we got permission from President to go out of our area and went to see him.  He was pretty happy to see us.  We taught him a few of the commandments, and then as we were talking to him, he said, "I've decided I want to join your church, and I want to be baptized on Cinco de Mayo." Gah!!! Harley is getting baptized, you guys!

We were planning on bringing Harley over to the Beal's house to watch General Conference (which he was so excited to watch), but since he was in he hospital, we ended up going over to the hospital for the Saturday afternoon session and watching it with him after going to Sister Aubry and Weaver's house for brunch and the first session.

On Sunday we watched conference at the Beal's house with the elders. We watched both sessions, and it was so fun!  We had lunch and played some fun games in between sessions.

After conference was done, we found out Harley had another surgery, so we decided it would be best to come over with Brother Copeland and Hinson, and they gave him a priesthood blessing.  It was such a powerful blessing!

It was a little weird that we saw Harley three days in a row this week because that never happens, but if the need is there you've got to do it. Always remember to follow the spirit because it's when you do that, that miracles can happen.

Sincerely,
Sister Shelton

Sister Sulivan and I on exchanges with Carol after we chased down the ice cream truck!

All of us partying once we were reunited! (And it feels so good!)

Quotes of the week:

Harley: You guys are my friends and I don't even know your names!

Harley: Double 0 seven. Sent from heaven.

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.