Half Way!

Hey guess what! Can you believe your two rascal of missionaries are half way! It's crazy to think about, time can go quickly. I'm really enjoying my last few weeks with Sister Sandstrom I don't know if I'll ever have a companion like her again. Sorry Tucker hasn't written for a while, that's really hard. I hope he's doing okay, I know though that the experiences he is having will shape him and make him stronger. I miss him a lot but know that I will get to see everyone really soon.

So here's a story for you. We had exchanges last week. When I met up with sister Sandstrom again I notice she had a cut on her hand. I asked her what she did. She told me not to worry about it. I continued to press and she finally said "I was bit by a dog" I looked at her and thought she was kidding but she wasn't. I asked her if she was okay and she said yeah but the dog drew blood. She said that the dog was all nice and letting her pet it and then when she stop it jumped up and bit her. I said so was it a big dog? She kind of smirked and said quietly ... it was a chihuahua. I started laughing. "you let a rat bite you? you're for sure going to get rabies! So the next day I asked Sister Eubank what someone should do if they are bitten by a dog ( now I'll admit I probably should have told Elder Eubank first) my companion glared at me as sister Eubank inspected her bite and told her to find out if the dog had it's shots. She then proceeded to say that if the owners wouldn't tell her we would call the cops. haha that scared her. In the end the little rat was okay but it makes for a good story. :) I tease her occasionally that she has rabies from a Chihuahua.

We had a really awesome experience this week. While we were making calls in the referral center one of the sisters had an incoming call. It was a member who wanted to refer his friend. The problem was that his friend lived in Vietnam, and there aren't missionaries there. So the sister suggested that the online sister chat with him. So he got our email and sent it to his friend telling him about us. The man's name is An Ho and he is so great! Because of his friend Mike he wants to know all about the gospel. He said that he basically wants his family to learn more about prayer and how the gospel can help them in their lives. He is so willing to do anything to meet with us. Because of the time difference it's been a little hard but when we sent him an email telling him we would love to meet at 8 am he thought we meant our time so he said he would be more than willing to meet at 1 pm his time. It was crazy. When we did meet with An Ho and his wife they were so great! They kept say Yes sisters and thank you so much sisters. He has two little boys and he want them to learn from us too. We were dying because we want to teach them in person. We have been working SO hard to find missionaries to teach them in their area because they are golden they are so ready for the gospel. The other problem is as far as we know there isn't a church very close to them theres one in Thailand but that is just to far away! Sometimes we take for granted how blessed we are to have the gospel and to have everything so close to us. We are going to continue to teach this amazing family and hopefully we can at least find a worthy priesthood holder in their area who can baptise them. I think that even before they have taken all of the lesson they feel this is different and that it can really make a difference in their lives. I am so grateful for the gospel and how much it does make a difference in our lives. Our families can be together forever, we can return to our eternal family, we have purpose in our lives and know why we are here. This is God's Church and he will help all those who come to him.

Aloha

Aloha!

Hi family, things here are going well. We got to spend a good day at the PCC. I think I've been to most of the shows now. That was nice of Sister Sandstrom to send a letter home. We have become really good friends. I told her I'm going to set her up with Tucker when they both get home and then she can be my real sister. :) haha I sent a letter to her parents a while ago and they are so sweet now they are sending me letters :) Her brother had the idea to have Christmas in December so were getting a lot of Christmas cards. :) As we have grown really close we have talked a lot about our families.

We now have pad mates, a very sweet Japanese and a Tongan. They are so funny! We love them.

We have had some great experiences this week on chat. There were a couple of people who deeply wanted to learn more about the church but because of family difficulties were unsure of how to proceed. It made me really sad to think that there are people out there who are so hard hearted that they won't listen to their loved ones and allow them the opportunity to learn more. Even more sad is to think that you could be married to someone whose religious beliefs are so completely different. It happens all the time where a couple comes into the visitor center and they have completely different beliefs and you can tell that God just isn't very important. If nothing else my mission has taught me how important it is to understand the relationship we have with God. If we understand God then we can understand why he asks us to do certain things. We can better understand his plan for us. We have been using a really good scripture with our guests in the VC its 2 Nephi 26:27-28. We all have the same opportunity to be with God again, he wants all of us to follow him. I'm grateful for all that he has done for His children and all that He will do.

Mini Missionaries

Talofa!

Sounds like things have been going really well. That's neat that you got to meet Elder Perry! I'm glad I got to meet him here or I would have been pretty jealous. Especially because you seem to have had more general authority visit the ward in the past 9 months than I have seen my whole life. :) I'm so glad that you got to play with you scum group, those were always good memories when all your friends came over and me and Tucker hid in the basement or played with the Sargent's. How is Mackenzie doing by the way?

Things have been fairly slow here which is sad because it's summer there should be a lot more people. Hopefully by the end of this month our guest number will rise. It was pretty great though because we have a goal to get 300 referrals in the visitor center and we finally hit it this month! It's been since October that we hit it last. President said that he would buy us pizza if we would do it again this month. He is pushing us really hard he really wants to hit 1000 baptisms this year and the way he's pushing us I'm sure we'll make it. That will be exciting. Things are changing all over the world in missionary work, sounds like preach my gospel DVD's are being emphasized, next month when we get new missionaries they won't have been taught the lessons. So it will be the trainers job to help with that. They will have longer comp. studies and they will be together for at least two transfers. This month they are also doing mini missionaries, which I hadn't really heard of before, but sister Anderson is doing it in Denmark as well. Young people from 17-21 are being invited to spend either a week or weekend with missionaries. We get to show them what a missions will be like. I'm not sure if the Visitor Center sisters get to participate but it should be interesting.

While on exchanges this week we got to eat dinner at a members house, they fed us real Tongan food, it was different but not bad (it was chicken, lu, taro and rice). One of the women told us she decided to serve a mission because she went on exchanges with a missionary. She said they went to this house that if she had known it was that house she wouldn't have gone. A little boy had previously been killed by the mans dogs and she did not want to go. The sister said we have to there is a 16 year old boy who wants to hear our message. When they approached the door the father was really upset and let all four of his huge dogs out! The sisters moved to the middle of the yard and realized they were in trouble the sister missionary grabbed this woman's hands and told her to close her eyes and say a prayer. When they had finished they looked up and all four of the dogs were lying in the grass. The man came out and asked what they did to his dogs! They never acted like this, he accused them of killing them. The 16 year old then came out and said he was going to listen to the sisters. It was a really amazing story and because of that this woman served a mission in Utah and had so many more miracles happen to her that were so fun to hear. Miracles happen to us every day and sometimes they go unnoticed, but when we ask for help God is always there for us. So with this experience in mind it will be neat to see how many young people who come on mini missions will be affected.

I love this work, and even though it's challenging, and not everyday is a great one I am very blessed and the experiences I'm having now will last a life time.

I hope you all had a great fourth of July weekend, they really did ban fire works here so it wasn't as lively as new years eve. We still had hot dogs and performed some island dances one of the senior sisters taught us- lets just say have you ever seen a crazy Korean with a poi ball. Hahah talk about funny.

I love you all, wouldn't mind some more letters but I understand things get busy. Oh by the way the only time for us to email is from 3:30-6 unless we find out where the computers are on BYU. So sorry it will be a bit late for you when you get them.