The same thing Arkansas!

(Sister Slade)

Remember my title from last week? What did Tennessee? The same thing Arkansas! You might have to say it out loud if you didn't get it. Someone we are teaching told us that joke and I thought it was pretty good.

We've been playing softball on a Christian league with someone we are teaching and the tournament games were this week. I have steadily improved throughout the summer and on our last game on Saturday I actually made it to first base! It was a really neat experience because we were playing on a Baptist team and at first they were kind of standoffish, but they've warmed up to us and we were all really good friends by the end of the season. They even invited us back for next year!

A family in our ward that is super amazing, the Deans, recently had their daughter and son in law who is not a member move up from Florida to live with them. He's been coming to church the last couple of weeks and this morning we got a text from Sister Dean saying she had someone for us to teach and that it was her son in law!!!! Both Sister Brown and I felt the Spirit tell us that he was one of the reasons why we are in Harrison. We're super excited about teaching him. Pray for Lucas!

We got transfer calls on Saturday and both Sister Brown and I are staying. This will be the first time in 4 transfers that I'll have a companion for longer than 6 weeks!

God is Good!

Sister Slade

pictures:

Sister Brown and I doing weekly planning last week

Some fun mission memes I made from a picture of sister Brown

Sister Browns been making a lot of hats recently, so I put them all on

Umm, I think they spelled that wrong

Sister brown and I at service

Sister Elkins painted this for me

A lady bug that was on me yesterday

Sister brown and I playing a duet at the mission wide pday last week

A pretty look out place in our area

Arriving at the MTC

(Elder Petersen)

Last Wednesday I arrived at the MTC around 12:30 and it was a blur after that I got my bag's from at Aunt Jeanna's car.  Aunt Jeanna, her husband Richard, Avery and my cousin who is taking classes from BYU got pictures and then I was taken from them and brought to a building given my tags asked a lot of questions and brought to my residence hall. After that I was brought to my first class of the day not an hour after I arrived. I met my companion and it was not until after 4 hours of learning and getting to know my district of 4 Sisters and 8 Elders. Throughout the rest of my week it was none stop race to this building, race to that building, get to dinner. All through that I got to know my companion really well, he goes by the name of Elder Ogburn - he is great. I have had a great time going to everything from classes on how to talk to people, to devotionals on how you should not eat the holes on Swiss cheese. My teachers have been great the food has been pretty good as well. The best part though is the fact that as I am here I feel as if I belong as I have only felt with close friends and family. A really amazing thing that happened during my week is I found my cousin Austin who just so happens to live in the same residence hall as so I hope we can manage to do stuff together while I am here. I got to go to the temple today Tuesday the 13 the amazing thing about that is that the temple has been closed for the past nine weeks and it only opened up again today. I got to do an endowment session in the temple with my companion and one other Elder who was in our group. When we got to the chapel were we waited for the endowment session to start there happened to be 60 other missionaries there to do a session. I love you all and I miss you terribly but I will be writing next week and the week after that and I will keep doing so until I am back home in slightly less than 2 years. I will see you all then.

Rafael was baptized! :)

(Hermana Ellsworth)

This week was such a wonderful week. We saw a lot of miracles and a lot of opposition. A lot of opposition to the Book of Mormon especially. That is a wonderful book and is the only book that Jesus Christ himself declared to have the fullness of the Gospel D&C 20:9. In Doctrine and Covenants 84 the importance of the Book of Mormon is stressed that we should not "treat lightly the things [we] have received"

This week though Rafael was Baptized and it has been a long process of helping him get over addictions and to the point where he has felt ready to be baptized. He is from Salvador and has lived in Puerto Rico for most of his adult years. He always calls us Hermanitas "Cute little sisters" I love it so much. He is a very special spirit and he doesn't love to smile all that often but when you talk to him you can tell how much he really does love God and Jesus Christ. He is a very humble man with a large heart. I am grateful that I have had the opportunity to teach him and help him take this step. He was baptized by Hermano Toro who is a the most amazing member ever.

This last Pday we also went to a beautiful look out of the Ocean and It reminded me of all the blessings that God has given us. There is so much that he has created just so that we could have joy while here on the earth. I love you all :) have a great week :)

What did Tennessee?

(Sister Slade)

To learn the answer to this weeks title, stay tuned to next week's email.

Hey! Sorry my email is so late. We were at a mission wide pday activity today. All of July we were doing g a fit challenge and then we were competing in a bunch of events. I took first in the 100 meter, pushup, and balancing competitions and 2nd in the 400 meter. Because it was stake against stake and my stake only had 4 sisters, we had to compete in every event to win and all of us were way too competitive.

This week we had exchanges on my birthday, so we had a fun little party with the other sisters. It feels weird to be 20. I'm not a teenager anymore! We also had interviews with president and sister Strong this week. I was kind of annoyed about that though because some guy from the stake interrupted my interview with sister strong so I didn't actually get an interview with her. :(

At district council this week we had the opportunity to teach some old the senior missionaries that serve with us. We taught the restoration to them and I could feel the spirit so strongly as I testified of the truthfulness of the Gospel. It reminded me of why I'm here and why I stay. Because I know the Gospel can bless peoples lives and help them find joy.

God is Good!

Sister Slade

I don't have any pictures from this week. My bad. :(

The middle of nowhere

(Sister Slade)

Sometimes I can't believe how much happens in a week. I don't really remember what happened on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, but Friday and Saturday were wild.

On Friday we drove up to Lead Hill. It's a small town about 20 miles North of Harrison. We had 3 lessons that day which is pretty exciting in itself. At one of them I was able to play and sing Peace in Christ for them. I could feel the Spirit so strongly as I bore my testimony to them through music. Then we drove out to Yellville from there which is about 25 miles East of Harrison. Some members who live there were feeding us, but they live in the middle of nowhere. The dirt road they live on could barely pass as a road. (We actually got a flat tire driving up their drive way).This family has very little electricity, no running water, and they use a bucket for their bathroom. But the crazy part is that they choose to live like that! They love being out in nature on their farm without the distractions of the world. They were some of the most humble and faithful people I've ever met. On the fun side of things, we got to hold some of their piglets and milk their goat. It was really fun.

On Saturday we did a ton of service. At a thrift store we volunteer at one of the other volunteers said that he had been curious about us for a long time. He said that there was a light around us that he's never seen in anyone else and he's wanted to ask about it for a couple of weeks. It was so cool! He asked us a ton of questions and he wants to know more! Then that evening we had another service opportunity at the House of Hope fundraiser. We talked to 20+ people there and probably half of them asked about our name tags and what we do. We had 2 really good conversations where they walked away saying that they had changed their mind about the "mormons" because of our good examples. Service works!!!!

Thank you everyone for the birthday wishes!

God is Good!

Sister Slade

Pictures (we have a lot this week!)

1. I got to see Sister Allison (my MTC companion) for the first time in 9 months last week at zone conference

2. A fun mural

3. Me holding a piglet

4. Me milking a goat

5. Sister Brown milking a goat

6. Pretty picture
7. We got stuck behind a tractor going home on Friday night

8. This note was on our door when we got home Friday night

9. A nasty looking spider outside our door

10. The nail that the tire shop pulled out of our tire when they fixed it on Saturday

New Companion

(Hermana Ellsworth)

Just Kidding I still have Hermana Paredes as my companion :)  But here is a picture of a cute little girl in our ward.

The primary had a lesson about missionary work at church and so all the little kids had name tags that said "Future Missionary" (in English 😂) but they were all so excited to be missionaries and they asked to take pictures with us because they were missionaries too. This is what it must had felt like with the missionary age change in 2012. I still feel like I am this 6 yr old girl trying to figure life out. One of the primary kids told me "when I am 30 years old like you I want to be a missionary!!!!!' I wanted to tell him, "Don't look now but as soon as you are in primary you are on a mission! Life is going by way too fast."

The work in Puerto Rico is going well we are getting rained on a lot and so my hair is always a little frizzy but I love it. It's the island life ;)  I have been learning a lot about patience and the agency of others. I think being on a mission really gave me a better eternal perspective. We are out here doing the best that we can and then there is nothing we can do when someone uses their agency in their own way. The members are doing their best to help us out but once again we are all imperfect people. which reminds me of a good talk by President Russell M. Nelson called Perfection Pending ----https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1995/10/perfection-pending?lang=eng ---- There is nothing like a good mission to make you realized that we are all SOOOO imperfect and we have SOO much to do. But thankfully and I will be Eternally grateful that we have the Atonement of Jesus Christ to help us return to our Heavenly Father.

Everyone that we are teaching is doing well. We have a baptism scheduled for this Sunday after church for Rafael :) he is doing so well and it has been a journey to get him to accept a baptismal date and to quite smoking but he is doing well and I am really proud of him :)

We had someone read us Anti-Church literature in one of our lessons and it talked about some really weird things that "we worship 6 main Gods" an that "morminism believes Jesus Married 3 women" but the part that they couldnt get over was that it said Joseph Smith was 18 when he saw the vision and not 14. Somehow that was the part that really got them that we "got the age wrong when we explained the first vision" We asked them if they read the Book of Mormon and they said no because it was not inspired by God....... But they really loved this other book and they read it 6 times in the week that we last saw them!!!!! 

Anyways, I know the Book of Mormon is inspired by God and is evidence that the Church of Jesus Christ was restored on the earth. I love Jesus Christ with all my heart and I am SO grateful that I have this opportunity to share what I know and to learn more than I ever thought possible :) Please take the time to read from the Book of Mormon and ask God if it is true. Please don't be these people who took HOURS to read something that invited hate and conflict.

I LOVE YOU ALL!! PLEASE DO GOOD THINGS :)

They accidentally played an R rated horror movie.

(Sister Slade)

So this week was zone conference which was amazing. We talked about the Holy Ghost and how we can more fully leave a place for him in our life. It was a really neat workshop. Then President Strong announced that we were all going to the theaters to watch "The Other Side of Heaven 2." It was a surprise for everyone, but we were all really excited. They had rented out the theater for the missionaries, but the theater thought we were watching "The Other Side 2" which is an R rated horror movie. We were all freaking out a little bit. Luckily they got it figured out and we enjoyed the movie we were actually supposed to watch. :)

I can't remember if I've talked about the service test my mission is doing in my emails yet, so I'll talk about it here. So my mission is one of 10 in the whole world that has been asked by President Ballard to do a service test. What that means is that each companionship is required to do 10 hours of community service every week. The missionary department wants to know if service can positively impact the missionary's experience and view of their mission and if it helps with finding. We've been doing this test for the last 5 months or so and I would say YES to both of those. The service we do soften's people's hearts so much and I love seeing that I can make a difference in the community. Since they've started this test I've done a lot better in battling the discouragement and depression that comes from being a missionary. I can almost definitively say that I'm still on a mission because of the service I am doing here and the difference I see it make in someone's life. Please PLEASE look for opportunities to serve others. I promise it will make a difference in your life as well as theirs.

I love being a missionary! God is Good!

Sister Slade

Pictures:

1. Sister Brown had too much fun with the bag closer machine

2. Us at service at a food kitchen

3. I got to see sister Fretwell during zone conference!

4. She took this fun photo during our phone audits