December 12, 2019

(Elder Petersen)

Monday

               Well today was our P-Day so we went with our District and played some laser tag after that we bowled for about half an hour and then went home. Once our P-Day ended we knocked on a few doors of people that were formally taught.

Tuesday

               We had service today and then after that we did a lot of texting until dinner. Then we went by formers and member visits until we went home. One of our member visits was pretty cool actually because we met with them in an old church building of ours that was renovated into a bed and breakfast.

Wednesday

               Today we had District Council where we learned how best to use scriptures in our teaching. After that we knocked on a few formers doors had dinner with an awesome family, they were the Smiths and they fed us spaghetti.

Thursday

               Today we had Back to Basics meeting basically just to teach us what we should be teaching investigators, and the basic idea of this was to bring our teaching back to only the basic principles of the Doctrine. After that we went and knocked on a few formers doors.

Friday

               Today we Huddled with Elder Waldner and discussed the missionary work that we had both been doing in their stake. After that we visited a few people and then had our weekly planning where we discussed what we would be doing to help the people that we are teaching come closer to Christ.

Saturday

               Today we had a non-member lesson with Heather that went well. She is on date and she will be interviewed this week to prepare her for baptism.

Sunday

               Today we had meetings from 10:30 to 5pm after that we had dinner and knocked on a few more formers doors. Then we went to bed.

A WONDERFUL WEEK

(Hermana Ellsworth)

This week was full of so many miracles and tender mercies. We are teaching a woman named Jaileen who will be baptized this next Saturday and she has become one of my best friends here in Humacao :)  She Recently went to New York to visit the visitor center for the Temple :) She has such a strong testimony and is one of the sweetest people in the world. I LOVE JAILEEN!!

I also got to go down to Guayama last week to do an exchange with the amazing Hermana Blackhurst and that was such a fun experience because Guayama was my first area and we got to walk around with Luis that I got to teach one lesson to before I was transferred who was baptized!! 

I feel incredibly blessed to be serving a mission and being a missionary at this time and in Puerto Rico. I have never felt so close to my Heavenly Father and felt so much joy before and it just keeps getting better! Also look at this cool thing we found.

My companion is still just a wonderful human being and we are working on being exactly obedient in everything and it is flooding us with miracles. We had a very food filled thanksgiving and ate 4 meals in 4 hours... it was just painful... But my father decided to send me a picture of their scorpion turkey and i have no words.. #whoiscraig

I guess we could do an emergency transfer

(Sister Slade)

So we got a call on Saturday night. It was President Strong. He told us that there was a sister that needs to go home for a medical emergency which requires some moving around of some sisters. So last night we drove to Springfield Missouri. Sister Faleafa was moved to Mountain View Missouri and Sister Jelderks came back to Fayetteville with me. And now you understand the title of my email. Interestingly enough, sister Faleafa and I have each been part of 3 emergency transfers during our mission.

Fun fact time: sister Jelderks and I are both from Colorado. We both have the same first name. We are both super nerdy and logical people. We're both super neat people and like things to be clean. I have a feeling this companionship is going to work well.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving! We had 3 dinners Wednesday and Thursday. Too much turkey.

I can't really think of anything else that happened this week because I spent 6 hours driving last night.

God is good!

Sister Slade

Pictures

1. I got to see sister Brown when we had an ET!

2. Last picture with sister Faleafa :(

3-8. We put cats in Christmas sweaters for service. They don't look very happy do they?

December 3, 2019

(Elder Petersen)

Monday

               Today was interesting it was my first P-Day with my new companion, whose name is Elder Ladd. We did quite a bit had a dinner with a member family at 5:30 and then went to a few more member houses then our day ended.

Tuesday

               Today was a pretty interesting day because we had service assigned to us but the mission did not realize that our service assignment was closed due to Thanksgiving. But we did have a combined Companionship Study with the Elders who drove us the the failed service. After that we did a lot of tech time to set up appointments for latter in the week.

Wednesday

               Today we did a lot with our technology in proselytizing. We tried to set up as many member appointments as possible during the day. We also went and knocked on a few formers(formerly taught non-members) to see if we could schedule an appointment with them.

Thursday

               We ate a lot of good food and spent a lot of time with members and non that invited us over for dinner. But other than that we did not do much else.

Friday

               Today we had a Multi-District Council meeting in which we met with our entire zone and got training on how to become better missionaries. We did weekly planning and a few member appointments that our ward mission leader set up for us.

Saturday

               We found a new person to teach today as well as did some service for a member. We had a packed night tonight with ministering appointments as well as some how finding a new in the most random way. We just so happened to be being driven around by a returned missionary who speaks marshalese and the door that we just so happened to knock on was of a marshalese speaker who had moved in not too long ago.

Sunday

               My companion was sick yesterday so we did not do much until 2pm. At 2 we went to a meeting with our Stake president, then at 3:15 we had a non-member lesson that went pretty well and after that we went to a Musical devotional that was held in Brigham City that I sung in.

Nov 26, 2019

(Elder Petersen)

Monday

               Today was average until the evening when we went to a pass off lesson from another set of Elders to us. We got so involved with the lesson that we spent a full hour there teaching this nine year old about the commandments and the Word of Wisdom.

Tuesday

               Today was a harder day due to the fact that transfers are tomorrow and my companion Elder Coupe is getting transferred out so packing and deep cleaning took up a bunch of our time. But the hard part was watching Elder Coupe say goodbye to the good friends that he has made over his past 9 months here in providence. He says that it is a bitter-sweet moment and I truly believe that is is and will be for me as well. But to happier subjects our teaching pool has gone up a lot so we actually have something to keep us busy for the next little while!

Wednesday

               Transfer day! My new companions name is Elder Ladd and he is great. We managed even on a transfer day to get a fair bit done in our work which was awesome. We got so much done that it does not seem that it should be the same day.

Thursday

               Today we had Zone conference and we were trained on how to do Ministering With Members effectively. Also we were given an inspirational talk by one of our Senior Elders about how we should never give up on ourselves or our area. That he will never give up on us so we should never give up on ourselves.

Friday

               So today we had a huddle with Elder Waldner which went well. He then took us to a Musical devotional practice that I am in. After our practice we went to dinner and got a lift for one of our homeys who went with us to every member visit that we did tonight and to contact some formers on our lists until it was time for us to go in.

Saturday

               Today began like any other day we had a lesson set up with Heather but she canceled so we did not end up meeting with her but we did try contacting a few of the formerly taught people in our area book. We managed to get to a few of those as well as do some service for some members all before dinner and then after dinner we had a good number of member visits that we went to after diner and after that our day ended.

Sunday

               Today we had a lot of meetings to go to and at the start of the day we we had two member lessons which both rescheduled. Then we did former contacts had dinner and went on splits to get all of our appointments done. Then we went into another fire discussion with a non-member and had another meeting after that. So we are doing good today.

When there's something strange in your neighborhood, who you going to call? Missionaries!

(Sister Slade)

Guess what? We actually got to go out and work for most of the week! And it was a wild week.

On Tuesday Sister Faleafa had to see a Neurologist in Bentonville. Ironically, it was the same neurologist that I went to a year ago. They figured out what was causing the migraines really quickly and gave her a nerve blocking shot and she's been great the rest of the week. Hopefully it keeps working.

On Wednesday we went ghost hunting. Someone we are teaching texted us a d said that there was an evil presence in his house and that he wanted us to help him investigate. We went over to tell him that we could help bless the home or cast it out but that we couldn't be involved in the investigation and that we definitely shouldn't try to speak to it. And then he was like ok and then proceeded to hand us recording devices and heat sensors. The problem was that we couldn't just leave because of various unrelated situations. So we were there for FIVE HOURS. He even downloaded this app (it was definitely fake) that let us speak to the demon (because that's what he determined it was). It said things like bacon, legion, hundred, fear, agent, and objection. The person then said he knew what the demon meant; it was "afraid" of us because we were "agents" of God and we had "hundreds" and "legions" of his angels around us (I don't know how bacon fit in). Anyway, that is where today's title comes from. I will admit that there was definitely something weird in that house and I dos not like how it felt. You better believe I was praying the whole time I was there.

On Friday we had a district Light The World activity. We did service at the library where our bishop is head over facilities. He had arranged for the library to basically do light the world without calling it that. So for Fayetteville's light the square event we handed out light batons that prompted people to do kind deeds throughout the month of December. It was pretty cool.

Unfortunately, sister Faleafa picked up a bug somewhere and has been sick the whole weekend, so there's not much else to report.

God is good!

Sister Slade

Pictures:

 Light the World activity

The library's idea of no shave November

Us at service

 some neat candles we made for light the world

a funny meme

HUMACAO

(Hermana Ellsworth)

I am so sorry that it has been a little bit since I have been able to email a group email but I am in Humacao now and it is one of the most amazing areas. I love it here so much. My companion is Hermana Allred from Las Vegas, Nevada and from Saratoga Springs, Utah!! We lived 20 minutes away from each other in Utah but did not meet until we came to Puerto Rico:) She is a spiritual giant and is helping me grow so much. We are seeing some amazing miracles from being obedient to our mission rules and the advice of our mission president. As a mission we are asked to talk to 10 new people every day for every missionary. That is 20 new contacts every day and we have been able to complete with that promise everyday for these past 2 weeks and now we are seeing some wonderful blessings.

We are teaching Jaileen who is getting baptized on the 7th of December. We were able to go to a members house and have lunch with the Youngs :)  We have some pictures from that really fun lunch. We  are also teaching a man named Tony :) He is amazing at painting and drawing and he drew a picture of the Puerto Rican Temple as his way of keeping his eye on the temple :) 

I love you all so much :)  We had a wonderful Mission Leadership Conference yesterday with Brother Corbitt from the missionary Department of the Church and he talked a lot about the faith that we had in the premortal existence and how we really just to be reminded of the faith that we already had. We are of infinite worth and value and are able to go through hard things. As a companionship we are working on increasing our faith to find the Elect of God who are the ones who will listen to us and not harden their hearts :)

Also my companion had the talk on Sunday in church. .... And when we looked down in her bag after the sacrament we realized that she did not have her talk... SOOO while the other speaker was giving her talk we RAN ALL THE WAY TO OUR HOUSE to grab the talk and ran back before the 1st speaker finished her talk! It was the most stressful sacrament meeting but she got her talk and no one noticed that we were gone for 10 minutes :) So we are good. Its fine, im fine, its fine. :)

GO FIGHT WIN!

Remember to tuck your tail.

Have a wonderful week friends and family!