My Companion wants to kill me

(Sister Slade)

So in mission terms when you begin your mission, you are "born" and when you finish your mission, you "die." The other day Sister Jelderks looked at me and said, "I want to kill you." At this point it's very possible that she could be my last companion and "kill" me.

This week was so good! Nothing too exciting happened, but we did so much and worked so hard. On Thursday we did a lot of service, and it was all with books. It hurt my heart that I couldn't read them. We did service at the public library where our bishop works and got an arm workout dusting over 100 book shelves. Then we volunteered at the animal shelter's fundraiser of gift wrapping at barnes and noble. We were at the bookstore for 6 hours and all I could do was look at the spines and covers and start making a list of books to read when I get home. We did find one book that had 3000 get to know you questions and we went through some of them.

We got to see a lady that lives in a nursing home a couple of times this week. We had made some christmas decorations for her and her roommate and it made them so happy. We also took a young family with us that wanted to meet her and they all had so much fun. The youngest in the family who is two keeps asking, "Go see miss Cathy?" and Cathy keeps asking when the kids are going to come visit.

We had our ward Christmas party on Saturday. I played a special musical number in it, played piano for the relief society's special musical number, and helped the young women in their 12 days of Christmas skit. Now the whole ward knows I'm musical.

I love being a missionary and seeing the light of Christ come into others' eyes. That is what this season is about; the Light of Christ and bringing it into the lives of others.

God is good!

Sister Slade

pictures:

1. Random picture of Sister Jelderks

2. One of the sock monkeys I made for Johana's little girl for her birthday

3. Picture of me wearing an elf hat

4. sister Jelderks and I at Barnes and Noble

5. At the library I looked over and Sister Jelderks was on the ground. It turns out she was fixing a shelf she accidentally broke

6. You see the 5 twin mattresses? All of them were in our apartment until tuesday when we enlisted a member's help in donating them to the Restore.

7. all but 4 of the sock monkeys i've made from left to right they are named Lola, Fred, Debbie, Hal, Norma, Kyle, Fred, Will, Susan, Ellen, and Zeke. (the other 4 were named Mira, Bob, Gon gon, and Al).

Baptism and Boxing

(Hermana Ellsworth)

This week was such an amazing week full of Miracles. Jaileen was baptized and is was such a wonderful experience. Jaileen is such a wonderful sweet spirit and has left a lot of things to accept the gospel in her life. She has started a new beginning here and I am so excited to keep teaching her and learning from her. I am very grateful that I have been apart of her life in this moment and in this time of my mission.

I am also learning how to do some boxing from our friend Nelson who is a spiritual Giant. We teach him how to be spiritually strong and he is helping us be physically strong through some amazing boxing drills for our exercise hour! WHOOT!! We ask him

Everything is going well in HUmacao though :) A wonderful people and a wonderful Companion. With some amazing people that we are teaching! ILOVE THIS AREA!!  This has been one of the most busy and rewarding times of my mission and it is all because the Lord cannot lie and keeps his promises. I love my Heavenly Father

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.