(Maine)iac‏

GOOD NEWS..... *drum roll* .....we have another baptismal date!!!!!!!!!!! Yulia has accepted the invitation to be baptized on October 17th and we are SO excited for her :) I can absolutely tell that she's been prepared her whole life for us to approach her on her porch a couple weeks ago. She's my age and currently living with her boyfriend who's also one of our investigators, he's just a little more hesitant about the whole baptism thing. We'll get him though ;) we still have to teach them the law of chastity though so pray that it goes well...yikes. If it's their time, it shouldn't be a problem right? 

Next miracle happens in the home of a less active family. Sister Crook and I made a cake to bring to someone because we had some extra time on our hands. We decided this week to take it to the family of the girl who was baptized a few weeks ago but they weren't home. Next, we tried another family and they weren't home either. Awesome. So we were stuck with this cake and we couldn't eat it ourselves because we made it during proselyting time..finally I had an idea to bring it to a family that's been struggling with some things and could use a nice gift from the sister missionaries :) 

It ended up being SUCH a good idea that we did that because the mom was having a really hard day and she said it made it so much better with us stopping by. Also, their daughter that's my age was there and she considers herself an atheist, but she came and started asking us all these questions about God and about our religion in general. We answered them simply and we bore our testimonies to her and the Spirit was so strong. I invited her to read the Book of Mormon and she gladly accepted it! 

Her name is Bre (Breanna) and before we left, we were talking about how nobody knows how to spell that name or something. And they said it would be even stranger if it was spelled with an 'i' instead of an 'e' which is how I spell my name obviously. And since I couldn't tell her what my real name was, I still wanted to stand up for my name so I told her I knew a girl who's name was Brianne and she spells it with an i. She was very confused that someone would ever spell it like that. Sorry
Breanna..

Missionaries not only solve problems for people in the gospel...but apparently we are also love doctors. Two appointments this week happened where they unloaded their love problems on us and we just sat there giving them advice and listening as they vented. SO FUNNY. We gave one advice on how to approach breaking up with her boyfriend (she's in 7th grade) and the next one we had to tell him that she just wasn't interested...sorry Kent. So if you need any relationship advice, you now know where to go!

Yesterday we went and visited someone at a nursing home and it was probably the best decision we've ever made. I LOVE OLD PEOPLE SO MUCH. I've never felt more beautiful in my entire life. Everywhere I went I heard the old people telling me, themselves, or the old people around them how "beautiful that lady walking by" was. They would look at me with the biggest smiles on their faces and I was so happy and I wanted to stay there for the rest of my life. 

I wheeled an old man into their dining room so that he could eat dinner and he sat in the very back. As I was walking him back there, I heard so many of the old women talk about me and I stopped at their tables on the way back to introduce myself and to thank them for their never-ending compliments. One even told me that I looked like a Christian even before I told her who I was/what I was representing. She said we had a nice happy glow about us! I can't wait to go back this week :) the lady that we originally visited there told me she would paint my nails if I came back and visited. Deal.

FALL IS COMIN slowly but surely..the leaves are struggling to change at the moment and everyone is saying that it's been too dry for them to change. Excuse me...I will cry.

Here comes the pain.......we got Tiwi. Tiwi is a box that is on the lower left part of our windshield that monitors our speed, aggressiveness of driving, seatbelt usage, etc. Tiwi will yell at you if you do anything that he doesn't agree with, then he will record it and send it in to whoever is over the Automobile part of our mission. If it gets bad enough, he alerts the mission president and we can get our driving privileges taken away. We were given cards that we have to slide into it every time we get in the car so that he knows who's driving. I've never been more thankful to be the junior companion so I don't have to drive and deal with Tiwi...he's a pain. His voice isn't very nice either! If you speed, he yells "CHECK YOUR SPEED" and it's actually quite frightening. Maybe it'll teach me how to drive so I don't get another massive speeding ticket -.-

We went and did service at an older lady's house this week and when she opened the door, she had no pants on. None. Just a shirt. No pants. We thought she was going to go change or something but she just said "ehh, it's nothing you ladies haven't seen before!" So we had to just deal with it and hope for the best.

ZONE CONFERENCE :) I had my first zone conference this week and it was absolutely amazing. It was all focused on the Book of Mormon and how crucial it is in your every day life, and not just as a missionary. I really wish I would have read the scriptures by myself more when I was at home now that I can see all the many blessings it can bring when you do. The Book of Mormon has changed my entire perspective on life and I have the strongest testimony of the truthfulness of it. 

I ask all of you to PLEASE take a couple minutes out of your day to open up your scriptures. There are verses in there that were written just for you specifically in any situation you're in. I have found answers, peace, hope, and guidance through the Book of Mormon and I know you guys can too. It will strengthen you personally and as a family. Apply the scriptures to your life. Change some of the names to your own,name. For example, Moroni 1:3. Change moroni's name to your own! Or in,Alma 38:5, do the same thing with Shiblon's name. Once you do things like that, scripture study becomes a lot more personal and you get so much out of it.

We also had stake conference this weekend which was also SO GOOD. We had Elder Perkins from the Seventies come and he also stressed the importance of the Book of Mormon. That's been coming up SO much lately so I suggest y'all get on that ;)

I really don't know what else to write..so I'll just put up some pictures :)

Tiwi...

Here's our neighbor Rick that loves us. He seriously lays out on his chair all day long and tans. He always makes sure he says hi to us and he leaves us treats on our porch sometimes. New Englanders are the nicest people in the world, I'm not even joking.

BROTHER SMITH!!! He is our ward mission leader and he's literally the greatest man ever. He gives us like two cartons of ice cream a week along with chocolate, a birthday cake, and popsicles. He loves his missionaries and he won't let us forget it! Whenever sister crook and I enter a room that he's in, he'll start singing "there is beauty all around...." Awe I'm going to miss him! He promised me he'd take me "kayakin'" if I come back to visit him after my mission. oh, and he's so proud of his train thing and he wanted his picture in front of it so that's why you get a picture of brother smith clutching a train

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City Slickin'

Where do I even begin?! This week has been stuffed full of different things, so here we go :)

Like I said last week, we had to drop Dotty. She was one of three of our investigators, but we had already baptized the other two so once we dropped her we had no more. Completely investigator-less. So, we decided to step up our game and try to get THREE new investigators in one week! In New England, that's nearly impossible. People in the mission celebrate if you even find one investigator throughout the week. We decided to stop and talk to absolutely everybody we come across on the street and invite them to learn..no exceptions. (There are some intimidating people on the street sometimes so this was no easy task). Ready for this miracle?........We got FIVE NEW INVESTIGATORS this week! 

One is Maurice who is an older man that was sitting on his porch when we walked by. We invited him to learn when we saw him, then set up a return appointment after he agreed to hear the lessons. Few days later, we go to his house and teach him the restoration. He is such a funny man! He also told us that the day we talked to him on his porch, he saw us walking toward him and said he felt a "shiver up his spine" and he knew we were good people even though he'd never talked to us before. So cool! During his lesson, he straight up said "I want to go to your church this Sunday." We didn't even have to invite him! He is so ready :)

Next is Steven and Yulia. They are a couple living together about my age. I have a weird fear of teenagers and people my age because I feel like they're judging me or something so I just walked past them while they were playing cards together on their porch. Sister Crook, thank goodness, was brave enough to stop and talk about the Book of Mormon with them. Yulia was amazed at it all and asked where she could get her own and how much they would cost. She then wanted to meet that week again to talk more about our church! Few days later, we go to their house and talked about the restoration and they loved it. They now want to meet TWICE a week because they both love learning about the gospel. YES. 

Kent Talmage..oh dear. Haha he's a minister at some other church but he loves missionaries coming over. He's a middle aged man and he's very very open about his love life and just his life in general. He let sister crook and I relax on this comfortable futon bed/couch thing in the shade on this patio while we drank ice cold water bottles while we talked to him about our church. We felt like queens! He asked a lot of questions and we were able to answer a lot of them. We hope he finds the truth soon through his reading in the Book of Mormon. 

Kristen is a young mom of 4 or 5 that we saw a week or two ago trying to carry a big freezer through her front door. We ran over to help her lift it inside then, of course, we invited her to learn. She was very open and we set up a return appointment. Later that week, we went and taught her the restoration and she was very receptive and took the challenge to read and pray. This past week we went to teach her again but she told us that she read about 40 pages without any luck. She was having a difficult time understanding what she was reading and she said she wasn't ready to take that step into religion and commitment and what-not. We were NOT going to back down. We told her to not give up, but to continue to read and that she needs to pray as she reads so that she will have that desire to learn and that she will have the knowledge to understand what she's reading. She changed completely and she told us she would keep trying. She even wants us to come back and check up on her which was definitely not what she wanted at the beginning of that conversation!

Enough about investigators...I WORKED AT A FARM. Keep in mind that I've never been to a real barn in my life. Meanwhile, my companion grew up on a dairy farm in a small town of Wyoming.
In the ward, I'm known as the "city slicker" because of how different I am than my companion..she's a true farm girl and I'm just.....absolutely not.

But I actually had some fun bailing hay! The farmer guy (who we eventually handed out a Book of Mormon to) would send big bails up on an escalator thing to sister crook and I who were at the top of the barn. I would then pick them up and throw them across the barn to sister crook who would stack them. It was quite the experience!! He had a 4 year old grandson named Ben who absolutely loved me. He gave me tours of the barn and always followed me around, it was the cutest thing! When we left, sister crook wouldn't stop talking about how cute I was with him and how she couldn't stop picturing me being a mom and how good I'll be at it. Ummmm okay. It freaked me out for a little while because I realized how soon that was all coming! After my mission, I'm supposed to start a family. Marriage and family has always seemed so far away until now....thanks sister crook -.- 

I had my first dreadful experience with a "basher". It all started a few weeks ago when we talked to a girl on the street. We gave her a Book of Mormon and she was interested in us coming back to her house down the street another day. A few days ago, we found her house and talked to her a little bit. Eventually her dad came out with the Book of Mormon we gave her a while ago and asked if it had been us that gave it to her. We said yes and he gave it back to us telling us that he read the first few pages and marked everything he thought was incorrect. (Basically everything was underlined and he made plenty of notes).

He went on and on and on about how wrong we were about everything and he brought up a lot of bible verses that apparently contradicted what we believed and it was all around just horrible. Sister Crook and I just stood there in shock, nodding our heads at the things he said and being as respectful as possible. I absolutely hated hearing things I held dear to my heart being warped and thrown at me like this. We tried bearing our testimonies through all of his harsh words but he wouldn't let us. We told him to have a good day and we turned around and walked off their porch. He went inside, got a piece of paper, and ran after us yelling at us to come back. I whispered to sister crook to ignore him and keep walking but she didn't want to be rude. He told us that "the Holy Spirit wanted us to take the paper" or something but we told him we really weren't interested and left. He kept yelling horrible things at us as we walked away. SUCH a scary experience! As threatening as it was, sister crook and I agreed that we came out stronger. Nothing that he could have said could've shaken our testimonies of this gospel. 

Here's a funny/embarrassing story...haha so the other day we were walking past a house and we decided to take a selfie for some reason..I really don't know why but we stopped and raised our camera to take it and the guy that lived in the house we stopped by came out and asked us "if we needed anything" because it looked like we had taken a picture of him or his house. We had to awkwardly tell him that we were taking a picture of ourselves and he was truly judging us.

I went to Popham (pop-um) Beach today with a darling old lady in our ward! Her name is Sister Alexander and she's the sweetest lady I've ever known. I've talked about her and her husband before but they just get better and better. We ate at a small diner right on the beach :) I have such a love for the ocean..I'm so lucky to be serving on the coast!! 

A personal miracle this week came to me about testimonies. I've always had a fear of testimonies and bearing my testimony especially being out on a mission. I always thought it had to be long and powerful and eloquent to be a good testimony. NO. I happened to read a story this week about Brigham Young and his conversion this week. For those that don't know, he investigated the church for a long time before accepting the gospel. It took a man with no talent of public speaking and no eloquence to bear his simple testimony and convert one of the greatest prophets. Sharing a simple, basic testimony can bring the spirit to somebody's heart just as easy as a big eloquent one can. Never be ashamed of your testimony!! 

The leaves are changing and the air is getting colder and I'm so excited about it yayayayay :)
I love you all!! Have a great week ❤️

Before the farm :D

At the beach Monday :)

On our 10 mile walk the other day....

Popham Beach ❤️

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*sighs dramatically*

This week was just....yeah. Here we go! 

First, we had to drop Dotty :( it was so so so sad, but she just told us that she doesn't see herself changing churches so we didn't have any other choice. I'm going to miss going to teach her by yelling in her deaf ears and hoping she hears me :(  We will continue to pray for her and visit her occasionally but for now we have to focus on people that are progressing and people that are actually ready to accept the gospel. 

I might've almost died a couple days ago so that's interesting..we pulled up to the gas pump at the gas station and a guy walks over to us to pump our gas and sister crook was caught so off guard by it all that she completely forgets to turn the engine off. He ends up pumping our gas while the engine was on! We didn't realize it until he was done and it was time to drive away. Couldn't we have died?!?! I don't know..maybe not..I'm not smart with cars. Hmm. 

We also met a nice couple that walked here from LOUISIANA. Walked here. Just the two of them and ONE bike and a small tent. They saw us walking around one night and stopped us and asked us if we "worked with God" since we had a glow about us. We told them we did and how we were missionaries, blah blah blah. They know a lot about Jesus Christ and they've spent plenty of past years serving people and teaching them about Christ as well. They said they were Jews I think? But they were completely homeless and tired and hungry so my inner stephanie/mom came in and wanted to serve them the most I possibly could. Sister Crook and I walked the mile back to our apartment, got as much of our food and bug spray as we could get, and walked back to them. They were so thankful and they even took a Book of Mormon! Such a random night, but so much joy came from willingly serving them and helping them. I would do it all over again in an instant!

Before anyone else tells me, I know all about the BYU game! Trust me, the Mainers are quite amazed and it didn't take long for the word to get out to us missionaries (especially me since they know that's where I'm from). Sounded like an awesome game though! 

Three different cops thought that Sister Crook and I were convicts the other night while we were walking around so there's that..I guess some girl in a gray tank top who was bleeding was walking around somewhere and THREE cops stopped us to see if we were her, or if we'd seen her. Poor Kristine.. :)

Oh my goodness so the other day we were walking to an appointment and a guy with headphones in his ears was walking towards us on the sidewalk. (I wouldn't even call it a sidewalk because New England only has random strips of pavement as their sidewalk) but he definitely was trying to look as "cool" as he could while walking towards us which I found hilarious. Right as he was in front of us and about to pass us, he gets this random running start and HEELY'S AWAY. Ya know those shoes with the wheels? Yep..he just speeds away with grace and elegance... I was laughing so hard! 

Oh, and many people from the ward has seen my wisdom teeth video..they did a trivia with the four missionaries in the ward so the members can know us better so I had to give the bishop a funny/interesting fact about me to put into the trivia. The viral YouTube video was the only thing that came to mind so you could only imagine the many people that came up to ask me what the video was called after that trivia. They later found me the following sacrament meeting and told me that they'd watched it!! Oh man!

THE LEAVES ARE CHANGING! My world is about to go from a blur of green to all sorts of shades of yellow and red and orange be prepared for pictures of it all once they're all here!

We had to go two days without showering this week...oops. Our landlord came by and had to rip up our bathtub to fix it so we had no way of showering until he was finished. Thank goodness for perfume?

"No bathing in Bath..ha..hahaha..haha..I think I'm funny.

Oh yes, we gave a Book of Mormon to our sweet Chinese mail man! :) he loves us and always stops to say hello while he delivers the mail so we just took that opportunity to share the good word with him. We'll see how that goes! 

I've been asked to speak in sacrament meeting on September 27th about hope and prophets since general conference is the following week. So...nervous.... it's a wonder why I chose to serve a mission when I get so scared to talk to/in front of people. 

Not much else went on this week..just a lot of lessons and street contacting! We finally have miles back for our car but we still walk around a lot to save them up. 

Oh! My mom sent my companion and I new dresses and lip gloss. We call our lip gloss our "liquid power" or "our confidence". So whenever we are nervous to walk up to people and street contact, we will put on our "confidence" to help us out :)

I've learned something about myself and it's that I am in fact NOT perfect. I make plenty of mistakes, I've offended people, I'm not a perfect teacher, and I'm not the perfect missionary. Long story short, I've had a tough week both emotionally and physically. I've seen many blessings, but I've also seen many struggles and it's been very difficult. I know I'm supposed to be happy and uplifting in these emails but it's especially tough this week. Feel free to send some words of encouragement because they're actually very much needed today. 

Quote: "Never tire from discovering and rediscovering the truths of this gospel." There is SO much to learn and so many ways to improve yourself. Never stop learning and growing!
Have a good week, love you all. ❤️

I saw these at a yard sale and had to get them..best $1 I've ever spent! How could I pass up a lobster like that in Maine? And of course..one direction!

New dresses from Mom!

Cool random picture of the cemetery we walk past almost every day

Our "liquid power!"

Church selfieeeee

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#pioneer

Hoooooly cow..what a week! That was definitely the longest week of my mission so far. I'm currently icing my knee right now and itching my 47382 mosquito bites and looking at my blisters because that's how my life is going at the moment. By Thursday, we ran out of miles for the month completely so we had to walk literally everywhere we went. I should start keeping track of how many miles we walk per day because it would probably break records. Sorry pioneers, you've got nothin on Sister Crook and I.

We were also on our last roll of toilet paper this week so we've had to be extremely careful and ration it out and it's all honestly a struggle..we have no way of getting to Walmart today since we are (thanks to the elders) over our miles now by like 30 miles. No groceries for me this week unless I want to spend my P-day walking 10+ miles to Walmart (which I don't). A new month starts tomorrow so then we'll have miles which means during our lunch break we can drive there and FINALLY get more toilet paper. But no groceries...It's amazing the things you become grateful for as a missionary. :')

We had our second baptism yesterday for Emma! I gave a talk on baptism which went pretty well. I hope she likes short and sweet talks because that's what mine was hahaha. I just love baptisms..there is no place I've ever felt the spirit more than at a baptism. I probably said that about Caryssa's baptism but it's soo true! I'll attach a pic of it at the end of this email :)

I GOT DOTTY TO PRAY!!! it was so difficult because she was so unsure of herself but I was very persistent and didn't stop encouraging her to pray. Finally she gave in and gave such a beautiful prayer about herself wanting to accept our church and for her to be able to leave her other church behind. I'm so so proud of her :) I've been fasting and praying for her to finally accept it and feel the desire to be baptized so let's hope it works!!

Sister Crook and I have been struggling with being confident enough to approach people on the street and invite them to learn. We'll do it a lot of the time while walking to appointments (nothing new) but we let them all go too easily. Everyone here is a part of a different religion or they consider themselves Atheist so as soon as they say something like that, we just let them go and continue our day because we are afraid to offend them or something. A few days ago it really hit us that we need to quit doing that. We need to find the confidence to be more bold and persistent when inviting them and ask them more questions and bear our testimonies so that they know our religion is more than just "learning about Jesus Christ". We decided to pray about it and read through the Book of Mormon to see how the people in there would approach people and what they would say to begin introducing this gospel. We've come to realize that we don't need an exact, perfect approach to bring people to the church. The Lord will place people in our paths when they're ready and even when they're not. Our job is to find out and follow the spirit as we do so! We immediately went out and tracted with that new mindset and we ended up receiving 5 new potential investigators. That's more than we would get in a week! #miracle

We ended up going over to the Youlands three times this week because we just love her so much now :) we walked clear to her house last P-Day to hang out with her, Friday for our weekly lunch, and Saturday to build a brick patio. OH maybe we should call her and ask her to drive us to Shaw's to get groceries!!!!!! She definitely would..wow sister watson that's a good idea :) I'll keep you guys posted. 

We had a coordination meeting at the bishops house with the elders and I LOVE THE BISHOP AND HIS FAMILY. He has a 14? year old son who's name is Nathan. His 11 year old son reminds me exactly like my brother Nathan :( he is obsessed with his hairstyle and he always makes sure it's exactly how he wants, just like my brother. And it's even the same haircut! He has five sons and they're all so cute. They such a "Utah family" with their Nike Elites and Nike shoes and cool haircuts and sarcasm and such. Sister Crook and I point out "Utah families" all the time because it's SO rare out in New England. It's insane how different these people are than those at home! 

While we were walking (wow haven't heard that in a while) to a less actives house, it started POURING rain. Let me tell you..New England rain is completely different than any other rain. It's like a mixture of thick mist and buckets of water dumping down on you and it lasts about 5 minutes. That five minutes is life or death because it's quite possible that you'll drown. When the storm stopped, it was like we just stood underneath a waterfall for a while..awesome. -.-

Since the two of us walk around so much, we've had the opportunity of having some nice, deep conversations. The latest one pretty much changed/strengthened my view of the Atonement. She said, "even if you were the ONLY person that accepted the plan and came down to earth, Jesus Christ would still come down and do the exact same thing all over again." Sometimes it's difficult to think about the Atonement and believe that He knows exactly what you're going through since He did it for everyone that has lived, is living, and who will live. But I'm sure that while he was suffering for ALL our afflictions, he thought of us all individually by name and pictured our faces and saw everything that we would have to go through and everything we were going to struggle with. I'm so grateful for my Savior and his overwhelming love that He has for each and every one of us. 

As dreadfully long as this week has been, there isn't much else to talk about! I'm so sorry that this email is so short. I hope I didn't bore you to death.
Have an amazing week, love you all!

Emma's baptism!!! ❤️

I accidentally left my name tag at the apartment and I didn't realize it until we were about a mile away from home so Sister Crook gave me one of hers to wear for the day. Introducing ourselves was preeeettty awkward..

Elder McMahan gave me this can of green beans (ew) because he knows my hatred for vegetables..thanks Elder McMahan..... -.-

No worries, I haven't changed

Pre-church selfie because baptism and sacrament meeting talk and baptism talk and baptism song solo. We had quite a stressful church day so these smiles are half forced...

Sister Derr served us milk and cookies all fancily (is that a word?) 

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