Boots on the Ground

Dear awesome familia!

Wow! I don't even know where to start! My companion is Sister Packer and she is from, drum roll please......Rexburg! She knows Devon and Aleesha! Haha! Awesome right!? She is just fantastic! She has only been out for 3 months, so she just got done with her training! I hope I can be this good in 12 weeks! So likelihoods are I will be here in Sun Prairie for at least 2 transfers, maybe more. When she is done training me she will have been here 6 months! Our ward is a family ward and they are awesome! We work a lot with the members and building a good relationship with them! I haven't been able to meet all of them yet because we had Stake Conference! I will get to that in a minute. We live in a really cute, nice little apartment on the second/top floor. It is small but has everything we need. I will send pics next week hopefully! Our area isn't to huge. It is on one side of the highway but we do drive most places. When we go contacting we drive to a neighborhood and park then walk. We have a car with a monthly mile limit which isn't really a hindrance. We will be fine with miles :)

President and Sister Cutler

Dad, your business trip sounds awesome! There are SO many trees here! It like isn't super huge forest-y or anything but tons of them. The cities around Madison are nice because they aren't packed. We got a little tour of Madison on Sunday because that is where our Stake Center is. We are in the Madison Stake. It is such a neat city. Downtown is mostly just University stuff (not sure what university, felt too stupid to ask) but the buildings are gorgeous! There are parks, lakes and mini forests all throughout the city. It is a huge city but that is because things aren't wall to wall. It is really nice. In 2 weeks when the leaves come out on the trees it is going to be gorgeous! It is still pretty cold. Today it is in the 40s and pouring! It has only been sunny once since I have gotten here! I wish I had more tights! It is all good though! It rains a ton! All day it has been raining. It goes between drenching to a mild Idaho rain though throughout the day though ;) My companion though is super awesome and sweet. She doesn't care too much about primping and what not so we can go outside and no complaints :) We love the rain!

Our teaching pool here is rather...small. We have one baptism date but she seems to be dropping out. None of the investigators are really progressing. So we are working hard on finding! Lots of tracting! We finally placed a Book of Mormon on Saturday! And she said we can come back! So hopefully she will be there! We are also teaching an RLDS family! That is crazy! Their beliefs just blow my mind! They don't believe in temples! So they aren't getting baptized! It is so frustrating! But we are praying hard and still working with them. We also teach a muslim lady who is super hard to teach because she only believes Jesus was a prophet and she asks where Muhammad is in the BOM :) She also won't take anything of ours with pictures of Jesus, so we have to cut out a lot of pictures because of the "no en graven images" thing. It is interesting. We do have a 12 year old new convert who is bringing her 10 year old friend to lessons and she wants to get baptized! It is tricky though, this week we have to talk to her parents, so hopefully that goes well!

Anyways! Work is hard here but I am loving it! Something great about Stake Conference was on the Saturday night session they talked a lot about missionary work. It is so cool to be on this side of things. Something cool our ward has done is they made a ward mission plan and made a big poster of it to hang up at the church so everyone can see it and everyone remembers. Then our bishop issued the challenge to make a family mission plan and to do the same. Hang it up in the house so you can see! And it is all about just trying. Not success but trying because that is all we can control. We are getting a CD around the ward called "The Missionary Next Door" maybe you can find it online or something but you should listen to it. It talks about as members it is our duty to do the social conversion while missionaries do spiritual conversion. They teach you how to set it up so missionaries get blamed for all awkwardness :) It's good! Something cool I learned at Stake conference! Elder Bruce Carlton of the seventy came and he told us sometime when you listen to conference talks write down all the invitations! Then do it! So cool. He was great!

You know that for some odd reason I wanted to tract when I came on my mission right? :) Well I get to! It isn't my comps favorite but we have a goal to do at least a half hour a day until we get a big enough teaching pool! People here are so great! I love them! When they reject you it is funny how nice they usually are! They open the door and will talk to you in their cute Wisconsin accent and we usually have about a minute conversation then they say " Oh no thank you, we found Jesus and we are solid! But good luck to you!" The weirdest thing for me to get used to is our lessons. Because most people don't let us into there house we have a technique to still teach them a lesson. We teach a principle (which is easy) we make a commitment (usually visit Mormon.org) then we ask if we can say a prayer with them. People here will pray with you in the middle of the street! I was more freaked out then the person we talked to the first time that happened! But that is how most of our lessons go. Crazy! But I love that people will do that!

I was actually thinking about the dress and leaning more towards black... I don't know. Do whatever you want to! And snacks are fine to send! You can do salty and sweet! Haha my comp eats like a mouse! She throws so many things away! But it is all good :) The only bad thing about her which is perfectly fine :) I love her! No contention yet! Which is great! We actually listened to that talk today while cleaning! He is good! God is good! I love this work! I wish I could be better, I am trying hard though to be the best I can be! Hey if you want to send any of that BYU-I stuff to me ;) haha jk! We have our tornado siren go off every Thursday to test it. Its pretty cool and loud. I'll have to pray extra hard during tornado season! Haha I think back to a kid when I was absolutely terrified of tornadoes and could hardly sleep! But I don't think I will be like that at all! Even with the hard winds and storms we have been having I sleep like a baby at night. I feel good here. It is home and I love it! I love serving the Lord! It is such a great calling and I am grateful for it everyday! I feel the spirit feel me and I feel Christ's love for others. It is hard to be a good missionary. I am trying so hard to be better and have more trust in the Savior and his atonement. That is one thing I take away from the phrase the power of the atonement. It isn't just for healing from sin. It is Christ with us to lift up our burdens, our fears, our doubts and carry us through them. I would not have the power to wake up everyday and do all of this without the Savior, I am nothing without him. I am just a little girl. But with his power and can be a representative of him. Speak his words to his people. Everyday I am in awe that he will let me. It is all up to me in having faith in him and asking!

Sorry if this letter was all over the place! My mind is all over the place! I am doing well! I love it!
Lots and lots and lots of love!!

OoXxOxxoxXOXo!
Sister Trent!

Sister Packer and me

By the way. If you ever want to send me links to really cool talks on lds.org I can print them off. We do service at a senior center so they let us use their computer lab for free! We do lots of service! I don't know if I mentioned that. We serve lunch here at the senior center and play games and what not. We help at a museum. Most of our investigators aren't too interested or the people who gave us refereals don't want us to "preach" We have to respect their wishes so we start off most of our friendships with service, like Ammon. A couple of them are getting interested. There is one and she is like this crazy cat lady, who is super nice btw but I say that because she has 13 cats! She makes us clean everything with vinegar because she can't do chemicals but she finally started reading the BOM! There is also Sally and we are helping her unpack her house. She is really old and can't lift anything. She is also slowly progressing. That is how most of our investigators are. Very slow. But we are touching their hearts so it is all good :)

Tomorrow Starts Early

That other package stain remover would be nice. Also pictures. I love pictures. I look at our family photos every night! It keeps me going! I love you! Sorry for the over flow of emails! We finished packing except for what we need. We are ready to go except for the fact that we need to wake up at 1:30in the morning....yay.....I want to throw up. But all well, gotta do what you gotta do!

Lots of love,
Anne

p.s. we quote Nacho Libre all the time haha quoting movies is just uber exciting. more exciting then it should be :)

MTC Photo Treasures

My companion and I are almost done serving together

I'l miss this district

We invite

The enhanced diagram

MTC district w/ a Canada patriot.  Sounds familiar.

Sister Madrid

Our new zone

Final temple trip

Elder Gibb being Elder Gibb :) We are going to miss our Elders!

The MTC in Spring!

Final MTC Moments

Dear Family,

Alright this week was crazy and I have no idea where to start! First off, yes I got he package, and thank you! Second go for the dress. If it is a bright blue like my journal get that...or red, I can't decide. And dad that is going to be an awesome bishopric. At first I thought you meant in our home stake so I was freaked out and confused on how they would get those boundries :) I talked to Rebecca again today! Probably for the last time though since I leave so soon! We just did laundry and my clothes are just drying then we are packing and cleaning! It went by so fast! It felt like a super EFY almost. 

So they have a teaching resource center here that they call the TRC. Mormons, much like engineers, like acronyms :) Anyways we received a investigator from them name Kyung-min Kim. We just call her K-min for short thank goodness! She is from South Korea and she is not a member of the church and we had the most wonderful time teaching her! She has the most wonderful testimony and she doesn't even realize it. She feels very good about everything we are teaching her, she totally feels the spirit. She said today that since she started praying she does feel like God can be with her and that she feels special and loved! We invited her to be baptized but she talked about her husband and how she doesn't feel comfortable unless he is okay with the decision. So we challenged her over the weekend to pray and talk to her husband. We followed up and she did! It was hard saying goddbye to her because she told us how much she appreciated us and how much we touched her life! This is such a real and important work! Every person deserves to know they have a loving Heavenly Father! 

Saying good by to K-min

In front of the Provo temple

So Tuesday we had a devotional and we got to hear from Neil L. Anderson! That was pretty sweet. We sang in the choir. We earned from him how to better utilize the BOM. I believe I already wrote you about this so I am going to move on. Wednesday I had my first breakdown :) But it was all good. One of our great teachers pulled me out and I got to share all my concerns and everything then share my testimony with him. It helped a ton! I have never doubted me being here! This is the place for me. It is just such a responsibility! This calling means so much to me. I can't even express how amazing it is to be a missionary!

I have had so many spirit filled moments here I can't even keep them straight. When I got here I would just yell out "I'm a missionary!!" It was just so cool to me. Now when I say it, it is "I am a missionary." A declaration. I am a representative of Christ and I have his permission and authority to preach his gospel. Granted that is still so cool and exciting! As we follow the rules and be obedient, it is so much easier to try to become like Christ! I feel his love for his brothers and sisters! I feel God's love for his children! I just have to be the best missionary I can be so they can work through me. And I know they can and have already. I can't do any of this on my own. This is their work and they are just letting me try to help.

No for the good stuff!!! Haha! Easter Sunday! Oh! My! Goodness! Spiritual exhaustion afterwards! So I was in the choir again and none other than President Uchtdorf walks in!! The spirit just filled the room as we all stood! He was just super smiley! So the whole MTC gathered together and we partook of the sacrament together! With him! How cool! Then we sang for him! Then! He spoke! It was such a beautiful talk! He told the story of the Savior. He compared us to Peter. Before Christ was crucified he denied Christ because he feared man. And he wept! And when he heard the Savior was not in the tomb, he RAN to go see! He became a changed man! Because of the atonement of Christ and his Resurrection! He then became one of the greatest missionaries ever because he feared no man! That was his main message to us. He told us a story of an amazing missionary. He explained he was so amazing because he wok up every morning, looked in the mirror and said, "You fear no man!" He told us that is the type of missionary we need to be! Then he blessed us! As an apostle of God! He blessed us that if we followed Christ and if we kept his commandments, stayed obedient that we would have the spirit of the Lord with us. To lift us up and become a woman of God! That we need fear no man! Then when the meeting was over he came around and shook hands! And I just happened to be in the front row seat of the choir! He shook my hand! He looked me in the eyes and I looked back! And he spoke to me! The spirit was just so strong! Oh my! Then the sweetest thing happened! There is a senior missionary couple here and the man is blind. He went and found him, took him by the arm, said something to him to let him know who he was and took him in a sweet embrace! I just started crying! It was just such a Christ like thing to do! Wow! All day was amazing really. I wish I could tell you everything! We learned so much and my testimony of the savior grew exponentially! It is so special to be a missionary!

There are these crazy trees around here that have flowers that almost look like tulips

I drew an awesome  picture of the missionary, investigator, god relationship and then Elder Gibb drew Trogdor under him :) Haha! Every one thought we were weirdos because we were the only ones who knew who trogdor was! Baha!

Classic

My creeper map pictures :) For you Molly haha!

Ditto

The district.  Seems like someone feels like they've done this one too many times.

Don't get too tan out in that beautiful sun! I'm looking at you mom! Haha! I am pretty sure I won't even be nervous about flying because I have to wake up at 1:30! Oh my! So my SLC flight leaves at 6 and Denver at 9:55. I bought a calling card, but if you don't pick up it takes like a 100 minutes off. It is ridiculous! So be ready mother! Do you even want me to try calling you dad? I should be in Wisconsin at 1:30. And did YOU read the character of Christ? I know it is long but it is so worth it! Did you get my picture for the plaque printed off and good? Did you plug in the tablet to the wall? Try different plugs. It did that to me once and I just changed chords and it worked. I don't know though. I hope it works for you. If anyone asks how I am doing, I am doing absolutely fantastic! I love being a missionary! I am excited to talk to people and share this great message with them! Liam sounds adorable! I love him! By the way, the hand written letters and dear elders are awesome! If you want to help out a missionary, write them :) Really! We live off of that! I love you so much! Pictures to come!
I love you loads!

-Sister Trent aka Anne

p.s. I don't feel like I have a name anymore haha! Saying Anne just weirds me out!

Teaching at the MTC

April 16, 2014

Dear Mom and Dad,

Yesterday was "AMAZING". Probably one of my favorite days so far. The day started off with a lesson with our investigator Jordan. We've gotten him to open up a lot and he shared some personal experiences with us. We focused on the atonement of Christ. We shared with him the parable of the bicycle and Alma 7:13-15, I believe, and we committed him to baptism! (disclaimer: He isn't real but the character and lessons are very real) This is big because the Elders can't even get him to open up :). We are awesome. Then we taught K-min who is very real. She is from South Korea. Her family is all Buddhist but she doesn't know what to believe. She's very knowledgeable about the church. She believes that God exists. That Jesus Christ exists and that Joseph Smith saw what he saw. But she doesn't believe that we could have a loving Heavenly Father. She is worried about her family who has never prayed to God, and she is worried about the people in North Korea who are forsaken and will never hear about Christ if he is the true religion. We told her about the atonement that it makes up for everything. That everyone will get a chance to know Christ whether it be in this life or the next. She was so thrilled and happy at the end of the lesson.

Then we had MTC devotional. I decided to join the choir. Then we found out it was being broadcast to all MTCs. So somebody big had to come, right? Right! Neil L Anderson came! It was SO good. It touched me so greatly. He talked a lot about the Book of Mormon and we did a few exercises. Something I've heard a lot here is that you need to go buy a cheap B of M and study and mark it purely looking for one topic or question. He invited us to look for the atonement of Christ. Something that was really neat to me was his use of the word "we". "We" are disciples of Christ. "We" are representatives of Christ. Are "we" acting and teaching as Christ would? That is an apostle of God talking on the same level as me! Little Anne! We are doing a great work here. I was called from a prophet of God to be here. I'm here to represent Christ, to bring others unto him. There is no greater call! It's amazing. I can feel him every step of the way.

Love,
Anne aka Sister Trent

P.S. After we had an amazing choir practise for Sunday. Something big is going to happen! I'm so excited! My heart is full!!

Family Pictures from Anne's Farewell

Thanks for taking these pictures, Camille.  We'll love having them to remember the day.

Le familia

The parents of the youngest

They are just ninos getting out their wiggles.

The clan minus one [sniff].  We missed you, Abe.

Aaaand... Dallin.

No kisses for a year and half.

I'm off to the work.

My MTC District

Our District! I love our district! There is Elder Izatt from star valley Wyoming, he is quite yet so funny! Elder Crutchfield (tall one) from Pleasant Grove Utah and he is also quite the character, it is good he is out here on his mission, he made a lot of changes. Then Elder Gibb, funny looking one with the glasses. He has Adhd and will not let something go once it is on his mind, he is hilarious! Oh man! We get good laughs. So all of our classes is just the 5 of us. Right now we are also a zone and a branch because the rest of our zone left. So Elder Crutchfield is the DL, the other Elders are DL and We are sister trainers! But this week we get to greet new missionaries and get 8 more in our zone. But for now it is just the 5 of us

New Sisters

The lovely tan of the MTC interiors

"This is me and the comp on our 2nd day, exhausted! Its been long days!"

If you think you're tired on the second day...

Spring matchies

Temple day is a great day

Ah, the stories this fountain could tell

The district

Elders in the district

Sunday, April 13

Dear Familia!

I cannot even tell you how nervous I was to open up my email today! I was dreading no emails! I wanted with all my heart to hear something from home and I had 9 emails! So I am pretty much grinning from ear to ear right now! I am glad you found my shrine... I was a little too busy to put it all together but I figured you would find it. Just so you know, at the bottom of that poster it said "Do you miss me yet?" on the bottom but it got cut off. What a blessing my car worked until I left! I laughed pretty hard when I read dad's letter about that! Also thanks for putting my room together! Sorry ;) haha! 

So the MTC has been WONDERFUL!! Oh my goodness! Literally! Holy goodness! My comp is Sister Goldwater and she is just fantastic! She is convert and has done basically everything imaginable. She is a poster child! So when we talk to our investigators she can open up that trust so easily so we can find out what the Lord needs to teach them. So at the MTC they have people who walk around with gold tags and we can contact them and get investigators! It is so neat! We have a lesson in an hour teaching an inactive member and his nonmember wife! Also all of our teachers have split personalities so they are also progressing investigators. The spirit is so strong in our lessons! We have an investigator named Jordan and we are getting so far with him! He is such a wonderful spirit! It is amazing being a missionary! I love it so much! You can feel the spirit so strong all the time! You feel Christ's love for everyone we meet! Me and my comp turn to each other after every lessons and just exclaim our love for them! We got really excited when we found out we are going to be here on Easter!! We might get an apostle! We are all crossing our fingers and praying for it! EverySunday night and Tuesday night we get some sort of devotional. So last night the BYU Men's Chorus came and sang for us! It was awesome! I think every missionary there appreciated it so much and needed it. It made us feel a little bit like we are still normal human beings! Haha! It's nice to feel that. Afterwards we got to watch a video of a talk Elder Bednar gave a couple years ago at the MTC. It was called "The Character of Christ" I encourage you to look it up. It has to be somewhere out there on the internets :) If you do find it, you could maybe print it off and send it to me? That would just be so nice of you :D (That's my cheesy begging smile btw) 

So we have been sleeping with the AC on and our window open every night since we got here because it has been hot in our room. In the middle of the night though a storm hit and we got woke up by a huge gust of wind and our window being slammed open! Me being me and me being my fathers daughter, I knew exactly what it was and just immediately jumped out of bed and shut it. I sleep on the top bunk though so I surprised my companion by my skills :) The next morning we had a pretty good laugh about that. So in our residence we have 6 beds, but it is just me and my comp in there which is really nice! We are hardly in there it just feels like one long day! I am still working on falling asleep. Last night was my first night solidly sleeping through the night, so that was good. We get to go the temples on Mondays, so that was a nice thing to do today. Except for once the lights turned out in the temple we did as well... It should be a rule to never turn out the lights on missionaries! Just don't do it!

I got my official MTC address it is

Sister Anne Trent

APR22 WI-MIL

2007 N 900 E Unit 29

Provo UT 84602

And just so you know we can get packages and mail every day... :) We got our travel plans already.  I am really excited! We only have a week left here! Our days our just super jam packed! It is rather crazy! We have to take breaks because our district just falls asleep. It is normal though. 

I am glad Dad is perfecting the ribs :) Too bad I'm not there to enjoy all that meat! Haha! It sounds like a fun time with the Quinns as well! If you want to send me those pics as well that would be great, I like a good cry! That is crazy about Sister Williams! I hope she is okay! And Kendra emailed me! That is so exciting! The Lord's work is real! He is with us!

Now I am going to work on sending pictures! Love you all!

Lots of love,

Anne!

p.s. I wanted to touch more on this. Being a missionary is amazing! We are given the authority to be representatives of Christ! We can feel him in the room when we teach! We can feel his love for his children! We are given the exact same calling that general authorities receive! How amazing is that! To become consecrated to the Lord, to bring others unto him and  to establish his church! I have the exact calling written in my scriptures but I will share it next week! In lessons we get so many promptings, we make promises that if they follow these things they will receive blessings. And we get promptings on which blessings they receive! It is so special! I love it here! Well now we have an appointment to get to with Nick then Laundry! I love you so much! Write me! Ask Lindsey how to do dear Elders!

I'm Here!

Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 9:09 PM

I am at the MTC, it is amazing! I love my companion! It is Sister Goldwater that I knew from facebook. I love her to death! She is so good! Our investigators here are amazing! Sister Goldwater connects with them so well! I love it here, my heart is so full! I love you guys! I hope you made it home safe! I am not supposed to say guys anymore...super hard :) Getting used to saying Sister :) I love it here!

Love you so much!

-Sister Trent

Departing!

Before Anne's departure to the Missionary Training Center and into the mission field, pilgrims travelled from far and wide to say their adieu and share hugs, gifts, and well-wishes.  Thanks to everyone who came to show support for Anne.  

She just entered the MTC this week.  We got to see her one last time on her trip through Utah.

Loving grandparents!

Did grandma just help Anne add another specimen to the zoo?

Anne loves grandpa, and grandpa loves Anne

We're *so* on our way

Mid-bite photo opportunities at their best.  Thank you.

Thank you kindly stranger for this last-minute family photo opportunity.

Anne, we'll see you in 1 year and half

Such sweet sorrow

Hug overseer

Some of the best hugs right here

We were always such devoted sisters

"Papa, come with me!"

"I'm here!"

A life out of a suitcase begins

The last wave