I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you

Family!

Dad, I can't believe you saw a bear. That's gross. Don't do that. Just say no. It's like drugs, not even once. But really. :) Anyways! Happy Birthday! I hope that was fun! You should send me some cake and ice cream :D I am trying to convince my comp to let us get ice cream now. I can't believe Jessica comes home this week! And Alexis and Elise are getting married! Wow! Tell them all I love them and that is awesome! Congratulations! It's just weird. You all can't have a life while I am gone :)

Anyways, have I mentioned how much I love Sister Weaver?! We have so much fun together! Its ridiculous! Lots of singing and craziness.I have laughed so hard this week. Tears, multiple times :) But this week was crazy good! We have finally been seeing progress in our work! First time really since the 4th! We finally have cleaned up after that mess. Tuesday we taught 5 lessons and placed 2 BOMs. We knocked on a potentials door and we hear a girl on the other side scream at the top of her lungs, "There's people at the door!!! Run for your lives! It's two blonde women!" It was hilarious! My favorite and most honest thing I have heard so far :) But the mom answered the door and let us in and we are teaching her now! So extra good. The only catch though is she believes in...are you ready for this? I don't think you are. Prepare yourselves. She believes in Greek Mythology. :) And she got that belief from the Bible. Something about a Pegasus. Anyways, we are not entirely sure how to teach her. She loves that we believe in prophets though! If anyone has taught someone who has believed in this I would love to hear how it was done :) We had 15 minutes left before we could go in so we street contacted on Main st. which could also be known as Bar st. Or Bar central :) And it actually turned out successful and we got a new investigator!

Wednesday we went to mutual with the Young Women and did Zumba with them, that was awesome. My thighs were particularly sore.Then weekly planning day was particularly not good for my mental health :) We just go a little stir crazy, emphasis on the crazy! And we made cinnamon rolls, monkey bread and sticky buns with Harriet! That was fun! And delectable. We met more crazy high potential people. Summer does get in the way a little bit. You find someone then they go on a 3 week vacation :) The seed is planted though! That is what counts. Hearts are softened and there are many BOM there waiting in homes for the right time.

We went tracting in the ghetto and this guy answered the door with almost no clothes on, but he took a Book of Mormon and told us his O.G. would be very interested and to come back. We are too white to know what an O.G. is and took a wild guess that is meant old grandma, but I am still not entirely sure :) We found a former investigator who just had her aunt pass away and has so many questions and ALL can be answered with the plan of salvation! I am so excited! She is so prepared! She already knows the importance of baptism! It is great! This week we will get to see where all of this is going to go!

Sunday, halfway through Sunday School, church got cancelled. My companion and I were thinking there must have been a freak snow storm ;) But thank goodness no. Just the sewage in the bathroom was..coming back up. Not water, but other stuff. So that was interesting. It might have been a blessing that no investigators were at church that day! And we stole, I mean borrowed, some church movies from the church library. I knew modern day prophets were cool but I had no idea how boss they really were. I have really been enjoying church videos :) I got past the cheesiness bothering me. Then Sunday night, miracle! We had a lot drop through at 8 and it isn't ideal for tracting because people get really mad when you knock on their doors that late. So we just go over and over the ward list trying to figure out what to do. We saw a name of a less active but just passed over it because a couple weeks ago she just got kind of upset at us. But we just felt like it was the thing to do. So we went and it was a miracle how it all came together. But long story short we saw a new painting in her house and felt prompted to talk about it. She ended up letting us in her house and she is going to let us back! I am so excited! It was meant to be! I really do love her paintings. They are just the happy things in the world! I want one! She reminds me of you mom, she likes sewing painting and cleanliness! She is great.

Welp! I hope you guys have a fun time in Oregon and stuff. It is funny how people say Oregon here. Sister Weaver is from Salem. They say it like Or-ray-gone it is funny. Silly Wisconsins :)

I love you all! Remember the Book of Mormon can answer any questions! It is the best book EVER!

Love you more than the Wisconsin has rain!

Anne!

p.s. It has been an awesomely cool summer. Last week with the heat index it was 106, next day in the 60s :) I don't like sweating so I am loving the cool spell

The Fun Has Arrived!

Oh my goodness! So I got a new companion this week! First new companion! I was super nervous and scared. But oh my goodness! We get along! It is almost freaky how similar we are. There is only one tiny difference ;) She's 4"11' :) That's right. No one in my family can ever call me short again! I love her though! We have had so much fun together already!

Anyways! This week! Tuesday! It was CRAZY! Fullest schedule yet on my mission. We said bye to sooooo many people! We had Breakfast with the Greers again and beat our french toast record. The 6 of us had 46 pieces. I know, we are fat. It was so fun though. We finally saw Alex again! So last time we saw her she was in 1 Nephi 20 well now she is in Mosiah 20! Incredible! She is reading everyday! Every time I lose faith in her she pulls through! I need to learn my lesson. She also said she wants to be baptized before the end of the year! So cool! Then we had dinner at the most amazing person. Brother Fullmer. He is a Book of Mormon guru. Doctrine genius. He is the guy who planned youth conference. Anyways little did I know he is an author AND artist. I bought his Book of Mormon book and I will have to send it home when I am done looking at it. It is so neat! Anyways the went there for dinner and they have a parrot who can talk. I got to hold her! So fun. He showed us his art studio and blew our minds with it. So neat, I told him he can't get rid of us. I feel bad though his family is super busy. He is the Madison institute director and wow. I just can't even describe their families awesomeness. Busy day and some tears when we said our nightly companionship prayers. Sister Packer is just a sweetheart!
Wednesday we booked it out of the apartment and went to transfer point. Had to say goodbye, it was sad. There were 5 sisters all waiting at transfers so we went and worked with the Madison sisters and had fun. The 3 of us getting new companions we all were saying goodbye to our trainers and feeling nervous for our first new comp. It was kind of funny. We went and saw they Mad sister's new convert and he had us all sign his BOM and I was the only one who hadn't met him before. He kept calling us angels and I was the newest angel :) So cute! Then the cars pulled up and I got my new comp! It was a slight shock with the height :) But by day 2 we realized how similar we are and just have been having so much fun together! She is the designated driver but I "know" the area. I keep getting us lost :) But whatever, we will both learn. I get so turned around it isn't even funny. I need my mountains.


Sister Weaver comes from the ghetto in Waukesha so she says she feels unsafe with the safety here. But we had a good conversation with our drunk neighbor so she feels better now :) She has seen the Sasquatch gang and loves LOTR. So I love her. And she brought really good music with her. Christian music, who knew?
We went and visited Sister Pink, oh my goodness I love her! She is just a sweetheart! She sent me the sweetest email afterwards as well! She is another one I just HAVE to stay in touch with after my mission. People are just too good to us out here!


The Elders in our ward finally got an investigator at church. His name is Goldie, yes he is as interesting as his name. Our Sunday School teacher likes to go around the class and ask us our name and a question. This week it was what is your favorite summer produce? I said strawberries, others said corn and tomatoes. He said "I love hanging with my brothers here (the elders) and looking at the sweet sisters" Me and Sister Weaver just went wide eyed and the Elders had to leave the room so they could go laugh. It was pretty hilarious. Thankfully the Elders had apologized in advance for anything he said or asked.
My mind has gone crazy this week so I can't think of what all happened. I have been eaten alive by mosquitos. I have at least 40 bites and that is not in the slightest an exaggeration. Nothing works, it is painful.
You guys sound like you are having a blast being empty nesters. I told my comp you need to miss me more ;) You deserve it though. That sounds crazy about what happened in Rexburg! All it was was rain and it did all of that? Wow. That is so weird. So weird. I wish I could see the videos, it just sounds fake. Really neat story though.


I read something really neat this week about consecration. He was talking about sacrifice. As missionaries we sacrifice a lot. But he said if you were consecrated it isn't a sacrifice at that point because you know it is God's will and you know the blessings will be a hundred fold. I love that! It is so true. I am still learning but I do know that I would rather be doing this right now than anything else. It is more than worth it. These are God's children, my brothers and sisters! I will do all I can for them in this short time I have here. God has given me everything, I wish I could give more. I love being a missionary and I love the Book of Mormon. It has the most amazing examples we can look up to!


I love you all so much!


Anne

You know what Napolean, you can leave

That is in honor of Sister Packer leaving :) Haha! She leaves tomorrow and I am so nervous! I get a new companion, Sister Weaver. She looks pretty adorable, and pretty small. This is what you get for making fun of me being short! I am excited though! I have only heard good things about her. It was pretty sad on Sunday because Sister Packer has been her for 6 months and she was just bawling saying goodbye to everyone. We were joking after that she cried 2 gallons of tears. And I was just like an awkward guy not knowing what to do to help her!

To start off I don't know what happened this week. Our numbers were down the hole so not too much to tell in that area. Everyone disappeared so lots of knocked doors with empty houses and no appointments. So yeah, just to get that out of the way!

But we had a good zone training this Tuesday. Most of my district had some problems with the presentation of it, but whatever. We talked about what it takes to be a consecrated missionary and sanctifying yourselves. I finally feel like I am grasping what giving our will to God means. They paraphrased the talk of "The Fourth Missionary" and it just made so much sense. We have all these commandments that we do that give back to God in a sense. Like tithing, we give 10% back of what he already gave us. It was already his. Taking care of our bodies, which were a gift from him, already his. But the only thing we can give to God that he didn't already have is our will in our mind. It is the ultimate gift and it is how he can ultimately help us to learn and to grow! So cool! I can't explain it as well as they did but it was a total light bulb moment for us. Then as a zone we committed to do a 40 day fast. So I am starving! Jk :) That'd be cool though. It is a fast from those things that keep our will from God's or that keep us from growing closer to Him. So we fasted from food for a day and made a list of things we were going to fast from for 40 days. Pretty cool eh? I thought so.

Oh by the way. Awesome family history stuff you sent me! That was a freaking gold mine! Did you know 2 of our relatives personally knew Joseph Smith?!? I was freaking out! And Joseph saw their posterity! Which is us! Say what!? Yeah I shared that with the Brother and Sister Stoll. They thought that was really neat, so did I. I kind of freak out every time I think about how awesome that is! The Stolls took us to this restaurant called Buck & Honey's. Oh boy, talk about fanciest restaurant I have ever been to. I had Chicken Chipotle Pasta. It. was. divine. My taste buds have never experienced that much pleasure before. It was like a symphony of flavors. So good, I probably am going to dream about that the rest of my life. Then they started asking what my hobbies were and I said music. They knew both of us played piano so they freaked out and asked if we could play for them. We have keys to the church so we figured why not. And we played for them a couple pieces. Sister Packer and I did a duet for Zone Conference a while back so we played that, sight read and did a couple others. It wasn't all that amazing but they loved it. They won't stop talking about it. For days afterwards too, they said it is the best worship service they have ever been to. So we had another light bulb moment. We can use this as a finding tool! Getting people into the chapel and then slamming them with the spirit! So we brought it up to our ward mission leader and he loves it! So he took it to ward council and they loved it! So they said make a plan and they will listen and approve it! Sadly Sister Packer is leaving but we are going to plan out an awesome recital thing! We already have some great ideas! We are thinking kind of do they first lesson but in form of music. So start with songs about how much Heavenly Father loves us (I am a child of God, My Heavenly Father loves me) Then prophets (We Thank Thee Oh God for a Prophet) songs about Christ and what he did. First vision and so on. Kind of do a music and the spoken word. I am excited! Hopefully I will be here when it happens.

This week is going to be fun! We get super fed tomorrow! 3 meals! New companion! Maybe driving! I don't know. We will see what tomorrow brings! Wahoo! I love being a missionary! This is a great work and I am so happy to be part of it! I don't know if I told you guys but our mission president gave us a great challenge that was so inspired. Everyone in the mission is going to pray everyday that every area can baptize before October general conference. So cool! So that means every companionship! 124 baptisms! I am excited and ready to work hard!

I love you all! Have a fantastic week! Keep smiling!

Love,
Sister Trent

This party is going to be crazy!

Family!

Wow! It sounds like quite the week! Lots of parties! I'm excited to get those letters! ;) I need more pictures! My sister got married and I don't even know what her dress looked like! Haha! No bad news at least :) That is so cool that you did a family history tour. Way to go! Now go run with it! Find names! Do temple work! That is one of the things I am excited to do when I get home! Speaking of, did you know I have been gone for 3 months?! I am 1/6th the way done with my mission! It is crazy! Transfers are next week and chances are that something is changing. We get the text on Saturday to see who leaves then we find out where on Monday. It is going to be slightly agonizing. Sister Packer and I are getting along fantastically and having more and more fun so of course we are going to be split up! I am glad all the kids had fun. We spent a lot of time with families in the ward on the fourth and I got lots of sweet hugs by those precious little arms :) It just makes my heart melt!

So this week. Oh boy. Where to begin. People are mean when it comes to holidays! :D I love it! We had several Tornado warnings again. We are only slightly paranoid about tornadoes after last time ;) We had lots of great food this week. I love food. Gained a ton but that comes with the territory right? Any healthy tips would be good :) So bottom line, almost everyone dropped us this week or one of us is in the dog house temporarily ;) So that meant lots of time for tracting. Which meant lots of time for rejection. We got a ton of slammed doors and no one would really talk to us. We finally got a little tired of it :) But Hallelujah! Wednesday was mutual and we went and played capture the flag with the youth and it was super fun and good for us to relieve our stress! Then the 4th!

We spent the fourth with mostly members. They were so good to us! We went to Deforest for their 4th of July parade and oh boy! It was good but wow was it long! It was a good hour and 40 minute parade. It was very dragged out. I am sure every city vehicle was in that parade! But whatever! Really good bagpipes. That is one of my dreams in life. I will be marching in a parade with the kilt and socks playing bagpipes :) Oh yeah. We both love bagpipes so Sister Packer is all for it. I know you guys don't like them too much but I still have it as a dream! We had a bbq at a ward members house. Then we went to Harriet's and made cookies with her. All her family was gone. I just love her, she is too good to us! Then we helped out at the museum. Then we went to the Williams for another BBQ and had so much fun! There were like 5 families there and we played tons of games and ate tons of food and watched fireworks. It just was so fun and felt so good! We really enjoyed ourselves! I love it! The kids finally seem to like me! They were yelling "Sister Trent!" So that made my heart melt as well!

Saturday we helped out at a funeral in our ward. It is so neat to see a ward pull together like that in support. Also Saturday we had a really good lesson with the Stolls about praying and fasting and seeking for an answer. So we all fasted together and we told them if they came to church we would bare our testimonies. And they came to church! Wahoo! And it was an amazing testimony meeting! And the sister whose husband passed away this week came to church and she hasn't been for like 3 years and wow! The spirit was so strong and everyone was helping build each other up! We now are going to follow up on the Stolls and hope and pray they got an answer!

Funny story! You'll never guess who knocked on our door this morning! The Jehovah's Witnesses! It was great! We let them do their spill then we asked if we could exchange materials. And they asked what church we were from and we told them and they went blank faced :) It was pretty great!
Well fam! It seems like it has been a good week for both of us! I love you guys so much! I love being out here! No matter how many people say no, it doesn't matter. This is the Lord's work and it will not be stopped. The seeds are being planted and oh the harvest will be great!
Have a great week! Safe travels! I love you a billion!

Love,
Anne!

Will Anne Be Moving?

Necklace from my daddy

I just really love pavement

Curfew?

Kids and fire

It's stache time!

S?  W?  Either one.  Same amount of sense.

Hi.

So many games possible with a good length of pvc.

Game time

Ring around the rosie

Best time for pictures: eating time!

Possible goodbyes for lots of us

The sky was really that red

Did You Not Tell Them They Were the Lord's Chips?

Dearest Family!

Wow! It sounds like this week is going to be super exciting! I think there ought to be an activity in there called missionary writing time :) Yeah? I love letters! *cough cough* And pictures! I expect a bunch of pictures of all this stuff going on! I am slightly sad to be missing all of it but I am more than happy to be out here serving the Lord! The couple in our ward is not married yet, it is going to take a little bit of time. It was a rather rough week last week and it kind of bled over into this week. We started out and I have no idea where our teaching pool went. They disappeared and dropped us. So we worked really hard this week! We contacted a lot of formers and tracted a ton because we didn't have many teaching appointments.

Tuesday was actually really good. We started of our day by having ice cream with a less active youth in our ward, Meghan. She decided quite a while ago that church just wasn't for her. This last week they had a youth conference though that she went to. It sounded quite amazing and I can't believe I have never heard of anything like it before. This man in our ward planned it and he is brilliant! The idea was to do something like the pioneer trek but for the Book of Mormon. We do treks to remember our heritage and make it more real. He made the Book of Mormon come to life. It changed so many youth's lives! They did the iron rod, realistic Book of Mormon battle sequences and Christ coming to America. The most amazing thing was the Christ coming to America. They had the youth blindfolded and led blindly to this wall/amphitheater thing. They had a 15 minute audio presentation of 2 Nephi 9 and 10 with the storms and winds over loud speaker. Then they had the kids take of there blindfold and this man dressed like Jesus was on the wall and we stretched forth his hand and all the youth just went to him. Apparently the make-up artist transformed him. Also the man in charge had him act very precisely as Christ would and it was just beautiful. All the youth and adults there are just raving about it. So while Meghan was there she had this feeling and like she said she felt like she was slapped with the feeling that she needed to read the Book of Mormon! And she is! She has been coming to church for 2 weeks in a row! So cool! Then we met with our investigator Dominique and wow. It is going to be interesting to see where that goes. Bottom line we were worried she'd either be at our next appointment or in jail :) Don't really know what to do with her! She is coming to church next week though!

Wednesday we went and helped Marie and this is the 2nd week in row she has read from the BOM and received an answer by searching. It is pretty neat. We were working really hard all day to place a BOM and we just couldn't find one! We were going to a dinner appointment that we knew would take up the rest of our night. We go to the dinner appointment and she suggested we knock on 2 of her neighbors doors! It is 8:50 and we knock on the first door. Not interested, wouldn't even take a card. Knock on the 2nd door and it is 8:58 and he took one! Wahoo! It was so cool! I got in the car and man, it was too much anxiety for me haha! I don't like cutting it that close but the Lord always pulls through!

Thursday was weekly planning and oh boy. I just go crazy! My body is not programmed to do one task for that long haha! We went to the Schroeders for dinner and oh boy! I just love them! We have such good conversations at their house. He is a Marine and is a sniper for them so he has so many crazy stories. He lived in Hong Kong with his sister for a year and that is actually where he was converted and the day after he was baptized he went sailing the route Marco Polo went and got chased by pirates. And of course I feel for his missionaries because he ups and leaves after baptism and they are freaking out hoping they don't lose him! But obviously he has stayed strong in the church. She is super cool too! She went on her mission in Italy and has a ton of cool stories too. I want to be their friend after my mission so bad! I am pathetic. Anyways we are actually going to their house today and doing laundry and hanging out there, that is why I am so early on the computers. We were contacting formers and we went to this house and the lady had moved but the lady who moved in took a BOM and scheduled with us the next day at 8 am! It was awesome and she was there! She has 3 kids under 2 so I was feeding them pass-a-long cards as Sister Packer taught ;) Sometimes that is why you have companions.

I don't know if I told you this but we had a church head quarters referral last week and we went there and the husband is catholic and the wife used to be a mormon. They weren't interested but invited us over to dinner this week. It was so fun. We found out she had us over because her birth daughter is a missionary too! And we found out a funny story about last week when we knocked on their door. We went walking up to the door when we heard a phone call. We didn't want them to pulled away by a call so we waited for like 2 minutes and we didn't knock but the husband came to the door anyways. Turned out the phone call was from their neighbor telling them it was the sister missionaries :) They call her their "Mrs. Crabtrees" (sp?) from Bewitched because she calls them anytime anything happens in the neighborhood. It made me laugh :) And it happened AGAIN that we had only ten minutes left in the day yet someone still magically appeared right before the end to give a BOM to! So cool!
So apparently missionaries out here get lots of naked people stories. We got our closest to that this week. We were knocking on doors and the first one we knock on it takes a while for the lady to get to the door. When she does she just kind of bursts out and comes outside. She has a button up shirt on that is not buttoned up...with nothing on underneath. And she is just holding it shut! It was sooo awkward to talk to her while she is doing this! Then she does up 1 button! Which is like the bottom button, so it isn't doing much good. She took a Book of Mormon though, so thats good! And to make it more awkward, she just walked into the computer lab we are in right now and we helped her with her computer haha! So funny!

Sunday was great! We had an amazing talk in church about gardening! You would have loved it! He talked about how you need good dirt and a fence to protect from the bunnies and deer and how you need to tie the fruit to something so it grows up. And he compared it beautifully to our spiritual life. How we can stand in holy places and build our defenses and tying ourselves to God. I wish I could get a copy of that talk! So good!

So bottom line of the week, it was hard but the Lord came through and blessed us beautifully! We found 5 new investigators! Which neither of us have ever found that many people before! The power of the Book of Mormon is just blowing my mind! Everyday I have so many miracles to be thankful for! I love being a missionary! It is just the best! I wouldn't trade it for anything! I have been reading the Ensigns like crazy! Sunday I had like a mind over load and now I just can't read anything, my mind is just burnt out! So many good things. I keep having conversations and I will say "I read something really cool about that! I don't where, I have read a ton of things lately but it was good!" And Sister Packer will just laugh. They had us get rid of board games so during every meal we would play Yahtzee as a stress reliever and now I just read enisgns. It is crazy. My mind hurts though I am gonna have to take a little break :) So sorry is this letter makes no sense my mind hurts :) But man! I wish I would have taken more advantage of these magazines! Thanks mom and dad for always making them available! I wish I would have read them more! I figured I have been binge reading them just like how I binge watch my TV shows, can't stop until I have read em all!

I love you all! I hope you have a fantastic week with the family this week! Give everyone hugs for me! I love them all and miss them! Have fun for me! Keep reading the Book of Mormon through all of the craziness! It will be your refuge of peace I promise! The Lord provides miracles when we read, I see them everyday!

I love you infinity to the power of infinity!
Anne

Anne the Cooking Missionary

For you dad, this guy at the nursing home dragged me to his door to see his fishing treasures :) I thought you'd appreciate it

I made this, from scratch. The crust, filling everything. Of course only with Harriet's help :)

Us saying goodbye to Ziamara, one of our recent convert's kids.  She had to go back to her dad's house in Arizona.

Ziamara!

Us making smores over the stove! Sorry this is all the pics! I didn't take many! Next week!

It's gourmet