It's so fluffy I'm gonna die

Dear Family!

This week went by fast. Sister Plante and I plan on setting up our own flood cleaning company. We are getting really good at it. We do our service at "House of Mercy" which is a homeless shelter for women. Well we are sitting there all calmly when the residence start yelling that there is water leaking out of the city. So we ran upstairs and the toliet was overflowing and the upstairs was badly flooded. So we turned off the water and called the manager. Which she then told us the worst thing. To make the residence clean it up... Oh boy. They are nice people who live there but boy they have attitude. Of course they refused to do it. Water is still leaking from upstairs and started to ruin things so we go clean the big puddle upstairs so it wouldn't leak down stairs but we didn't clean downstairs. I don't know why we keep getting floods. I think I will forever own a shop vac. I need one. Everyone needs one! 

So we taught Hope again this week. It was a really good lesson. We got to answer a lot of her questions and answer some concerns. We retaught the Plan of Salvation. You could feel the Spirit. So we brought a member to come a couple days later and she wasn't there! It's always difficult going out with members. I feel fine with people reject me, but when we get rejected with a member I just feel so bad. So if you ever go out with missionaries, be ok with rejection! 

So we brought the Elders and a member to our lesson with Kevin, the deaf less active this week. It was a good lesson. I had this whole plan on the Anti-Nephi-Lehis because he talks about how hard it is to read the Book of Mormon because it isn't in his language. So I start telling the story and he already knew the whole story! And before he had claimed to never feel the spirit but he told us he does when he reads! I think I communicated just fine me feeling about that just with my face! Haha! He knows more then he has let on. I gave him a lot of looks and I am pretty sure in the lesson he was told at least 10 times to come to church. For some reason I can be super bold with him. Probably because of the language barrier. I have to say what I mean, plus half of it is facial expressions so I really just show my feelings :) I do feel like I am getting better at signing! I was able to translate for the 4 people we brought. The Elders and Sister Plante all asked for name signs. There is now only one Elder who hasn't met him and gotten a name sign and he is pretty jealous. But the best part is, Kevin came to church!!!!! Wahoo!! We were thrilled! And his interpreter showed up too! (sometimes she doesn't). There was a new family that spoke in sacrament meeting and she came down after and started signing to Kevin! Sister Brabocion, she surprised us all! She has a deaf sister! A lot of people came and talked to Kevin actually! It was good. Now he can't use the no friends excuse! I had to interpret in Sunday School though. That was interesting. We basically just ended up having our own lesson. The teacher, Brother Lebeck tried teasing me and asking me questions but I couldn't really talk I was just in the mode. The whole rest of the day I was just in a different world it felt like. My mind can't switch back and forth too fast! Anyways, there is that! Exciting stuff. 

I made a really good pizza this week. So I have made quite a few pizza rolls on my mission, but then I discovered I like pizza better and the dough for that is the same price. So I have been getting creative and I made THE pizza this week. I got the thin crust and I put Alfredo Sauce on it and chicken and 3 kinds of cheese. It was SO good!! I am a big fan, and quite brilliant! If you want yummy goodness too you should try it. Also Yoplait yogurt has a caramel coconut flavor. You need to try it. 

I had a really good study this week on the family proclamation. I was reading a line from it that just stuck out to me.
"Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities."

If a prophet of God is telling me what to do to have a successful family I want to do it! So I broke down each principle and wrote how I could apply that in my family or a family. It was really good. Plus it has kind of confirmed all that I have been studying in my priority studies. The gospel is true! 

Well I love you all lots! I hope your week is awesome! 

I love you more than I love my brilliant chicken alfredo pizza!

Anne

The work will go forward!

So this week started off not too swell, it's probably because it just was so good last week. But it's all good now. So we thought we would help Hope take baby steps and come to a church tour so we would feel comfortable. We set one up and invited her, she said yes. Then we got a text saying she couldn't and needed some time and a step back. Of course we are in shock and trying our best to stay optimistic. We waited a few days and went back. Turns out the Elders had shown up right after we had and she felt pushed. But she still wants to meet and come to church and get baptized! We are just going to have to slow down a notch. 

We have been having referrals just rain down on us though. I do not know what is going on. I love it, but it is crazy. We haven't been able to contact too many this week though. Some actually have jobs! We don't know how to deal with that. One we met, Elizabeth. She is quite the character. 

We played volleyball twice as a ward this week. It was super fun. There is nothing quite like a ward coming together. I just love the church. It is a great place to be. I made a once in a lifetime hit though! I hit the ball a little too hard and it went directly to the ceiling but ricocheted right into the net for a perfect swoosh! You could even hear the swoosh!

I really don't know what to write you about too much this week. We did a lot of less active work and contacting people we haven't seen in a while. Nothing extraordinary happened though during the week. 

Sunday though as I am sure you were all aware there was a big football game. Tracting would have been the worst idea in the world yesterday. But we really didn't have anything to do. We had 0 appointments. We went to church almost ready to beg invitations out of people. After church God just poured out the blessings. The members filled our whole day! We also had candy and cookies blessed upon us at church too! It was a blessed day! On our way to our first appointment I had the funny thought that this was God's way of protecting us, it would have been dangerous to go out :) The first house we went to fed us lunch little did we know though, they were having a Packer party. So we were just kind of put into the back room with some food and a puzzle. It was rather funny, we did get occasional visitors taking a break from the excitement of the game. Then we went to our ward mission leaders house and practiced a little signing until the Elders showed up and they played ping pong while we shared a spiritual thought. The bishop invited us to Clinton to have dinner with them. A nice steak dinner. He then asked us to visit a old lady who just moved into the ward and we went and saw Peter, the 32 year investigator. 

Gas here is 1.89! It's crazy! We filled our tank for $18! Then at the Kwik Trip they were selling divine $1 pork sandwiches. I felt like I was in the wrong decade! Since when were things cheap? That was funny! I also really enjoyed your letter mom! We have had quite the empty mailbox since Christmas. I am working on writing thank you notes for that. It is a slow process. I hope no expects a thank you before July! 

It was a good week even though I don't have too much to say about it. I have been learning a lot about prayer this week! It has been wonderful. If we put ourselves in the right mindset, are sincere and pray by the spirit it can be a wonderful communion with God. I am so thankful for prayer!

I love you all more than Wisconsin loves their precious Packers!

Anne

The rains came down and the floods came up

Dear Family,

This week was crazy! Good crazy! Perhaps the best week so far! So we started off with a really good Zone Training. I think we all had to get back on our feet after our awesome atonement study. It took a lot of our study time and we all felt lost without it and all that spiritualness. So it was kind of lets dust ourselves off and find a new sacred study for each of us. We also kind of did a refresher on all the new tools we got this year and got reminded to use them all. We have a whole new arsenal. They call it the 1-2-Whip approach. It was fun. But now I have a sweet new study. I reread and study Julie Beck's talk from Women's Conference that mom sent me. It is all about our purpose and how we need to prioritize to fulfill it. So I am doing a new study on my mission not just as a missionary but what I need to do to live with my Father in Heaven again. I was going to add Christ mission as part of my study. We will see. I wanted to buy colored pens before I started marking my scriptures so I will have decided tomorrow. Priorities is something huge I have learned on my mission and I want to make sure I have them solid and in place before I go back to reality. I won't ever have this consecrated time to be this focused again. So at least I can make a reference guide for future me!

Wednesday was a great productive day! We went and saw this sweet old lady who is less active only because she can't get to church. But she always cheers up our day. We went and taught Krista and her kids the plan of salvation. Her kids just loved it and were better listeners and contributors than her. We aren't really sure what to do with Krista. She is just kind of falling apart and won't do anything. Destiny, her daughter, just loved the plan though. She will remember it when missionaries knock on her door in 10 years. Something crazy that has been happening lately is we have been getting referrals right and left. I don't know what we are doing right to be getting all of these.

We got a mormon.org self referral. Self referrals are the best, they are the only referrals I have heard that work. Also typically people request just a Book of Mormon or a Bible but Meg asked specifically for Sister Missionaries to visit her! So we went and taught her about the Book of Mormon and got to know her. I walked into her house and oh my goodness, I thought I walked into Molly's house. She is just like Molly. Her front room is decked out with Marylin pictures and old stuff. She is so funny! She is sarcastic! It's great. Wisconsin people don't do sarcasm but Meg does! She is great and we are teaching her the restoration tonight! She wanted to know more because her cousin is Mormon and she admires how she lives her religion, not just at church. Wahoo! Golden. Then we went and taught Hope too! She is incredible. Every time we see her we can just see her in white 3 times. Her baptism, the temple and the celestial kingdom! Also on Wednesday we, meaning I, did a U-turn and totally got stuck in the snow. Pretty bad. But because of my beast like abilities I was able to push our car out! I rock. So did Sister Plante for pushing on the gas. It was fun.
Thursday was also really good. It's been really snowy so we helped shovel some drive ways. Boy am I thankful for all the warm things you have sent me! They have all helped! We shoveled Beverly's drive way and she gave us cookies and hot cocoa after. It was so worth it! We also taught Kevin. I think signing hurts my brain. I am getting to the point where I know a lot of vocab but I need someone to teach me proper structure. But our lessons still go really well and Kevin understands. I got him and ASL Book of Mormon so now he has no excuses not to read. I got me the kids ASL Book of Mormon. Best buy I have made. That has helped a lot they sign slower and simpler words. We ate dinner at the Thompson's. When you go to their house you have to make a food request. They will only make what you tell them to make. So they made me chicken cordon blu. It was delicious! Now Christmas is official. Now here is where the crazy stuff happens.

We have one church key between all of us missionaries. We had it and the Elders needed it. So we were going to meet in the church parking lot to exchange it. We got there and were sitting in the parking lot when all the sudden the alarms start flashing and going off. It's after 9 and our curfew is at 9:30. We don't really know what to do so we call the closest member from the bishopric to the church and it happens to be Brother Thompson. Basically when we hang up three firetrucks pull up. We then let in the firemen into the building and it was just flooded. We also had the key to the room they needed in to turn off the water so we got to trudge through with the firemen to show them where and to give them the key. I felt pretty cool and I was very thankful for my waterproof boots, yes they work. The sprinkler head in the library had popped off and was spraying everything. We stayed until after midnight helping suck out the water with shop vacs. It's the first time I have seen midnight on my clock in 9 months. Holy cow, my body is not used to that! I thought it was ironic that it happened exactly 9 months after I left. 4/8 I was up late nervous about leaving on my mission and 1/8 I was up late on my mission doing what missionaries do :) So that was an exciting ordeal.

Friday was a rough day just because we were so exhausted. Thankfully we had service and weekly planning and nothing to strenuous. We did surprise visit a less active family, the Gardners and invite Sister Gardner to a lesson with Hope. We both felt like she was perfect for her. They accepted and fed us! So nice! So the next day we went to Hope's with Sister Gardner and taught the gospel of Jesus Christ. SHE brought up baptism and so we invited her to be baptized on February 7th and she said YES!!!!!! Wahoo! Sister Gardner was perfect and testified at all the right times! The spirit was so strong! It was just wonderful! We are so excited! You can already tell Hope is improving her life! I can't wait to continue to see the gospel work in her life! So keep her in your prayers! Extra!

So basically it was just a wonderful week. Sister Plante and I are so tired but so happy! We hope we can catch up on everything today! The gospel is real and it's true! I love it! And I love all of you!
Love you more than all the snowflakes!
Anne

Layers. Lots and Lots of Layers.

Dear Family,

It was a good week, but I can't remember what happened! I do know it was good though. Thank goodness for records! So Tuesday was a crazy day. We had the Sister Training Leaders come and do a blitz with us. Sister Jardine was filling in for 2 weeks and she served in Janesville a couple months ago and came to strengthen the less active recent converts. It was great for her to come because several of them just haven't talked to missionaries since she has left and now one of them is talking to us regularly! That was the first half of our day and then when we got back to our house after the STLs left we realized we had used up all the rest of our miles for the month! We happened to choose to do that the day it started getting cold, we are so good with timing. So we walked around the rest of the night trying to find people. Randomly we decided to cross the road and as soon as we got to the other side this man came out side to take his dog out. We GQ'd it and asked if he had heard of the Book of Mormon and he had heard some not very true things about it. So we explained the map to him without drawing it and his eyes just lit up! When we asked if we could give him one he got really excited and said he would definitely read it! We are going back tomorrow night to follow up with a member! He seems so cool! His name is John. That was a total miracle! 

So Wednesday we didn't drive anywhere and walked to all our appointments. I am sure grateful for all the winter stuff I had! The hand warmers work great! I felt fine except for my face! It was good to walk around. We were pretty cold and we may or may not have stopped at members along our route to "use the bathroom" or just to feel our faces again. It was good though. We went and helped a member paint an apartment she is putting up for rent and that was fun. It is quite therapeutic to do something that requires no brain power and thinking about what to say next. Then our sweet bishop's wife came and picked up all the missionaries and we spent New Years with the Nielson clan again! It was so fun! There were so many kids! We did a count down at 8! Sister Nielson the Younger, the one with all the kids, gladly took us home to escape the chaos. We stopped by another members house and sang our made up New Years songs. 

Thursday we woke up to a beautiful New Year full of new miles! We can drive again, thank goodness! It was a great day! We saw Hope again! She is so prepared. We taught her the restoration and she said she will pray. She really wants to know the truth. We are praying she makes it to church this week. She will know if she just gets up the courage to come! Also we have had a referral for somebody named Grace for 4 months. We just could not find her. I have knocked on her door some many times, I almost didn't think she didn't exist. But Thursday she was there! She really wants to know more and we set up a return appointment for tomorrow. She was so cute, just thanking us so much for coming. We finally saw Kevin too! Oh my! That was some serious brain power teaching in ASL after a month of not using it. We did a language study that morning thank goodness! I wrote out a lesson plan based off of Elder Kelbingat's talk "Approaching the Throne of God with Confidence" Then I re-wrote it looking up what words had signs and changing it so I could sign it. It was a great lesson because I felt prepared. It was hard though because I would be teaching, not knowing what else to say and I would look over at my comp but she doesn't know how to sign, but it all turned out. I should be getting an ASL Book of Mormon for him this week. He was going to come to church but we had a big storm right before church so he didn't want to brave the weather. Next week. I feel like I improved a lot in my signing by preparing that much. I don't know how I did this though, in the middle of the lesson I totally volunteered to interpret for him. I didn't even realized I said that until I got home and I had a wide eyed moment. Lets hope the spirit was the one that said that because that means I will get help. The gift of fingers ;)

I hope you guys are feeling better. That's too bad you got sick over your vacation. But that is good you did so much at Jake's! Sorry I forgot to tell you I wasn't getting transferred. So you can continue to mail me! You are good untilFebruary 18th. I have been loving this New Years time!  It is getting pretty cold though! This is the Wisconsin I heard about! I will just wear lots of clothes! 

I love you guys! I am loving the work, it just feels good to serve the Lord. I am grateful for this time! I can't believe I hit my halfway this week! Weird!

I love you more than layers I have on ;)

Anne

Saturday is a Special Day

Dear Family,

This week was just fantastic! Goodness! I don't know where to start or wat I didn't tell you on Thursday! Christmas was great! 

Monday we only emailed then went back to work for the day since we were going to the temple on Friday. So we walked around for several hours from place to place and handing out He is the Gift cards to everyone we saw. It was good, we handed a ton out. Lo and behold an hour after we did that someone called us back! That never happens. But, we missed the call and just got a voice mail and didn't understand it. And we didn't call back. This Sunday I was cleaning out our voice mails and a listened to it again and I realized what it said. This guy wanted to know more! So we immediately called back, he was still hard to understand but we did set up an appointment to come and see him! So that is sweet! A first for me! Call back. And then for dinner we went to the botanical gardens for a sweet light show! It was so magical. I can't even imagine what it would have looked like with snow. And no, we didn't have any snow at all this Christmas. In fact the day after it was 50 and sunny! It may have been my first not white Christmas. We also saw live reindeer! That was cool! 

Tuesday we went to a Christmas Zone Meeting in Madison. I opened my gift of Truman Madsen's talks on Joseph Smith early and we listened to those on the way. It was a fun meeting to see everyone and to have a free meal. But that is honestly all I can remember of that day. This has been a long week. I can't believe that was even this week. 

On Christmas Eve we started off by walking around downtown and handing out He is the Gift Cards again. That was fun and interesting. Then we went to Sister Buchanan's and she prepared several gifts we could go out and deliver. One of the people we went to lived in an old Victorian house. He is an artist and there was literally something painted every square inch of the house. It was incredible! I have never seen anything like it! I need to go back and take pictures. I can't even describe it. That was fun. We picked some people we thought it would be good for and enjoyed our afternoon. She wanted this Christmas to be different since her husband just passed away. So then we came back to her house when all the presents were delivered and ate some delicious Papa Murphy's pizza. Which it has been like a solid 9 months since I have had that. We had the veggie pizza, it was super good. We went and helped a member go and clean their apartment that they rent out for a while. Then we went to the Paulsens! It was so fun to be with a family! They were just way to good to us! We got an awesome Christmas Eve dinner just full of traditions! Their little girl had lots of fun with us. I got her to give me several hugs and squeeze as tight as she could! That felt good! Everyone needs a good little kid hug every once and a while. They gave us all huge stockings just full of gifts. It was so sweet of them. We acted out the nativity and just had lots of fun. After we learned some acupuncture! That was exciting! It was only for the truly brave in heart! I was the 2nd person to put needles into my arm so the pride of all the Elders was on the line. Not all of them did it though! I sent you a lovely picture attached :) We then sang some Christmas hymns and just had a good time! Sister Plante and I ended the night by doing a Christmas devotional. I thought I would have trouble sleeping but really that hasn't been a thing lately! 

Christmas morning we woke up and opened presents! That was fun! Thank you for all the wonderful things that you sent me I love each one! Everyone was so good to me I have no idea how I am going to send a thank you card to everyone. Wow! We then went to the Lebeck's to Skype! That was fun! It was so great to talk to all of you! Or at least to look at all of you! It was fun! I can't believe we only have one more time left! That is just strange! But thank you for all joining! It warmed my heart and I will be able to make it through the next 5 months! We went to another members house and played games. We each got to pick one and I picked Dominion! That was super enjoyable and reminded me of fun times! My jaw about dropped when I saw that one. Then we went to dinner at another member's home and had Christmas dinner. We accidentally showed up 30 minutes early so I entertained the little girl and kept her out of the kitchen and was super helpful. That is what her mom said but I was just having fun playing with her and her awesome toys. We were best buds by the end of the night. Basically I just tried to get my kid fill for 2 days! They also provided us with some presents. People were just too good to us. 

Friday was another big day! We got to go to the Chicago temple! We woke up brighter and earlier than usual to go! Let me tell you, it is a lot prettier in person! I think all of us missionaries were slightly shocked, pictures just can't capture it at all. It was so great to be back there. After we met the temple President and he blew our minds, so I am going to have to wait and ponder until I can go again and see. It was good after so long! After we got there we saw a van full of missionaries pull up from the Chicago mission for their zone conference. It was crazy. 

We drove back through Lake Geneva which is super rich man's place. Supposedly it is the largest and clearest lake. That is where that huge picture of the mansion is from. We also saw places with gas at 2.12! It's crazy!

I decided all the miracles happen on Saturday. We tripled our lessons for the week and just had miracle after miracle. We met Hope who is having a hard time with her mother's death. So we taught her the Plan of Salvation. She just loved it! She is going to start the Book of Mormon and come to church next week! We are meeting with her again tonight to teach her the Restoration. It will be good. Then we just got in contact with a lot of people who had disappeared. We also got a referral! It was just a great Saturday!

Really it was a great week! I loved it! I can't believe how much happened. I will have to tell more stories in 10 months because I can't write it all. But I did get to finish the Book of Mormon this week and Jesus the Christ as my gift to Jesus. It was so great! I feel like I know my Savior so much more. I can hardly believe let alone comprehend the magnificent love he has for me and every child of God. I am so grateful for Him, the greatest gift of all. Through him all things are made possible and all things are made right! He is the great refiner and through Him we can all be changed and feel his love. I am so grateful to be on a mission. I am learning so many things I could have learned no other way. It is life changing!

I hope you have a Happy New Year! This will probably also be my first year (in remembrance) starting the New Year sleeping! Changes all over the place! Drive safe! I love you so much!

I love you more than all the cheese consumed in Wisconsin! ;)

Anne

It's Christmas Time!

Dear Family,

It has been a fantastic week and it will be an even better week this week! So much to look forward too! I don't even know where to begin. I guess I will try to go in chronological order. So this week we went to go and visit Krista. She came to church 2 weeks ago and we haven't really seen her since. Apparently it's a busy time of year. The sisters have been going to her house since May and we haven't really been able to teach her much because she never lets us in and she is always "busy". This week she let us in! And her kids were there too! They are so cute! They are 8 and 9, Chris and Destiny. So cute. Chris he gave us batteries for Christmas and Destiny took a Papa Tom's Christmas card and altered it so it was to us from her. We taught Krista where the Book of Mormon came from and how it can help her, she said she is now excited to read it! When we were leaving Destiny said "Thank you for your company!" I don't know what 9 year old says that but it was dang cute!

Thursday we gathered with some ward members in Clinton ( a small town we cover) and went caroling at a nursing home. We sang in the cafeteria 2 songs then walked down the halls and sang. After a couple minutes the people were asking us to come back to the cafeteria and this old lady hauled us back there. Elsy, the old lady, then asked what key we were singing in and she sat down at the piano and busted a tune! Holy cow! It was incredible! We preceded to sing every Christmas hymn, she was so incredibly good. So after I asked her how she knew piano so well. She used to play professionally at churches! She knew the piano like the back of her hand! I felt like I ran into Bach or something. After I went up to an old man who had been singing along and had just loved the whole thing. I shook his hand and wished him a Merry Christmas, then he saw my name tag. "Oh! I know your church! I love your church! I have been investigating it for 30 years!" What?? He then tells me all about how he was going to the Beloit ward and loved the Madison stake and went to conference there and just busting out all this church lingo. It was crazy! I asked him if he still had a Book of Mormon and he has read the whole thing and loves it. We are going back there. A Christmas miracle! After caroling we went and had a "bonfire" and roasted some s'mores. It was a great time. 

Saturday we went out tracting with very little success. The Packers weren't playing but apparently there was a game that was vital to there salvation. So most people won't answer the door. So after a very cold 1 and a half we finally found someone! His name is Rob and he was all nonchalant until we started talking about where the Book of Mormon came from. He said he totally believes Christ visited others. He said he would probably read the whole thing this week. We will see how that goes! We then went to a less actives and found a pretty awesome nativity. They had Micky and Minnie as Joseph and Mary, Boo from Monster's Inc. as the baby, Green Lantern, Batman and Superman as the 3 wise men. It was sweet. 

Now for the big Kahuna awesome day! Sunday! No one came to church but I just love Christmas Sundays! But after church we had a big fiesta with the Nielson clan. It was 4 families. One of them had bragged that he can make better Cafe Rio than Cafe Rio does. Oh boy it was good! I would say it perhaps was better than Cafe Rio if my taste buds haven't been deprived of Cafe Rio for the last 9 months. But we gladly took the leftovers home with us. I also made a delicious creation! At the dinner before when Brother Nielson had bragged about his cooking skills we dreamt up a really good brownie. For some reason we called it a tootsie roll brownie even though it has nothing to do with that besides the shape. We imagined a brownie in the shape of a tootsie roll with chocolate chips dipped in caramel then dipped in chocolate. I thought I would be funny and make it for our party. So I couldn't really figure out how to do that. So I made it like cake pops. I crumbled the brownies into a bowl and mixed it with caramel, rolled it into balls and dipped it into milk chocolate. They were good. Really good. The best part was seeing people reactions eating them, the wide eyes and the praise escaping from their lips. I felt pretty proud of myself! Anyways, sorry if you are drooling now. I will get back to what we did. We were also able to see a recent convert who we haven't seen in 2 months. That was a miracle. Her new boyfriend might actually be the one dragging her to church, so kind of a good thing.

That night we went back to someone we had done a survey with, Michelle. We were almost starting to believe she was a figment of our imagination because there has been no life in that house for 3 weeks, not that we did tons of drive-bys or anything. We are not creepy. But last night there was life! And she opened the door! She had read a little of the Book of Mormon and said it seems pretty good so far. We asked if there was a time we could come back and tell her more. She told us now would be good and to come in. We both sat down deer in headlight mode. I think it was just kind of shocking to both of us. It isn't good when you keep turning to your comp because you don't know what to say then she looks at you because she doesn't know what to say. It was rather funny, that will be an embarrassing moment to watch up in heaven! So after a very choppy we-have-no-idea-what-we-are-doing-but-we-will-do-our-best-to-open-our-mouths moment we transitioned into the Plan of Salvation and from there it went great! The Spirit took over! And by the end she was crying and we invited her to be baptized if she got an answer if it was true. Then she sat there deer in headlights mode and said "what?" Sister Plante repeated the invite. She then asked if she needed to be baptized again, we said yes. I was totally waiting more an MTC prepped horror moment, hard question with high likelihoods of offense but she said yes! So we will go back and set a date after Christmas. The only bad part about Christmas, waiting. So that was a HUGE miracle. Yeah!

Anyways other exciting news this week! Tomorrow we finish the Book of Mormon! Wahoo! Thank you for doing that with me mom. it means a lot. Thank you for reading too dad. I have an awesome red and green reference book to the atonement. I had no idea the Book of Mormon was so full of the atonement. Everything really does revolve around that wonderful gift! We get to go to a Christmas Zone Training Meeting tomorrow to discuss what we have learned, eat cookies and laugh! That will be fun! Oh and tonight for dinner we are going to the Botanical gardens for a light show and to see live reindeer! I am PUMPED! We didn't know this place existed until one night we were out driving in the middle of nowhere when BAM! This magical place appeared in front of us! So pictures to come. Then of course Christmas Eve and Christmas! I get to hangout with you guys! See your beautiful faces! I will be doing it about 12 my time, you do the math! That way there will be no confusion. Also dad, it was your favorite day of the year yesterday. Shortest day and from here it only gets better. Then on Friday, drum roll please, I get to go to the temple!!! First time in 8 months! I am stoked! So basically it will be the best week. We are going caroling with the Elders and just basking in the Christmas Spirit! Thank you for all the cards and gifts everyone has sent! i am just feeling the love! I love all of you SO much!

I love you more than all the Christmas presents in the world!

Anne

You'll never get dehydrated if you just keep breathing!

Dear Familia!

I just can't get enough of Christmas! It is just so magical! Except, there is no snow! It has been so warm! And so foggy! It has been a solid fog for 2 days straight. It was weird, everything is wet, there are puddles BUT it hasn't rained. Therefore my title. I am pretty sure humidity is like 140% because you wave your hand through the air and you can feel the moisture. I want some snow, I am not dreaming of a foggy Christmas, it has been fun though. 

So I will just get the house keeping out of the way first. I will be doing a google hangout on Christmas, it will probably be somewhere in between 11-1 ish my time. We don't have a solid time and I don't know if I am going first or my companion. If you could mail me, handwritten, my gmail password so I can access that, it would be great. My siblings are welcome to join, I invited them. So there is the stuff, I will detail it out next Monday. But let me know if anything doesn't work. I will probably have my screen on mom and dad most of the time so it won't be chaotic and noisy. Kind of like what we did with me opening my call, but I do want to talk to each of you! I love you guys and I can't wait! 9 days! 

I have been loving my advent calendar, it is so fun! Just like my presents I itch to open them early, but I don't! 

Anyways, not too much happened this week. It is hard to find people home around this time and everyone is busy with the holidays. We did find one awesome person. Her name is Erika. We did they survey with her and she has never been to church and never read the bible. Her daughter is asking a lot of questions about God though so it has been weighing on her mind. She had us come in and answer her questions. She had a lot of really good ones like "Where is grandpa? Does he live with Jesus?" And some silly ones too like "Can Jesus turn into bread?" I just love children. We taught them a lot of random things and invited her to church. She is timid so we are doing a church tour first this week. It should be a great thing for her little family! And she is married so we don't have to worry about some things! 

William got back in contact with us, I don't know if you remember him. But he is really sick and could use prayers. He has so much potential, you can tell he is just waiting to receive the gospel. So basically just a lot of things have the potential but it just takes some acting of others. If people only knew. 

Really not too much happened. It's been rather ridiculous, but that is ok. The members have been super nice to us. We have 4 invites on Christmas and maybe 2 on Christmas Eve. I hope we get more so we don't have to knock doors. I am just pumped if you can't tell. It will be weird to be away on Christmas though. But we have people taking care of us, it'll work out.

Alan's story is really funny, oh boy. It is shocking to some people. I have not seen Sister Morales yet, I don't know if I will. She is further up North and going home in March, probably before I have a chance. Who knows though. Maybe if I get transferred to Milwaukee before then I would see her. 

Well I hope you continue to enjoy the snow! I love you guys so much! Sing lots of Christmas music for me!

I love you more than all the christmas lights in the whole world!

Anne

We decorate trees like the Jaredites build boats!

Dear Family!

It has been a good week! I don't know if I have mentioned our whole new survey approach, I am sure I have. But we did it quite a bit this week. We found 2 really awesome people doing it. On Tuesday when we did it we got let into quite a few homes which was nice because we didn't have to be cold! However, none went anywhere except for one. I think the key on how far it will go (usually) is if they answer one of the questions a specific way. The 6th question on the survey is "Do you believe the bible to be the word of God or just a history book? If you knew there was another book of scripture written by prophets that testified of Jesus Christ, would you read it?" Without fail, it they say they would they let us teach them. So after all night of people saying they would not read another book we finally met DJ who answered yes. We shared with him the message of the Book of Mormon and he was just on the edge of his seat, and when we offered it to him he jumped right up! It was pretty cool! Then we set up a return appointment and he said he would start reading it as soon as we left. 

On Saturday we did them again. This time we went to so many houses and no one owuld give us the time of day. It was weird (kind of :). One of the first houses we went to a lady was on the phone so we just moved on and kept going. We did the whole street up and down then we decided to go back to the lady's house. Are we glad she did! She let us in and took the survey and she gave great answers. Then we transitioned into the restoration and she was just eating it up. She may be the most receptive person I have ever taught the restoration too. There was such a strong spirit after sharing the first vision and she said she really likes that and feels she can get an answer too! And the whole time she was just really into it, like with the apostasy and how people picked what they wanted and how Joseph was confused because he would read something yet all these churches would say it meant different things. You could totally see her connect to it and kind of a light bulb go off saying "yeah! every church is so different! I want to know what Christ's church taught!" And we are going back tomorrow. We pray she will read and feel of the spirit. 

We had our nativity festival this week. It was crazy awesome. The second night the ward did the music. So I signed up, you know share your talent and don't hide it under a bushel. As a missionary though, it is highly difficult to practice your talents. I had 3 days to put together a piece. I played Joy to the World. after I simplified several hard spots it went decent. My music fell off in the middle of the performance but I kept going with my page turner rescued it! Good thing I asked for one! 

We also are handing out lots of "He is the Gift" cards. I am almost positive all y'all with Facebook have your walls exploding with that video! It has been my favorite tool so far though! It can change any awkward situation. You can do as awkward of an approach as you can, crossing the street, going into peoples garages, it doesn't matter. When you say I want to share this Christmas video with you they just love it! So if by some crazy happenstance you haven't seen it yet, watch it!christmas.mormon.org

I do love Christmastime! I got a package from April and Jake and their fam. Now there are presents underneath our tree. If you send me a package that you don't want me to open, write that on the outside. But if there are wrapped presents I will quickly put them under the tree and resist all urges to touch, shake and poke! 

I am glad you finally got to see Meet the Mormons! So did it start out at Edwards if it just got to the paramount? That is crazy if it did! I got to see that right after it came out. We had a Zone conference and watched it. I think all US missionaries got to see it. I am also glad mom is still enjoying and utilizing her iPhone. I still can't believe she has one. It is rather ridiculous :) I love my advent calendar. A new letter gets opened every morning at 6:30. The King Singers sound fun too! I have never heard them before. 

By the way mom I have been doing the scripture challenge with you the whole time. I just got a day behind during transfers and like you said it is very difficult to catch up. So I am with you! Today we read one of my favorite scriptures. I don't even remember if I picked a scripture for my plaque, but if I could now it would be 3 Nephi 9:14. I love that Christ always invites us to come to him and be healed of everything. He puts no boundaries or limits. You don't have to be this perfect or fit any quota. He loves us all and desires our happiness and eternal life with Him and our families. Because family life is God's life which is exalted life!

I love you all so much! I hope you have a great week!
I love you more than I love basking in our Christmas corner!

Anne

Happy Thanksgiving!

Dear Family,

It sounds like you all had a crazy holiday! I liked your noise video mom. It is actually pretty funny, when we go to dinner appointments with families and they are embarrassed by their kids being crazy and loud I say oh no! I love it! It feels like home! So I love going to crazy families homes! Not that you guys are crazy or anything... ;)

Monday was Sister Plante's 21 birthday! That was fun. We went to the mall and I got a cute warm scarf. We also found nerd heaven. If I was rich I would buy everything. It is full random stuff of superheros, doctor who, and anything else that has fans. It is a really fun store, a dangerous one too. We went to the Lebecks and had pizza and cake. I hope she had fun!

Tuesday we went and taught Kevin. That was crazy. We were still able to communicate and teach him! I just couldn't think in english for the rest of the day I was just in sign mode. We saw a lot of great members too. It was a good day. My companion came up with the craziest Thanksgiving message which probably shouldn't have seen the light of day but it did. We made a paper turkey and compared the turkey to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The turkey really trusts his farmer (faith) so he goes to his farmer and gets all his "bad feathers" plucked out (repentance). Then he gets washed and cleaned by the farmer (baptism). Then he gets thrown in the oven (baptism by fire aka the Holy Ghost) and then he gets carved into what the farmer knew was his divine potential (enduring to the end). We were careful who we shared it with, the family we did just loved it. It was really funny. The 2 year old at the end said "No, we can't eat Thomas!" It was super cute. Then his parents were telling us on Thanksgiving he kept asking for more Thomas. Scarring children all over the Midwest! They got a kick out of it and helped us improve it. 

I can't remember everything so we will just go to Thanksgiving. We went to the Lebecks in the morning and just hung out with them and talked. After we went to the Bishop's house for a giant Thanksgiving feast. That was super fun being with their family. After lunch everyone went downstairs to play rockband and I thought of how similar our Thanksgivings were! They even had the one anti-social guy go into a room by himself to watch the game ;) Then we went to the Holloways for dinner (which was only an hour after I stopped eating during the last feast). The had all the missionaries over and another family plus their 7 kids. So it was a feast of 20 and it was rather comical. They had lots of fun foods and fancy foods. They had spicy jalapeno yams. They were great, you'd like them! Me and Sister Plante just loved them and all the Elders were scared to eat them. Eventually their pride got to them and they tried it but couldn't handle it. Not that I am prideful or anything. It was a fun Thanksgiving, it helped that we didn't have to knock doors. Knocking on holidays is no fun for anyone. After we ate I I am surprised I fit it all in! It was a big eating day!

Friday and Saturday we had exchanges. One of the Sister Training Leaders, Sister Ostler, came here. We had lots of fun together. We had a very successful day! We finally got more lessons in for the week. We were just able to find and talk to a lot of people. One of our investigators Tom had a miracle! We went to his house and he said he went the doctor this week and they were checking his lungs because he had COPD. They came back and were in shock because it was completely gone. He is fine now and healthy. He gave credit where credit is due, God, and thinks him meeting with us and him reading and praying helped in the process. So he is going to keep doing that! It was cool.

We also met a woman named Krista. The sisters had been to her house many times but she doesn't let them in because something is always going on. So we felt prompted to go over there this week. She opened the door and said she had been thinking about us and she really wanted to come to church! Heck yes! So we got her a ride to church yesterday and she came! And she loved it! It was a perfect sacrament meeting. It was all about the blessings of daily scripture study. Inspired! There was one talk where she read the Book of Mormon is 7 weeks because she just loved it so much and saw the blessings. After Krista said maybe she'd read it in 7 weeks! In Sunday school afterwards she just kept thanking us a lot about how even though she never let us in, we  kept coming back religiously to share the word with her (got a chuckle out of the class, yes, we hallways come back.) It was cute. And she wants to come again, it is going to be a great week.

Sister Plante and I are getting along great! We have officially made a Christmas corner. We found two chairs in the spare room and put them by our Christmas stuff. And we grab our blankets, turn on the heater and sit in our chairs watching Christmas Mo-tab. It is quite enjoyable. It is a little feeling of home. It is also where I now spend all my spare time :) Oh and Friday was like the best day ever! I got an awesome Thanksgiving package! It was so good, I love getting those thigns, never too many! Then I got 3 letter from friends who hadn't written me yet on my mission! What! Crazy stuff!

Well I am glad you all had a happy Thanksgiving! It looked fun! I love you all a ton! I hope i didn't make you cry too much mom in my video! ;)

Love you more then all the calories I put into this body of mine!

Anne!

Oh the Weather Outside's Delightful

Dear Family!

It is just a wonderful day! It has been raining for 2 days straight and during companion study I said, "Could you imagine how awesome this would be if the rain was snow?!" Two minutes later BAM! Snow! And it is just dumping! It was pretty exciting! It has been such an exhausting week and I haven't written in my journal so I have no reference as to what has happened! (I usually write every night mom, this is the first I have missed) But oh boy! I will do my best to go off memory!

Monday and Tuesday was just crazy getting Sister Homan packed up and get all her goodbyes in. Just lots of visits.

Wednesday was crazy day! Transfer day! We drove ( I drove because I can do that now :) ) to Madison early and she left and all us missionaries waited all day for our new companions. My new companion is Sister Plante. It's french though so it's not plant but kind of like how the mom say french in Better Off Dead. French bread, french dressing and so on. She is a ginger! She is an only child from Orem, Utah. My first Utah companion! She is super sweet. It is actually her 21st birthday today! She made german pancakes this morning! That reminded me off home. We didn't have whipped cream though so I may or may not have just put icing on it. Either way it was delicious. Anyways back to Wednesday, we went and ate dinner with Katie, the woman who got baptized last Saturday. Her husband is a member but like 5 other people live in their house that I just can't figure out the relations. But we had some pretty crazy and good gospel discussions and questions with everyone in the house. If we made a mess hopefully the Elders can fix it :) Our district got cut in half so we have 3 new missionaries in our ward. One of them is being trained here. 

So our mission is implementing this crazy new approach. It is a bold new way to get in doors. We ask if they would be so kind to help us with a survey we are taking. Then we say "May we come in" whilst walking forward assuming they will. Then once you are in the door you point to the living room and ask "Straight through?" Then you sit down, make sure they sit down. You then take the survey and ask to share a message that would answer some of those questions. Holy cow it's bold. We have done only 3 so far and got in 1 door. Afterwards I am pretty sure I weirded myself out, I can't even imagine how they felt. But we have been promised by our inspired leaders that we will get progressing investigators if we keep doing it. So we are doing it. We made a list of less actives we have no information about and we try to visit them then go survey their neighbors. So we should be busy for a while. 

We have a lot of people with promise but now everyone has the flu, so not a ton of progress with our current people. Saturday we went to Bishop's Breakfast. This is a huge deal for the missionaries because they invite all the missionaries and all the recent converts and anyone else their heart desires and we feast on so many breakfast foods! It's delicious! We had freezing rain that morning though, so it almost got cancelled because bishop lives 30 minutes away. But we made it anyways! Also I am officially the designated driver! I never thought this day would come! Because typically I am the youngest and the choose based off of experience. Well when Sister Plante filled out the form for driving on her mission it asks how many miles you probably have driven. Her mom told her to put a big number so she thought 100 was a big number :) So I get to! Which is great, I just love to drive! Granted two Elders in our district did the exact same thing with writing down 100 and they can't drive. Silly missionaries. Even with the freezing rain we survived! It was delicious!

Sunday was awesome. We walked into gospel principles and it was full of less actives! Most of them just showed up out of the blue! There were 7! It was CRAZY! Awesome though! Sunday bishop invited us and all the misionaries over for dinner again and everyone shared how their families came into the gospel, it was neat. Then we went and taught our ASL class. Oh boy it is going to be interesting continuing that! It will be fun! I will be pro by the time I leave janesville! Sometimes I say my personal prayers in sign, it works pretty well. 

So now it is my turn to share the talks from sacrament meeting. It was based off of Craig C. Christensen's talk this conference. There were two really good lines from the talk though. He said his mission president would tell them all the time, when you feel the spirit you must act or change what the spirit is telling you, otherwise it is just a good feeling that will eventually fade away. He also said "Faith is more of a choice than a gift" It is so true. The only way we can get true faith is by acting. The only way to gain a testimony of the gospel is to live the principles of it. He talked about no matter what, the world can never proof religion wrong or proof it right. That is the brilliance of our Heavenly Father's gospel. It is a choice! I thought that was great! 

I hope you all have a fantabulastic Thanksgiving! I hope it is a white one too! Have fun, take pictures and write me! Everyone can go gather around my shrine when you miss me! It'll be great! I love you soo much!!!!!

I love you more than I am jealous that both my parents now have iPhones... :)

Anne!