I'll be Home for Christmas !!

So surprise! Transfers came and although we were assured many times that no one would be leaving right before Christmas here I am.... leaving.... right before Christmas. Wild. But I'm going back to Nampa. MY HOME! I've missed Nampa so much and I'm so happy to be back. It's honestly the greatest Christmas gift President could ever give me. So yes I am in Nampa now and will be covering 3 wards. I'm with Sister Ellett. She is pretty new (this will be her 4th transfer) and she is from AZ! I love my AZ sisters! 

So this past week was a really fun one. We had our Christmas Zone Conference. Man o' Man it was a blast. I got to sing a song with my dear pal Sister Ray. It was a song we created together in Meridian titled "The Life of a Sister" and it goes into all the ways that we are better than Elders haha. It's pretty fantastic and had a lot of the Elders baffled. My favorite haha. Then we also performed a Hula number with a bunch of sisters from the mission. Hula is so fun! I loved learning how to do it and laughing with my friends while doing it. 

We were finally able to teach Emily this week which made me oh so happy. She has been through a ton and her religious journey is super crazy. The amazing thing that is happening though is that she feels prompted to take these lessons now and so she is putting her WHOLE SOUL into it. She has these crazy journals and highlighters and is treating these discussions as a college course. It's pretty grand. Yesterday when Sister Anderson and I went over to see Emily we talked a lot about testimonies and how we can't gain a testimony on knowledge alone. It is just not possible. We expressed to her that she was going to, at one point, have to start praying and putting just as much work towards her relationship with God as she is with these discussions. It was an awakening moment for her and she realized the big piece of the puzzle she was missing.

We had this huge stake nativity activity this week. It was breathtakingly beautiful. The whole church was filled with Nativities from different countries. Some super modern, some over a thousand years old. It was so neat and so many people from the community came. ( I vaguely remember our stake in Minneapolis doing something like this when I was a kid. So it was cool to see and have little deja-vu moments here and there.) 

We also got to go back to the old folks home on Saturday and I got to talk to some of my favorite people for the last time. It was so great. 

So other than that I had a lot of goodbyes that I had to say these past couple of days. Goodbyes are the hardest. But it's amazing that I can love people so much... literally in the matter of weeks... that saying goodbye is so tough. 

I love you all and miss you like crazy.

Sister Aase

  

Saying bye to my pal Ray, Low-quality picture with high-quality Emily, saying bye to the Brushes (we wrote in our journals with them every Sunday night), and my goodbye to the Browns (Judy said she was doing her vogue face🤣 what a hoot) 

And Here to Stay...

Welp, it snowed this week! Like a lot. So my green beast is here to stay and now it has some friends, the yellow monsters (aka my crazy snow boots). Haha. The snow is honestly beautiful and I'm so grateful that I have warm clothes so I don’t have to die out here in cold Idaho. 

Not much happened this week. Lots of walking in the dark, some cool street contracting, and getting to share Christmas messages with families. Those are basically all the highlights. 

Man luckily the letter you got "last week" *wink wink* hopefully kept you entertained today. 

Love y'all 

Sister Aase 

Abby posing w/Michael Pope, who served

with me in my Canada Montreal Mission a 

few years ago (ok, like 32) - We were never

companions, but I was fortunate enough

to serve with him in many districts and zones.

He's been so great to send photos of Abby

when he sees her.

This is Abby's companion, Sister Anderson

Abby and other Sister Missionaries

out providing service as part of the 

Light the World project.

I'm guessing this was at a district meeting

The Green Beast is Back!

Okay y'all, so last pday was a little crazy so I didn't get to send an email to tell y’all about my week. So today you get two emails! Yay! 

So burrrrrr. It got super cold this week. You know what that means. My green beast of a coat has officially come out of the closet. So get ready for pictures all season long that will look like I'm wearing the same exact thing. 

Lots of highlights this week. To start I got to go to the temple with Shanell this week. Man alive I love that girl. Even though we had to give her over to Boise and couldn't see her baptism, it made me so happy that we could at least see her in the temple. Also, I got to see my number one Sister Maschino again so that was a plus.

We had an amazing lesson with my friend Sarah this week. Whenever you get a new companion it takes you a second to get into your groove and teach well together. ANDERSON AND I FOUND OUR GROOVE! It made me so happy. We both walked out of their just elated. 

I got to volunteer at the Meridian's Winter Parade (which is basically just as big of a deal as the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade so I'm not even upset anymore that I couldn't see that *said through tears). It was so fun! We got to be the ones that would tell the kids *cough adults* to step back so the parade could come through. In Idaho, missionaries are basically famous, so there were definitely times where I felt like I was part of the parade because these kids would just yell "missionary missionary". It was funny and great. 

Last highlight. Saturday, Dec 1st, was the kick off to “Light the World” with the day of service. And serve we did. We started by going to one of our wards breakfast parties and helped take things down afterward. Then we went to a retirement home and served them lunch and talked to them for a while... scratch that... really long time. They really like to talk. They said the funniest things to us. So Sister Hansen (another sister missionary in our apartment) has dwarfism and seriously the number of confused faces and funny comments we got from these people was just hysterical. Sister Hansen was cracking up. I think when you’re old, you can pretty much say whatever you want and everyone will just find it funny or endearing. We ended the day of service at Sarah's house decluttering the heck out of it. It was so much fun. She's a hoot. 

Welp I think that is all. Hope you have a good week and continue to light the world in small ways!

Sister Aase 

Thanksgiving 2.0

Hello Friends and Happy Thanksgiving! 

I hope everyone got the chance to watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade for me. Just like last year, it was the one thing- besides family- that I missed the most. So for those of you that watched it please share with me some comments about it haha.

So I'll be honest holiday weeks are always pretty hard for missionaries. You miss home, your investigators go out of town so you don't have that many appointments, people get very irritated when you knock on their doors, and members get caught up in all their craziness so you usually don't have dinners. BUT all the craziness of the week makes the actual Holiday 10x better. 

Thanksgiving was really fun. We started the day with a Turkey Bowl with some of my favorite missionaries. It was a blast. We then hung out with a lot of different members and we played... wait for it... ♣️♦️CARD GAMES ♥️♠️!!!! Uno, Golf, Phase 10 ahhhhhh it was the best. Oh, and the food was good too. Haha.  It was actually low key amazing and I was contently stuffed. I did not go into a food coma. I did not feel like I needed to throw up. I just was content. So 1 point for Sister Aase. 

So this week was a hard one but this upcoming week looks like it is going to be amazing. Even with the hard weeks, I am so grateful that I get the chance to be a missionary. I had a person ask me the day before Thanksgiving while we were tracting at night in the rain "why are you out here? It's too cold and wet for anyone to be outside!" And I looked at her and said "We do this every day because we have an important message to share. A true message that brings us happiness and we want to share it with everyone who is willing to listen". At that time she didn't want to listen BUT maybe she will down the road. Even when people don't want to listen, I'm grateful I get to give them a chance to exercise their agency.

 I'm grateful that I myself am changing and coming closer to Christ during this process. I'm so grateful for my Savior and for a wonderful family who introduced me to Him. I'm grateful for the love and support of all of you. But most of all I'm grateful for my knowledge of this true and restored gospel and the peace it brings to my life.

Love you all, 

Sister Aase 

Pictures 

°Fun sister pictures at the Turkey Bowl

°We found some old Christmas stuff in our apartment and decked out! 

Let the Holy Spirit Guide You

Hello!

How have everyone's weeks been? Is everyone getting excited for Thanksgiving? It is such an amazing time to be a missionary. People take you in and just love you. Of course, I miss everyone at home immensely BUUUUT if I could be anywhere, I would choose to be right here in Meridian with these amazing members that just love us to pieces. 

This week was filled with miracles, tears, laughs, and trials. That's basically every week of a missionary’s life. So, this week I started leading this area. This basically means, at least for the first week, pretty much planning the day by yourself because your companion doesn't know what is going on. Boy, that was hard. I just never knew what to do or who to see. But it was amazing because the Spirit guided me throughout the day, every day this week. When some appointments fell through and we had a spare hour to do something, the Spirit guided me. When we were stuck in a place and needed a ride, the Spirit guided me. When we were out in the cold and needed a place to go to warm up, the Spirit guided me. It is amazing what the Spirit can do when we just humble ourselves and allow it to guide us.

I love all of you and hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with thoughts of all our many blessings.

Love Sister Aase 

Transfers AGAIN???

It is crazy y'all. Transfers are happening again. These things just seem to fly by now. I will be staying here in Meridian but my dear Sis Maschino will be leaving. I have learned so much from this sweet girl. I love her to death and she is going to do so many amazing things in life. 

I will be getting Sister Anderson and she is just the sweetest person and I'm excited to be with her.  I am excited that I get to be in Meridian again and keep on teaching the people here. There is just so much to do. 

I love you all and I hope you are staying warm and getting into the holiday spirit. 

Sister Aase 

Maple Leaves - The SCARIEST Mascot Out There!!!

Helllooooo! 

Happy Halloween! What did everyone go as? Send pictures please!!!! HAHA. I think as a missionary at this time now instead of letters (although you really appreciate those too) you just love love love photos:) so send them away!

Man, this week… so many stories so little time. So I will save my craziest one for the end.

Story number 1 

Title: They dun got dunk 

When: Saturday 

Where: Kuna 

My dear dear friends Ken and Jannet got baptized gahhhh! It made me so happy. To top it all off it was Jannet’s birthday that day and she just kept on saying "you see this is my BIRTHday and I'm being BORN again. Ha. Get it? It just makes sense." She is so flipping funny. Man and ... don't tell President... I even got to hug Ken! Ah, it made me so happy. He said to me after I gave him a handshake "it's a special occasion you can hug me now" gah I died! I love them:) 

Story Number 2 

Title: Let’s GLOOOOW!!!!!!! 

When: Last Monday 

Where: Church Gym

We had the freaking dopest pday last week. All thanks to yours truly. So we had what was called a district P-day because everyone else was off on their temple trips and let me tell you everyone always complains about district P-days because they think they are so boring. Ha Ha wrong-o. I love district P-days, you just have to put some thought into it. So I received a package by my dear friend Sara earlier in the week with a bunch of fun things in it including...wait for it... GLOW STICKS! So we decided to do a bunch of glow in the dark games. Glow in the dark volleyball, glow in the dark hide and seek, glow in the dark lookout. It was the best and everyone enjoyed it.

Story Number 3 

Title: The invisible trunk 

When: Halloween Eve 

Where: Church Parking lot

My dear companion is a convert to the church. She has only been baptized a little over a year. So she had never been to a trunk or treat before so of course, I had to take her to one. She was obsessed! Absolutely loved it. When it came to trunks ours was definitely the best... it was invisible! (remember, we don’t have a car, we are in a biking area)  WOW. We sat in a parking lot and handed out candy and whenever anyone past our trunk we would scream, wait you past our car! They would be so confused. Then we would give them some candy and a Halloween pencil (again thanks to my dear friend Sara). It was the best. 

Story Number 4

Title: Cereal for days 

When: Dinner time

Where: Only the best family ever

WE HAD A FREAKING CEREAL BAR FOR DINNER! what the what??!! it was the best thing ever. Everyone got two bowls and two cups so we could have chocolate milk and orange juice and two different types of cereal all at the same time. Needless to say, we love the Ashtons. 

Story Number 5

Title: What's Halloween without a little blood

When: HALLOWEEN

Where: An innocent looking neighborhood

So here we were riding our bikes home for lunch after a great time contacting. Sis Maschino and I were 1 starving 2 freezing so we were so excited to get home. So we were just traveling home and we saw these gorgeous maple leaves and we love to ride through them because the crunchy sounds give us joy... they did not give us joy this time. I biffed it so hard. I as my family would say pulled a big fat Quinn. Man, so there I was laying on the ground not able to move and out of nowhere this man comes and says "are you okay". Being so embarrassed I looked up at him and said no no I'm okay. And he just looked at me and said haha no you are not okay. I then looked down and I saw a bunch of blood yikes. So they fixed me up and then took us home.  Then Maschino checked for a concussion and I was all good and so I took some rest. I woke up to a bunch of elders in OUR APARTMENT. They gave me an amazing blessing and it made me feel so good. Wow, I love the priesthood. So do not worry about me. I'm all good now just a black eye and a couple bruises on my face (haha my face broke the fall lol). And now I have a fear that cannot be tamed of bikes (not really I'm good just a little scared of leaves now). But the blessing of this is I was wearing my gloves and leggings so a literally have no scrapes on any other part of my body just my face haha.  

Story Number 6

Title: I all alone there's no one here beside me

When: A dark dark night 

Where: A confusing neighborhood

So here we were again back on the bikes and it was pitch black. Sis Maschino wanted to see this family to say goodbye to them and I was totally on board until we got outside. I just kept on saying to her, Maschino this is so dumb. But alas we went. So I was going really slow because umm pitch black and fear of bikes haha. But it was freezing and Maschino is from AZ so she was going really fast. Before I knew it, she was gone and as much as I yelled her name she never came back. I was a little nervous to say this least. So here I was in the dark, with no companion, and no idea where to go, and had a missing contact lens (dang black eye... it's been making my contacts fall out... I've only completely lost one though). Let’s just say I was companionless and lost for 20 minutes. It was terrifying. I have realized that the adjustment of coming home and being without a companion is going to take me a while. 

Man so this has definitely been the most eventful week of my mission, but I have loved every second of it. Even the scary ones. As Sister Maschino says it's all part of the mission experience right. 

I hope all of you had some exciting things happen to you this week. I love you guys so much and stay safe out there... far away from the maple leaves. 

Sister Aase

Photos:

1. Us at pday glowing in the dark game - bomb!

2. Maschino and I with our invisible car

3. Me recreating a picture of me as a youngin' with a black eye haha

4. Jannet and Ken's baptism