I Love Being a Missionary!

Okay, I realized that I haven't done one of these in a while. So here it is-my top reasons why I love being a missionary. 

~I love teaching people who have been prepared for our message

We taught this girl named Arianna this week and we asked her what she likes to do for fun and she told us, "well I like to read the scriptures". What a cutie! We had our first lesson with her and put her on a date for March 23rd. So excited!  

~ I love it when we are expecting people at church and then they don't come.

Sounds odd huh? But here is why I love it. When that happens, we are absolutely devastated and that means that we love them with our whole heart and soul, and that, my friends, means we are doing our job! 

~ I love it when we think someone didn't come to church but really, they just snuck in the back.

Man! that is always such a cool thing. Dylan did that to us this week. Then after the meeting, she came running up to us because she was so happy she came and wanted to show us her curled hair that she did for Church and HER DAD CAME! whoop whoop. She is planning on being baptized March 16th and hopefully, her dad will baptize her. 

~I love having companions and missionary friends that make you laugh until your sides hurt 

Have I mentioned how much I love Sister Hansen? She is the best and we are always laughing and getting ourselves into funny situations. We also love jamming to music, which is always the best. 

~ I love service projects 

This week at Zone Conference, a lady told us all about JustServe and how we should log into it online. I already knew about JustServe but this just ignited my fire to use it more. We have a service project coming up with our district that we are super excited about. It will be great. I'll send lots of pictures next week

~I love being a servant of the Lord and having the Spirit with me always 

Life is so good. We had an amazing lesson with this man named Richard this week and during the lesson, I was able to promise him all these amazing blessing because that's what I can do as a missionary. How cool is that? Richard is amazing and is planning on being baptized March 30th. We are so excited for him. Please send prayers his way. He is starting Chemo in about a week. He is a fighter and super strong but prayers are always good. 

Okay love you all and I hope you all had amazing weeks. 

I will see you soon 

Sister Aase 

Pictures:

1) So we started our walking week and two blocks in I realized that I was already starting to get a blister so I had to sit down on the ground and put a band-aid on... oh the joys of the work. 

2) Me and cute sister Hansen. 

 

What the Hail?!!

Wowzers what a week! 

First I just want to clear somethings up for people. So yes! We can indeed call and facetime and text our families now on our preparation days (usually Mondays). It’s super awesome and I can see multiple benefits from it.

•Doing the "come follow me" program with your family

•Helping your family get involved with missionary work

•Giving struggling missionaries a chance to get some good motherly advice in "person" 

•Creating habits of communicating regularly with family members (college prep man) 

•Figuring out future plans easier like college classes. rooming etc. 

So so so many good things. So now that this topic is out of the way, let me tell you about my main girl Hansen. Hansen and I are rocking the world out of Nampa. We are finding so many people and getting so many people on a “date”. It’s amazing and I love the work so much. Also, what I love about Sister Hansen is she knows to have fun with the work. For example, Thursday is our weekly planning day and boy howdy is it a long day but man I don’t think I've laughed so hard my whole mission. 

I'll share just one quick miracle this week. We taught this boy named Cody this week. He is 11 and has autism but his family really feels like it’s the right time for him to learn and be baptized. So, it was our first lesson with him and we had only met him briefly before, so we really didn't know how it was going to go. So, as we were planning for our first lesson, we really were trying to listen to the Spirit for inspiration and "bam bam turkey and ham" it came. We ended up having a great lesson with Cody and he seemed like he caught on to what we were saying. It was amazing.

So, lots going on here. I hope you all are staying alive out there and loving life and helping others to love it too. 

Love Sister Aase 

p.s. It hailed this week... like 3 times so that was our catchphrase of the week... hence the title. 

Photos

1) This is a bunny I held at dinner

2) These are the McCleary’s. They are my favorite people

3) Elder O’Connell’s birthday was yesterday and we celebrated with a pinata we called Tina. It was grand. 

Snowy, Snowy Blessings

Hello Everyone! 

Okay so I know I can't complain that much about the cold because half of the people on this email just went through a crazy POLAR VORTEX but let me tell you the craziness that happened this week. Sister Hansen and I share a car with the Elders in our district and we exchange it on Friday mornings. We had a snow storm Friday afternoon.... right after we gave the car away. It was crazy, but you want to know something? God loves and blesses missionaries who walk. So let me give you a rundown of what happened after we started walking.

·      We gave out 4 copies of the Book of Mormon

·      We put someone on goal date for baptism  

·      We found 2 new people to teach 

·      We had 5 people come to church (3 of which are not even investigators...yet) 

Also, we ran into a crazy lady which is always SO FUN. Here name is Elizabeth and she really liked touching our hands and praying with us. Super crazy.

Well, I love all you guys and I know that God is aware of us and will bless us when we choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong. 

Love you

Sister Aase 

Sister Ellett Don't Goooooooo

IT’S TRANSFER DAY!!!!!! 

I love transfers but they are also such a confusing time. You are excited but nervous, happy but sad, pumped and amp for change, but soooo exhausted. It’s just crazy. 

So transfers for me?  I am staying here (yay) but losing Sister Ellett (not yay). We are so bummed we won't be together anymore. I'm getting Sister Hansen. I've never met her before because she was "born in banishment" (which means she started her mission in the corner of our mission boundaries so she hasn't been around a lot of missionaries for basically her whole mission.) So I'm excited to meet her and get a new friend. 

So let’s talk about the week. This “Come Follow Me” program is amazing! We have been using it to reach out to people who don't go to church anymore. We study the program with them and the Spirit fills their homes. I love learning from the New Testament and studying Christ's life. It's so awesome. 

We also visited this girl named Aubrey. She has been meeting with missionaries forever but we have had the hardest time setting up a time to meet with her. Then this last week we went over and when we were about to leave, she asked if we could come back next week to have dinner with her. We are excited to continue this friendship and hopefully get her progressing in the Gospel. 

Anyway, that is all that I have folks. Hope all your weeks were wonderful. 

Sister Aase 

Pictures

These were from last pday when we went ice skating as a zone. I love ice skating.... even though I'm really bad. 

I Wish I Was Sister Nymoen

Wow, this week is a complete blur. It is weeks like this where I wish I could be like my dear friend Sister Nymoen and just write an amazing inspirational email even if it is made up of nonsense stories. Sister Nymoen is the best. 

We had zone conference this week which was amazing and inspiring. I loved it. I recorded a song and posted it on FaceBook this week. That was really fun. The most amazing thing that happened this week though was my dear friend Dylan came to church with her dad! Wow, that was an amazing sight to see. She loved it too. AND THEN later that night during our lesson, she said she wants to be baptized but she doesn't know when. WOW. It was way cool to see her be excited like that. There are still a bunch of things we need to work out with the family because the worst thing we could do is let her be baptized and then have her just become a less active member. So we are trying to get the whole family back. Good thing we have amazing members right. Bro. Douberly is already on it to friendship the whole family. I love that man. 

Anyway, I think that is it. I will include some pictures. Including ones of last week because I forgot those. 

I love you all 

Sister Aase 

Photos

~The primary activity we do with the Wheelers. They are the best little kids. This week we acted out scripture stories. They loved it.

~Photos with my friends Sister Pace and Sister Hansen. I was companions with Pace when we were both little babies and just 4 months out, I just lived with Sister Hansen last transfer in Meridian. 

~Me happy with my uke

~This member taught us how to flavor profile and make this Scandinavian type of bread thing... I forget what it is called... but you basically just put yummy things on rye bread BUT you have to flavor profile first. ALWAYS FLAVOR PROFILE!! 

Bring Him Home

If any of you know me at all, you know that I love my Broadway music. So when I made a Broadway connection to a spiritual event this week, I knew I had to tell you all about it. But before we get into any of that, let me tell you about the rest of my week. 

It snowed this week! YAY! It was our walking week. BOO! Haha. So yes the week started with snow and Sister Ellett and I had to put on our big girl boots and keep moving forward cause haha #nottodaysatan. We started contacting people in the beginning of the day and didn't stop until dinner when we had our appointment for the night. Guess how many doors we knocked on that didn't answer. Just take a wild guess. ZERO! Everyone let us talk to them. Everyone. Some may say that it was because of the snow and people felt bad for us... and it’s very true for some that might have been the case but I also am a strong believer that we received so much success because God loves us and knows that we were going out and doing a hard thing and He wanted to bless us. Man alive God is so good. 

Wednesday we got to make these really cute puppet things with one of our investigators Brooklyn. She is so cute and we love her. We do primary lessons with her every week. She is amazing and wants to be baptized but can't because of her parents. But we do primary lessons with her at grandma’s every Wednesday and always have a great time. 

(side note I just found out that my companion titled her mass email "mama mia hear we go again"... can you tell we are a match made in heaven?) 

Saturday we got to go on a road trip to Meridian for a baptism of a girl Sister Ellett taught. I got to see a bunch of my favorite people and the baptism was amazing. I never met this girl before but the spirit in that room was so strong. I loved it.

So now on to my Les Mis part of the email. So this week I found out that a dear dear friend of mine got baptized. His name was Jim Frost. He was someone I taught in my first area. Really like my first real investigator. I taught him for about 4 months and I saw him grow tremendously in the gospel. He prayed out loud for the first time with me. (this guy is in his 70s). He started to gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon while I was there. I cried over this man a million times because I just wanted him so badly to get baptized and he just refused. When I found out that this man, that I love so dearly, decided to get baptized my soul was overwhelmed with joy. So on Sunday, we got to hear from a member of the 70 and his talk was all about how God is our loving Heavenly Father. He shared a story with us of when he was a mission president and President Nelson came to his mission to evaluate it. He told President Nelson all these huge plans of how they were going to raise their "numbers" and how statistically this is the best thing that he thinks they can do for the mission and blah blah blah. President Nelson stopped him mid-sentence and said, "I don't really think God cares much about any of this. He just wants his children home." That's all he wants. He wants us to come home. He wants us home because we are His.

So I looked back on this experience with Jim and thought about how I felt when I realized that he was taking the steps he needed to come home. I thought about how much I have come to love this man that I literally have known for under 2 years and taught even less than that. Then I thought about our Heavenly Father and how He must have been feeling that day. Heavenly Father has known Jim for an eternity. Knew him before he even came to this earth. Heavenly Father has taught, loved, and watched this man as he has slowly over the years come closer and closer to baptism. I know the Heavenly Father's soul was overwhelmed with joy when Jim made the decision to be baptized. He could finally say my son Jim is on his way to come home, and that is all our Heavenly Father wants.

That is my testimony that I want to leave with you this week. I know Heavenly Father knows what we are going through and blesses us and I know that He is just waiting for the day for each of us to come home.

Sister Aase  

Cause when you fifteeeeeen (months out)

I hope all of you remembered that good ol' Taylor Swift classic CAUSE LITERALLY NO ONE IN MY ZONE REMEMBERS IT! 

But you heard it right yall. Your little girl has hit her 15-month mark. Craziness. It still feels like I just got out here. 

So here are 15 fun facts from your favorite sister missionary

1)  Did you know that water is wet - Elder Wiltbank 

2)  Polar bears gain 500 to 600lbs when they are pregnant - Sister Thetford 

3)  Call of Duty is actually a terrible game -Elder Bruce

4)  Cars have 4 wheels -Elder Ginther 

5)  Lefties are better than everyone -Elder Broderick

6)  Lefties statistically have a shorter life span -Elder Wiltbank 

7)  On a 100-octane pump gas the Dodge Challenger Demon it makes 850 WHP (wheel horse power) - Elder Wahere 

8)  The moto on the 1st official Us coin was "mind your business -Sister Ellett 

9)  Dogs have tails - Elder Thomason 

10) Star Wars is better than Star Trek - Elder Wahere and Elder Bruce 

11)  You don’t eat bugs in your sleep -Sister Ellett

12)  South Carolina is the best state in the nation - Elder Wahere 

13)  Sister Maschinos favorite animal is a dolphin - Sister Maschino 

14)  President Sorenson was a nursery leader before being called as a mission president. -Sister Aase 

15) The book is blue the church is true. -The Nampa South District 

I love you all and I hope you have amazing weeks. 

Pictures 

- We went on exchanges this week and it was so fun. 

- At our mission-wide meeting, I got to see all my friends! Here is a picture of my MTC companion Sister Bentley, all the sisters in the MTC with me (Sister Temple, Sister Pace and Sister Bentley), and lastly a picture of everyone who came out with me. We are all FIFTEEEEEEN (months out)