Not Every Week can be a Miracle Week

Happy April Fools day friends!

So I am going to update you on these past two weeks. Last week I just had no energy to make a weekly letter, but let me tell you last week was amazing. 

So Richard got baptized last week. It was such a sweet experience. It was the first baptism where I felt the Spirit so strongly. He is just an amazing person. Also, Arianna decided to get baptized earlier. How exciting! She will be baptized this Friday. It was a great week. 

This past week was...super hard. And that's just how it goes sometimes. My friend Elder Dalton explained this to me early on my mission. He said as a missionary you are always a tool in God's hands and on the hard weeks that is when you are being used as a hammer. Haha. God gives us hard weeks so we grow, learn to trust Him, and humble ourselves. He never abandons us. If there is anything that I have learned on my mission it is that. And that is no April Fool's joke ;)

Love you 

Sister Aase 

I'm going home, back to the place where I belong

So this letter comes in a bit of an unusual way – via Facetime with my Dad.  So he will be providing this week’s update from me to him to you.

Yes, it is true, I will be going home very soon.  The date has been set for April 26^th flying into Salt Lake City. The actual transfer date is May 1^st, but since I plan to start Spring Semester at BYU Provo, I spoke with my Mission President who said, well just go home a few days early.  Which really isn’t early because I will hit my 18th-month mark on April 10^th – so I will have served 18 1/2 months on my mission.

That said, even though I will come home a few days early, that only gives me 3 days before school begins – YIKES!!  (seriously I question if this is the right thing to do, but after much prayer, I feel calmer than ever about where I’ll be living, who I’ll be rooming with and starting school so quickly – I guess I’ve learning to trust my Heavenly Father when he provides me with answers to my prayers.

The reason why this letter comes via Facetime is because my dad and I met at our storage unit where all my earthly belongings are stashed.  Yup, about 12 plastic bins of clothes, books, and various souvenirs and mementos.  We went through 6 of those bins of clothing so I could have my dad bring some “non-missionary” clothes to Utah with him.  I feel like I did pretty well considering the circumstances and my Dad’s lack of skill with the camera phone, haha. 

I left one box of t-shirts and stuff, two of winter clothes, one overstuffed box of clothes for Goodwill (yay me just getting rid of stuff I don’t need) and just two tiny little bins for my dad to somehow pack into a suitcase and bring with him, and like 10 pairs of shoes – easy right.  And it only took us 1 ½ hours to go through all that!!

Anyways, I’m excited to come home, see all my family and friends I’ve missed so much, but boy will it be hard to leave my Nampa Idaho Mission and all of the wonderful members and friends and great missionaries there, but I know I’ll be back up there again soon

.

Love you all . . . and see you soon,

Sister Aase

The Beginning of the End

Welp, it is happening.

This is my last transfer. It feels really weird but at the same time, I am so excited about this transfer because so many amazing things are happening. But first, let me tell you what did happen this week. Richard decided to move his date up. He will now be getting baptized this weekend. He started chemo this week and God is moving him along and helping him every step of the way. He amazes me every day and reminds me of the reason why I'm out here.

Hailey and Cynthia both came to church this week. Man, did that make me happy. They are both just such amazing girls and really just need positive role models in their life and I'm so happy we can be that for them.

We did service this week which was so fun, painted nails, painted a shed, and sang karaoke to old people. I love service.

... and now the sad part. On Saturday we found out that my dear friend Sister Hansen was leaving. I have loved being with her and have learned a lot. I now have Sister Vaughn. She is from Paradise CA. She is so sweet and I already love her. Also, we are living in a new place. Our ward mission leader realized that we were not living in our area and so he decided he would let us stay with him and his family. He also owns a palace so that is a plus. So I will be ending my mission with a bang! 

I love you all. Thanks for all you do 

Sister Aase 

Cows Vibrate . . . FACT!

Hello everyone! 

So this week I was able to go on exchanges and go to a little town named Letha. It was awesome because Letha is the place that my dear "mom" Sister Soelberg went when she left me. She used to tell me about it all the time. It also was super crazy because my whole time on my mission I've stayed within a 20min radius, including all my exchanges, but Letha is out in the boonies. It was so weird to leave all of civilization for a day. 

When we were driving there, I kept on looking out the window and then saying to Sister Frandsen (my comp for the day) "where are we?" "Are there houses here?" "Do you live in a house?". She was getting a kick out of it... but I was legitimately concerned. Ha. 

Anywho so that was fun and she reminded me that conference is only like a month away! Craziness. I love conference so much and I'm way excited for it! 

Also while I was there, I kept on oddly hearing my phone go off. But every time I checked it, there was no notifications bo nothin. I finally asked Sister Frandsen at the end of our exchange if she heard the weird vibrating noise. She then laughed and told me it was all the cows outside mooing. Yep, that was a thing. So cows mooing apparently in my head sounds like a phone vibrating... fun. 

Man lots of service happening this week. It’s our new mission push. We want to be doing community service as much as possible. It is also pretty fun and breaks up the day a bit so that’s always good. 

Richard is doing so well and is really excited about his baptism. He starts chemo tomorrow and we are just hoping that it goes well so he can continue meeting with us and learning and growing. We are also trying to figure out how the logistics of a baptism will work because his immune system will be so weak and he will be hooked to an IV. Lots of things. So pray for us to get revelation for a solution and pray for him that everything will go well -- would be very appreciated!

Thank you for all you do. 

Sister Aase 

YOU'RE HOT & YOU'RE COLD

Hi everyone!

So it happened. It was bound to happen. People guessed it would happen. Even I knew that it would eventually happen... I got sick. This was the weirdest illness I have ever had. Positives - no running nose, no congested anything, no upset stomach yeah none of that. I will now try to describe what my symptoms actually were. It felt as if I had just done a full body work out and depending on the second, it was either in Antarctica or the Equator. Fun times right. yeah literally every 5 minutes I would go from sweating to having freezing sweat on my body. It was insane.

YOU’RE YES AND YOU’RE NO

So we met this sweet Ukrainian lady this week and afterward she immediately invited us back so we could meet her single 25-year-old son.  ... this happens quite often when your companions with Sister Hansen. But we are missionaries so of course, we came back. When we showed up guess who wasn't there, the single 25 years old. Apparently, he was a little offended that his mom was trying to set him up so yeah he was a "no" to hearing the gospel, but you know who was a "yes" Ludmela the Ukrainian lady and her husband Roy. It was great. 

I would finish the rest of the song but I don't really know how to tie it all into the rest of my week. But just know Nampa is still on fire, God is still so good, and the Gospel is still truer than true. 

Love you,

Sister Aase 

Pray for 

Richard Swegman (Baptism day March 30th)

Dylan Knudsen (Baptism day April 13)

Arianna Manning (Baptism Day April 5th)

Santana Griffin (Baptism Day April 13th )

Hailey Drennon (Baptism Day April 27th) 

Cody Jonstun (Baptism Day May 11th) 

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.