Crazy Dreamers

This week was crazy y'all. We have been tracking like nobody's business this week. We have just had a ton of appointments fall through all throughout the week so we've been filling our time with finding activities. We even did street contacting in the mall on Black Friday hahaha. It was great! Thanksgiving was great too. We had a bunch of great families who gave us tons of food. We loved it. 

The highlight of the week though was listening to the “dream channel”. What is the dream channel you may ask? It's a “radio show” Sister Soelberg and I produce that goes live at 6:30 AM every morning (our wake up time). We talk about the dreams we each had the night before. Here are some of the crazy highlights:

-Sister Soelberg being an inspirational speaker and saying "a chameleon still has its own identity whereas a mirror wonders who he truly is."

- Sister Soelberg, Elder Davis, and I being on a hip hop dance crew dancing to "Families Can Be Together Forever" 

Stay tuned for more. 

I hope everyone's Thanksgiving was great and that y'all are getting excited for the Light the World initiative ... it's going to be lit haha.

Love you!

Sister Aase

Mugs & Hugs

Hello Friends!

So Since I just emailed you on Thursday there is not a lot to say. But I will tell you it has been getting cold here... like really cold. I got a really big coat on Thursday and I love it and have been wearing it like every day. Also, we have been given so much Hot Chocolate it's ridiculous. We are always offered it in like every house we go to. Sister Soelberg is obsessed with hot chocolate so we always say yes. My favorite part is looking at all the mugs. I drank out of a fantasia mug this week. It was beautiful haha. Anyway another great part of serving in Idaho is that random strangers just come up to us and give us hugs all the time. They will say things like "I just got home from a mission and I just love you guys" or "my son's on a mission and you guys are just so special". I love it because I love hugs... other missionaries think it's weird... but I'm totally into it. Anyway short email but just know that the Church is true and God really does know and love each and every one of us. 

Have a great Thanksgiving and go and do something for someone else!

Sister Aase

These are photos that we received on Thanksgiving from the family in the photo - members who invited Abby and her companion to have dinner with them.  

Sticks & Stones and Wild Beasts

Hello!

How is everyone? Good? Good! Thank you so much for all the emails and prayers being sent my way. I love the emails and can always feel your prayers:).  So another great week here in Nampa. The temple tours are now done. It is definitely a bitter sweet. We are sad to leave the temple but so excited to get back to normal missionary proselyting (and finally get to use the referrals we have been getting YAY). 

So since we have been at the temple so much, I have gotten to study my scriptures a lot. It has been the best! I want to share with you one quick lesson that I've learned from my studies this week. So if you will all turn to 1 Nephi Chapter 16 with me hehe. Chapter 16 is the bom.com and there is just so much you can learn from it but I will share one quick message. 

So the story goes. Nephi and his family are in the wilderness and things are going well. They have weapons to get food. They have this Liahona (compass) that is guiding them to where they need to go. Life is pretty swell. Then Nephi's bow breaks and chaos ensues. Everyone is upset... Lehi, Ishmael, Lamen, even Nephi BUT Nephi instead of just being upset goes to work. He finds sticks and stones and he makes weapons. Then he goes and he fights off "wild beasts" with these hand-made weapons. 

A few things we can get out of this:

1.) Take what you have to the Lord and he will make it work. 

Sticks and stones are all Nephi had. He didn't have fine steel or a professional bow maker. He had sticks, stones, a determined mind, and faith in the Lord. Then he goes to his father, the prophet, so he can ask of the Lord to make it work... and it did. 

2.) BOOM the Lord will make it even better 

Not only didn't it work, but the results were better than before. Verse 14 says they went and "slain food". What does Nephi slay? "WILD BEAST". Nephi doesn't just get some bunny or duck for his family. He is bringing back the whole bear. 

When we bring all we can to the Lord he does not just qualify us. No. He over qualifies us. He takes our abilities and talents and weakness and makes them more useful than we could ever imagine. This week I had so many just bunnies and ducks that I thought would be impossible for me to overcome, like talking on the phone and approaching people on the street. However, I took all I had to the Lord and put my trust in His hands and I came home each night with bears hanging on my shoulders. The Lord can do miracles if you simply let Him. He has performed miracles in me, he has performed miracles in my investigators, and he can perform miracles in you. Let him!

I love all of you guys and I hope you have a great week!

Love Sister Aase 

A member in our ward, my Trainer, Sister Soelberg, & ME!

Behold, Fear Not

Hello from Nampa Idaho!

I'm officially here and I'm loving it. Getting here was absolutely crazy. Leaving at 3 am + 20 departing missionaries + introverted travel leader (aka me) = insanity. Haha but we survived. That day was packed full of things to do. We arrived and headed straight to the stake center to meet all our trainers. We were not told until the end of the night who our trainer would be so we all placed bets for the next 4 hours on who we thought would be paired with who. All the Sister trainers are so so nice but I honestly think I might have gotten the best one hehe. Her name is Sister Soelberg and fun fact she knows my cousin Zach. It was truly meant to be. She came out from Kansas but her dad is in the military so she has moved around her whole life... just like me. We have become friends rather quickly. We love talking about music and books together. It has been so much fun.

So I am working in the Nampa North Stake and I could not ask for a better area. The members are very friendly and just love the Sister Missionaries. I have also been able to work in the Meridian Temple Open House. We usually get there around 7 in the morning and leave around 9 at night. It is craziness, but I love being in the Temple. And... I get to see my MTC companions like every day because we are all working at the temple. We are in charge of the video rooms and answering questions in the reception tent at the end of the tour. It is so neat to meet so many people from all around. Everyone just loves the temple. (including missionaries because we are getting so many referrals out of it).

Anyway, we had this really neat lesson in Relief Society all about the commandment to fear not. I loved it and it was just what I needed. That is what I have decided to do this week. FEAR NOT. I have been given so many promises from the Lord to just open my mouth and that is exactly what I will do. Fear is not going to stop me anymore. I love the hymn "How Firm a Foundation" especially the lyrics "fear not I am with thee, oh be not dismayed, For I am thy God and will still give thee aid." That is what we should remember always. We have Him with us always so there is no reason to fear.

I love each and every one of you and I love this gospel. Thank you for the thoughts and prayers.  Keep the faith.

Sister Aase

My MTC group and one of my instructors, Sister 

Sister Bentley helped me pack - Oh what would I have done without her??

The skies here are so gorgeous, this photo doesn't do it justice.

The Lloyd Family -  they were the first family I had dinner with here in Nampa, ID

And She's OFF !!

We had a wonderful 14-minute phone call with Abby this morning from the SLC Airport.  She was made the "Team Travel Leader", responsible for getting all 20 missionaries off the Mission Training Center (MTC) bus and onto the TRAX light rail to the airport, then getting them checked in.  Thankfully, she knows how to delegate.

She was a mix of emotions on the phone - excited & nervous, happy & anxious, and after a few minutes on the phone, admitted to being a little homesick (which is why missionaries aren't allowed to call home once they arrive in their missions - it's just too hard and it makes them more homesick).  But more importantly, she was upbeat and ready to get to work.

We received a very nice letter from President Sorensen, the Mission President over the Idaho Nampa Mission, along with a photo of Sister Aase with Pres. & Sister Sorensen.

I'll share a little from the letter we received:

"After arriving at the mission office and conducting a brief orientation of the mission, I had the opportunity of interviewing your daughter, in an effort, to become better acquainted with her and to feel of her spirit.  As a result of this interview, I felt impressed to assign your daughter, as a companion, to the most obedient, most skilled, and hardest working missionary in the mission.  You can be assured that this companion is one of our mission’s very best."

One of the things Abby has told us several times during her time at the Mission Training Center, was that she wanted to work hard - so it looks like she'll be doing just that!!

Sister Aase & Pres. & Sis Sorensen

Wait a second.... we are fish!

This week my district decided to be fish haha:) Sister Bentley got the cutest package with all fished themed things including seaweed, a fish protein bar, and fish stickers! We all decided to eat this nasty stuff together as a district for a “district bonding activity”. Needless to say, we sure became closer after seeing about half our district almost throw up... including me! Sooooo nasty haha. We then all wore fish stickers all day long and we are convinced that’s how we got our investigators to talk to us. My district is seriously just the best and we all get along just swimmingly ... hehe. 

So I've been asked to talk a little bit more about my companion and my roommates so here we go.  My companion is my dear sister Bentley. She is a hoot. She is such a hard worker like me and has so much knowledge of the scriptures. She is teaching me something new every day. Also, she used to work in a cheese factory.... like a legit cheese factory! Could I have asked for a better companion! I think not. 

The two lovely girls in the middle are Sister Bentley and my roommates. They are in our district and coming to Nampa with us. Sister Pace is from CA (Ventura area) and is my absolute soul mate. She is the only person I have met on this planet (besides my dear sister Maddie) that understands all my Disney references and can stump me in Disney 20 questions. Sister Temple is just as cute and missionary-like as her name sounds. She is from Texas. She is also just the sweetest person I have ever met and is always thinking of others. 

I was also asked to talk a little about how this whole TRC thing works. So basically, these people walk around with gold name tags and their job is to be an investigator. Some are members and some are actual investigators curious about the church. They don’t tell us and so most of the time we just assume they are legit. It’s really neat because we get to experience walking up to people and talking to them. Also, we get the experience of planning out our schedule to meet their needs and ours as well. It’s just a really cool experience. We got two new investigators this week Meleah and Ethan. Meleah absolutely loves us and tells us all the time that she is going to come and visit us in Nampa when she is driving back home. She is the sweetest person and has honestly taught me so much about life and being happy. Ethan haha is so funny. He just has the craziest questions, but we always try to answer and tell him that we are just little 20-year-old girls haha. He really appreciates how blunt and straight forward we are with him though, which is nice because usually Sister Bentley and I worry we are super mean when we are blunt with investigators. 

I love it here so much and I hope you know that the Gospel is true and it really has the power to change people’s lives. 

Thanks for the prayers, 

Sister Aase

Me & Sister Bentley

My Roommates - Sisters Pace, Bentley, Temple & Aase

Hello From the MTC

HI Friends and Family! 

I survived my first week here! YAY. I have loved it here. It is so hard and so worth it. My companion has watched me cry multiple times but she has also watched me laugh until I cant breathe. So weird how there can be such drastically different emotions in the same place huh? 

Anyway let me tell you a little bit about what's been going on. First off surprise, I get to have an iPad in the MTC! It's been a big blessing in reaching out to investigators and searching for videos during lessons. Also, I have no clue why they did this but, I was called to be the district technology adviser. Basically, I just get to make sure everyone is following the rules in terms of technology. It's pretty simple but it also gave me a bit of a confidence boost because if the Lord thinks I can handle another thing on my plate I must be doing okay as a missionary. 

So my companion, Sister Bentley, is just the best. To tell you a little bit about her personality let me share with you a story. Second day here I am already falling asleep in class #darnnarcolepsy . So I tell Sister Bentley that I am going to just stand up in the back of the room (literally like two feet behind her) and she says "nope WE will stand in the back". So for the rest of the meeting, Sister Bentley stood in the back of the classroom with me balancing her notes on her knee just so I wouldn't be lonely. SOOOO sweet. 

Okay I'll end with one funny story. So here we were 9:30 at night and we get a pounding on the door. We open it and they say Sister Aase they are looking for you at the front desk. Sister Bentley and I look at our SDLs and then at each other and then at our outfits... pajamas. The SDLs insisted that we just leave immediately because the people on the phone at the front desk sounded concern. So here we go, both in pajamas, walking through campus to get to the front desk (on the other side of campus). We get there and I'm like shaking because I think I'm in trouble and I'm cold and embarrassed because we ran into like 20 different Elders... I digress. We get to the front desk and before even saying a word they hand me a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. I look at them really confused and then they look at me really confused (probably because of the pajamas) and then they say "you're Sister Aase right?". So I take the doughnuts and start walking back. Then I read the note on the top of the box... from Clayn Smith... ???  It sounds familiar, but where do I know a Clayn Smith from . . . but thanks for the doughnuts!. The sisters and I have been joking about it all week saying all the different people he could be. So funny. I wish I could send a picture but unfortunately, I can't figure out how it works on this computer. 

I love all of you guys and I'm so grateful you will be on this journey with me and be able to see how my testimony grows each week- because I know it will. If I could tell all of you one thing I learned this week, it would be that God is real, and loves each and every one of us so much. He sent His Son down for us and through the Atonement we can be with Him and His Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ again. 

Thank you for the support,

Sister Aase

My MTC companion, Sister Bentley