Holy COW, You've GOT to be KIDDING ME! - Letter 2/10/2014

The title from this week's email is in honor of the Less-Active that we work with, Brother Hill. He is awesome and he says that (the title) at least once every time we meet with him and his wife. They are such awesome people! We absolutely love them. Now... To get them to church. :D He was ON the high council. It's just silly. Come to church.

So this week has been fantastic. One day in particular stands out this week... WEDNESDAY. So, Tuesday night we're all stoked cause we have 8 appointments scheduled for Wednesday. EIGHT APPOINTMENTS! We woke up the next morning, and it was a frozen TUNDRA outside! The wind was blowing so hard and it had been snowing since the night before. And guess what. People used that dang weather as an excuse and every one of our appointments fell through!! The only on that really didn't was Alexis, but she just asked to move the appointment to later that night. 

So at this point, I'm just like "alright. Obviously, the Lord has a different plan for us today." And by golly he did! We tracted in that crazy weather (yes, yes we did) and taught the restoration, found an awesome family that just moved here and is "church shopping", and stopped by a couple people we haven't met with in a while and got to have lessons with them. So, even though they all fell through, we still got to teach 5 lessons that day - but only one with someone we had originally planned on! So that was awesome.

So, our investigators……..Darlene was doing really well for a long time, right? Well, she hasn't been reading the Book of Mormon and she's really hung up on the fact that her baptism wasn't done the correct way or by authority. Which, if she was reading and praying about the Book of Mormon this wouldn't be an issue. So we're going to have to do an intervention, because we only have one more lesson to teach! Ruh-roh! But we talked a lot about baptism and what's holding her back from setting a date and what it comes down to is that she is NOT READING AND PRAYING about the Book of Mormon.

Jay IS doing really well! We had a sweet lesson with them on Thursday, talking about Enduring to the End and a review of the Gospel of Christ. He got a lot of his concerns cleared up, and the awesome part was that we hardly had to say much at all... It was just him and Sister Bryant talking about things. It was so good, the Spirit was so strong. We talked a little bit more about baptism too, and encouraged him to ponder on a date. Speaking of "ruh-roh", they have a dog that looks exactly like Scooby-Doo. We love their family. A lot. 

Then there's ALEXIS! She is awesome!! We love her! She is so sassy haha. We taught her the restoration the other day and she said the prayer at the end. After it was done the spirit was CRAZY STRONG!! We didn't say anything and just let her think... And then she just sat staring at the floor and goes "Huh..." and looks up at us and goes "....Hi." Hahaha. She was like "I just feel like this huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders..." Uh, yeah! Prayer will do that for ya! Anyways. She came to church yesterday and got a pretty big answer to her prayers. She said the night before she had said in her prayers "I think it's true but I just want proof..." And then during Sunday School they talked about how the style of writing was so typical Hebrew that there's no way Joseph Smith could have come up with it on his own... We look over at her and she just looks up and says "Okay, I hear you!" Haha she's awesome. Also, she'll just text us randomly all the time and give us updates. The other day she goes "So, you pray about this book, get revelation on it, get baptized, and then what?? I've been reading my little teaching book thing..." Meaning her Restoration Pamphlet haha. 

ALSO...  EXCITING UPDATE! We finally met with Pinky and Bill again! FINALLY! And when we were talking to them Pinky was like "We have just had bad luck for like 12 years straight and I keep praying and asking Him to give me direction help me through this..." And she said she was just looking for peace and comfort. And so we shared with her that we had prayed and felt very strongly to go see her. We told her that the Gospel has provided support, guidance, direction, and peace to us and the other people we teach. Then we said, "Pinky, this is God answering your prayer." She was quiet for a second and then looked over at Bill and said "Well, I think we should try to make it out to their church sometime, huh Bill?"   HAHAAA YES.  So we'll keep ya updated on them.

Well, time's gone again... Haha but READ THE SCRIPTURES! In church they were saying that the Scriptures are like letters from home... How? Well, where is our REAL home? Heaven, right? And if the Scriptures are God's words... Then they're just letters of support and encouragement and direction from our Heavenly Father. :D

Also, Pinky quote of the day: 

"The sisters aren't going to buy the house ya big DOPE!" To her husband. 

Love you ALL! 

Sister Perrenoud

Also, President Vellinga does this thing where he puts Peanut Butter and Miracle whip

 on bread and calls it a sandwich. We wanted to try it, so... We did.

And it was nasty....... 
Sorry President!

Mom tortured "encouraged" the boys to make
Valentines to Send to Sister Sue - They did really well!

I Can Hear The Bells - Letter 1/27/2014

Hooooolaaaaaaaaaa!

So this week has been crazy good. I guess I haven't updated anyone on the past couple of weeks, huh? Well... Nothing too crazy has gone on. So I'll just focus on this week.

We've started working with a less-active sister in our ward. She is the SWEETEST THING EVER! She got baptized like 20 years ago and has never been back to church though. So. She really doesn't know much about the gospel but we're hoping we can help her to know more! :)

Darlene is doing really well. She read up to 1 Nephi 8 in the few days since we had met with her, and she retained it all really well!! Like she was "Laman" this, and "Nephi" that, and "Well I can see why he would hesitate in killing Laban..." We were amazed. She is doing really well. She just needs to come to CHURCH! We took her on a church tour to see if that would help her be more comfortable with coming. We invited another sister from the ward and they got along really well. The spirit was SO STRONG! Especially at the baptismal font. qI think she totally knows that she's getting baptized, cause everything she said was "when" and not "if". You know? Like, instead of saying "So, if I do that I would..." It was "So, when I do that I would..." I WAS DYING! It was so exciting! But she still didn't come to church... Hopefully she just wasn't feeling good.

Dave has not shown up to lessons twice. We stopped at his house the Saturday after the first time, and he said he got another job and was just really busy. Then he sent us home with a dozen oatmeal raisin cookies (DELICIOUS OATMEAL RAISIN COOKIES) and hugged us before we left. Haha I didn't even know what to do with myself. So then we tried to meet with him again this past saturday and he didn't show up to that either. :( We were sad. But I am not giving up on him. 

We also started teaching a guy named Jay. We are so excited about him! His girlfriend is less-active but she still has a fairly solid testimony. At the end of our restoration lesson I think she really saw the need for her to be better and start coming back to church more regularly. He's not comfortable with prayer at all, so we're meeting with them again tonight and focusing a lot on prayer. Oh yeah, they also live together soo... Wedding!

We have found some fantastic new people lately too. There are a lot of potentials, but the one I'm most excited about is named ASHLEY! So after our exchange Saturday me and Sister Beaudoin were trying to figure out where to go to tract. We had Virginia street come to mind, so we were like "hokay" and went to virginia street. It had been snowing and blowing particularly hard that day, so we grabbed our shovels out from the back of our car and offered free shoveling/book of mormons to people. Finally, we got to this house, and we just started shoveling their driveway. We thought nobody was home so we were just going to leave a Mormon.Org card. We were almost done when two people come out, a brother and sister, who looked like they were in like their 20's. They were saying it was nice of us to do that for them or whatever, and then the dad came home and he started freaking out over it too. Anyways, they ended up inviting us in for hot chocolate (since we explained the no coffee thing). Ashley asked us the million dollar question of how Mormons were different from Baptists. Turns out she's been looking for a new church to go to. She was raised Baptist and wants a church that has the same values she grew up with, but she doesn't like the Baptist churches here. SO WE'RE TEACHING HER WEDNESDAY! It was seriously a miracle. That was some real divine intervention. Also, their dad's name is Lemuel.  CAN YOU SAY PREPARED. We're bringing him a Book of Mormon on Wednesday.

Lem, when we were leaving, he was like "You guys are welcome at our home any time. And if you ever need anything at all, just let us know and we'll be over in a moments notice! Hey, we'll have to feed you dinner!" And all this crazy stuff.

So this week has been so good. The church is SO TRUE! I love watching peoples lives change because of it. It's such a blessing to witness it. READ YOUR SCRIPTURES! All of you! They make a difference! Hahaha love you all!

Sister Perrenoud

Goals for the ~weeeek~ ???  Kaitlin assigned Sister Beaudoin 

some pretty hard ones!

Okay, but still not as pretty as an Idaho sunset

First Ohio gear purchase - where did your legs go Kaitlin?  

Weird pic!

Sister Beaudoin put liquid dish soap in the dishwasher instead of 

dishwasher soap - Ooops!  Glad it wasn't Kaitlin!

Gobbling at Turkeys With President Vellinga - Letter 1/21/2014

Kaitlin was not able to write this week as normal because the Library was closed on Monday due to Martin Luther King Day so she sent a short email.  I had to share a small portion of it.............................

I have some pretty good stories this week. Hopefully I get the chance to write them out, but I want to make sure that you hear one in particular so I'm typing it now.

I gobbled at turkeys with president Vellinga.

Haha during my interview he was like "Have you ever gobbled at those turkeys?" (There are wild turkeys that walk around behind our church sometimes.) and I was like "No..." So after my interview he took me, Sister Beaudoin, and a couple Elders from my district and gobble at them. So I did. And they all gobbled back haha!! All of them at the same time! And I turned around to look at President and his face was PRICELESS. His jaw dropped to the ground and his eyes were wide open hahaha.

Anyways, that's my gem for the week.  Love you so so so so much!  Thanks for the letters!

Love you,

Sis

HOLA NACHO - Letter 1/13/2014

So this week was fantastic. 

We were locked in our apartment for a straight 48 hours until the cold went away.  When we finally left, it was.... Weird. I felt like I was leaving the MTC again, cause basically we just did a lot of studying and watching The District DVD's. It was also really good cause Sister Beaudoin and I worked a lot on our teaching companionship and we feel a lot more prepared for the work. 

On Wednesday, we were able to teach a couple people - which was good - but nothing really has come of it. However, when we were tracting, we came across this really sweet old guy who let us in just to tell us that he respected us for what we do, although he does not believe the same way we do. He then proceeded to tell us that when he and his wife were dating, and they talked about marriage, she got scared of it and started hiding from him when he'd come visit her at her work. Her friend told him she'd hide in the bathroom and so one day he camped out outside of the bathroom and when she came out to see if he had left he goes "Now you listen to me. I love you and I want to marry you!" And he goes "And here we are, 47 years later." Haha and then he gave us four oranges and we left. 

ALSO! The Tuesday we were locked in our apartment we got a referral from a member of the ward!! He met this lady and I guess she had been taught like 20 years earlier by missionaries and she wanted to learn again. Her name is Darlene. We met with her on Thursday. At first, when we asked what her expectations were of meeting with us, she was like "Oh I just wanted to meet you." We were like "Uhh... No." Anyways. She was going to go to church with us on Sunday but she cancelled on us because "she had a cough and it's worse in the mornings and she would be embarrassed if she coughed all through church."  Satan has his ways. But, we really feel like she's ready to truly accept the Gospel this time. So we'll keep working with her.  Also, Sister Beaudoin was so excited about making an appointment with Darlene after the referral came in that she ran over and jumped on her bed. She whacked her head on the ceiling hahaha. She is great.

On Friday we had a Zone Training Meeting. The one thing I probably really learned the most from it was from what our Zone Leader talked about. He said that there's a good missionary, who says "I'm going to baptize everyone!" So basically "I'm going to do my work." Then there's a better missionary who says "I'm going to do HIS work." But, there's the BEST missionary who says "He does His work through me." I loved that. I think that's something that hit both of us pretty hard. Something we've been trying really hard to work on.

We ALSO got a new investigator this week that we are BEYOND excited about! His name is Dave. We taught him on Friday. He's a single dad so we met him at the Library in Vermilion. He has two kids, William (8) and Luke (11). He's a really good dad to them, and the day we met him he had just been laid off from work. He is the nicest guy ever. The spirit was really strong talking with him, and I think he really could see why he needs the gospel in his life!

There was also a baptism that night... So we invited him and his boys to it. Just to see what it was like haha. At first he was like "no, I'm pretty busy, I dunno..." and then SISTER BEAUDOIN looks at his kids and goes "Hey boys, you wanna go see a BAPTISM?!" and they were all "Yeah! Yeah! Dad please can we go!" Hahahaha. Winner!  Him being at that baptism was definitely the highest point of my mission so far. The Spirit was SO strong, especially while Brother Landrygan was being baptized. You could tell Dave was really touched by a lot of things. I was watching him like a hawk during the service, and praying so hard that nobody would say anything off-the-wall! Haha cause that's how our ward is. They say weird things. But, nothing too crazy was said (although they did say something about W.O.W. and when we met with Dave earlier he had a Coffee Thermos and smelled like Cigarette smoke) and he pointed out that a lot of things we had talked about with him earlier had been mentioned during the service. One Elder from our district asked what he thought of everything and he was like "I actually came here a couple times quite a few years ago. I just kept thinking 'I don't know why I ever left.'"   SO good. Such a good night. 

Also, the ward really reached out to him. He got along especially well with the guy who just had been baptized. Sister Beaudoin said that at one point she heard him ask "So... You feel like you found something you had been looking for?" Which is one of the things he had expressed to us earlier, is that he felt like all the other churches had something missing.  We are too excited about him. 

Also, I ran into my first basher yesterday. It was hard to remember not to play his games and not to get worked up. He took every little thing we said and twisted it and used it against us, and at one point he started getting really condescending, saying we hadn't looked into other things enough to really know. But, it only made me realize how much I do know. Every time he was like "But you don't KNOW that!" My instant thought wouldn't be "well maybe I don't." my instant thought was "I do. I do know the things I'm telling this guy are true. I do." It just drew out my testimony. He was annoying though haha.

Welp, I may or may not have forgotten my camera at the apartment so no pictures this week but there wasn't anything too exciting anyways. I'll make up for it next week haha. I love you all! Things are going so well here and the pace is swiftly picking up! We're going to the other sister's apartment today so that will be fun. They live with some members. One sister is from my Zone in the MTC. They serve with us in our ward. They are GREAT! 

...Big gulps huh?? Alright. Welp, see ya later!

Love,

Sister Perrenoud

Freezing Tundra That is Ohio - Letter 1/6/2014

This week has been so GREAT! But weird weather! Some days it's sunny and in the 40's and beautiful, one day it was DUMPING snow all day long, last night it was raining, and today it's supposed to drop so low below zero that our mission president is actually not allowing us to leave our apartments at all for the next two days starting at noon.  Holy Moly.

There are so many good things about this week I don't even know where to start!  First, with some funny anecdotes.

First one is that when Sister Beaudoin and I were tracting earlier this week, we go and knock on this door. A guy opens it who can't be more than like 17, right? So I'm like "is your mom or dad here?" and he's like "Nope." So I start into our "Well we're missionaries..." Shpeal. He's pretty abrupt about how not interested he is, but as he reaches for the Mormon.org card I notice he has a ring on his left hand ring finger...Haha yep, the guy was married and the owner of the house. Hahahahaha. I swear he looked like he couldn't have been older than Marcus! He actually looked a little like Nick Barton. Maybe that's where my judgement was off.

Second funny anecdote was that we went to Brother Clapper's house again Saturday night. This guy is seriously the best. He made us dinner! Slaved over it like all day long, we called him at two to make sure he was still wanting to do it and he was like "Yep, Turkey's in the oven!" So he made us like a mini thanksgiving dinner. He said something about how the Potatoes were a little lumpy and he hoped the stuffing was good, so I made a big deal over "Well, I'm from Idaho so I'll be the potato judge!"  I didn't know you could goof up cooking potatoes.  They were seriously the nastiest things I had ever eaten in my life!   Hahaha oh my gosh I just had to like choke them down because we didn't want to hurt Brother Clappers feelings! As soon as we were in the car, Sister Beaudoin looked at me and was like "So... Those potatoes..." We both wolfed them down as fast as we could so we would be able to just get it over with hahaha. On top of that, we were cramped in his tiny apartment eating in his living room, watching him feed his little Mini Dachshund half the turkey. Oh my gosh!  He is the best.

Tuesday we found this really sweet couple named Kay and Kathy. Kay is this hilarious guy who was really interested in temples and Mormon.org, and Kathy, his wife, let us in because she could tell we were freezing and she's a sweet little grandma. We're going to do service with them and hopefully get to teach them eventually!

Wednesday was nasty. It was so crazy! The night before it had snowed for a little bit, and then all of a sudden it just DUMPED on us on Wednesday. Like, it was constantly snowing hard all day Wednesday. So we tried to go shovel tracting, basically offer a message about the gospel and then when they said they weren't interested we would be like "Well, we have some shovels with us and we would love to shovel your driveway today! Just looking for service opportunities!" And they either had a son/grandson coming to do it or they paid for it to be done. I guess people didn't want to see girls in skirts to shoveling their driveways, or maybe they didn't think we could... Anyways. Shovel tracting is a no-go. So we just ditched our shovels at our car and tried to regular tract but everyone was like "Go home, it's too cold for you to be out in this weather!! We will talk about this later, you need to be somewhere warm!"  SO LET US IN DANGIT. 

So wednesday was pretty... Eh. Haha. BUT we did get to teach the Hill's again! They are so awesome! They need to get back to church! Brother Hill, before we left, said "Well, do you like home made bread? Cause I baked some today and I made an extra one cause I knew you were coming over!" Isn't he the best??

Wednesday night we were supposed to have dinner with some members, but their son was in the ER because of a kidney stone so they had to cancel. They're an older couple and they have a couple kids living with them for medical/temporary purposes so we decided Thursday morning that we would shovel their driveway. Sister Schultz came out in a robe and told us to come in and drink hot chocolate when we were done. She is seriously so sweet. I guess she posted some big thing about it on facebook, one of her kids told us about it haha.

Thursday we had dinner with the Hansens. They did pork with sauerkraut on it?? At first I was concerned but it was actually really good! Try it! We were also able to make a lot of really exciting appointments for this week.

FRIDAY WAS THE BOMB.  We hardly did any tracting. Why? Cause we were so busy teaching! We taught three less-actives, finally taught Charlotte again, and taught a recent convert. We also got a couple more appointments for this week, one with a former investigator! Which, he was great. His name is Dave. He lives in Vermilion, and the Elders stopped by him a couple times and then I guess just stopped? But he was in the former investigators section? Anyways, he was genuinely happy to see a set of missionaries standing on his porch. He almost seemed hurt that they had stopped coming to see him. And he had just been laid off that day so I think he kind of recognizes that what we have will help him out a lot. We were supposed to teach him tomorrow but that probably won't happen anymore because of the weather haha! Hopefully we will be able to reschedule though.  Teaching Charlotte... I was like in tears the entire time. She is so heartbroken about her husband passing away. She keeps a picture of him on the kitchen table and sits and talks to him. When she turned the picture around to show it to us, I had to try with all my strength to not bawl my eyes out. It's a picture of her husband that they took at a restaurant, so it looks like he's sitting across from her at the table. And it really captured his personality! Anyways. She has a lot of concerns with getting baptized, mostly that she doesn't feel like she's a good enough person to be. Which we can see otherwise but we are all our own harshest judge or however the heck that saying goes.  We were exhausted after Friday. A LOT of energy went into those we met with. Which was good! I felt good about it.

Remember Pinky and Bill? They didn't come to church. I was so sad. We called them later that night to make sure everything was good and they said they just couldn't come because they were both really not feeling well. Darn it :( We are going to try and meet with them this week and hopefully (HOPEFULLY) commit them to a baptismal date! We really feel like that's the way to go.  Speaking of baptismal date, we committed someone to baptism this week too! We were tracting and we walked past this girl. As we talked to her she seemed really interested in the church, told us which house was her moms, and said to go talk to her about it. So we did. She let us in and we taught her the restoration. At the end, we started talking about the Book of Mormon. We had her read the second to last paragraph of the introduction, and then I bore my testimony of it and had her read the last one. When she read the last paragraph, she was dead quiet but kind of had a smile on her face... She was like "You guys will think I'm crazy, but when I read that last paragraph... I dunno. I just got this warm fuzzy feeling. Right in my heart."  YAAAYYYYY!!! So we jumped on it. We told her it was the spirit bearing witness of truth and asked her to be baptized (after she's taken lessons and come to find out the truth for herself that is) and she said she would! Her name is Tinettie. She is awesome. Just trying to find the truth.  My one main goal here is to find an investigator from the Catholic church. St. Josephs in particular. Everyone we've met from there is pretty set in their ways... I want to [be the means to] convert one. Haha. 

Welp, this week was so good. This coming week will be even better. I am so excited for the people we're teaching! 

Love you all sooo so so so much!

Sister Perrenoud

The things you find when you take over a
long time Elder's apartment.............

I think we're all jealous of this snowfall!!!!!

The celebratory "little weenies"  for New Years Eve.

Some traditions never end...