Hey everyone!! This week has been pretty great!! Also to explain the subject this is what Jerry and his family decided would be a good thing to put on a shirt for Decatur hahahh. It smells especially a lot like soy beans today we were shocked when we walked outside. This week was super good and we saw lots of cool animals and got to teach some people about Jesus christ which is always a blessing.
Monday-CHristmas Eve!
-We went to the carriers house and it was great! they are such a sweet family and they have a dog! Also a bunch of people from the ward were there. we read luke two with them also and that was great
Jerry with his family
We also got to go to Jerrys house for second dinner!! We love Jerry! we got to meet his kids and they were just like him it was awesome. The food was so yummy and jerrys family is crazy and awesome also jerry has a dog and if jerry turned into a dog his dog would be exactly what he would look like
-I wore my christmas pajamas to bed and they were so cute thankyou so much for them!!
Tuesday-Christmas!!
-it was a great christmas!! I got to call my family!!!!!! best present ever!! it was so good to see all of their beautiful faces and be able to talk to them :)
family!!
got to see penny too
-we ate lots of good food and spent time with members
-we were allowed to watch movies and we watched the scary grinch, he will always scare me so much haha his fingers! We also watched elf and he kinda reminded us of a super excited missionary
-I got to play the ukulele that was pretty fun!
Wednesday
-we saw a robin and it was so pretty and bright red!!
-we went to this neighborhood where there are tons of shootings and we were trying to find this kids house but we couldn't so we just tried random houses. all the windows of the houses we tried all these houses and seriously they were all shot up and same with all the windows of the cars it was crazy!! But we met all these kids on the street and we handed out some fresh copies of the book of mormon and one of them said that their mom would be super interested!! she said she was going to put the book of mormon with her bible and that we should come back to her house. That was super good
kids that we met
-We taught jerry and his son about the restoration. We love them so much and
Here is what jerry looks like with his overalls hes my fav he always goes yep yep!
-We tried to contact maria but her kid came to the door and opened it and then slammed it sad day
-We had a super amazing lesson with Danny!! We read from Mosiah 27 and the spirit was super strong. He can relate a lot to Alma the Younger and we are so proud of the steps that he's taking to come closer to christ
Thursday
-everyone hated us today! Just kidding, not everyone! I am just dramatic. haha it was just the strangest day where every single plan we had the whole day fell through. All of our appointments canceled and we almost got hit a bunch of times and we got honked at so much!! It was crazy!!
-"the only people who didn't hate us today was...brother Nocak!"-Sister Palmer
-We met a man with 15 cats and they were all like crawling around his house, that man really loves cats
-Jerry has been wearing overalls and we love them haha. He keeps his camera in the front pocket and takes pictures of so much stuff. He took a picture of everyone at the Book of MOrmon study. The more we get to know Jerry the more he becomes my favorite! Same with his son Sam!!
-we had a really good book of mormon study!! we had a really good discussion about how God has a hand in all things. He will always prepare a way for us if we trust him
-We decided that Decatur is behind the times by a couple years because they still have video stores like family video its the craziest thing!! all the fads that I have seen in utah like years ago are big here now.
-We met a man named gene because he requested a bible and he was super nice and he called us "swell" and he said we could come teach him about the restoration so we are going on Wednesday!!
-It was stormy and there was an exercise ball that like flew across the street
-when we tract here people never answer their doors they always just go "who is it" before they open it
-jerry said Huzzah! during scripture study and it reminded me of working at temple square and it made me laugh so much
Friday
-We had the New missionary orientation and that was pretty cool I got to see the city of Saint Louis!! A member and his daughter and son drove us there and his son is named Miguel AND HES JUST LIKE LINCOLN!!! He is so funny and cracked up so much. But I seriously cannot not get over how much he is like lincoln
-His best quote from the trip "I thought pday was the only day you guys could go to the bathroom"
-I got to see the famous arch it was super cool! The member who drove us let us sprint out of the car and get a picture and then run back in. It was so nice of him!!
Saturday
-I felt like the grinch because of how many outfits I put on!!
-Helped bake the sacrament bread again
-We went to visit Shykea and read scriptures with her and she was at her boyfriends house and one of the guys there hit on us and I like sprinted away and then he was like "im gonna come to church just for yall" and we gave him the elders phone number
-WE SAW A WHITE SQUIRREL and we were in the middle of a conversation and sister palmer goes "is that a white squirrel?!?!' like sooo loud and at first I thought it was a plastic bag BUT IT WAS A SQUIRREL and it was completely white and it was running in the street. so crazy thats the coolest thing ever, a white squirrel.
lake clinton
Sunday
-We went to De Witt and visited an elderly lady who is in our ward. the air felt so good their because it didnt smell like soybeans and it was fresh!! it was awesome!!
-We taught Angelina and her children about the plan of salvation and we put her and her kids on date for baptism!!! It was cool to teach her about the plan of salvation, it is such a blessing that we have the knowledge that got has a plan for us
-While we teach Angelia her little kids are so funny and crazy and they like start brushing mine and sister palmers hair and like go through our bags and look at everything but we cant really do anything because we are teaching haha I love it.
LOve you all hope Utah is good!! Read the Book of Mormon everyday it will change your life :) I am so thankful to be a missionary!!!
Hello Everyone!! Hope you all are having an excellent week and enjoying the wonderful spirit of christmas :) I miss you all and love you so much!! I miss the snow and the mountains of Utah but I am so happy that I can be a missionary at the christmas season I feel so blessed!!
beautiful sights in decatur
This week was super crazy busy which was so awesome.We always have so much to do everyday and we literally don't know how we are going to get to everything and Heavenly Father some how makes it so that we can do everything!! Its actually the coolest thing. It was so cool to be able to share christmas messages with people these last couple weeks and hear their testimonies of Jesus Christ and how important he is in all of our lives. Jesus Christ literally is everything to us and I am so thankful that we have the christmas season to remember his birth!
Tuesday
-On pday I bought mini bananas and they were so good!!
a mini banana
-also we had dinner with a member on monday and they had the cutest dog ever it was so huge and it was so nice it literally bad my day to pet it haha AND they had two guinea pigs!! they were so strange and everytime we touched them their like jumped and ran away
-We had exchanges today and I was with sister Sullivan shes awesome!! it was so great to get to know her better
-I met someone today from Brazil and she was baptized by someone with the last name of butterfield and I was like NO WAY because my grandpa butterfield served in brazil but it turns out she was living in a different part of brazil than she lived in but still I thought it was pretty cool haha.
-we taught a lesson at mcdonalds and it was awesome we did a book of mormon read and that was great stuff!!
-We planned our skit before we went to bed and it was super funny because here we all all these missionaries dancing around in baptism suits planning a very strange skit haha
Wednesday
-Today was zone conference!! we woke up super duper early to be able to make it to ofallon in time and we were so sleep haha
-The sunrise on the way to zone conference was incredible!! I took a thousand pictures of it because it kept getting prettier and also I got to see the sun come up on the horizon because its so flat here and also the sun look so ginormous!! it was awesome
early morning selfie on the way to zone conference!!
AMAZING SUNRISE!!!!!
another sunrise pic because it was so gorgeous
-Zone conference was great we got to here a lot of messages about jesus christ and I got to share one!! It was from 2 Nephi 25:26. In the MTC our teacher had us change the word "of" in that scripture to "like" and its super cool!!
my mother and my grandmother
-we played white elephant and I got my present stolen like ten times haha it was a tragedy
Weird nuns that are also a music box that the elders gave us
-our skit was pretty short but we thought it was hilarious. We danced to white christmas in baptism suits because our mission president said we should have a white christmas baptism wise, it was kinda funny. Also the elders in our district wore baldcaps and taped flashlights to sunglasses and wore president batemans tags and pretended to be him and then they said "thats not approved" it was an interesting time haha
Outfits for our skit
-there was another skit that literally make me laugh sooooo hard and everyone was staring at me instead of the skit because I was laughing so much and it felt amazing to laugh super hard
-we got thai food for dinner and it was so yummy!! I love asian food
Thursday
-we taught Angelina about the restoration and we also started teaching her daughter!! We invited her to be baptized and she said that she would want to it was so awesome!!
comp selfie
-it was super rainy and cold today which i love
-We went tracting and found so many awesome people that we can hopefully start teaching!! but also this one lady opened her door and look at us and said hi and then closed her door right after like as she was saying hi and it cracked us up for some reason
-we had a book of mormon reading and a bunch of people came which was great!! also Jerrys son came it was super cool to meet him.
Thrift store with birds in it!
-We helped sister bard make salsa because she wanted to give people a christmas gift but she couldn't do it on her own and we were so happy that we could help her out. She didn't have enough money left to buy jars to give the salsa to people so we called the elders and asked if they had any and they were doing service at the time and there was a bunch of jars there that were perfectly sized so that was a huge miracle because we got sister bard all the jars she needed for like five dollars it was amazing.
our beautiful Christmas tree
Haha well lots more stuff happened but I ran outta time love you all hope you have a great Christmas!
Hey everyone!! I miss all of you and love you all so much!! This week was pretty good. Decatur is the most random place ever and I love it ha ha.
Tuesday
-We had a relief society activity and it was so awesome!! I got to know the ward members better which was great and they even read one of my favorite Christmas stories!! the one with the tree that is nice and lets all the animals use it for shelter and stuff and then its the one that get chosen. Dad isn't that the first Christmas book you bought for mom??
Wednesday
-We got to visit sister Bundy for lunch, we are trying to help her become more active in the church and she is our favorite person ever.
We shared a video that has the little kids talking about Christmas time and then we asked her some questions about why Christmas is important to her and how Jesus Christ is the greatest gift we have ever been given. The spirit was so strong!!
-we taught the young men in the ward how to teach the plan of salvation lesson. -I could actually see a couple stars this night!!! I love stars so much
-I saw like the cutest family of deer and there were like four of them and it was so cute
-the young mens president was taking photos of all the youth because hes into photography and he had this big professional set up and he made us get our pictures taken too and it was so random hahah
Thursday
-We made cookies with the hughes and them handed them out to people in the ward who are less active
-We had lunch as subway with brother novak. I do not know why but people in decatur love subway I have been so many times on my mission haha. There are more subways than anything else!!
-When I was at the subway I was reaching for something in my bag and I fell completely off my chair and I was just laying on the ground in the Subway and it was so funny
-it smelled like decatur today (which means it smells like a soy bean processing factory) and there was weird misty rain stuff in the air all day so you would get wet outside but it wasn't rain, I have never experienced that in utah. Its really cool though I like it
-Also decatur processes a bunch of soybeans and stuff and so thats why is smells so strange sometimes. But i find it super funny because there are like banks and stuff named after soy beans. Like "soy capital" hhahaha
-we went caroling at an old folks home and it reminded me of provo @malery!!!!!! All the people we sang to were so so sweet and they would sing with us too which makes me so happy. There was this one lady named Welma and she was tiny and so cute and she was just the nicest lady ever!! she sang with us and she sang so loud and she loves the song white christmas so we sang it a bunch. After we would sing to them we would ask them questions about christmas and what they love about it and stuff. We had the chance to show the light the wold video with some of them and the activities coordinator named tay!! It went so super well and we had a nice talk about Jesus Christ and then the activities coordinator asked if we would come back and share another message with them!! we are so excited!!
-we stopped by a bunch of peoples houses today and tried to do some finding but pretty much no one answered or let us in haha bummer
-We took some cookies to sister bard (she is the sweetest old lady who bakes the sacrament bread she had a lot of health issues that make it hard for her to do anything even coming to church so we like to go visit her a lot and share messages. She is the sweetest thing ever and has such a strong testimony it inspires me) but it turns out she was having a really hard day so I am glad we visited her!!
-sister bards cat miss kitty lays on its back all the time and also it loves me and sister bard said the only Illinois cats lay on their back like that hahha so funny
-we had dinner at the stoddards and they are literally the cutest family ever! Sister stoddard is literally like goals of who I want to be. She is so awesome and cute and has the sweetest family. and she served a mission in Finland!!
-We helped one of our less active members start a stop smoking workshop so that was cool! he is a really good and funny kid but he just has had a lot of problems with addictions but he wants to do better and hes been coming to church and to our book of mormon study!!
-We had our book of mormon study and we had a lot more people come this time so that was awesome!!
-We went tracting in the rain for our last hour of the day and I thought it was so fun because I love the rain, we got to share the light the world video. No one was interested in hearing from us again but we got to meet some really nice people and talk about christ!!
Friday
-Today I have officially been a missionary for one month!!! ONly 17 more monthes to go
-I keep doing the weirdest thing ever where i wake up in the middle of the night and I think the alarm goes off like a bunch of times!! I think I am just really terrified of the alarm going off or something haha.
-We were trying to contact a bunch of people in this kinda scary neighborhood and it was dark and no one was home at any of the houses haha. But we were going up to this house and I was like staring at the top of the house because I thought I saw a face of the top of the house and it scared me so bad but it was just a piece of paper but we like sprinted away from that house when no one came to the door bc we were so freaked out for some reason
-we had an interesting dinner at a members house and it was cornbread, pizza, doughnuts, soup, and salad it was a very interesting combination. We shared a christmas message with them and it was nice and also we got to see their fishes and one of their kids who is about to move to college said the funniest fact which was "I heard that 90% of betta fish die from being stung by a wasp so we should probably cover out the tops of our betta fish tanks because there was a wasp in the basement" and then his brother said "where the heck did you hear that" and I started laughing so so hard it was hilarious.
Saturday
-we helped sister bard make the sacrament bread which was a great time and we also picked her up and orange soda before we went over because its her favorite, i think thats the cutest thing ever!!
-We tried a bunch of people again like potentials and people we were teaching last week but nothing worked out sadly no one will answer the door for us haha. But we went and tried a less active member to bring her some cookies and she wasnt there. but her house is super interesting hahah its literally like covered in eyeballs and they are eyeballs all over and even the doorbell is an eyeball and there are halloween decorations still up and some interesting drawings all over the porch.
-after the eyeball house we were walking around and we say this house and there was a little girl playing in front of it and I really felt like we should go try it out and so we did and the mom of the little girl let us in and let us share a message!! she said we could come back and start teaching her the lessons so I am super excited because this will be the first person that I will get to teach since I have been here!!
-we went to visit someone from the ward to share a message with her and she ended up being super sick and she needed to go to the emergency room so we took her to the emergency room and we were worried for a sec but she is ok
-we went to a super posh party and it was cool. It was a dinner party at our ward mission leaders lakehouse. It is literally the biggest house I have ever been in and I can't belive its in Decatur haha it so fancy!! It was his work party and there were a lot of people who weren't members of the church there and we got to share a christmas message which was cool!!
-there have been beautiful sunsets like everynight this week which has made me so happy. there is not a lot of nature stuff around here so I kinda miss that haha. But one thing I was blessed with this week was incredible sunsets that made me feel so so happy!!
I hope all of you are having a great christmas season!! I miss all of you all love you all so much!!
"Life is either a great adventure or nothing." This quote by Helen Keller is how I feel about life! Most of my adventures happen in the walls of my own home. I have one son, two beautiful daughters, and a husband that makes me smile! We explore and have fun together. My blog is meant to document our family's adventures and share them with our friends and family.
