Longest week ever!

So this week has been the longest week of my entire life. okay not true- the first week of the MTC and the first week in the field were the longest weeks but this one was seriously not going to end. but it did end on a good note! I will get to that in a minute.

So monday- Sister ellis was sick so I stayed with her that evening while the other two sisters went and did YSA Stuff. it was great- I got to work on our area book and I made us some Mac and cheese and I slightly felt like I was back in Cedar at school and that Castle or Dancing with the Stars would come on! yep realitly check. haha I am seriously missing school. I never thought I would say that. I have been so homesick for school. To wake up and go to class, and do homework I think I am going insane! oh well hopefully I feel this way in 16 months when I do get to go back! haha

Tuesday was awesome! we had 6 appointments. doesn't seem like a lot I know but its the most I have gotten in one day!

Wednesday was a hoot. We had sister council and this was the first time that sister goodman would be having a lesson with her. little info on sis council. she has been a member for about 4 years and was hard core jewish before. well currently she atends chruch every week but she doesn't actually believe in Christ. yep. thats right. so we have stuck to old testament stories. haha so sis goodman was all set to figure her out. poor girl. I just sat and smiled as sis council told her she was full of crap. Yep that was her exact wording. haha but she tells all of us that so nothing new there! thne we went and helped sister king with her house and the elders came as well. That lady is also slightly very insane. she has to lay some linoleum. Oh man chase if you could see how she is doing this you would kill over on the spot. she is making it so difficult but we love her so its all good!

then thursday sister bliss and I were both sick. that sucked. I think I slept for a good 16 hours straight. at first I thought this is great I can rest! nope you have tiem to think. which leads to being homesick. and wishing you could lay on a couch and watch tv. hahaha oh well the day ended and all was fine

Friday! it was zone conference which was a lot of fun. my president and his wife are wonderful so it was great! and then saturday came. the best day of my life.

so I mentioned this family call the Pahias who were investigators in my ward then the ward boundaries changed. so the kids and husband wanted to get baptised when sister pahia who is a member, mom was in town. well sister pahia had her baby and the mom was in town. but she was leaving yesterday.  so they aren't in my ward but guess who spent the entire week trying to get the to be baptized on saturday? me! so we went with the new sisters in their ward wednesday- sister craig as like so you are getting baptized saturday? i was like nope this isn't going to work. but it did! so basically the whole zone planned a baptism in two days and they were baptized and confirmed on saturday before the grandma went back to hawaii. it was amazing! and sis johnson and her family where back in the mission visiting so they came too! it was wonderful. I loved it. to see a baptism especially after a long bad week, oh it just made every moment worht it. and then chris the dad went to church yesterday and got the priesthood and they all want to be involved in their new ward. oh its great. Temple this time next year! I would love to go but i doubt that will happen. so yes a long week ended on a wonderful note! Hopefully this goes faster though.. hahah

as for a few random things

- i never want chinese food again. bring back the tacos.

- we are rearanging our furniture. oh wait we dont have any. which leads to street finds. I might have prayed that we would find some dressers. yep guess who found some last night? boyua!

yep thats all.

Love you all so much!

Thanks for the package mom and dad! chase I want some cookies. :) also grandma I got my letter thank you so much!

I think thats all...

Bye!

-also I bought a recorder so I might try to send a recording home next week!

Annlie

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Another Week

So another week has gone by. 

We were able to meet with selma and have a spanish couple in our ward come over and speak spanish with her to help fill in the gaps, it was really awkward since I don't speak spanish but Selma really enjoyed it so thats wonderful!

we were able to meet with Sister Mitobe again but she didn't come to church yesterday. darn her, though sister tutt another less active did! she is a hoot, we went and saw her after church and man she is strange. she will defend this church and the book of mormon to her death but she doens't yet believe that its the one true church. oh well one day! 

We also taught a guy named marty, his wife is a member and they are in the 70's and she has been praying for years for him to come to the church and this is the first time that he has sat down and acutally listened to the missionaries. yeah!!! 

Sister Krommenhowk is also having some work done on her house so we went to help her clean it. scary. haha trust me. I will never be a hoarder after this mission. no parents that doesn't mean you can go throw my stuff away. We also had dinner with a member family and their friend Tamsyn. That means twin in greek cool right? anywho she is a 14 year old who is more interested in religion than any 14 year old I have met. so hopefully we can get her taking the discussions! Ruby bailed out on us again and she will be out of town for the next 2 weeks so I guess we will see what happens with her! thats an update on the missionary work, as for some other random facts,

We met with a couple from sister goodmans home ward that was fun!

biking is a pain. but its keeping me in shape!

we had an advanced orientation on friday at the mission office with all the kids that we came in with so I got to see my MTC district which was so much fun!

I got a package from Nate and Katie which was wonderful! 

Last night at dinner we met the members neighbors and after dinner we took their little 5 year old and some deserts with us over to them. Alisha the 5 year old is a great missionary! 

I have eaten more asian food in the past week than I want to think about. 

yep thats about it. 

Thanks for everything and for everyones support I love you all and will hopefully have some more entertaning stories next week! also sorry for the spelling errors I have to type fast and so it jsut happens. :)

Annlie

PS Sister johnson might be coming to visit us on saturday. So excited!

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2 Months!

Guess who has been out 2 months today?? ME!
Yep and it feels like forever. Thats okay!
This week has been so crazy! I got my new comp Sister Goodman on tuesday, she is a blast! she has been out 6 months and is from SLC. Also we are in a new car share with the pleasanton sisters. yes pleasanton is like 20 minutes away so no this car share is not working. BIKES! but luckily my comp is in worse shape than I am so we take it slow so I actually really like it.
However I have been in charge of the area because I have been here for 6 weeks. so pretty much every normal appointment we have cancelled on us. so that left us trying to find anyone and everyone. one night we had the car and we tried 7 people. not a single one let us in. ahhhh.... but we also met with a bunch of people since we are riding bikes and we have some new potentials! we have the husband of a less active member who had us over for dinner, as well as another less acitve and then this random neighbor of a member family and then we have this guy named ray who we try to teach but he is really busy and his son is basically a bum-like drugs-no job-alchol- so he is always worried about his son so we stopped by yesterday and ray wasn't home but his son was so we started talking to him and next thing ya know we were giving him a book of mormon and inviting him to church! so lets hope he is interested because if we straighten that kid out then ray will join the church in a second. yes!!
also dinner last night. oh man. we ended up not have dinner so our relief society pres said to come to her friends house for dinner. yep they were asian and in the mandarin branch. Im not sure what I ate last night. it was called hot pot- there was tofu, mushrooms, radish, shrimp, beef, lamb, fish cake, fish balls which had fish eggs inside, and tripe. yep anyone that know me knows that that whole list is not edible. but I tried the tofu, radish, beef, fish cake and tripe. yes I tried tripe. for those of you who don't know what that is. well go look it up. I will also never eat that again. hahaha
Hmmm what else happened this week..oh I had to talk in church on sunday. that was fun. not. haha oh well.
Im trying to think what else to tell you, normally I would tell you about the people we taught but they all cancelled. haha great week.
its also been freezing in the mornings.
also I love mail. feel free to write :)
 Well love you all, have a great week!
Annlie
also Sis oborn got a new comp as well sis bliss. she is really nice but very whats the word... bubbly... let me put it this way. if I hear the word "Super" one more time... haha no she is fun!

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Transfers

So I am going to apologize again this email might not be that long because well this week has been insane. Really. actually I don't remember much of it. I helped Sister Ellis with the YSA some more because I go where the car goes! but I did get permission to start riding bikes again so thats good! So lets just skip to wednesday. We totally taught a homeless person inside Caspers Hot dog store... not sure if its a store or a stand or what. either way that was fun. we also contacted a guy on the street that may have killed someone. yep great day! so lets go to thursday! we helped sister Council move, she is going to san ramon which is sad because we can't go over to see her.. but we were helping her move and she had these $100 wine glasses. Yes not the most active family. well she doesn't drink but her husband might. well sister ellis might have broken one. whoops. hahaha but luckliy sis council is amazing and just laughed and said she thought it was funny jsut to watch us confess. that and she said she didn't drink. then she took us out for ice cream. yep good day. until about 30 minutes later when president called and asked to talk to sister oborn. Yep her visa came in. Nope I wasn't happy. So transfers are this week and so she left today. but back to thursday and the weekend, we kind of slacked at being missionaries and focused on her getting ready for brazil and trying to train me so that the area doesn't die this transfer. haha so She left this morning. it was the out going farwell for those leaving last night and we all went to that and then us 4 stayed at presidents last night so we could wish her well this morning. yep so now I am quite depressed. WE call our trainers our mothers so pretty much I don't have a mom at the moment. I will get a new one tomorrow and hopefully a car as well. haha For now I am with Sister Ellis and Johnson but Sis Johnson goes home on wednesday so we will leave her with president tomorrow and then Sister ellis is going to be training a newbie so she will get her comp on thursday. got to lvoe changes! hopefully everything goes smoothly because it will be an interersting few days! Everyone was sad to see sis. Oborn go, miss ruby wasn't going to let us over  because she was sick and then I told her that sis oborn was leaving and she was like "get over here!!" haha it was funny.

Well I am really sorry this email is so short, my mind is a  little shot from all the craziness lately, I will have a lot more to tell you next week!

Love you all and thanks for your support!

Annlie

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Another Week Down

Dear Everyone,

I am going to apologize now if this letter is short and doesn't make much sense. I have been up since 4 am. But I will get to that in a few.

Its been a good week, a bit crazy because I was put on the no biking list so I have had to follow the car which often meant doing splits with the other sisters and I would help with the YSA ward, but that was fun. Our investigators are good, Selma is wonderful as ever but this week we are going to try and have some members in the ward that speak spanish come to our lessons because selmas first language is spanish so hopefully we can fill in some gaps. The Pahias are good though we have to send them over to the other sisters this week since the ward boundaries changed and we lost them. Miss Ruby is hilarious as ever. She was suppposed to do a church tour but we called her and she said she wasn't feeling well so we just stopped by. But we were late because we were dealing with the car and such and she was yelling at us and all mad and i was sitting there thinking well here goes this investigator and then all of a sudden she is like are you hungry? have you eaten I made you some ribs. So next thing you know we were eating ribs. whatever! haha but we taught her how to pray last week and she told us that she went to a baptist churhc with her friend and she taught the preacher how to pray like us. awesome. haha hopefully we can make some more progress!

the rest of the week was good.Sister mitboe didn't come to church which was sad but we will talk to her again this week.

as for th 4 am deal. Well yesterday was sis Johnsons b-day so we had the sisters in the zone come over for a sleep over last night (president said it was okay!) so they came over and a member in the ward came to so we had 9 girls. awesome. which meant at about 11 I was out cold on the floor as the rest of the girls were talking. so then as a zone we did a sunrise hike. hence the 4 am. Im not sure how come i can't ride a bike but they have no problem having me walk straight up a mountain. haha it was hard but man the view and the surise was beatufiul! the fog covered the sun so it was bright pink. so cool.

Well that was pretty much my week, sorry it wasn't that exciting, I am just a little out of it right now because of my lack of sleep. love you all and thanks for your support!

Annlie

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Another Week!

okay well another week has gone by! some things from this week we taught our investigator selma again. she is amazing really. she was like yeah and christ will speak through you to tell me things that i need to hear that you might not know. I looked at her and said yep im pretty sure you should be the missionary and I am just going to leave now. haha she is wonderful! also we met with miss ruby! so fun, we hadn't met her for 2 week and when i asked her what happened in to joseph in the sacred grove she totally rememebered! and then I asked her if she believed that there could be one true church on the earth today and she said no. back to square 1. haha but when we first met her she said she would never go in a church and she agreed to do a church tour with us this week so thats progress! also Sister Mitobe came to church again. and her son was going to come with but ended up not being able to but he wants to come next week! yay! also Sis tutt is a less active that I finally met this week and we did some service for her and then she came to church. I basically started crying seeing as she said that she wouldn't come to church. it was great.

So some changes have happened here, they redid the ward boundaries. Im not thrilled. they took some good families away from our ward and they took camp parks which is the military base which has our investigator family the pahias in it. they were soooo close to baptism!! we are hopeing that the elders will keep them commited. they also took the bart system away from us which means we have no where to street contact. we are supposed to get 140 street contacts a week and we can barely get 100 and now we will get like 20. whatever its fine. haha oh but I got to meet an egyptian family! technically the other sisters I live with were teaching them but we did splits and so I got to meet them! so cool! I loved their accents. and they really liked our church until the realized how different it was from theirs. haha they couldn't figure out how we were so conserviative. oh well we will see what happens with them.

Oh and Nate and Katie I found where you lived! We were going to visit a less acitve yesterday and I was half asleep in the car like I always am and all of a sudden I am looking at these apartments and I was like yep this is where the lived. I saw the pool and I rememeber swimming in it and cute little ashlyn when she was a new baby! Yes it was serious deja vu. I also met Claudia Ambrose, she said that you(katie) were serving in young womens togther so that was fun!

Well that was pretty much my week, sorry this email isn't amazing its just crazy trying to email everyone in an hour!

Love you all and thanks for the support!

Annlie

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1 Month!

Dear Family and Friends,

Well as of last friday I have been out 1 month! Crazy right? Yeah it feels like 6 months. I now understand how Carson can see that he has 7 months left and still feel like thats forever. haha But thats okay!

First off Happy Late B-day to Megan C. and Happy coming b-day to Katie and Ryan and Megan R on the 21st!

Next it has been a crazy week. Lets start off with my pets. The ants have unfortunatly not been very friendly lately. I think they may have gotten the hint to stay outside. The blue birds on the other hand love us since we are starting to give them left over fruit. As for homeboy our black widow, well we discovered that homeboy is actually a homegirl and after giving her a bath with bleach she looked a little cold last night so we decided to start a fire in her hole to warm her up. Sadly the fire got a bit bigger that planned and both homegirl and her babies died. So sad... But hey no more black widow! I guess I will have to see if I have any more entertaining pets next week!

as for lessons this week, we worked hard but a lot of people were out of town. We met with Selma again and taught her about the temple which she liked but she just doesn't feel ready for baptism yet so we will keep working with her! Ruby was out of town on saturday and well she watches tv all day mon-fri so we couldn't come over another day. (my kind of lady!) But we went on splits on wednesday which was terrifying because I didn't watn to go by myself but I did! So me and Brother/Sister Lechaminant (the ward mission leader and his wife) Headed off to find some people to teach. Yeah no one was answering, so we tried Sis. Mitobe who is an inactive that hasn't been to church in 5+ years. We have tried her before but never gotten in and so I was like well guess we can see! But she let us in! and we talked with her for a good hour or more and I invited her to churhc as she came! though Sis. Lechaminant went to pick her up and I have a feeling that she might have refused to leave unless she came... But hey whatever works! So that was fun.

Also mom and Dad I got your package thank you very much! I also send a letter that had some rambling about packages, I don't need any of that right away its just ideas to send.

Oh we had dinner with a family in our ward and she is super mom. she has twin daughters that are 13. (one looks just like ashlyn) and then twin girls that are 5 and then a 2 year old and then 7 month old twins. (boy and girl) Man thats a lot of twins!

So more info on the member we live with. She is a single sister who attends the mandarin branch. Well sort of. apparently she is less active. Our district leader was like "housing the missionaries, going less acitve. Bold statement" needless to say we quote that all the time. She is really nice but very odd. haha Only thing you really need to know is that "water is the worst enemy" That pretty much sums her up.

Also biking this last week. Bad... I had some fun asthma attacks but it all worked out. We are in talks to maybe get another car but President brought me up a new bike on saturday that helps me stay sitting up straight better and I think its really going to help. My mission President is so awesome!

Well that was pretty much my week. How are things at home? How was the lake? I was really missing that last week! I believe the homeshow is now over? have the kids headed back to Georgia?

Love you all, have a good week!

Sister Stevenson

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