Week 16: #Spiritdoppelganger

A nice woman gave Sister Gardner and I Aloe
plants for free!!! Lol, Sister Gardner the gardener....

Hello Friends!

It's been a crazy week!! But it's been really good! As you all know I have been transferred to a new area with a new companion, and while it's been hard to leave people that I know and I love behind, (again) I have had a crazy wonderful week. My new companion, Sister Gardner, is the best thing since sliced bread. I was really worried to leave Sister Foulke, I guess no one wants to leave their mother lol, but sister gardener has been amazing! This far in the field I have been SUPER blessed with my companions. Transfer day was ridiculously ridiculous *heavy sigh* so there's this phrase that members of the church use called Mormon standard timewhich means that Mormons always run 10 to 15 minutes late. Well… Missionaries have this thing called missionary standard time where missionaries run 15 to 45 minutes late. That's OK. I'm definitely not bitter. Not dwelling on it either. LOL it doesn't bug me even a little bit.

Last night we had dinner at a member's house and
they had a house-pig... not a house-dog. A house-pig.
Sister Gardner was in heaven! XD She is SO cute.
But I prefer not to make friends with my bacon.

So this week… Let me rewind a little. Sister Gardner is a Nauvoo missionary which means that she serves in Nauvoo for the summer. And in the winter she serves in another mission in the US. I am the lucky duck who gets to have her as a companion!! *fist bump!!! She and I have decided that we are spirit doppelgängers. Yes. We have realized that we are the same person. We both love to work hard but still have fun at the same time which is a hard balance for most people but not for us two!!! We have the same sense of humor and the same laugh and by that I mean that we're both obnoxious laughers! XD I have only been companions with her for less than a week, but I have decided that we will always have to live near each other. We are both super OCD, we both love the same type of music, and for those of you who know me, you know that I take great pride in my burping abilities... and she also takes pride in my burping abilities!!! I have found my match and she agrees!

OK so this week has been Cray Cray to the max!! But there is a lot of work that can be done in this area and that is super exciting! I love missionary work and in this area we don't have a lot of progressing investigators which means that Sister Gardener and I do a lot of walking and a lot of tracting and tracting just means that we go door to door and introduce ourselves and ask if there's anything that we can do to help. Most of the time people won't accept our help or our message about Jesus Christ, which makes my heart hurt because I know how much joy it can give them if they would just accept it. But everyone has their agency and I just need to learn to love them enough that even though they don't use their agency the best they could I still love them. One of the things that's been a little hard for me is when people are rude and by rude I mean really weird because I love people so easily and so it's hard not to take people's rudeness personally. But the enabling power of the Atonement is a real thing. Because of the Atonement I have been given strength and ability and love to spread the message of Christ's love for us. Because we have a loving Heavenly Father who gives us families and prophets to help us and guide us, because he has given us his only begotten son we, all of us, have the opportunity and ability to return to live with Heavenly Father in Eternal joy. How crazy wonderful is that!?!?! It is such a blessing to know the truth. That is why I am serving a mission, because I know it can bless so many people's lives. That's why it makes my heart hurt every time someone rejects the message that we bring. It's not my message. It's not the church's message. It's Christ's message. It is a message from God himself telling us that we can find joy that it's available to all of us!!! How blessed am I to be a messenger of this great work!!!

LOL, LOL, on a less intense missionary note: this week I was missing some of the people in the last area I was in. I was talking to my companion about it while we were tracting and we walked past this maintenance van and I walked a few steps in front of it before I did a double take. So I walked back and lo and behold it was a van for a company that one of the families in the last area, the Barlow's, and on the van is a picture of Sister Barlow and one of the boys, his name is Seth who is the cutest thing ever!! I was so happy to see them even if it was just on the side of the van! LOL, I love being able to see some of the people that I grew to love! I was also able to see another member from the YSA Ward, she is super awesome I love her! This week was incredibly hard, incredibly awesome, incredibly blessed, I saw so many miracles this week! I wish I had more time to tell you all about them but it will have to wait for next week. :)

I love you all so so so so so much! You are all in my prayers! Stay safe! Love one another! And write me back!!!

Sister Longo

Crazy cool, HOMEMADE Halloween decorations!

More great decorations. 

There IS life and beauty in this place!
Not a whole lot, but I'll take what I can get!

#relationship goals ☺

Week 15

Hello My Lovelies!

I hope you all have had a great week. We had a great week this week, a lot of things occurred. We had ZTC, which is Zone Training Council. They basically just regurgitated what President Snow talked about in Zone Conference the week before. It was good though.... found a really good Mormon message! xD

 We got our flu shots this week! I absolutely didn't want to, but our mission president's wife, Sister Snow, was quite adamant about it, so my mommy (Sister Foulke) rewarded us with delicious ice cream because I was such a brave girl when I got my shot! 😇

We had to get the flu shot (if you want my rant about flu shots
email me) and so my mommy (trainer) got ice cream because
 I was such a brave girl! 😇

Kelly got baptized!!!

WE HAD A BAPTISM ON SATURDAY. We weren't going to have one, but when we told Kelly that we were probably leaving, she bumped it up to this week. It was an amazing baptism, it went perfectly, and Kelly cried while she was being baptized. She deserves this, she is SUCH an amazing person and it was a beautiful experience. She was so happy the whole time.

There was a Why I Believe on Sunday, and Sister Foulke, two other sisters and I sang "A Child's Prayer". It was an amazing fireside, the testimonies of the converts were very compelling and inspiring.

Ah yes. I'm being transferred! I've been in the Royal Mesa YSA ward for 2 transfers, or 3 months. So...*DRUM ROLL* I'm being transferred to the Warm Springs stake, Sunset and Silverado wards! My new companion is going to be Sister Gardner who is from the Nauvoo mission (they send their missionaries to other missions during the winter when they don't need them) and she actually is a signing missionary!!!! So I get to learn ASL from her and I am SOOO PUMPED!

I think that's everything that happened this week, it seems way shorter than usual, I don't know why. I'm having a lot of mixed emotions about being transferred. I'm glad to leave, I want to have new adventures, but I'm sad to leave the people that I've grown to love so much! I love this area! But I'm excited for what awaits! :D

I love you all, thanks so much for all your prayers! I can't believe I've

been out for almost four months! The time has flown by!

Sister Longo

MY NAME! (on the license plate cover)

Week 14 #MissionaryMeetingsTake5EVER

Hello darlings! :D

I. Am. SO VERY SORRY! Please don't kill me for the radio silence! The last few weeks have been the definition of "cray-cray". But it has been the good kind of manic so no worries, my lovelies! I'm gonna do my best to get you all caught up on the last few weeks, so we'll see how this goes! xP

So, since before my mission I have been searching for a CTR ring *whispers to mom to put a picture of what it looks like* CTR stands for Choose The Right and it is a very popular saying within the church and everyone in the church has had a CTR ring at some point in their lives. I have been on a quest to find a ring that was unique enough and "me" enough in order to justify buying it (because I'm cheap). A couple weeks ago we went to Seagull Books (a LDS bookstore) and we went over to look at the jewelry section to look at their rings. And then I saw it. Instead of a CTR ring like everyone ads person and their dog has, I got a "Tree of Life" ring. In some of my previous letters I've talked about the vision of

Tree of Life Ring

the Tree of Life that the prophet Lehi had (See: https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/1-ne/8?lang=eng). Any who, I was super, super excited! My companion simply laughed at me and called me a hipster. Which deeply affronted me because I am NOT a hipster, hipsters are "in" right now so I cannot be a hipster. When I told her as much she just started laughing harder for some reason.

The reason for the # for this week's letter is because missionary meeting take 5ever, not 4ever, but 5-freaking-ever. They will say when they're going to end the meeting so we plan accordingly and then, without fail, it runs at least an hour late if not longer. And then we have to reschedule lessons with investigators and re-plan the day and... I'm going to stop now, because I could go on forever about this but I won't do that to anyone else. Sister Foulke still hasn't recovered from my last rant about punctuality and timeliness. The reason for this frustration is that we have had a meetings every week these past few weeks. Zone Training Council, Zone Conference, etc...

On a much different and much happier note, I ADORE personal study! Something that I have been doing recently is that I read a chapter from the New Testament and The Book of Mormon each along with the Institute manuals (Institute is a religious education program organized by the church). Holy. Cow. There are SO many nuggets of golden wisdom and pieces of understanding in those inspired books! They quote from the prophets and apostles as well as from other religious authorities. It has been a joy to study the words of the scriptures, both ancient and latter-day! In addition to that I have also been reading one General Conference talk everyday (usually pulled from a quote that was in the institute manual). One of them was so amazing that you all HAVE to read it! :D It is by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, one of the current 12 Apostles and it is titled "The Only True God and Jesus Christ Whom He Hath Sent" (https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2007/10/the-only-true-god-and-jesus-christ-whom-he-hath-sent?lang=eng). It is an incredible piece of scripture!

The past few weeks have been gorgeous as far as the weather is concerned. Honestly anything under 95 degrees is beautiful, but for the last couple weeks have been in the 80s! Heavenly Father loves me so very much! x)

On a hysterical note, I love teasing my poor companion! XD So a little background to this situation is that Sister Foulke... doesn't enjoy the company of our District Leader in the slightest. But he has to call us every week in order to get the information he needs for his report. But he take foreverly long and he calls us at 10 at night and we are exhausted and our daily allotment of patience it nearing the end. He asked us last week what the colors of our toothbrushes are. Yes. He did. No, I am not lying. Believe me, Sister Foulke and I wish that I was lying to you right now. Anywho... We were talking about how we had district council and how she had to give a training (which was inspired btw! My companion is so awesome!) and I teased her and told her that the reason that our DL takes so long on the phone and why he asks Sister Foulke to train so often is because he is desperately in love with her... The look on her face was priceless perfection!!!!! Oh my goodness!!! I doubled over in laughter and from the pain that the laser beams emanating from her eyes were inflicting upon me! XD Her face was a look of shock, indescribable horror, and an expression that conveyed her deep desire to shoot something. I was dying!!! The next day was District Council and whenever our DL looked at her or said something to her or interacted with her in ANY way I would send her a note telling her that he just couldn't contain his love for her... I am very grateful that there were witnesses otherwise I would be writing this email from the other side.

Amazing news! One of our investigators, Kelly is getting baptized this Saturday the 15th! This is the first investigator that I have been with from start to baptism! I'm so pumped! :D *fireworks and canons go boom!*

That's all I've got for the last few weeks, please read the links and tell me what your thoughts and impressions are! :)


I love you all!
Sister Longo