Week 66 - Here's a weekly email for you!

Sister Smith and I were reporting lessons!

This week was really really good! We've been focusing on visiting a list of focus people that our bishop gave us and we have seen BLESSINGS. We're teaching this guy named Adrian and he's the coolest. He just accepts everything as truth and he just feels it. I wasn't in the area yet, but on his first lesson he just started crying because he felt the spirit and he's just so cool. We brought a member with us to read the book of Mormon and they're pals now so that's cool. We're just working on getting him to church! 

We visited this lady named Joanna this week and she's so cute. Missionaries have been visiting her for 10 years and she said she thought that it was so cool that even after all these years we still come visit her. She's very impressed with the record keeping within the church  we asked her if she wanted us to teach her about the gospel and she said, "sure, I haven't taken the lessons in a while, but I'm not ready to get baptized." So that's a bummer. But she's a nice lady. Maybe we'll take her some cookies for Christmas or something.

We got back in contact with David! David has been meeting with missionaries since probably April I think and we lost contact with him for the last three weeks or so because he had to drive his family members all over the place but he didn't tell us that so we were just kinda hanging out and and we thought about not teaching him anymore and we wrote him a note talking about how we were gonna stop bothering him and then he came to church. Was it manipulative? Probably. Did it work? Yes, he came to church on Sunday and he said he wants to get back on schedule. 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

We spoke in sacrament meeting! Sister Smith talked about Jesus Christ as the Good shepherd and she killed it. I talked about following the example of Jesus Christ and forgiving others. Super deep. I wrote it the night before. As per usual. It was not deep. One lady said she liked it because it was in layman's terms so she could understand it. And I said thank you, that's about as deep as I go. So that's cool. #relatable  my favorite quote I've got on forgiveness is

 " being mistreated is the most important condition of mortality, for eternity itself depends on how you respond to those who mistreat you " or something like that. But you get it! Forgive others and if you need help, then it's a good thing that Christ is the Good shepherd and he'll come get you and help you!

That's pretty much it! I figured I'd put some effort into a real email this week! Have a merry Christmas! 

Don't forget to read your scriptures!

Sister Dorrance

Sister Smith and I had a photo shoot in the dark!

Sister Smith took a picture of me doing personal study and trying not to bother her with the talk I was listening to. I PROMISE I WAS NOT SLEEPING. I WOULD NOT SEND THE PICTURE HOME IF I WAS BECAUSE MY PARENTS WOULD BE DISAPPOINTED IN ME.

Week 64-65 - Sort of a weekly, but more like a scrapbook 😁

This week has been a crazy one! We had a meeting in Arcadia and we had a correlation meeting and the Christmas party and some other stuff and so it was crazy, but it was great! We kept running into people that had met with missionaries before so they were super open! We met this one guy named Hector and he had been meeting with missionaries for a while but he got super busy, but he said that we could come by! We stopped by on Sunday and he was so cool! We talked a lot about the book of Mormon and he loved it. He said ,"I'm gonna have to read it and really see if I feel it. You guys are gonna have to answer all my questions." And sister Smith and I are as excited as a little girl who's crush said he liked her back. We're stoked. So it was a good week. We also had the Christmas party! Lots of great things!

Also, it rained for two days straight here and it was so wonderful. Not quite snow, but it was super nice. Lots of pictures and videos  

We took pictures after contacting people in the rain! I guess people are more interested when it's raining!

 neither of us were focusing very well in studies in on particular study sesh this week

We selfied in the car

Sister Smith gave me a piggy back ride to the apartment and a weirdo whistled at us *shudder* we don't do that anymore.... 

We had a white elephant gift exchange at our meeting in Arcadia! 

I was staring at the rain one morning and sister Smith thought it was funny. Sister Chamberlain joined in. 

We got apple cider and we felt pretty basic so we figured we might as well take a selfie with our Starbucks..... 

We helped put Christmas lights up at the Wright's! Our ward mission leader said he didn't want us to do his lights because we're girls so we sent this picture to him  all in good humor of course!

I tried on some super rad heels at a discount store  I don't know how anyone walks in shoes like that!

We froze sister Chamberlain's deodorant and mints 

 

Videos of the Rain (you can probably only watch these if you are on an actual computer)

Week 62-63 -Hey team!

We put up a Christmas tree that sister Smith's Mom sent!

Hello!! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Ours was way fun! We went to a members house and they had this cool Hispanic twist to thanksgiving! It was a little weird, but another member gave us a bunch of leftovers later (which are actually the best part) so we're happy campers. Homemade cranberry sauce and everything. Its the coolest, ever. 

We are currently in a prank war with the hermanas we live with. It started with them freezing our bag of Skittles and a couple days ago we hid their mattresses. And then they wrapped everything on our desks in plastic wrap. Its so fun. 

On thanksgiving, nobody really wanted to have us come and teach them (super bizarre  ) so we took cookies to members of the ward! We got caught almost every single time. Except when they weren't home. At one house, we knocked on the door and they must have been waiting for us or something because they opened the door within 5 seconds. It must've been super funny to see the two sister missionaries sprinting across your front lawn in skirts yelling, "RUN FASTER HE ANSWERED THE DOOR!!" We were just winded. We blame us running so slow on the wind drag from the skirts but I'm pretty sure it's because we have a full-time car and our ward really likes to feed us in-n-out. I ain't mad. 

This area is seriously the promised land though. There are so many miracles and wonderful things! Also, we got transfer calls and sister Smith and I get to stay together for another transfer! It's super exciting. We get to spend Christmas together! 

We're teaching some super fantastic people and great things are coming!!!! 

Don't forget to read your scriptures! 

Sister Dorrance 

here's a picture sister Chamberlain took when she was chasing me through the apartment.

We wrapped Hermana Chamberlain's mattress and put it in the shower! 

Plastic wrap! It's as close to holding a baby that I'm gonna get for a while!

Week 61 - We had a week

Sister Smith and I usually remember that we don't take a lot of pictures while we're in the car.

Hi team! This week was hard! It was cool though because I have a feeling it's going to be a super funny email. 

The week started out with three of our solid people dropping us in two days. So that's super duper sad, but we still worked hard and tried our best and pranked the sisters we live with to make us feel better! It worked! We flipped all of the pictures on their walls upside down and their mattresses and it was wonderful. We also hid all of the sodas in her 12 pack around the apartment. And we froze some deodorant in a bucket of water  they put Vaseline on our door handles and stole all of our pens and they froze our skittles and all of my rings and put post-its all over our mirror. It's been very eventful in the Cameron pad. 

 We had a sisters conference this week which was really cool! We got to do Zumba in the morning and I'm terrible at Zumba, but boy did I try. It was awesome. We talked about a ton of super cool stuff that helps with missionary work and it was really nice to have in the middle of a week that could have been worse!

Not very many people were super excited to talk to us, but we managed to teach a couple of them which was super nice. It's literally the greatest thing to teach people about the gospel. But we'll get into the meat of the email because that's why you're all actually reading this. 

I had the literal worst sacrament meeting of my whole life yesterday. I may be acting a little dramatic, but it was not my most favorite way to spend the Lord's day. So we start out with ward council. Our stake president was spending his Sabbath in our ward so he was there and that was all sorts of fine and dandy but we left that early so that we could go and wake up one of our pals for church! She was supposed to be getting baptized this coming Sunday and she said that she was going to be at church yesterday but she bailed. She wasn't even at her house. It was so sad. So now we have to push her date, but she's still so cool because she knows the church is true and wants to Follow Christ's example! Except not by going to church yesterday. It's all good though. So moving on. We're teaching this other lady named Cassandra and she's super cool. She wants to get baptized too, but her husband isn't super interested and so it's hard for her to come to church because she has a 2 month old and a 2 year old and her little baby has been sick. But we got her to church yesterday! Cassandra is a referral from a member named Cynthia and Cynthia has two kids. A 5  year old girl and a 2 year old boy. These kids are literally insane. Actually all three of these children might actually be completely crazy. Or they were just on one yesterday. Who knows. So we get to sacrament meeting and were all sitting there and everything gets started. Cassandras son starts getting antsy because he's not used to sitting still at church. It's understandable, I get antsy too, but Cassandra gives him her phone and he finds a YouTube video and decides to turn the volume all the way up. Not super great, but she turns it down and then he turns it up and I don't know why she didn't take the phone away, but I'm not a parent so I can't judge that kind of thing. He did this a few times. Sister Smith got her tablet out though and let him do some finger coloring though which was awesome but he got out of the pew and he started walking up the aisle. Not a problem, but then it just got worse. Cynthia's kids joined in and then someone got a rubix cube and these kids literally started yelling at each other in the middle of the aisle. They threw sister Smith's tablet, which thankfully had a case on it,  and started hitting each other. So Cassandra, holding her 2 month old baby, started chasing them around the chapel, and she wouldn't let anyone else hold her baby. Eventually they chilled out with the fighting, but they started playing and all three of these children were running in the chapel and laughing and yelling and Cassandra was trying so hard to quiet them down all while holding her infant, and Cynthia LITERALLY DID NOTHING. She just sat and let her kids run and yell in the chapel during sacrament meeting. It was awful. A lady in the Ward told Cassandra to go out and sit in the foyer. And she wouldn't, and then another child from the Ward joined in and the stake president was talking and these kids were going over and under the pews and yelling and one started running up onto the stand, but he didn't make it all the way and we're just missionaries so we cant throw them over our shoulder and drag them out so we just hoped that stickers would help but they didn't. It was actually terrible. It was so loud. But Cassandra came to church which was good even if she left after second hour. But we all took the sacrament and that's what matters. But it was pretty hard.  So we went home after church and just sat for a little bit. It was rough. But this week is gonna be great. Promise. After much tribulation comes the blessings! 

We had a good lesson with David yesterday though! He's awesome and he's going to get baptized soon. This area is truly blessed! I hope you all enjoyed this story!  

Don't forget to read your scriptures!

Sister Dorrance 

That natural light though.

The one with the braids is the only picture I got from the sisters conference