Wednesday, November 28, 2018

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!













Tuesday, November 13, 2018

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


Friday, November 9, 2018

Week 60 - This'll have to pass as a weekly email




Hello!

This week was super great! We did lots of cool things and we have been teaching Kimberly and she's getting baptized in a couple weeks and we are STOKED. It was Halloween (as you probably know) and we had to be inside at 6 pm so we got about 15 Nerf guns from a member and had a war in our apartment to gospel music. It was the wildest night on my mission. It was awesome. We turned all of the lights off and everything. Nobody got hurt so that was good, but there were some close calls. We had two exchanges this week! I went to Spanish work with Hermana Chamberlain which was cool. All of the people thought I was funny when I tried to speak Spanish so that was pretty cool. I guess you don't have to learn another language to be funny internationally! We also went on exchanges with Rowland Heights which was the coolest. Basically missionary work is the coolest. God is the coolest. 

We had a zone activity today! We played soccer and had hamburgers and it was awesome! There's a member of our ward who gives us each a two liter bottle of soda every week so we volunteered to bring drinks! It's a beautiful time to be alive! Free food! I think that's all I've got time for!

Don't forget to read your scriptures! 

Sister Dorrance
Sister Quigley crushing walnuts

Couple model shots from Halloween. This was before sister Smith and I crushed everyone at Nerf wars.
Namely: Sister Smith, Hermana Chamberlain, and Hermana Quigley 




Zone activity. 




Picture of the most Californian thing I've ever seen. A pretty sunset and an in-n-out. PS. We go to in-n-out at least twice a week every week. It's beautiful. 




Last weekly email probably 😮

Holy smokes team. This is it. That's CRAZY. It's been a year and a half. A year and a half of bearing testimony of the single m...