Sister Missionary Sisters

  Hello everyone! Not much has really changed with me this week. A lot of spanish and a lot teaching! This week we were able to have member meals with 4 people which was a blast. The members here are so nice and make me talk, which is annoying but I know it is for my own good! For some reason they put boiled eggs and pitted olives in a lot of things including pastas and soups which is not my favorite but it is not cow intestines or bugs so I eat it and smile! We are currently teaching about 6 different people, 3 of them are from Haiti and so they are also learning spanish right now, and let me tell ya with my spanish being not so good and their spanish not being so good, it really makes for an interesting lesson! But they love the book of mormon and they really have a testimony about God! The beginning of this week was really hard because I felt like I was not doing enough or learning fast enough. But after I talked with my Sister training leader my entire out look change...

  This week has definitely been a rollercoaster of emotions! Being in the same room for 9 hours a day only speaking spanish kind of took a toll on me. But, as of yesterday I am done with quarantine and I already feel so much better now that I can walk and breath fresh air! On Friday this week we had a little interchange with the sister training leaders, because we needed food desperately! We only had 30 minutes the first time I got here to buy food and we had only been eating bread, and yogurt for 5 days. Hermana Castro went out with one sister to go shopping and I got to stay back with Sister Lunt. It was just what I needed! She is from the United States so I got to have a little English break and could ask questions and actually say what I was thinking! It was so fun to meet other missionaries! Something awesome is that we got a referral this week, and now he is on date for baptism after only 3 lessons. His name is Raul, and something unique is that he is currently in prison. He ...

  I know that this is a response to response to a past letter but I have to write this letter on a phone and it won't let me write a new group email! Oh my goodness! What a week! I got on the plane on thursday at 2pm, and got to Chile at about 9am their time. I also got hardly any  sleep so i was very exhausted! Then when I got off of the plane a security man told me to go and wait up against a wall or something like that. My spanish is really really bad! So then I was seperated from all the other missionaries, i tried to not freak out but i was so worried because so msny missionaries have done things wrong and been sent back home. Turns out I was randomly selected to be COVID tested! Downside was that no one spoke any english so it was an adventure! Any time anyone at a station asked for something i just gave them my folder of documents and hoped for the best! And I made it through so I guess it worked! Then I was finally reunited with other missionaries!! And best of all my ...

  I have officially finished the MTC. I can’t believe that I have finished!. I have learned and grown so much over the course of these 6 weeks. It has also been the hardest thing that I have ever had to do, people always warn you about that and turns out they are right! It is hard! I have honestly never wanted to give up on something so much in my entire life, but also never had so much motivation to keep going. I am so excited to go to Chile and give it my all. I'm ready even though I can barely speak the language. In a video that one of my teachers shared with us was of a member of the Seventy talking about learning a language. His message was that you are going to make 30,000 mistakes before you can speak a language well. It is up to you how fast you are willing to make those mistakes. I know it sounds weird, but I am excited to get out there and start making mistakes! I have learned so much over the course of these 6 weeks, but the thing that I am going to rememb...

  Emily Balls   < emily.balls@missionary.org > Sat, Feb 20, 8:42 AM to  Abby ,  Alex ,  Annie ,  Ashlyn ,  Aubree ,  Ben ,  Bishop ,  Bridger ,  Camary ,  Cambria ,  Cameron ,  Camie ,  Cheryl ,  Cori ,  Correy ,  Danika ,  Darren ,  Dave ,  Daynalee ,  Elder ,  Ezra ,  Grandma ,  Heike ,  Isaac ,  Keri ,  Kevin ,  Kristine ,  Laren ,  Lauren ,  Lena ,  Lyndsay ,  Melissa ,  Michelle ,  Opa ,  President ,  Ramsey ,  Sarah ,  Sarah ,  Shalyse ,  Shelby ,  Shelly ,  Shiny ,  Sister ,  Suzanne ,  Travin ,  Victoria No   It’s crazy that I only have 1 more week left at the MTC! I am both very excited because I can’t wait to just get out there already, but also my Spanish is lacking so I’m just a tich nervous.      Not much has hap...

       Hello everyone!! The most exciting news that I have this week is that I get to go directly to Santiago Chile!! March 4th is the day I will be flying out! I am beyond excited! When I heard that news I immediately said a prayer of gratitude! I know so many others don't have this opportunity yet, so I will continue to pray that all other missions open up for you guys!   This was my first full week having all my classes be in Spanish. I’m happy with how much I am beginning to  understand! Speaking it is still a whole other beast, but I know that that will just come with time! This week we have been learning a lot of practical skills like how to receive direction, tell the time, and order food! Which is a huge comfort because now I feel like I could at least survive a spanish airport! Other than that it is just the same old story! Get up, class, study, devotional, study, class, sleep! I did have another TRC this week, and I was ab...

  This week has been such a rollercoaster! The best part was on Tuesday night as a district we got to choose what we wanted to do for our last class in English. We ended up doing a mini testimony meeting, and it was such a great spiritual experience. I learn so much from all of them, and my testimony is strengthened through them. I know I say this every week but my district is actually the best! I think that is one perk of doing home MTC. You get to know each person in your district on such an individual basis, probably more than I would have in person!        Then starting on Wednesday every class I have from here on out is 100% in Español! My morning teacher Hermano Nelson is super nice about it and talks slow to us, and uses lots of hand gestures so it’s easy to get the general idea and easy to learn new words. My night teacher is such a nice teacher, but when it comes to Spanish he is a firm believer in tough love! He talks very fast and uses long complex se...

  This week has both gone by so fast, but also felt like every day was eternity! I have been amazed by how much I have learned this week. The devotionals that they give each week, are truly inspired! Something cool that happened this week, is that I was able to go back to my work and receive my last dose of the COVID vaccine! So now I am fully vaccinated! Down side though, this time it did not only make my arm sore, but it made me feel pretty sick. So that day was filled with a lot of hot chocolate, medicine, fuzzy blankets, and a long nap so that I could still attend all of my classes, and TRC that day.      My companion and I have been doing a lot of teaching drills this week, and I am amazed at how far we have come! We have really adapted to notice each other's cues of when to switch off teaching, because it is a lot harder to tell over a zoom conference! I know I said this last week, but I am so incredibly thankful for my amazing district! They amaze me...

Hello everyone! It's kind of crazy that now I am the one sending out a group email every week! On Wednesday I participated in my first online MTC classes! Going into it I was super skeptical about it and honestly kind of had a bad feeling about it, but after my first morning devotional my whole perspective changed. I was given a kind reminder from the spirit and the speaker that God knows what he is doing. If he didn't trust that we could do this online, then we wouldn't be! Now I am finding myself really enjoying my classes!   My district 21-E, really makes the time go by fast! They are some of the best people! There are 12 of us total, and 8/12 of us live in Utah. We are all going to a Chile mission, but I am the only one going to the Santiago North mission. My companion is Hermana Jones and she is currently in Arizona! She is so sweet! Our first companion study was kind of a mess and we just ended up getting to know each other the whole time, because nei...

Hello yet again! Wow, 61 emails... sorry, I know I talk about how crazy it is that I've been out this long almost every week, but it really just boggles my mind. Well, I suppose that it's really only been 60 emails because I missed one email forever ago, but that's alright! How are you all doing? It's weird that all of you know SO much about my everyday life and events, but I have no idea what most of you are up to. I promise, I care about each and every one of you enough to read a paragraph about what's new with you. Heck, I'll even respond to you! Yeah! For real! Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled Sister Balls Program! Thanks for tuning in for another update! Let's start with cancels. I kid you not, every  single  lesson we had set up with the people we're teaching this week canceled. Half of the lessons we had with members canceled too. Let me tell ya, that's a quick way to discourage a missionary. Here's to hoping we're able to meet...

Good morning, everyone! In stark contrast to the behemoth that was last week's email, this one will likely be on the shorter spectrum of the emails I've written. Why? Well, because of the insanity of last week, this week was largely spent playing catch-up. I'm sure that it would be  so  thrilling to hear about all the office work I did, but I'll abstain. It really was nice to get caught up on some things though. The referrals are looking better, my data is up to date, and my head only slightly broke from a huge project that got dropped on me on Thursday. Thankfully there's a GENIUS elder in the office with me who helped out, but both of us sure did lose some sleep the past couple days getting it done in time for yesterday! Then daylight savings time just put the cherry on top. Needless to say, I slept in today. It was glorious.  Honestly though, most of our lessons cancelled on us, and we didn't get to meet with many members, so I'm not sure what else to inc...

Hello again from North Dakota! The Abbreviated Version:      Wow. Just wow. This week has been absolutely insane and I don't even know where to begin. For those of you who are skim readers and don't want to read in detail all the miracles, here's a brief overview of the highlights: I accidentally called the cops on Sister Kropf's dad, we set a baptismal date for Brian, got in contact and began teaching a referral through some miraculous events, did service at a soup kitchen, had zone conference, found 4 new people to teach from people formerly taught, and had three of our friends join us at church. The Cops:    Big yikes here! So when Sister Kropf got transferred to Pierre for her last 2 weeks she left half of her stuff at our apartment so that when her parents came to pick her up she could just grab it all then instead of packing it all twice. Well, they come to pick it up, and her dad decides to be funny. They buzz our door all nice and normal, but when I say ...

Hello everyone! How are you all doing? This week has been crazy, but there isn't really much to report on of interest. The main thing of the week is that I had to basically redo my big old ad spreadsheet that I've been working on since August. I now have it set up to pull in the data automatically, which should be nice. However, in order to do a thing that needed to be done given the new way we're structuring our ads, I've had to teach myself regular expressions. Basically, those are used as a form of coding used in Google Sheets formulas. Talk about a learning curve! Since Sister Call is over family history for the mission, we've been helping to teach some of the members of our ward too, which has been fun. One lady we helped lives in one of the tiny outlying cities on the edge of our area, and she invited us up to help out with a service project there, and it was awesome! It is the tiniest town EVER. It was a fun little road trip though. We're also teaching Br...

Hello for real this time! Tada! My pdays are now back on Mondays! I'm actually incredibly happy about this fact, because I have been starved of almost all social interactions. But now I can go to district and zone pdays, hang out with the other sisters, etc! The only downside was that it made this week the longest week of my life. Going 9 days without a pday is NOT something I would recommend for ANY missionary, but hey, I made it! Valentine's Day happened, which is cool I guess. I just treated it like a day to celebrate the two great commandments! We got invited to a Lunar New Year party with the people we're teaching and a bunch of members; it was incredible! I have now officially had an authentic dumpling. I can confirm that they are very good! They had two chairs set up away from all the others for Sister Kropf and I so we could be 6 ft apart, but it looked like "guests of honor" places hahaha. We also got together with all the other Sisters in the zone, had d...

Hey everyone! My pdays are being switched back to Mondays. So I'm not dead, but this is all I have permission from President to send today. I love you all! Actual email to come in 2 days 

Howdy Y'all! So. This week I got sick. From Wednesday through to yesterday, I was ridiculously nauseous and felt like I was going to lose the contents of my stomach. As such, I kept my stomach pretty empty, except for bananas, white rice, applesauce, bread, and yogurt. That added up to us working exclusively from home and quite a number of naps. So... the things to report are few and far between. One notable thing was Sister Kropf sprayed me in the face with bathroom cleaner. Whether or not it was on purpose is complicated. She intentionally sprayed me, but she didn't think about the action before. Two seconds after spraying me, she goes "That was chemicals. I should not have done that." Man, that girl is so funny. On the bright side, I have had a lot of time to read and study! I've been reading a book called "The Divine Gift of Forgiveness." And a quote from it I really liked was that we often make the mistake of repenting of sins, instead of repenting ...

And just like that it's Saturday again! Crazy. This week was incredible! We had zone conference on Tuesday, which put Sister Kropf and me on a spiritual high and renewed our convictions to be the best representatives of Christ we can be. We came home and immediately discussed some things that we needed to change, set some goals, and put plans in place to achieve them. The rest of the week was so much better as a result! While I know we were doing perfectly fine before, I also know that it's easy to let small things slip over time as you get busy. Reevaluating your progress, your efforts, and your desires regularly is SOOO important. If you want a hard core spiritual reevaluation, go read Alma 5. It is so amazing how we can repent every week, day, hour, and minute to try and align ourselves more with Christ. With zone conference came interviews with President Howell, during which President expressed at length his gratitude for my contributions in the mission office and his confi...

Hello! This week was incredible for one monumental sentence uttered by yours truly to President Howell: "I'm bored, I don't have enough to do." That is most definitely the only time I'll ever get to say that to the craziest, most fast-paced man I know. It was because he's been at zone conferences all across our 5 states the past couple of weeks, but still! I've gotten just a bit too good at the referrals and data, so I've now taken on auditing the missionaries' area book planners, which is the app that all missionaries use to plan their days, report their lessons and contacts, and set goals, tasks, and reminders! I do not even mind, because that means.... I got to build a new spreadsheet! Woohoo!!!!!! It's pretty schwanky if I do say so myself, and it took me less than a day to make! It gets even better: I got to make ANOTHER spreadsheet this week in addition to that one! We had a  phenomenal  training by the social media missionary work leader...

Howdy Y'all!! I honestly don't know why I use "howdy" and "y'all" as often as I do; it's not like I'm from the south or anything, but here we are. This week was incredible!!! You would never guess who I got to see: none other than Emily Balls! That's right, my own little sister got to come and visit me from Tuesday to today. Dropping her off was SO hard. Since our missions will overlap, President Howell said she could come and see me!!!! Gall, it was amazing.  She got to witness a pretty awesome miracle too! We were chilling in the office about to wrap up a day at work when the phone rang, and this guy named Robert said that he wanted to form a relationship with God and wanted to meet with us! We did a Zoom call with him that night and the next day, and he's praying about baptism!  Ems also got to see the weird side of missionary work too. The crazy things the people will tell you about their personal lives (like about duets written for A...

Hello there! Week FIFTY-TWO!!! Y'all!! I hit my 1 year mark this week! I genuinely cannot believe it, but here we are nonetheless! What a crazy year it has been. Frankly, it's been a crazy year for all of us, but going through everything we have while on a mission, which is crazy in and of itself? Geewiz, there's a head-spinner for you. Honestly, if you know ANY missionaries serving right now, you should just plan on having them checked out by a therapist immediately upon returning hahaha. Naturally I'm kidding and grossly exaggerating, but it truly has been a ride. Each of you know varying amounts of my mission's highs and lows, but there have been a lot of them. There are moments that have made me want to throw in the towel and get on the next flight to Utah, and others that have made me wish I could do this for another 18 months. Y'know, sometimes I have both kinds of moments in one day! Thankfully the good always outweighs the bad,  especially  because God h...