Sister Missionary Sisters

  Hey everyone! Rumour has it that because I didn't get a weekly email out last week, people were worried I was dead! Fear not, for I am alive! However, my motivation to write an email is very low. Here's a list of the week's highlights then I'll add some pics! 1. Zone conference was on Thursday! 2. We did a "Hallowspring" service activity with the city to make up for the canceled Halloween activity last year 3. We found 3 people to teach!! Love you all  Sister Balls 

  WOW. This week was absolutely insane and incredible. I have time for the highlights and brief synapses and not much else. BUT. I have a lot of pictures, which, rumor has it, are worth thousands of words.  So, early in the week was consumed by doing area book planner audits (almost none of you know what that means, but think hours of mundane, mind numbing drudgery). We had a hard deadline for Thursday evening, and we got it done in the knick of time! On Thursday, we also went and did landscaping at the Dakota Zoo for service! That was a lot of fun, and a lot of leaves! We filled up 5 barrels of leaves by the end of it. It felt good to go and do some physical labor though, even if it did result in me getting a stupid horse fly bite. It also inspired today's expedition to the zoo for simple pleasure. Good times. Friday we went and helped out my favorite members EVER with some yard work, and we then got fed lunch AND they gave us road trip snacks--including licorice! My road tri...

  Well hello there! Here is an actual weekly email for you for a change, and what a week it was! For starters, we had visited a woman in our ward who has two teenage girls named Tiffany and Tara who haven't been baptized yet. She came out and talked with us for a second, and even said hi to us at church the next day (last Sunday) and introduced us to Tiffany and Tara! That was already really sweet, but then it got even better! Later in the week, she sent us a text saying Tiffany and Tara hadn't been baptized, and asked if we would be willing to start teaching them the lessons every week after church and help them get baptized!!!!!! We were so excited and still are. It's great. It's not often that people walk up to you and ask to be baptized! The next huge miracle happened in McClusky, the cutest darn town of 409 people you'll ever see. It's about an hour north of Bismarck. The one and only active member up there, Sister Bowers, set up a time for us to come up an...

Here we are again! Wow, wasn't general conference just amazing?? I loved so much of what was said, but I haven't had a chance to review notes and the talks aren't available to rewatch/reread quite yet, so the deep spiritual insights will have to wait another week or so. I want you all to know that I fully sustain the living prophets and apostles and know that they are called of God. We did get to watch the first Saturday session with Lexi and Erika which was cool. I don't know exactly what they thought of it, but they listened to the whole thing! We got to talk about it together afterward, along with a WHOLE bunch of other stuff that was extremely awkward. But hey! I think in the grand scheme it was all good! I also now have a new companion! Her name is Sister Murri, and she is so cute. We're having a really good time together.  Sister Balls

 Hello hello! I hope everyone is doing well. I have officially recovered from COVID! I was technically released from quarantine according to the state on Halloween, but stayed in for another day due to Sister Astle's quarantine. Unfortunately, on Saturday all of a sudden she says "I can't taste this," then the next day she couldn't smell, and voila! She now finally has COVID after 23 days of being around positive cases. Poor girl. On the bright side, that actually shortens her quarantine by three days!  The big news of the week is yesterday, I finally got transferred! That was  supposed  to happen on October 14, so it's been a long time coming. Now that it is halfway through the transfer, I'm with my companions and in my area. I'm serving in Bismarck again! Different ward, but it's still cool. Honestly, it feels really weird to be back; it's like deja vu. I can't believe I get to be companions with Sister Baird again! We're already havi...

  Hello everyone! I hope you're all doing wonderfully. Another week has come and gone, with yet more COVID news. I apologize for how boring these emails have been, but when you literally never leave your apartment for weeks on end, corona updates are kinda the biggest highlights of our weeks. Man, I can't believe this is what my mission looks like. So, as I told all of you last Monday, my test results had come back negative which doomed us to a quarantine until the 28th of October. Well, on the 20th, the day after I wrote that email, about midday I got an extremely sore throat out of nowhere followed by a persistent dry cough. This was seven days after we had last seen someone covid positive. Two days later we got tested yet again, and on Saturday the results came back that Rona got me. Not gonna lie, it doesn't feel great. It felt like I was hit by a truck there for a while! I feel so much better now, but yesterday I completely lost my sense of smell. It's just gone. H...

  Hey there everyone! Did my last week's email even make it out? I was looking through my sent emails to try and figure out what week it was this week for my email's subject line, and I couldn't find it anywhere. If you got it, great! If not, I'm still alive and well. So, Sister Astle and I got tested for COVID on Tuesday and we were certain the results were going to come back positive. Of the 7 results that had come back, all 7 were positive. Why would ours be any different? Because life hates us, that's why. We had been around EIGHT positive cases, in very close physical proximity with no masks and many shared surfaces. Maybe Sister Astle and I are the supreme humans and are going to be tested by the government! Who knows. Do I sound slightly pessimistic about not having the virus? Well, that would be because I am hahaha. If they had come back positive, we would be out of quarantine 10 days after getting tested, meaning we would be out of quarantine on the 23rd. B...

  Hello hello! Yeah, I know that my email subject sounds super depressed, but I promise I'm good! Annoyed? Absolutely. But good! You'll read the source of my irritation in this email. Let's talk about the first half of the subject though! I'm halfway there! How did that even happen? One day I'm writing "Week 7" then BAM, I'm at week 39/78. My technical nine month mark is on Thursday. I'll be seeing all of y'all real soon! Alright, so let's address the gargantuan elephant in the email. I'm in quarantine yet again! If you can't keep up with whether or not I'm in quarantine and/or what level of quarantine it is, I can't blame you. I can barely keep track of it, and I'm living it! So, idk what y'all see on the news because, well, I don't read or see the news, but nodak has pretty much blown up with COVID. Currently we have the most cases per capita in the United States! That means that we're pretty dang high rank...

  Good morning everyone! Well, good morning to those of you who read this as soon as this gets into your inbox. Hello to all of you who read this far later when you finally open up your email app again as well! I hope you have all been doing as well as can be. It has been another wonderful week in North Dakota for me! The number one highlight of the week was, without a doubt, general conference. Oh my goodness, it was the best thing ever. Never before have I longed to hear our prophet's voice more than this year! Between being on my mission and the crazy state of the world, that inspired guidance, counsel, and direction was exactly what I needed. I loved how often the subject of unity was addressed! A phrase we often hear is to "be in the world but not of the world," and for my whole life I've always thought of that in regards to not being immersed in sin and other bad things. While that is definitely part of it, can it not also mean being above the worldly mindset o...

 Hey there! This week was a bit of an odd one. So on Monday, one of the elders in my district was SUPER sick, and Sister Astle and I also weren't feeling too hot. Well, what do you do in 2020 when you don't feel good? You get a COVID test and quarantine! What a party. As a result, the two family history sisters who were staying with us got quarantined too until we got our results back. Don't feel too sorry for me though--this week was one of the most fun weeks I've had on the mission! The sisters staying with us are so much fun and incredibly sweet. We were laughing just about every second of every day. Every night was another adventure! The only downside really was that we had to Zoom into zone conference. It was still incredible though! Zone conference is a big old spiritual overload of information and inspiration, and it's amazing.  Yesterday was such a good day as well. We had testimony meeting, and we got to have a young women's class that we got to sit in ...

  Hello again! And just like that, another pday has arrived. This week was a really good week! We were productive, met lots of people, had fun, and tried our very best to be the best we could be. Unfortunately, the numbers for the week don't reflect that. We once again found 0 people to teach, had 0 people join us at church, and 0 people on date for baptism. This is definitely one of the hardest lessons the mission has striven to teach me: you can work hard and not get the results you were hoping for. That's the nastiest pill I've ever had to swallow, but it's true. God is the only one who can catch a glimpse at the eternal effects each of our actions will have. One thing that made this week fantastic was that we got to meet with and talk to so many members of our ward! We pulled weeds, shared lessons, and--get this-- even got fed! That was a nice perk for sure. Being able to go inside again is such a huge blessing, and I'm praying that it doesn't get revoked. T...

 Hey everyone :) I feel like I have no idea what even happened this last week... all I know is that I've somehow made it to see another pday! It's been a kinda off week where I know that I did things, but at the same time it feels like nothing happened.  One thing I know for a fact DID happen though was lots and lots of service! I love service, so that was a plus. We handed out some boxes of produce for the Great Plains Food Bank again, and it was such a blast. Lots of us missionaries have gone and helped out there before, but I'm always the one who coordinates it with the organization, so it's always me, my companion, and 0-8 others. As a result, everyone there knows me, so I show up and just chat with all these awesome people! There was a new face this time though, a guy named Will. Will is now my favorite person ever. He has a million stories! From being in the marines for 15 years to working as a chef at Disney's Club 33. He told me how to say "sit down, sh...

  Hola amigos y familia!! Hope you all are doing well. I would say that this week has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, but that would be an understatement. It's more like it has been a full blown emotional amusement park! I'm not going to go into details, but it was literally insane. There are a couple results that are of interest though! First and foremost of these being... SISTER ASTLE DIDN'T GET TRANSFERRED! Turns out that the only reason why she was going to get transferred in the first place is because President Howell thought she didn't want to be my companion anymore (we have no idea where he got that idea from), so when she made a comment that she wished she was staying with me, President was shocked, went to go pray, and viola! She's staying! We could not be happier. This is my first time getting to have the same area AND the same companion for more than one transfer. With her no longer leaving, transfer day was actually a lot of fun! Mainly becaus...

 Hey there everyone who still reads my weekly emails after 33 weeks for some reason! This week was pretty crazy, which is nothing new, and MAN, it took a huge toll on me, my companion, and my whole district. It was a lot. But! We have all lived to see another pday! What caused this district-wide mental break? Read on to find out! Cause of distress #1 only affected me. So, y'know that huge data project I was given to work on that I poured my blood, sweat, and tears into? Yeah... so on Thursday President Howell essentially said that the Church is going to be rolling out a system worldwide that will do that for all the missions, so I didn't  really  need to do any of that. SO many tears of pure frustration were shed. Thankfully, it didn't turn out to be as bad as I thought! Not gonna lie, when he broke that news to me it felt like I had done all that work for nothing and that I was no longer needed. Dramatic, I know. My perspective and attitude improved dramatically Sat...

  Hello hello! Be sure to read the paragraph about the music video!! This week  flew  by in comparison to last week, which felt like a literal eternity. I know that I did things, but I mainly did a couple of big things rather than many little things, so this email might actually end up not extremely gargantuan in length! Woohoo! We made two videos this week which was a party. One of them was an interview with a family history GENIUS! It's yet to be edited, and we aren't sure when we're planning on posting it, but it was honestly just cool to talk to her. She gave me a whole new perspective on family history work! Video number two is a music video of Sister Astle singing a beautiful song called "His Name," accompanied by yours truly. So, there are some elders in Killdeer who made a music video a while back with a song they wrote called "Born Again." It's good; in fact, it's the number one video on our page. For no real reason except a spirit of he...

  Hello everyone, it's me again! Wow, what a week. As far as finding and teaching goes, this week was pretty rough. Not that we didn't try, but 13 of our 17 lessons we had set up cancelled. Fun times. In addition to that, we've also been crazy busy with everything else going on in our missionary lives at the moment. Ted is still doing great though; we absolutely love him. We had a 30 minute conversation with him last night about this week's Book of Mormon chapters from the "Come, Follow Me" manual which was all about the wars. He absolutely loved them and had so many great questions! Denise is also officially back in Arkansas, which breaks my heart. The Elders down there are ready to help her out though, and the young women's leader and the branch president are both soooo excited to have her. Alright, want to know what's been keeping us busy this week? Well, first of all, meetings as usual. Goodness we are in so many meetings. Then, photoshoots (gag). ...

  Hello you wonderful people and everyone else! Why do I think I time-traveled? Because this week literally feels like it lasted for maybe a day. Maybe. I honestly don't know how it's already Monday again! If the rest of my mission went at this speed, I'd be home before I knew it. It really was an amazing week though, because the reason for it going by so freakishly fast was we were very, very busy! The past couple of days, I haven't even taken a lunch or dinner break, and I often work past 9:00 working on things. I spend a LOT of time making spreadsheets, creating calendars, contacting people and following up with assignments we've given them, editing videos, and sitting in meetings. The weirdest part? All of this is missionary work right now! It blows me away. It makes me soooo happy though. I'm much better at all of this than I am at talking to strangers in a Walmart haha. One major addition to our plates of things to do this week was Instagram. Yep, you read...

 Well hi! Hope you've all been doing well. This has been one of the craziest weeks EVER. Quite the emotional rollercoaster! We'll start with yet another update on who the heck my companion is. If you can't keep track at this point, shame on you. Kidding, I can't even keep track now   I've had 3 different companions in the space of 7 days, and therefore mix up who I told what, who I did what with, etc. CONSTANTLY. Send help.  So anyway, on Tuesday the Watford City sisters drove down to give me Sister Meldrum and to take Sister Johansen (not gonna lie, I miss her like heck). From there, I took Sister Meldrum into Bismarck where I'd pick up my actual companion, Sister Astle. I was told that I may have to wait for her for a little bit, so I was prepared to keep myself occupied for an hourish. Yeah..... it turned out to be FIVE HOURS. But that's fine. Didn't destroy the day's plans at all. On top of that, I spent 4 of the 5 hours in a chair with a mask on...