Mother's Day Skype!

It was so fun to get to see our Lucy yesterday!  She is doing well, and is happy and working hard.  She loves letters from everyone, and promises to write back to anyone who writes to her. :) 

What a fun, fun day!  The Ipad in front of us was Hannah joining in from Colorado Springs.  We didn't give Brandon enough notice or we could have gotten him in there too!

Kevin recorded a little of our conversation.  (The reflection you see occasionally is Hannah from the Ipad)

 

 

 And here's her Blog Post for the week:

 

Happy Mother's Day!!

It was so fun to talk to my family yesterday!!
And I hope that everyone enjoyed the awkward skirt/slip story. (For the record, I had no idea that it was being recorded.) I seem to have had a lot of awkward moments lately... Maybe it's just my life. I don't know...

Things here have been good! I have been transferred to a new area and I have a new companion who is brand new to the mission! NEW! (Sorry I just reread that sentence and I realized how repetitive it was. I thought that I would throw one more in there for emphasis.)

Oh! And one more NEW thing: I am now a full proselyting missionary. So this transfer I won't be at the Trail Center at all, I will just be in the area the whole time. Eek!

My area is the Plattsmouth area and its awesome! It's been kind of weird being in the area all the time. I'm still kind of trying to figure out what to do with myself at times. But its been awesome!

In other news, I SAW A TEACUP PIG! Sister May and I were driving around Plattsmouth, and we saw it there, all cute on the sidewalk. Naturally, we pulled over to take a look. We ended up having a great conversation with the family that owns it. My only regret? I didn't get a picture with it! Dang it! What was I thinking? Come on Sister Harris, priorities!

But other than that, nothing else too exciting is going on. (But what's more exciting than a tea cup pig, really?)

I'll try and send a story or something next time.

Love you!

Sister Harris

Baptism!

This week has been awesome! Our investigator, Felicia got baptized! It was a really great experience to have and I will never forget it. 

 

Felicia is AMAZING! She has been investigating the church for a long time and has been taught by many missionaries. I'm so glad that she decided that this was the right decision to make! 

Leading up to the baptism was CRAZY though! Mostly we were trying to coordinate last minute rides for everyone (including Felicia...) But it all worked out and everyone got there. It was fun figuring out rides and using silly code phrases about it. (The eagle has left the nest! ) haha

It was very cool watching her get baptized and them come out of the water totally clean. She just looked SO happy. It was really cool to be a part of!

 

Here's a picture of Felicia with some of the sisters that have taught her over the years... we estimate she was taught by about 15 missionaries, or possibly up to 20.

Awkward Easter Dinner

So, this past Easter will forever be known in my mind as "The Awkward Easter". I probably can't even put it in writing how awkward it was. 

To start, our Easter dinner appointment cancelled on us, but our ward mission leader was DETERMINED to find us another dinner. After the second hour of church, he just told us to come over to the dinner that he was having at another family in the ward's house. After a few minutes of his insisting, we told them that we would just stop by really fast and say, "Hi" because we didn't want to awkwardly impose on someone's Easter Dinner. I was pretty sure that I knew where they lived, because the family whose house we were going to had given us a referral before to go and see a family member who wasn't a member of the church. 

Fast forward to an hour after church when we were supposed to go to dinner. 

We pulled up to the house and knocked on the door. And waited. And waited some more. A lady came to the door and let us right in. We walked into the kitchen to find...nothing. No food, no people, just us and this lady. So we start talking to her to try and figure out what the heck is happening and why the heck there aren't any people that we know there...Then she started to shrug her shoulders, shake her head, and speak Spanish. Then the whole situation hit me. Here we were standing in this lady's kitchen, not being about to communicate at all with each other, and not knowing how to explain ourselves and leave the house without looking like total weirdos. Great. 

We awkwardly stood there in silence with her little dogs running around us and jumping on us for what seemed like and ETERNITY and I keep thinking, "Heavenly Father, remember those 3 years of Spanish that I took in High School? Now would be a good time to remember some of that". Ask and ye shall receive, right? I'm racking my brain for some Spanish, and the only word that comes to my mind is "Perro" for Dog. So I say, "Perro" and start petting the Dogs. It was the only thing that I could do...my only defense to awkward.

But then the lady got a call and went to the other room, and I seriously considered just leaving...but it was her daughter in law calling to talk to us to tell us that we went to the wrong house and that we should go a few houses down for dinner. haha

There were a lot more awkward things, but that was the biggest one. 

To finish it up, when we were finally at the dinner, we were having this soup that was chili based and Sister Bowles accidentally spilled it on her skirt and ended up wearing one of the Lady's skirts home. 

And then after dinner, we took some food from dinner over to the lady's house that we had accidentally gone to...super awkward. We were just like, "Well...here you go! Bye!" haha.   

It was definitely a good day!

Happy Easter!

  Heyyy Everyone!!  Happy Easter! 
.

I hope that everyone had a great day and that everyone got a chance to think about all that our Savior has done for us.    I am so thankful for Him!    I am thankful to know that He lives today and to know that He is very aware of each of us. 

I just want to say that serving a mission is the BEST thing ever!! And definitely the hardest thing ever as well. But it's so good! I am so thankful that I get to be here right now. I have learned so much about the gospel, and I can definitely say that I know that it is true. I know it, without a doubt in my mind. I know that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God. I know that He translated the Book of Mormon by the power of God. I know that you can know too! All you have to do is read the Book of Mormon and go to the source of all truth. Pray about it! You will definitely get an answer.

Just a cool thing that happened to us: The other day, we were seeing an investigator and I kept feeling like when we were done, we should just go for a walk instead of getting in our car and driving to the next place, which is kind of weird because we wouldn't normally just go and walk around. But I kept thinking of it, so we did it! The crazy part is that I knew exactly where we were going to go. We went up the street and around the corner and there was this cute family outside! We started talking to them (well, actually, they started talking to us first!) and we got them to agree to come to the Trail Center for a tour and to see this art exhibit that we have downstairs. It was awesome and I can't wait to see them again! I love getting to see how different people are prepared to hear about the Gospel. Just by talking to them, we could tell that they have had so many experiences in their lives that have been preparing them. So cool!

I have to get going, but stay tuned. I'll write about the most awkward Easter ever next week!

Love, 

Lucy

PS -So fun to get to see the Duffy family during their Spring Break!!

A Day In The Life

A day in the life of a Sister Missionary in Nebraska!
So, Sister Missionaries in the Nebraska Omaha Mission (NOM) are a little bit different than most Sister Missionaries in the church. We serve in the Mormon Trail Center as well as serving in our assigned areas. This means that we have half of the time in our area than a normal missionary would, so we have to make our time count! Usually a day would look something like this:




6:20 am Wake up!
6:30 am Work out at the Trail Center
7:00 am Shower/get ready
8:00 am Personal Study
9:00 am Companion Study
10:00 am Book of Mormon Study
10:30 am Travel to our area
11:00 am Area! (So we teach lessons, tract, whatever we have planned for the day)
2:30 pm Travel to the Trail Center
3:00 pm Tours at the Trail Center
9:00 pm Go home and plan for the next day
9:30 pm Get ready for bed
10:30 pm Lights out!

Sometimes its a little bit different, depending if we're working the morning or afternoon shift at the Trail Center. Some days we evenwork there all day, and some days we don't work there at all. It's all about being flexible and ready to adjust plans. I love it!

These 2 pictures courtesy of Sister Bielefeldt. :)

We get to drive over this bridge on our way to the Kanesville Tabernacle.  It's supposed to represent a sunset.

Our investigators are good! No huge progress, but small steps for sure. That's all that we can really ask, right? We're focusing on two people this week. One's name is Felicia. She is awesome! We're hoping to set her for baptism this week. She has been investigating the church for a long time. Like 2 years. We've seen some amazing changes in her recently though, and we think that she is ready to be baptized! It's been a long road for her, but she has her life all in order now and has truly seen what the Gospel can be in her life.

The other that we're focusing on is named Petria. She's also awesome! We want to set her too. She actually referred herself off of an add that she saw on TV. She's been taught for a few months. There have been some ups and downs with her, but I think that she's really starting to understand. She got a blessing last week and ever since, she's been really dedicated. We asked her to read 1 Nephi 8, but when we called to follow up with it she said that she read 1 Nephi 1-18. She's SO great!
Oh and we're also teaching a woman named Betty. We've taught her the restoration twice and I think that we need to teach it again the next time that we see her. She's very sweet though and so willing to try to understand! 

There's another investigator that is just struggling with acting on what she knows. She doesn't want to come to church because she doesn't like meeting people. And before I got here she read in 3 Nephi that we are damned if we take the sacrament unworthily...so she doesn't want to do that either...great. 

We've been finding some great people though! That's a huge answer to prayer for us! Now we just have to find the time to see all of them..

I'm learning so much here! I love being a missionary, it's the best thing ever!!
Love,
Lucy

Kanesville Tabernacle

A wonderful new policy change has brought the sister missionaries to the Kanesville Tabernacle. Today is a freezing cold day, but we stay warm inside. Sister Harris and Sister Watson have been a joy to serve with us today. It may be the "slow" season for visitor centers, but it is not a slow down in testimony growth or enthusiasm and desire to share the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

  (Picture and above Copy both courtesy of Sister Bielefeldt's Blog  :)

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Hello Everyone!

This was our first week at The Kanesville Tabernacle, where Brigham Young was sustained president of the church. Kanesville was awesome! It was so fun, even though it wasn't very busy! I love getting to learn more about the pioneers. Elder and Sister B gave us a ride there and back, which was so nice of them!
A lot of the site is about the Mormon Battalion because the Battalion left from Kanesville, Iowa. (Which is now called Council Bluffs) So there's a small visitors center there and a life sized replica of the tabernacle.  The real Tabernacle was built in about three weeks because Brigham Young wanted there to be a building where he could be sustained. But the original fell apart pretty fast. 


I heard Denver got lots of snow this week.  Are Rexburg and New Hampshire getting snow too? We had a snow day here! It was from Thursday afternoon to Friday afternoon. We actually had a bunch of Sisters stay at our house! It was like a huge sleepover, so that was good. I love all the Sisters! They are all like my second family. And all of the senior couples too!

I remember when I got set apart to be a missionary, President Jones said that President Weston and Sister Weston would become my mission Mom and Dad. Its so true! If I ever have a problem, I know that I can talk to them. Or any of the sisters or any of the senior couples that serve here. Its awesome! 

 Zone conference was so great!

 We talked a lot about working with members at zone conference. Members are SO important to missionary work! I never even knew how much of a difference I could make. We also talked about the sacrament and how important it is. We can be clean every week! How awesome is that?

Sister Weston told the sweetest story. She said that she, President, and their kids were going to a football game when their kids were little. There was this huge crowd, and Sister Weston somehow got separated from her family. She had no idea how she was going to find them or where they were sitting. She was about to just go and sit down somewhere, when her little son came up behind her and said, "Come on Mom! We're over here!" She asked, "How did you know where I was?" And he replied, "Well, Dad knew where you were". She likened it to us and our Heavenly Father. He ALWAYS knows where we are and He is ALWAYS taking care of us!

I have to get going!! I love you so much! Have a great week!

New Assignments!

 Hi all!

Things in Nebraska are good! We had transfers this week and Sister Bown went home :( 

But I got a new companion named Sister Watson! She's awesome! So that's pretty exciting. 

 

 

I'm loving the Trail Center! We got a new Trail Center Director last month and he's great! So far at every training meeting he's changed something about how things are run at the Trail Center. 

 

 

Click here for More info on the Mormon Trail Center - Nebraska

 

The first thing that he changed was the rule about wearing a cardigan/blazer at the TC. We don't have to always have them on anymore! Yay! 

The next thing was the way that we do tours. We used to just take tours by ourselves, but now we're doing companion tours. So that's cool. 

 

And the last thing that got changed was kind of big. It used to be that the young sister missionaries only worked at the TC and the senior couples worked at both the TC and the Kanesville Tabernacle, but now the young sisters are going to be working at both! Crazy! We have our first shift at Kanesville this Wednesday, so that's going to exciting! 

 

Click Here for more info on the Kanesville Tabernacle- Iowa

 

I'll have to tell you how it goes this next week!

 

 ----Lucy
 .

Oh and here's a picture of all of the Sisters at the TC!

Also, our P-day schedule changed. We now have set P-days. Mine will be every Monday!