"The Sisternaries"

I'm doing great! 

Last week was awesome.  The 4th of July was fun! We ate dinner at the bishop's house and went to a party with a bunch of people in the ward. We had to be home at 9, still, so we didn't really get to see any fireworks, but it was still fun! Fireworks are HUGE here. We've been hearing them every night for about a week. It was really fun!

We got sick this week, so we were both in bed for about two days, but other than that, it was good! We also got to go to the temple and have had meetings all week, so that's taken a good chunk of time from teaching and stuff.

Oh! Our ward mission leader has 5 cute kids, and one of them had started calling Sister Huss and I "Sister Harry and Sister Hush, the sisternaries" SO funny! His wife accidentally called Sister Huss Sister Hush the other day.

Something kind of cool happened last week!
Last week we found an investigator when we were walking down the street and Sister Huss randomly wanted to go and knock on a door. So we did and we found an awesome lady who doesn't really practice any particular religion right now. We gave her a BOM, and talked about it and left. Then, this week we had an appointment cancel on us last minute, so we decided that we would go and check up on this lady. It was kind of weird because we had planned to go and see her later in the day, but for some reason we wanted to move her up like 4 hours and go see her right then.

We got to her house, and she came right out and started talking to us. She seemed happy that we were there and everything. Sister Huss and I started teaching about how God loves each of us so much and how Jesus Christ knows exactly what we are going through when we have trails. She started crying and told us about how she had been having a terrible day because of some things that are happening in her life.

As it turns out, the time that we showed up was the only time that day that she would have free time and be able to talk to us.
She kept asking us "How did you know?"
We shared Ether 12:27 with her and she asked, "Ok. Seriously. Did you plan this? HOW did you know?"

We had no plan when we were walking up to her door. We didn't even know if she would be home! This whole thing was such a testament to me that Heavenly Father knows each of us SO well. He knows exactly what we need when we need it and He is so willing to give it to us! All we have to do is ask in faith and act on impressions that we get.

I'm so thankful that I got to play my small part in helping this woman know how much she is loved by our Heavenly Father!

Welcome to 101 degrees New Companion Sister H!

Hello!  Things in Nebraska are still good! I'm still in Plattsmouth, but I got a new companion. Her name is Sister Huss and she's brand new to the mission! She's really awesome! She's from Ogden, Utah. Yep 3rd brand new missionary to train in a row for me. Usually training is supposed to be for 12 weeks, but both of my other trainees have trained a new missionary after 6 weeks! So I've only trained each of them for 6 weeks, then I get a new companion and they get a new companion. It's crazy. I think that Heavenly Father doesn't want me to be able to mess them up for too long, so He takes them away early :) haha

This transfer we got made full proselyting again! Eek! So now we're going to have LOTS of time in Plattsmouth! The ward is great. Everyone is really nice. We're really working on getting them more involved in missionary work.

Nothing super interesting with townsfolk... we just met someone who knows more about Mormonism than we do...eek. The big show down is Friday. He just invited us to come back and talk with him and his wife. It's kind of scary because he knows the bible really well and has gotten into a lot of anti stuff. Pray for me.

I'm going to be a pro at talking to random strangers by the end of the mission!

Here are some pictures! One of the temperature, one of a pretty sunset, one of Sister Bowles (my first trainee) , and random one of me at a bulletin board with a sticky note on my forehead that says to put on the bulletin board at the council bluffs stake center.

Have a great week! 

Love, 

Sister Harris

Highlights From This Week!

Hello! Some highlights from this past week:
 

-Having a lesson in someone's basement while a tornado siren went off. The lesson we were teaching? The Plan of Salvation

-Talking to a guy with a million conspiracy theories...

-Our investigator Jenny and her son Wyatt came to church! Wyatt is the most talkative kid that I've ever seen. But he looked totally stunned when he came out of primary...I think the class of crazy 7 year olds might have thrown him a little bit

-Helping a member plant her garden

-A tour of 30 young men (ages 12-18) at the TC who biked all the way across Iowa. It was kind of funny to watch them all hobble around during the tour

 

-Hearing someoner refer to Facebook as "The Facebook" (As in "I checked on The Facebook the other day")

and

 

-There is no good way to abbreviate "Plattsmouth". Try it and say it out loud...yeah, won't make that mistake again...
 

All in all it's been a great week! It has had a lot of ups and downs, but it's been a good experience!
 

A chapter in the Bible that I have really grown to love while on my mission is Romans 8. Whenever I feel down or discouraged I read Romans 8 and that helps me to feel better! I know that reading the scriptures gives us spiritual strength and hope. I'm so thankful for the scriptures in my life and for the peace that I find from reading them!
 

I hope that everyone has a great week!

Love,

Sister Harris

 

 

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!!