BEING BOLD

Merry Christmas!!! I can hardly believe it is December! Especially because just two days ago it was about 65 degrees. I do not understand the weather here! Oh well. It sure is cold today! We had some sleet last night so it is pretty icy and snowy looking today. So me and Sister Nelson had an awesome week! I won't be able to write about everything in the email but I will just start with Monday and give you some of the highlights and then I will give the remaining highlights in my letter; how's that :) So, the highlight on Monday was a Thanksgiving dinner at 1st and Calvary Presbyterian Church on campus. The church just put on a dinner for all the students in the area who wanted to go and they invited us there as well. There were some people from the ward that showed up and me and Sister Nelson got to talk to a few people while we were there. It was really nice. The best part though was after the actual dinner. We were talking to Brother Andrew and thanking him for the wonderful dinner. Then, I don't remember how it came up but we gave him an invitation to the nativity celebration that our stake is putting on. He was really excited about it and said that he would love to go and it looked and sounded like it would be amazing. We, of course, agreed whole heartedly! Then, he gave us the best surprise ever! He said that he was going to advertise this event for us! He said they could photo copy the invitation that we had given him and put it on all there tv screens and internet and who knows what else, but he said they could get it pretty much everywhere so that students would know about it. HOW COOL IS THAT?!?!?! That moment alone made the evening totally worth it! The next best thing about that night was that Brother Andrew let us help him clean up. He was practically the only one there and he was just cleaning up all the tables and chairs by himself. That would never do! So we asked if we could help and he said that if we really wanted to we could take the table cloths off the tables. We were off like bullets! It was me and Sister Nelson, Lauren and Alvin. We had a race to see who could get the table cloths off the fastest and in less than a minute the tables were clear of cloths. Then we set to work folding up chairs and breaking down the tables. Those things went away like clockwork! We assured Brother Andrew that we knew what we were about. As Alvin pointed out, as Mormons, we have been doing this sort of thing since we could walk! Haha We had so much fun and me and Sister Nelson really enjoyed doing some physical manual labor and service. Loved it! After that we headed to the institute and did some facebook stalking of less actives with Lauren and Alvin. Good times. Lets see, Tuesday. Tuesday was fun. We taught a lesson to Zach. He is doing good and finally moving out! Yay!!! The lesson was really good though. We had Lauren with us and she bore her testimony of the atonement. Wow! The spirit was so strong in that room! So good. We tried something new on Tuesday. A survey on campus. It is actually going to be a pretty effective tool I think :) We came up with some questions, like: do you believe in God? What church do you go to? Do you believe in the Bible? Do you think God could give us more scripture in addition to the Bible? What do you think of when you hear the word Mormons? etc., We had a lot of fun doing this survey with people and I was really happy with how many people actually stopped to talk to us. I think that as we keep doing it we will see some pretty cool things come from it :) Wednesday we had district meeting. After district meeting we were going to catch a ride with the Marshfield Sisters but that didn't end up happening because their rides car broke down and wouldn't start. Great. haha. So we just sat in the building for a while and planned for a Christmas fireside that we were thinking of doing to introduce the He Is The Gift Christmas Initiative. There was a lot of planning that went down on Wednesday... We were coming up with ideas left and right :) Sister Nelson has some really creative ideas on how to find people to teach. It is going to be a great transfer! We made some cookies during our dinner hour and then went out that night to deliver them to less actives and potentials. We actually ended up finding a new potential when we knocked on a less actives door and found out that she had moved about a year ago. Awkward. We ended up talking to the guy though, Naji, and he said he would like to meet with us and learn more :) SWEET! We will be seeing him tomorrow hopefully. Thursday was Thanksgiving. Hallelujah! It was such a great day! As you have already seen I caught two fish! Best Day Ever! I was so happy! There were some other things that happened as well though ;) When Bishop picked us up in the morning there was a turkey trot going on. Man was I frustrated! Hundreds of people right there, and we couldn't talk to them. Not being allowed to proselyte on Thanksgiving is so dumb. Well, maybe not, but right at that moment I thought so. I thought of all the He Is The Gift cards that I could hand out and all the people I could call to repentance and it brought a little tear to my eye. lol On the drive up and back me and Sister Nelson brain stormed with Bishop about finding ideas and about how we could promote the Christmas Initiative in the ward. We came up with some good ideas and got Bishops stamp of approval to do a fireside at his house on Sunday (yesterday). He also told us that he thought we should talk about the Christmas Initiative for the third hour at church. Since it was the fifth Sunday everyone would be combined. We thought that was a great idea so he said, " awesome. You can plan it." Oh. When we got up to Bishops parents house they made us feel right at home right away. Bishops mom came up to us and I said "hi, my name is Sister Cryer." to which she responded with "My name is Grandma," and gave me a big hug! Everyone was super nice and fun and we had a great time visiting and talking to everyone. There was so much food! I ate two full plates and dessert. After that we went out with Bishop and his Sister and niece, Hailey, and tried to catch the horses so that Cara could ride them. (Cara is a girl in the YSA that came to Bishops with us). In that attempt, we failed miserably. But we had fun trying. One of the best things about the day though, I got to take a nap. (Sigh of contentment). It was amazing. If I can just say, the Nothums know how to buy couches! So comfy. :) Friday we had exchanges with the Springfield 2nd Sisters. I stayed in our area with Sister Erickson. I was little more confident this time than my first exchange! It was a really fun day, but I missed Sister Nelson. Sister Erickson was great though and I learned a lot from her example. We didn't have a whole ton of stuff planned so we went tracting a lot. We met a lot of nice people :) and we got some funny stories from that tracting time! One door we knocked on this guy with long gray hair and a red bandana wrapped around his head came out. We started talking to him and he said, "I read your book!" "The book of Mormon?" I asked. "Yeah." Sweet! That's what I was thinking. I asked him how he had gotten it and he said "I bought it. I wanted to read it." "What did you think?" "I think he's a kook!" Oh. Not so sweet! Haha! Then he went on, "But you don't, so that's ok. I don't think I'm material for your next convert." Then he flashed the peace sign with a "peace out" and closed the door. Ok then! Me and Sister Erickson had a good laugh as we walked to the next door. Another time we knocked on a door and small pack of little yappers started barking away like there was no tomorrow. A lady came to the door and rolled down a window type thing in the glass screen door to talk to us. We introduced ourselves and talked to her a little bit about what we were doing. She responded with "well, I'm not very talkative so..." and pushed the screen up a little bit to close it. Sister Erickson said "do you like videos by chance?" "I'm just going to reclude myself from it entirely" she said, all the while slowly pushing the glass on the screen closed. We managed to get an 'Ok, have a nice night' in before the window closed completely and she was gone. Again, we had a good laugh as we walked to the next door. Saturday was fun. We got to go to the Nothums and help Sister Nothum decorate for Christmas. She had a ton to do and she had to have it done that day, so we helped her make some treats for the fireside on Sunday and decorate THREE Christmas trees. Brylee (the Nothums granddaughter) was our work boss while we were there. She was so cute! You could tell where she helped us to decorate the trees because she could only reach so high. So the bottom of the tree was so jam packed with ornaments that you couldn't tell if there was a tree there or not! Sunday was awesome! The third hour went really well and the spirit was there as we talked to the ward about missionary work and the Christmas Initiative. It was really cool and I was glad that I got to be a part of it :) We also found a really promising potential investigator. :D We went over to The House of Seven for lunch after church and to teach Antwain and Sydney. Sidney wasn't there but Antwain was and another guy that we didn't recognize. His name is Charles. Any way, we had lunch and then pulled Antwain outside for a lesson. On our way out I turned to Charles and asked if he wanted to come. He said sure! Woohoo! So off we went and talked to Antwain about church attendance. (He hasn't come for several weeks now.) Cool experience during that lesson :) We had talked to Antwain about church and why we aksed him to come. Why goint to church is so important. I asked him if he wanted to know that what we had been teaching him is true, because we are claiming to be the ONLY true church. He said that he did want to know and we explained that coming to church would help him to know if our message is true. Any way, at one point, after he had finished answering a quesion I realized all at once that I didn't know what to say. I had absolutely nothing. Great. Before it got awkward though, Sister Nelson turned to Charles and asked him what he thought about all this. He started talking and oh boy, he is so going to be a new investigator. He said that he had never heard anyone claim to be the only true church and that he was really interested in learning if that was true for himself. He said that he would love to meet with us and learn more. We tried to set something up right then but he didn't know his work schedule. Frustrating. But we are really excited! After the lesson we compared notes and Sister Nelson told me that she had really felt like she needed to ask Charles what he thought about what we were saying, hence the reason I didn't have anything to say. I wasn't SUPPOSED to say anything! And then she said that she was grateful that I had been so bold in my statement that this is the true church of Christ, because that is what caught his attention most. So cool! The fireside at Bishops house went really well! A lot of people showed up, despite it being such short notice, and the spirit was there really strongly as we all shared our thoughts and feelings about Jesus Christ and how he has been the ultimate gift in our lives. Me and Sister Nelson put a lot of thought and prayer into that fireside and we were so glad to see the Lords hand make it what we had hoped for :) We even had a non member there! Well, there are some of the highlights :) I hope you all have an amazing week! Love you all Sister Cryer (email Dec 1, 2014)