THE GOSPEL IS TRUE Y'ALL!

Portions of two cards dated July 20, 2015 Hello Family..... News. We went on exchanges with our Sister Training Leaders this past Friday. That was fun. I got to go to Ozark with Sister Bastion. I have never been to Ozark and this is Sister Bastions first transfer there so we had fun. We went on an exchange with some members though who knew the area so that was good. Funny story about that. We were driving around out in the boondocks trying to find one of our members when I looked out the window and saw up someones driveway a mannequin with no clothes on being hung by it's neck from a tree with the words "Keep Out" written in black across it's chest.....So that happened! I don't even know what else to say about that. We also had dinner with a very active little family out in Nixa. Those kids were EVERYWHERE! The spiritual thought was interesting. We put two pieces of paper on the floor far apart....Us..................Jesus Christ telling the kids that there was hot lava in between and then asked them "How do we get across?" One answered, "Lava Shoes!"...Uh, not quite what we were looking for. So we talked about the gospel of Jesus Christ and for each part of the gospel we put down a paper stepping stone across the lava. At the end we had all the kids jump on the steps to get to Jesus. That soon turned into jumping everywhere in the room and then they began tearing up the stepping stones. ha ha! NO! Don't destroy the gospel! I have no idea how any of us are going to make it back to heaven now. lol. So that was fun. So mom you asked about our new mission president and his wife. They are so awesome! President and Sister Loveland. President Loveland is a farmer. They are from Pocatello Idaho. Sister Loveland is very sweet, but if she has something to say she says it! In our conference call with them the first Monday they were here Sister Loveland told us a bedtime story from the scriptures. It was so cute! She actually ended up forgetting parts of it, but she just laughed at herself and moved on. President Loveland is quieter than President Shumway was and he isn't as eloquent when he speaks but you can tell that he has a strong testimony and that he holds keys for this mission. He also knows his scriptures really well. As far as responsibilities that I have as a trainer....basically I just train. They have something called the 12 week program that we go through with our trainees to help them learn how to teach and what to teach and pretty much just how to be an effective missionary. So we do that for an hour everyday. Other that that, I report to the Mission President every week on how my trainee is doing. Then I just try and lead and teach by example mostly. It's pretty awesome. I really love being a trainer actually. Well, we have to head to FHE with the YSA now so this'll be the last you get from me this week. The gospel is true y'all! I KNOW it is. I love you! Have a great week! Thank you for all the notes and letters and prayers. They mean a lot! Love Sister Cryer P.S. Don't mean to make you jealous but we have a pretty sweet thunder and lightning storm going on right now!

WOULD IT BE OK IF WE SAT AND LISTENED?

Hello family! So I have pretty much no time today so I am really sorry if this ends up being a lame week as far as communication lol We got transfer calls on Saturday night. I am going to Alma Arkansas to finish training Sister Murray. I'm pretty sure Alma is a tiny town out in the sticks somewhere. Should be pretty fun! Ok, so as far as some news this week...I will just tell you about a miracle that I saw :) We had a lesson on Saturday with a guy named Charles. We had tracted into him a while ago and done some family history with him but he hadn't expressed much interest in learning about the church or finding out for himself if it was true. So family history was basically as far as it went for a while until one of the members somehow met him and brought him to an activity :) I LOVE when members do that! Any way, so we got back in contact with him and ended up setting up an appointment for earlier this past week. From that lesson he seemed a lot more open to learning about the church and not just family history :) So we set up another appointment for Saturday and we met him at a little coffee shop in Holister called Vintage Paris. It was a pretty cool little place. Kind of reminded me a little of some of the places in Downtown Eugene :) Any way, when we set up the appointment we were a little bit worried because first of all he is VERY smart, and second of all he said he had a lot of hard questions for us and only some of them were doctrine. ... We told him that we basically just deal in doctrine and we could most likely answer any of those types of questions that he had, but we couldn't promise anything on the other things. Then on our way to the appointment we just said a prayer and asked Heavenly Father to please guide us and him with the spirit so that the conversations would be what He wanted it to be. We got into the lesson and started answering questions and it was so good! The spirit truly did guide all three of us! In fact, towards the end of the lesson he said "I feel that I should ask you both to share your testimonies with me of how you came to know that the Book of Mormon is true." Well OK! So we did and the spirit was very strong :) That was a miracle! Another miracle within that one was that while we were talking two girls came over and said "we couldn't help but overhear bits and pieces of what you were talking about and wondered if it would be ok if we sat and listened?" YES! It was so cool! That has never happened to me before and it was one of the best things ever! In that moment I felt that this was exactly what Heavenly Father wanted to have happen :) Best Feeling Ever! Well folks, that's all I have time for! I hope you all have and awesome week! I love you like crazy! Sister Cryer

LOTS OF SERVICE

Email dated July 20, 2015 Well hello family! Todays email might be a little bit short, just because I don't feel much like writing. haha How's that for an excuse! Let's see, I am trying to think of anything even remotely exciting that happened this week! I feel like I was running around with like a chicken with my head cut off, but there's not much to talk about for all that. ...On Thursday we did service almost all day. That was fun. We went down to Stockstill park and cleaned up a bunch of flood damage. There were a bunch of baseball fields down there that were under 6 feet of water, so they pretty much got destroyed. Any way, so we were tearing out fencing and cleaning up debris and stuff. Pretty great. I got a few more bug bites, but not very many for which I was very grateful! Any way, so we did that from 8 until 3 on Thursday and then we had to go home and shower and stuff because we were super gross and then we had a dinner appointment and then we went to do more service at 'Jesus Was Homeless'. That is an organization that basically just goes around to hotels and cheap apartments and stuff and hands out food to people. Pretty cool. Any way, we actually found the place which was a miracle and we were in time to help them put sandwiches in bags. Good thing too because when we left to actually deliver the meals we lost the van with all the food that we were trying to follow in the 76 evening traffic! Grr! We drove up and down and all around trying to find the van so we could help them pass out the meals, but we could never find them. So we went to Institute and were able to contact Shannon and set up an appointment with her, which was really good because we hadn't been able to contact her for about a week. So that was a tender mercy. I guess we were supposed to be at Institute, not 'Jesus Was Homeless'. Just goes to show that no matter how good a thing is, if it's now what God wants you to do, then you shouldn't be doing it. Let's see what else... actually, I think I only have a few other things to write about so I will leave it at that for this email. I love you all and I hope you have an amazing week! Say hi to some peeps for me :) No one in particular, just whoever you feel like (lol) and if anyone asks, tell them that I love being a missionary! Sister Cryer

SO MANY MIRACLES

Letter dated July 6, 2015 Dear Family, So, Heavenly Father has blessed us with so many miracles this past week! I will just tell you about a few of them. The 10 week goal this wee (week 10, last one) was to double the standard of excellence. Oh boy. Well, on Tuesday we got 9 lessons, 8 of which were member present. That is more than we got TOTAL the week before! It was so cool! And it happened because we worked to get exchanges, we were working hard throughout the day and we were really trying to talk to EVERYONE. Wednesday's miracle was that we were able to find a less active even though the address was wrong. We were out in Rock Away Beach on exchanges with Jared C. looking for number 1080 on Nathan Rd. Well, there was no 1080 anywhere on that road. Great. So we decided to knock on 1018 just for kicks. Who knows, right? Well, Heavenly Father knows. That was the right house! (By the way there were like a bajillion cats and flies around that house! I got like 12 bug bites in the 10-15 minutes that we stood there talking to the guys. Nuts!) On Thursday we got to have dinner with the Christiansens. That's not exactly a miracle but I wanted to mention it anyway. That is a cute family! I love them so much! Brother Christiansen is a writer. Sister Christiansen just recently got called as the young womens president. Their kids are just adorable, age 10 and 5. They say hi to us and give us hugs and knuckle bumps when we see them at church. So fun. Anyway, while we were eating dinner a thunder storm started moving in. Some of the thunder was so loud that it rattled the windows that were all around the table. Then as soon as we started heading out to the car it started dumping the water. It wasn't just buckets it was semi truck loads of water coming out of those clouds. It was raining so hard in fact that when Sister Gerard was backing me out of a driveway (after I had made a wrong turn) one of her shoes came off and actually started floating away down the road in the mini river that had started rushing down the streets after only about five minutes of rain! Windshield wipers going full force and me having forgotten my glasses and contacts, it was a fun drive. I think...Oh wait. Ok, yeah, so another miracle that happened was on....Thursday too I think. Anyway, we went to Walmart to grab something for Sister Gerard and we got run down upon exiting the store by a potential investigator named Kirk! We didn't even see him, he is the one that saw us and ran after us to say Hi! Apparently he works at the Walmart as a manager or something. Anyway, that was super cool. We asked if we could call him some time to set up an appointment and he said we sure could. Blessings! Then today we actually almost got run over by Logan (that guy we tracted into) and he recognized us and waved and we got to talked to him for a few minutes and set up a time for tomorrow! I tell ya, I will never say anything bad about Walmart again. It has been very good to me! Another miracle was at the Palms Inn off of 76. It's an extended stay motel. We were there to meet with a potential but he moved....like in the 24 hours since we had set the appointment with him...so yeah. Anyway, so we were about to leave and Sister Gerard was backing me up when she was suddenly engaged in conversation by a Jamaican man about three stories above us. I waited in the car, opting to let Sister Gerard just handle the situation and she was actually able to set up a return appointment with him to talk about church because he said he wanted to come. So that was cool! We'll be meeting with him tomorrow. Another miracle is that we got a really solid referral from a TOURIST! Talk about being a missionary! She just talked to this complete stranger and committed him to take all the missionary discussions! So cool! Well, that was my week. I love you all! Love Sister Cryer

ALL WE DID WAS TEACH HER A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE GOSPEL

Hello family! SAM YOU CUT YOUR HAIR!!! It looks super cute! And mom, I approve of the new outfits :) You look so adorable! <3 haha and I loved those videos! That made me laugh. So, news for the week. Oh wait, before I get to that, Sam, do you remember the big old spiral bound notebook that you gave me to be my study journal? The one with the cheetah on the front and back. Any way, I am almost out of pages in that thing and I have been so spoiled with it! Do you think you could find me another one similar to that? Big ish, spiral bound, hard cover, reasonably cool/cute looking cover ;) etc,.? I looked for one today at wal-mart and michaels and a place kind of like barns and noble called books a million. Any way, if you could that would be great. I will pay you back and everything for it so no worries there :) Ok, now on to new for the week :) So, we got back in touch with Randi this week which was super awesome! We haven't seen her for a while. We have been having the Dickisons stop by and talk to her a little bit since they live right across the street from her, which has been great. They are awesome fellowshippers! Any way, we tried to stop by to see her on the 4th of July but that didnt' work out because she had found a job and was at work! Yay!!! We had been hoping that she would find a job, so that was a miracle and blessing and we were ok that we didn't get to see her in that case. So this week we stopped by again and were able to catch her at home. The cool thing was that when she opened the door she looked so different! She looked bright is the best way I can describe it. She had a smile on her face and she welcomed us in and as we talked to her she thanked us so much for coming by that first time that we met her. She said that everything had just started to look up for her since she had met us and she really appreciated everything that we had done for her. Well, all we had done was teach her a little bit about the gospel! We had simply brought God into her life a little bit more, and she had seen the difference and was able to relate it back to God as we talked to her! So cool! We have an appointment set up to go see her tomorrow so we have our fingers crossed that everything goes well. Also, last week I told you about how we had run into Logan in the wal-mart parking lot right? Well, we had set an appointment for the next day but no one answered the door when we got there. Sad day. We were getting a bit discouraged and so during our weekly planning we decided to ask Heavenly Father if we should continue trying to stop by and get ahold of them, or if we should just drop them. We both felt like we should continue trying so on Friday night we headed off to go try and contact them again. Well, we knocked on the door and then who should come walking up the stairs but Lindsy (Logans wife/girlfriend)! She invited us in and we were able to just sit and get to know her for about 15-20 minutes. It was so awesome! She is so funny too! We had a great time and lots of laughs and we are hopeful that we will be able to really start teaching them both soon. Well, I had really better save some stuff for my letter, not a whole ton of news this week so... ya know. I hope everything has gone swimmingly for you today :) Lots of love! Sister Cryer

OUR FOURTH OF JULY

Hello Everybody! Your favorite Sister Missionary here :) How is y'alls lives? Looked pretty good from the email :) an earthquake huh? That's pretty crazy! Second coming is coming peeps! That's nuts! We haven't had any earthquakes but we have had those good old flash flood warnings. Fun times. Don't worry mom, I'm a staying safe :) Any way, we have been getting a lot of rain and lots of thunder and lightning ... at like 3 in the morning. So that's fun. So let me just tell you 'bout my week. Well, let me actually tell you about my 4th of July first I guess. 4th of July was...how shall I say? A bit lame. haha! It was a beautiful day and we had no scheduled lessons so all we had to do was go tracting and let me tell you, no one is home when it is 4th of July weekend and the sun is shining and there is a lake not that far away. So needless to say we didn't have an extremely productive day. Now that's not to say that good things did not happen. Good things did happen! In fact we got to OTM a lady with her little daughter (who looked like a mini me of Brave. So cute!) and she said that she would be open to having missionaries stop by and talk to her more :) It was kind of cool the way it happened because I had made a goal that morning to OTM everyone I possibly could, even if all I could do was just say hello. So when I saw this lady, even though I was actually really not in the mood to OTM anyone right at that moment, I knew what we had to do. So we started talking to her and low and behold we were able to get her name, phone number and address and an ok to have the Elders go by! Miracles! Just sayin'. Any way, so 4th of July was a lot of trying hard to contact people and for the most part not succeeding, but still trying :) As far as celebration goes, President Loveland gave us permission to stay out until 10 to watch fireworks as long as we were with members or investigators or less actives. So Lauren organized a little picnic deal to go out by the lake and watch fireworks with her and Kassidy and Shannon. So that's great and everything but they were a little late picking us up and then we decided to go by steak and shake to get the food and that took flippin' ETERNITY! No joke! Seriously, there was one car ahead of us in the drive through and it was a good 20 minutes before we even got to order our food and then another 20 or 30 minutes until they gave us our food. And then they didn't give us all of it! We were missing several of the drinks that we had ordered. Let's just say that steak and shake was riding the struggle bus! Any way, so we finally got our food and then started driving out to the lake and got stuck in traffic big time. bumper to bumper. Ok. We were all dying at the irony of it all! What a way to spend your 4th of July! Any way so then Lauren got distracted and almost rammed the car in front of her and we all started yelling and she slammed on the breaks and Kassidy, who happened to be holding 8 drinks in her lab stacked on top of one another, got drenched! So then she started yelling and laughing and we were all just having a gay old time. To top off the experience Lauren decided to roll down all the windows and BLAST Silent Night. We got some looks! And there were some people that cheered us on too. It was pretty hysterical! Any way, we finally got to the park and out to the lake in time to see the grand finale which lasted about 2 minutes. ...and then we got back in the car and almost couldn't get out of the ditch that we had parked in and then got stuck in traffic again. :) ...Best 4th of July ever! :D haha It was good times. Memories were made fo sho. So that was my fourth of July :) I should be able to get a letter out to you this week with other details of my week :) I love you all so much! Have an incredible week! Make some memories! Share the gospel! Sister Cryer P.S. Pictures So, this first picture is of me and Sister Gerard after de-flooding the Bretts driveway after a flippin' typhoon on Thursday. So, the Bretts have a very flood prone area right by the steps to their front door. The garage is also right there and the water gets under the garage door when it rains a lot and floods their basement. So when we arrived at the house for institute Thursday night it was raining really hard and the water was forming into a pool in front of the door and starting to go into the garage too. Me and Sister Gerard offered to put sand bags in front of the garage door to try and stop some of the water from going in, and then we decided that we could go a step further. So we got snow shovels (with Sister Bretts permission after some coaxing) and started herding the water into a drain further up the drive way. So fun! It's the closest you get to a pool party on your mission pretty much! Any way, so that first picture is of me and Sister Gerard after that :) We were SOAKING WET. This second picture is of me eating some water melon last night that the Hughes had given us. It was a really good watermelon!

NEVER POSTPONE A PROMPTING

Letter dated 29 June 2015 Dear family, OK!....Earlier on in the day I was thinking of all the things that I could tell you. I should have written them down. OK, here's something cool that happened. So every time a missionary has a birthday Sister Shumway calls them and gives them a birthday wish. So on my birthday Sister Shumway called me and wished me a new investigator that I would find by handing out a copy of the Book of Mormon. Well, because it was weekly planning day we didn't have a whole ton of time to make that happen! I handed out one Book of Mormon outside Kendra's apartment before our lesson with Shannon and then we went to try and contact a potential. We couldn't find him though and we didn't know what to do after that in the time that we had before our exchange with Sister Atwood. So we went back to the car and said a prayer asking Heavenly Father what He wanted us to do. After the prayer I kept my eyes closed so that I wouldn't be distracted and could focus on trying to hear the spirit. Several minutes went by and I was getting nothing. Somewhat frustrated I opened my eyes and immediately saw a guy walking past our car with a soda in his hand. I blinked. Then I jumped out of the car, grabbed by bags and took off after the guy. He had a head start on us and I didn't want to loose him, so I called out to try and get his attention but I don't think he heard me. He went down a little alley way and we followed in time to see him turn a corner toward the end. We ran to the corner and turned in but a little too late. The guy was no where in sight. We walked around the apartments a bit trying to find him but had no luck. So, then we walked through some of the neighborhoods hoping to see another YSA walking around (because we were out of our boundaries for West Ward) but had no luck. After a while we headed back to the car and off to meet Sister Atwood. I gotta tell ya I was feeling a little down about missing that guy and I take this opportunity to say, "Never postpone a prompting." Sometimes being able to effectively act on a prompting is a matter of a few seconds. If I had gotten out of the car sooner, right when I saw the guy and had the thought to talk to him then maybe we would have had a miracle happen. Lesson learned. Heavenly Father is merciful though so he gave me a second chance of sorts. On exchanges with Sister ATwood we got to talk to a guy named John and his son Owen outside their house and I got to give John a Book of Mormon. He said we could come back and talk to him about it so, we got a potential investigator. He is a super cool guy. He has a parrot named Flapper that is pretty cool too and Owen was a little ball of energy and confidence. So cute. So the ten week goal this past week was to set 2 new baptism dates. So on Sunday we set two baptism dates. We set a date with Ronan which was awesome. He is only 14 but he is so on the ball. He wants to get baptized, and wants to get baptized for the right reasons. We also set a date with Shannon. Talk about last minute date setting! We set the date over text and had to tell our Zone Leaders about it after we already sent in our indicators. Shannon is so cute. At our lesson we had talked to her about thinking about a date and said that we would follow up on Sunday about it. Well, we forgot to do that at church so we texted her about it Sunday night and asked if she had had time to think about it. She responded, "I was thinking next Tuesday." Uh, haha! That's great sweet heart but we got some stuff to go over wicha (spoken in a gangster type accent). We texted back and suggested setting it a little further back so we would have time to do all the lessons with her. "That would be even better!" she texted. We just love her! Well, we've got an early dinner tonight, so I gotta go. I love you all! Have an amazing week! Love Sister Cryer