RECENT CONVERTS

Letter dated August 24, 2015 Dear Family, Wow! August is going by SO fast! That's a mercy because July seemed to crawl by. It was July for forever! At least that's how it felt for me, I don't know about y'all. Anyway, on to the news of the week! Sister Murray just read something about freezing eggs in a cooking tips book....I really want to freeze an egg now and see what happens! OK! Now on to the news of the week:) So on Tuesday we had some open time and no one to go see so we decided to sticky note some peeps doors. We used a lot of sticky notes because we put one letter or one word on each one so we could make it look crazy and fun on the doors. Anyway, everything worked out surprisingly well. Either people weren't home or didn't see us and their dogs didn't hear us and we were able to sticky note in stealth mode, completely undetected, despite the fact that we stick out like a sore thumb in skirts with badges running madly down streets away from members homes and into our truck:) It was good times! We got to go on exchange with Brother Brewer, the Young Men's President, to go see Noah. He is 13 years old, recently baptized and pretty ADHD. Haha! That kid was everywhere! We couldn't stay on one topic for more than 30 seconds it felt like. They had a cute hound dog (super big) with an adorable wrinkly face. They also had a pond full of tadpoles and green water. Anyway, we talked with Noah about the temple and the Book of Mormon. He said he really wanted to come to church but he lives so far out in the boonies that it's hard to find people willing and able to give him rides. So we are trying to work that one out. We were able to do some family history with some of our recent converts. Myra and Helen. I sure love those two! They are a hoot! Especially Helen. She is a feisty older lady with a big heart and a desire to follow God. She has some eye problems too. She said that when she drives she can see the road just fine, she just can't see the speedometer....That's Helen! haha! Myra is a sweetheart too. She is very shy and has had a pretty rough life. She loves animals (she has 4 dogs) and she is so strong in the gospel already. Anyway, so we got to swap family history stories with each other on Wednesday. Myra was telling us that her mom had to have surgery on her leg to take out the bone and they put a goats bone in to replace her bone! What the heck! I didn't even think that could happen. Hmmmm, what else? I think the only other exciting thing happened after our zone training meeting. We had arranged to ride up with someone and to get a ride back with someone else, which was fine. We arrived on time and had our meeting and everything was great. Our ride home however wasn't quite as smooth. We had miscalculated how long our meeting would go, so at 12:00 all the other missionaries were heading out to go grab a bite to eat and me and Sister Murray were stuck at the church waiting for out member who would arrive at 1:00. That wouldn't have been so horrible were it not for the fact that I was SO hungry. There was nothing we could do though despite our zones best efforts to get us to CC's pizza with all of them. So, off they went and there we stayed. We decided to study while we waited so we plopped down onto the couches in the foyer and began. We hadn't been sitting there too long when we got a call from Fort Smith Spanish Elders, Elder Millet and Elder Busi. "Hola," I said. "Como esta ustedes?" I heard an excited exclamation from the Elders that I was speaking Spanish to them. lol "Que pasa?" I asked. They proceeded to inform me, in Spanish, (which I caught enough of to know what they were saying...kind of) that they had gone to an eggrollery near their apartment and bought egg rolls and they were bringing them back for us! "Bless their souls!" I said to Sister Murray when I hung up! Those Elders are the best! They couldn't come inside the church so we found a flat rock outside in the sun (a little hot but not too bad) and ate egg rolls, swapping tips for investigators and finding and the like. Well, I think that's about all my news. I love you tons and bunches! Have an incredible weekend! Love Sister Cryer P.S. "Teddy Bear" by Elvis was playing in Walmart today while we were shopping. It was pretty much the best thing ever! haha P.P.S There is a colony of daddy long legs that have just recently decided to set up house in our doorway. Really? So going in and out of the apartment has been a bit of an ordeal this week. A stick and a bottle of hair spray usually gets them running the right direction (away)....usually:)

LEARNING ABOUT CHARITY

Hello Family!!!!!!!! Boy I sure love getting pics :) That probably means that you love getting pics too huh? Did you get the ones that I sent last week? This week has been great. We were able to hit the 9 week goal this past week of having 10 exchanges which was awesome because we have been struggling to get the goals all the way, and the most exchanges we have had in this area for a while is 6 in one week. So that was pretty neat :) Yesterday (Sunday) was awesome because we got FIVE referrals out of nowhere! The Blacks gave us four and then one of the Wade girls gave us one. We were on cloud 9! It was pretty much awesome! I felt very blessed and noticed by Heavenly Father :) So there is a guy at outreach named Max, have I told you about him? Any way, we have been trying to get him to be a new investigator but without a whole ton of luck. He just never seems to want to meet with us really, but a few weeks ago we were able to ask sister Cranford, who is also at outreach all the time, to invite him over for dinner when we were going to be there. So she did and he came! We had a great conversation with him and got to know him better and he was able to get to know us a little better. Then this past week at out reach he asked us if we were having dinner at Sister Cranford's again any time soon and we said not that we knew of. Immediately he went over to Sister Cranford and asked if we could do a dinner again! Woohoo! He actually wants to do something! So we have high hopes of being able to start teaching him :D That was a neat little miracle that happened this week. Lets see what else? We had our zone training meeting this past Thursday and Interviews with President Loveland. That was fun! President Loveland is very different from President Shumway, but I love him and very much enjoyed my interview with him! He gave me some assignments to study how the spirit works so I am excited to study that more :) Me and Sister Murray also had the opportunity to instruct in zone training about charity. That was awesome! I have been learning a lot about charity! The definition of charity is "the pure love of Christ" right? (Moroni 7:47) Ok, well I was reading about all the things that charity is and in Moroni 7:45 one of the things that it talks about is that charity rejoices in truth not in iniquity. Well with the standard thoughts about charity being 'loving people as Christ loves them' I didn't understand how that worked. How does loving people lead to loving truth and righteousness? It didn't make sense to me. And as well where it talks about how charity causes you to believe all things. How does loving people cause you to believe all things??? I found my answer in Matthew 22:36-40. The FIRST great commandment is to LOVE GOD. Not to love others, to love God. Then, after your love of God is established, you are able to love others. Now THAT made sense to me. In one of his recent conferences addresses Elder Uchtdorf talked about how we should obey God out of love and gratitude for him. Loving and serving others is a commandment from God, but in order to keep those commandments correctly we need to love God first. So charity has two parts then. Loving God as Christ did, and loving others as Christ did. Any way, I could go on, but I am kind of running out of time already so I wont. haha I will make sure to get a letter in the mail though with some of the other fun things that me and Sister Murray have been doing. I hope you all have a wonderful week! Love you! Sister Cryer This is me and Brother Black our ward mission leader. He is pretty great :)

AWKWARD DINNER, DEVILISH CAT, & A PRACTICAL JOKE

Letter dated August 10, 2015 Dear Family, So I have just been flipping through my planner trying to jog my memory about what happened that would be letter worthy and there's not actually a whole ton. I told you about the best stuff in my email, but there are a couple small things that I can tell you about. I met the bishop for the first time on Sunday! I had been hoping to meet him on Thursday because we had a dinner appointment with them. But that was not meant to be apparently because we ended up eating at their house without either bishop or his wife there. Awkward! Here's how that thing happened....We forgot to confirm. That is basically what happened. So we were on our way out to their house and we ended up taking some wrong turns so we called bishop to let him know that we would be late. "Hi Bishop, it's the Sisters!" Hi Sisters! How are you?" "We're good. We just wanted to let you know that we took some wrong turns but we are on our way and should be there in about 15 minutes." "O.K. Where are you heading to?" ....Uh....that's not a good response coming from the person you are heading to for dinner. "Your house...? Your wife signed up for dinner." "Oh. O.K. Let me check with her"......."Yea, O.K. come on over." "...O.K." When we get there bishops wife is on the phone and getting ready to run out the door to go to work. Bishop was gone. So we ended up just eating the left overs of the dinner that the family had made earlier and we sat and ate by ourselves and talked to their kids (all married with kids of their own). They were all super nice about it, but talk about awkward. #missionlife We got to have lunch at the Stuarts house on Thursday with four of the Elders in our zone. That was fun. We do service every Thursday and then go over to the Stuarts to eat. Anyway, those Elders are so nuts!...but then again, what Elders aren't, ya know! You will be glad to hear dad, that they spent most of their time at the Stuarts "playing with" aka 'terrorizing' the Stuarts cat. That cat is pretty devilish though....so it was funny to watch the Elders jumping around and yelling as the cat swiped at their feet. She held her own for sure. O.K. I do have to tell you about the joke that me and Sister Murray played on ward council. First of all as a disclaimer: Brother Black is a jokester and prankster like no other. So it's kind of rubbed off on us. Sister Murray wears glasses and she is legally blind without them. Well, on Sunday she wore contacts and no one knew that she wore contacts. So right before ward council started Brother Black came up to us and said, "Sister Murray, where are your glasses?" "I broke them," I responded. "Yeah," Sister Murray agreed. "She got really upset and just stomped on them and broke them last night." Now, does that story sound believable to you? Well, Brother Black believed it. And so did the whole ward council! We weren't even trying to trick them. We didn't even try to keep a straight face, and yet we had the whole ward council believing it! In fact, about 10 minutes after we had left (we don't stay for the whole ward council) Brother Black came and found us and asked if just the frames were broken or the lenses too etc, etc. Apparently it was a topic in ward council and they were trying to figure out how they could replace them and where the money was going to come from. We told Brother Black that is was a joke and started busting up laughing. He just stared at us for a few seconds and then he started smiling and gave each of us a knuckle bump. It was pretty great. Well, I think that's pretty much all the news I have. Love you all! Hope your week is going good so far. Love Sister Cryer Card sent separately with the same date: Hey Family, Guess what I forgot to do? Several things. First of all I forgot to say that I was so sad to hear about Jack! I'm sure Jackson and Snuggles are looking out for him in the spirit world though. Also, I think I'm going to start taking a bubble bath daily! Tell Aunt Gloria thanks! I also wanted to say thank you for all your prayers. I know that they help. And I need to get all the help I can! haha. But really though, I am very grateful. And thank you mom for sharing that with me about your prayer being answered through my experience. Heavenly Father is such a good father. So merciful and loving. Also, I wanted to tell you that I loved hearing about y'alls insights on the brother of Jared. That's where I have been studying too, trying to figure out what the brother of Jared did to get to the point of being able to see God. It has been so neat to study! Something that I enjoyed doing was comparing Ether 3:2-13 with Mosiah 4:9-10....Anyway, thanks for sharing. I will try and share more next week. Love you! Sister Cryer

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF LIFE?

Letter dated August 3, 2015 Dear Family, So, I just had a panic attack because I dropped two M&M's on the floor. It was pretty funny!...but maybe you had to be there. Anyway, really quick mom, you asked a question about training that I don't think I answered. It's not a once a trainer always a trainer deal. It's very much up in the air as far as what's going to happen each transfer. Honestly, I wouldn't mind training for the rest of my mission, but I doubt I will. But who knows! Anything could happen. Well, I feel like I pretty much told you everything....I'm sure I can come up with something else though. We did a TON of cleaning today. The apartment was a little bit on the nasty side. It feels a lot better now though. The bathroom....well, I won't go into details I guess. It sufficeth me to say that cleanliness is next to godliness and this apartment is now closer to heaven than it was before. Fun fat (hahahahaha!) FACT (not fat): Our apartment has a problem with fruit flies at the moment. NASTY! We bought ourselves a little bouquet of flowers today because apparently the stuff that you put in the water to keep the flowers fresh kills the fruit flies. Who knew! So anyway, we have flowers around our apartment which is super nice. Hey! Guess what! Elder Bednar is coming to our mission in September!!! I am SO EXCITED! It has caused me to do some self evaluation for which I am very grateful. It made me think a little bit about the second coming. That I really do just need to be prepared at all times so that I am ready when He comes again. Thinking about that made me very grateful for the Atonement as well because there is so much that I need to work on, but because of the Atonement I don't have to worry about being imperfect. All I have to do is progress. And that reminds me of a thought I had the other day. We were saying a prayer and all of a sudden the question popped into my head, "What is the purpose of life?" What the heck! Don't I teach people the answer to that question? Why should I be asking it? But I was. For whatever reason that question was suddenly a very real question that I had. I felt like Enos when he said, "My soul hungered." Well, I knew right where to find an answer. I went into Preach My Gospel and almost immediately I found a highlighted sentence that said, "Our purpose in this life is to have joy and prepare to return to God's presence." I felt such a thrill of joy and peace as I read that! What a great purpose to have! My purpose is to have joy and prepare to return to my Heavenly Fathers presence! So anything in this life that does not contribute to one of those two categories (joy or preparation) is not worth our time. SO COOL! I just love the gospel! I love how we can always learn new things, not only with our heads, by study, but with our hearts, by the spirit. Anyway, it was cool to have my testimony strengthened in that doctrinal point. And now, because my testimony of that point is strengthened I should hopefully be able to teach it with more power. I just love how all that works! Anyway, I think I've pretty much given you all my news. I love you all a ton. Love Sister Cryer P.S. I was drawing at church to keep myself awake! Don't worry, I was listening. We were talking about keeping the Sabbath Day holy. There has been a lot on that lately. Anything changing at home or at church because of that new focus of the church? Just curious. I am trying to find some way to make Sundays special, because as a missionary I feel like Sundays are the same as every other day pretty much. So I am trying to figure out how I can still do everything I am supposed to as a missionary on Sunday but still make the day feel special. Any ideas?

IT LITERALLY FELT LIKE HEAVEN

Hello family! I will just start out by saying that I loved that missionary story that you shared with me dad! That is so cool! Missionary work is basically the best thing ever. So, this week has felt about a month long. The first full week of a transfer is always killer it seems like for some reason that I don't yet understand. The best part of this week was Sunday. So I will start out telling you about that and then if I have time I will tell you about some of the other cool stuff that happened :) ...well hold up here. Actually to explain some of the awesomeness of Sunday I will need to tell you about a few things that happened on Friday and Saturday as well. (I am sure there is a gospel lesson to be pulled from that about preparation or diligence or something. 'It's not just the end product, but what it takes to get it' type thing) OK, so Friday we stopped by to visit a less active family. We were a little less than hopeful that they would be home, because we were just dropping by and they are always super busy I guess, but we went forward with as much faith as we could muster and hoped that they would be home and available for a few minutes :) When we got to the house and up to the door we could hear the TV going inside the house so we knew someone was home. We knocked on the door and then listened to the following: "go see who that is" ... then a little kids voice yelling "it's the missionaries!" ... movement. ...TV still going. ... talking...... more TV..... and that went on for a LONG TIME. Well, we thought, if they don't answer the door then I guess we know that they didn't want to talk to us... lol We waited for what felt like about five minutes and then were just getting stuff out to write a quick note on a sticky to leave on their door, when the door opened and brother ____ popped his head out and said "sorry sisters, let me get a shirt on." lol Hey, at least they were willing to talk to us! We couldn't talk to them for very long because Sister Price wasn't there only Brother Price so we were just standing on the porch and it was HOT OUTSIDE. ...Super HOT. ....Hot. Any way, we got to visit with Brother Price for a few minutes though and invited him and his family to come to church and he said that they would be there! :) So that was miracle numero uno leading up to Sunday. On Saturday we had an exchange with the Smiths and they took us to go see one of their less active friends out in the middle of no where named Donny. He was a really cool guy! He still reads the Book of Mormon (he still has his original that he got when he was baptized. That thing was very well loved looking!) and when we invited him to come to church he admitted that he really had no reason not to come. So we invited him to come and he said he would try. ...try? He would try. That's what he kept saying. We just basically said, "you'll be able to make it" and "we'll save a seat for you" :) Saturday night we had dinner with our ward mission leader and his family, The Blacks, and they invited Alex (a less active) and Natalie (an investigator that we haven't been able to see in forever) to dinner at our request. And they came!!! That was a miracle in and of itself. They actually came and we were able to have a great lesson with them after dinner. We talked about how the gospel blesses our families. We asked Alex how the gospel had blessed him in his life and he talked about how he had noticed how even though he was happy right now, the happiest he had ever been was when he was going to church. He said that he knew the church was true and that he knew he needed to start going back. The spirit was so strong! The Blacks invited them to come to church on Sunday and they said they would come for the first hour. Which is really big for them. Then Saturday night on our way home we got a text from Sister Nelson. She is a less active who is working on getting back into the church and her grandson Pheonix is an investigator. He is 9 and super cute. Super small too. He looks like he is 4 or 5 years old. Any way, she texted us and said that they were bringing a non member friend, Kevin 20 years old, to church! WOOHOO!!! We were so excited! So, now to Sunday when we were able to see all the results of our hard work. Sister Nelson and Pheonix came with Kevin. Donny came. Alex and Natalie came, AND randomly, Lanty came, another less active. We had 4 less actives at church and 3 investigators! Me and Sister Murray and Brother Black at one point were just standing in the back of the chapel looking at all of these people in awe and grinning from ear to ear! It literally felt like heaven to see so many people there! It was like one of those movie scenes. The finale when everything comes together in a perfect yet quiet way. So awesome! We got to talk to Kevin after church and he said that he loved his experience! Everyone was so friendly and welcoming and he was well taken care of and he wants to learn more! PLUS in the third hour with priesthood they talked about the temple and so the question he started out with at the beginning our our lesson after church when we met with him was "can you tell me more about temples? What they're for and how I can go inside?" What a perfect question! Talk about beginning with the end in mind! So exciting. And now, I am pretty much out of time. BUT I will write a letter. I should have time :) I love you all so much! Have a wonderful week! Say hi to the ward for me :) By the way, how is Dimitri doing? And how about Jarom Jenkins? and Kyle Strasdas, has he got his mission call yet? Love you! Sister Cryer

ALMA ARKANSAS

Hello my family! What a week this has been! What a rare mood I'm in! Why it's almost like being in...Arkansas! lol how did you like my spin on that classic? ;) Well I am now in Alma Arkansas and settling in nicely. It is just as humid here as it was in Branson :) The mornings haven't been to bad the past couple days though. We have a trail out behind our apartments that goes up onto a hill and overlooks a beautiful lake. We walk on that in the mornings and I have been enjoying the cool air and watching the sun rise :) Alma is a good little place. Pretty small. Everyone has an accent here! It's great! AND I have a TRUCK! WOOHOO! The envy of every area that DOESN'T! haha Everyone one in the mission wants an area with a truck so it's pretty sweet that I get one. I will have to take a pic and sent it next week. The ward is great. Everyone is very down to earth and pretty much like you would expect people from Arkansas to be like :) So use your imaginations on that one. The roads here are crazy. Lets just say that I understand why we have a truck here! On my first night (Thursday) we had dinner with a recent convert and the road to here house was nuts! Good old dirt and rock uphill all the way and full of little hills and valleys. We were being jiggled around inside Teancum (the Trucks name) like beans in a rattle! We have two recent converts that we are working with. Helen Shriver and Myra Gourley. They are both super sweet and I love them already! Helen has a ton of questions for us every time we got over so keeping the lesson on track is fun! Myra has 4 dogs. They are very sweet for the most part but at one of our visits (my first day actually) they all four got into a pretty good fight. ...So that was exciting. We all just kind of sat there and stared for a second because it was so unexpected and then sprang into action trying to calm them down. ...Well Myra did anyway. Me and Sister Murray just kind of stayed sitting in shock. What was going through my mind was "no way am I getting in the middle of that!" Church was great! The building is FREEZING! And the temp is controlled in Tulsa for some reason and no one wants to bring the problem up to the big dogs in Tulsa so we all just have to chatter and shiver our way through the meetings. Someone just needs to man up and fix the problem! My new companion is Sister Murray. ...I think you already knew that but oh well. She is great! I am finishing her last 6 weeks of training. She is another pre trained missionary! I am so glad I keep getting those ones! She is a lot of fun though and we are having a great old time! It's always hard though, adjusting to a knew companion. At least I think it is. So on my first morning I was studying in the companionship unity section in PMG trying to get some ideas of what we could do to adjust more quickly. As I was studying I was thinking about a lesson we had had the night before with the Stuarts (they are great. Sister Stuart is a resent convert of about a year. Their home is pretty much our home away from home. We are over there every week for lunch I guess and we have a key to their house and we sometimes do our laundry there. Any way, they are really cool. And the have 60 chickens). We had just read a chapter with them in the Book of Mormon going around 3 verses at a time. It reminded me so much of scripture study at home! It was the best feeling ever! Any way, as I sat there studying about companionship unity and thinking about that lesson the thought came to me that me and Sister Murray should do that. We should take 10 minutes every night and read in the Book of Mormon together before bed. I brought it up with her in companionship study and she was all for it! So we started doing it :) It has been so great! Reading in the scriptures is such a great way to begin the day and such a great way to end it as well! On Friday night we got to have a "cottage meeting," whatever that means." In this case it meant getting a small group of recent converts and investigators together with some members and watching The Testaments and The Restoration and having a discussion about them over popcorn and lemonade. It was so fun! Movie night! The Testaments is so funny! haha I mean, I always bawl at the end because the spirit is super strong then, but the rest of the movie is just so funny! Kohor cracks me up! Any way, that was really fun and it started up some really great discussion. By the way, everyone is super excited that I am NOT from Utah OR Idaho OR Arizona for that matter. I love that I am from Oregon! It is an instant endearment for me to the members! haha Grrrr I'd better go. We have to email on library computers here (it is so tempting to read some of these books! But I can't! Ahhhh!) so I only have an hour now and I still have to email President Loveland and a less active from Springfield :) I love you all tons and bunches! Have an amazing week! Sister Cryer