SILOAM SPRINGS ARKANSAS

OK, first things first. Siloam Springs is so pretty! I love it here! If it wasn't for all the bugs and humidity in the summer time I could live here! There are a few really pretty parks with little riverlettes and bridges and things and down town is all old shops and cafes with tables and chairs and umbrellas out front, and with all the leaves changing and falling it is pretty much picture perfect! In fact I am hoping to get out with my camera today and snap a few shots! I'll try and get some people in there amongst the leaves, mom ;) Well let's see, what can I tell you about? It's kind of weird because at the beginning of the week I was in Alma and now I'm in Siloam...Crazy. Any way, Max and Artie came and played basket ball and ultimate frisbee with us on Monday. Our last hurrah! It was a lot of fun :) Most of Monday night Tuesday and Wednesday was just trying to meet with everyone so that I could say goodbye. Nothing too eventful other than getting bit by a dog on my foot. That was fun. lol Thursday was a bit crazy. We had to be at transfer point at 7:45am to pick up Sister Fausetts new comp, Sister Pratt, and the plan was that I would just stay there and hang out with the other missionaries until I got on the Bull at 2. Well, little did we know until 7oclock that morning that there weren't going to be any Sisters at transfer point for me to hang out with. What the heck! What were we going to do?! Me and Elder Van Houten came up with all kinds of ideas as we discussed the possibilities over the phone, but what ended up happening is we got a ride up to transfer point, and then came back to Alma as a tripanionship, went to outreach, had lunch, and then I got another ride up to transfer point with Sister Egerton at 1pm because there were sisters there by that point. Any way, it was pretty crazy! I got to go to outreach again though so that was cool and slightly awkward! haha Because I had gone in on Monday and said goodbye to everyone already, so then to have to show up and be like "haha you thought I was leaving didn't you! lol jk" was a tad bit awkward. But it was great to be able to see everyone again. Transfers was fun. It always is. I actually had a little tender mercy in the parking lot before I got on the bull to leave: We were all about to load up and head out when I suddenly hear "Sister Cryer, you're not leaving us are you?" from behind me. I turned around and saw Sister Smith, one of the ward members that had been so good to us! She had just come into town to go shopping and saw all the missionaries so had come over to see what was going on. I got to give her a hug and get a picture with her before I left :) So now, back to Siloam Springs! The area is absolutely beautiful! The Bishop is incredible! Bishop McWhorter. He is so pumped about missionary work! He reminds me a little bit of Bishop Nothum in that regard, so I know that the work and the ward here is going to be awesome! So much depends on the Bishop, and if he is excited about missionary work, then everyone else will be as well :) So the Bishop is amazing, and the ward is awesome! Everyone is so friendly and have already been so kind to us! We shotgunned Elders so they are excited to have Sisters again. Speaking of shotgunning Elders, we have spent a lot of time today cleaning. haha The apartment is actually pretty nice, upstairs and downstairs with two bathrooms. But...you could tell that Elders had been living there. haha There was a lot of dust and trash and papers everywhere, not a very updated area book as far as I can tell and just a lot of work to do in general to get the place together. I wish I had taken before and after pictures, but oh well. Let's just say that it has put my cleaning and organizational skills to the test. It's been kind of nice to clean though. Something different :) Ok, I had better head out, but I will try and send you a letter this week too if I can. No promises, because I haven't finished cleaning yet, but I will do my best! haha I love you all! I hope you have an amazing week and share the gospel with someone! Sister Cryer

I'M BEING TRANSFERRED!

Dear Family! Holy cow what a crazy week! I don't have a whole ton of time (what's new right?) so this might be kind of short, but it's something. So transfer calls were on Saturday. I am being transferred to Siloam Spring, AR. I am shotgun training (which basically means that there will be no established missionary there. Me and my comp are both brand new to the area and in this case, my comp is brand new to missionary work! So should be fun) and I'm not sure if I'm an STL still or not. ...Any way, so that's what's going on there :) Let's see what are some of the highlights... We got to have dinner at Gee and Pop's church and ended up talking to their preacher. That was cool! We had a crazy lesson with Myra because her dogs were gassing the place up the whole lesson! Man, we were all gagging! Brother Stuart had to keep opening the door and pumping it back and forth to get some fresh air inside! Craziness! We went tracting in an old retirement community and we got some great excuses for not wanting to talk to us! "I'm not dressed" "I can't pray with you, I have to go to the bathroom" "Sorry sweetie, I cant' stand here and talk to you my hip's broken" What the heck! lol It was pretty funny! Max and Artie came to church on Sunday! That was pretty awesome! It was a pretty great last Sunday present! Well, I'd better sign off, sorry this is so short! I love y'all though and hope you have an awesome week! Sister Cryer P.S. My ponderizing scripture this week is Alma 26:22. That sums up my goals for the rest of my mission pretty much! Love you all! Sister Cryer

BOOM!!!! THE GOSPEL IS TRUE!

hey family! I loved those pictures that you sent! Those messages must have been REAL deep! So, I don't really have a whole ton of time today I am sorry! But I will tell you about the miracle of Sunday! By the time we got to Sunday we were at 11 lessons total for the week and our goal was to have 22 lessons total for the week. Shoot! We had some serious work to do! We didn't have any scheduled lessons so we decided to tract. So we did. We wanted to get as many member present lessons as we could so we got Ian Christensen to come out with us. He is getting ready to go on a mission. He stayed with us for the three hours that we tracted. We got 9 member present lessons during that time! Then after dinner we went and tried to contact a referral but they weren't home. I was pretty much done at that point. We had done good for the day, 9 lessons is really good. But Sister Fausett wanted to get the 11 that we had set goals for. So we did a little bit more tracting. Knocked 2 doors and one OTM and BOOM 11 lessons was born! What a miracle! Heavenly Father blesses the faithful for sure! And I was so grateful for Sister Fausetts desire to keep going and do more! So that night when we were going through our day though, we received a tender mercy. We had forgot about one lesson that we had had with Ian. So instead of 9 member presents we had 10. Instead of 11 lessons total for the day, we had 12. So that bumped us up to 23 total lessons for the week! God is good and the gospel is true! I love you all! Have a blessed week! Sister Cryer P.S. I said fixin' yesterday! haha I am going Arkansas!

FUNNY STORIES AND A COUPLE PICS

Letter dated 5 October 2015 Dear Family, So, I am sitting in a Firestone car place waiting for out truck to get an oil change and a tire rotation. That's the reason for the unlined paper. I don't usually go for that kind of paper, but I had to bum it off the guys at the front desk and this is all they had. ANYWAYS....Let me try and remember some of the stuff that we had happen this week...So you know how missionaries aren't allowed to babysit? (Best rule ever!) Well, we kind of ended up babysitting the Jenkins three kids on Saturday at Outreach. Those kids are crazy and there's honestly not much that they can help with, so in a desperate attempt to keep them busy and helping instead of being underfoot we had them help us bag frozen cookies. It was an interesting experience! lol Most of the difficulty came from everyone wanting gloves and there not being enough to go around, and the kids refusing to help if they couldn't wear gloves. And fighting over the cookies themselves. Anyway, we were able to pretty much keep them busy while we were there but boy I sure had a headache by the time we left! And who knows what happened to them once we were gone! Sister Fausett commented as we drove away, "I haven't had to bring out the mom voice in a while. It's just not something you really use while teaching The Restoration!" Haha. We had a good laugh and then started saying a bunch of missionary phrases and lingo in our best 'mom' voices. My personal favorite from Sister Fausett was, "I'm going to turn this salvation around if you don't stop right now." lol O.K. this was another kind of funny thing that happened. We had about an hour Saturday night with nothing to do so we decided to go and contact a referral that we had received for a lady named Karen. Interestingly enough it was the same address as another referral that we had received a couple months ago for a lady named Meagan. Anyway, we had stopped by several times trying to contact Meagan to give her the bible she had ordered and eventually just ended up leaving it in a bag on the steps of the RV. We had since tried several more times to contact Karen without any luck. We decided to go try again though since we hadn't tried at night before. Maybe they would be home. So off we went and pulled up onto the hill in the dark with the RV and big shed and tent in all their sketchy-ness. And they were home! The big double doors of the shed were open and as we pulled up we saw two silhouettes run to the doors and then just stand there. Awkward! lol We got out of the car and started up the conversation asking if there was a Meagan here and had she got the bible we brought. There was a Meagan there and she had got the bible! Yay! So we started talking to them (it was Karen and her daughter Meagan) about the bible and about God and things were looking really great. But then they started asking us about our missionary work and I made the mistake of mentioning that we can't talk to our families except on Christmas and Mother's day. They were shocked and said that just wasn't right; we should be able to talk to our families and they couldn't believe that the church would do that to us etc etc. "Shoot, what did I do?!" I thought to myself. They even told us, "Well if you want to you can come up here anytime and call your moms and no one will ever know." Uh....no thanks! haha. Anyway that basically killed the good streak of conversation. After that it was all them basically telling us that everything we believe and teach is wrong all the way from how we're saved to the fact that apparently the bible tells us not to do genealogy...despite the fact that a good chunk of the bible IS genealogy....figure that one out! lol At the welcome end of the conversation Meagan asked, "So do y'all ever get any free time or anything?" "Yeah, we get some time on Monday," we said. "O.K., well if you want to you can come over sometime and I'll show you all the parts in the bible where it shows that what you believe is wrong."......Yeah, that's exactly what I want to do in my free time! NOT! lol It was pretty nuts! Life is just crazy sometimes. We had a good laugh out of it though. We also got invited by some Baptists to come by for a bible bash sometime. "Yeah! You come over with your list of questions and try to destroy my faith, and I'll make up a list of questions and try to destroy your faith and we'll just have a good old time!" That's basically what he said! I also got offered a beer for the first time in my life by a thin, shirtless man because he said I looked thirsty. Don't worry, I didn't take it. That's actually kind of a funny story too! So we were in the RV park contacting some referrals and we saw a small group of people outside one of the RV's so we thought we would go talk to them. Well, as it turned out they were in the process of getting hammered. Party hard. So it wasn't the best teaching environment, but they wouldn't just let us back out. "Tell me about the Book of Mormon, right now. I'm interested," the girl there said. The guy next to her (the thin shirtless on that offered me the beer) looked at her and said, "Well, could you go over there and talk about it, because I am NOT interested." "You don't even know what it is!" she said. "Yes I do!" he yelled. "Some guy, came to America, what's his name?..." he said pointing to us. "Joseph Smith? we said. "Yeah, Joseph Smith! Joseph Smith came to America, went into the woods and seen Jesus and BOOM! Mormonism is born!"... It was so funny! haha. We gave them a Book of Mormon and said, "Well, you can find out for yourself," and then we walked away. Good stories from tracting and OTMing. Well, I think our car, excuse me, our TRUCK is probably about ready (plus I'm about out of room on this sheet) so I'll call it quits for now. Love y'all! Have a wonderful fall week! Love Sister Cryer P.S. Dad, I hope you stay in Seminary for a while because I want to go with you when I get home! Seminary is the best! (A little pink note enclosed reads, "Dear Sister Cryer's family, Oh, Man! Way to go! You raised a good one. Sister Cryer is pretty much the best trainer ever! She is so kind, loving, and good at listening to the spirit. Keep praying for her because it is obviously doing good. I LOVE HER! Love Sister Fausett") Here are a couple pics that Sister Cryer sent home recently....With the Assistants to the President. Here I am tracting at a tent door!

LET'S ALL PONDERIZE!

Hello family! Hey so this email is going to be super short, so....sorry about that! We've had a great day though and a great week! I got to write a letter this time so you can look forward to that :) I am TOTALLY going to ponderize a scripture every week! I would love to hear what yours are and what you learn from them :) My scripture this week is 2 Nephi 2:28 "And now, my sons, I would that ye should look to the great Mediator, and hearken unto his great commandments; and be faithful unto his words and choose eternal life, according to the will of his Holy Spirit;" I read that scripture today in my personal study and it was just what I needed to help me through some feelings that had been getting me down :) I particularly liked when his says his GREAT commandments. at first I just thought that is was saying that all the commandments of the Lord are great and wonderful, but then I thought of the two GREAT commandments. Love the Lord, and love others. Any way, I don't know if it's talking about those or all the commandments or both, but it was a neat though. :) Well, I love you all! I hope you have a wonderful week! Sister Cryer P.S. The Book of Mormon is true Also, we picked up a new investigator, Chris. If you could keep in your prayers that he will be able to understand the Book of Mormon as he reads, and also that his wife Kendra will be more open to listening to the gospel that would be awesome! Prayers work, so I am excited to see the miracles! I will keep y'all posted!

MORE FAITH MORE MIRACLES

Hey family! How is life? SAM I AM SO EXCITED THAT YOU WERE ABLE TO GO TO THE TEMPLE!!!! The temple is the best place EVER and I can't wait to go again! It feels like forever ago that I was there. Costa Rica huh? That sounds like a blast! Holy cow! You will have a ton to tell me about then I am sure! Life here is so good! Me and Sister Fausett have been working together on having more faith and I think because of our efforts Heavenly Father has been blessing us and we got to see so many miracles and I wish I had time to tell you about all of them! I don't know maybe I will. I will do my best. Tuesday we had some really cool miracles. We had gotten a referral a week or so ago from the Jenkins, a recent convert family, for a lady named Dawn who lived in an RV park in town. "We don't know which RV she is in, but here's where the park is" they said. ...ok... So we went down there on Tuesday to try and find Dawn! I have never tracted in an RV park before but we gave it a shot! First door we knocked on no one was home so we walked around a bit until we found another door that looked like it needed to be knocked on :) Low and behold who should answer the door but Eva, a lady that we know from the outreach that we volunteer at every Thursday! We're not allowed to procylite at the outreach so we hadn't got a chance to really talk to her about the church before, but now we were able to! That in and of itself was a miracle and then on top of that during the conversation she said, "Yeah, I have a friend here, her name is Dawn..." No. Way. "...did you say Dawn?" "Yes, she lives in that trailer right over there." ...the church is so true! It was the coolest thing ever! We were also able to finally have a lesson with Jennifer, that potential that stood us up on Saturday. We were driving past her house to another appointment and we saw her outside. "Should we go back?!" Sister Fausett asked. Honestly I was a little reluctant because we were already running late for our other appointment and the family we were going to go see hadn't been to church in a while and we had been struggling to meet with them. But Sister Fausett said she felt like we should go back. "Lets do it then," I said, so back we went and we were able to have a good 45 minute lesson with her and we think that she has some awesome potential! She really opened up to us a lot and we are hoping to start teaching her soon. On Wednesday we decided to go spirit driving meaning that we just drive and turn where we feel like we should until we get to a spot or house that we feel good about. So we were driving and then I saw a housing development that looked good so I turned off onto that street and drove a little bit and then Sister Fausett picked out a house. There were four girls in the house that we knocked on and we were able to give them each a Book of Mormon! They talked to us for a good while too asking questions and saying things like "...Why doesn't anyone else know about this?!" when we would answer them and when we explained what the Book of Mormon was. It was really neat! We don't think anything will come from it right now, but the seed is planted and it was an awesome experience to be led to them :) Thursday was weird because everything went according to plan. ...that never happens. Friday was awesome because we got all of our weekly planning done! That hasn't happened for a few weeks! Saturday we were trying to contact a referral and ended up tracting a tent. haha That was fun! No one was home though. I will include a pic :) Sunday me and Sister Fausett sang in Sacrament meeting. That was a new experience for me! It was fun though. I am getting a lot more confident with my voice. Heck! I even sang I am a Child of God all by myself at the Mills house for an FHE. I was so scared, but I just didn't look up and it all went ok :) Oh! Also on Sunday we got 4 NEW INVESTIGATORS!!!! Mom and 3 kids. We had our first lesson with them Sunday night at 8 so we barely squeaked it in, but we did it! Heavenly Father is so awesome! He takes such good care of us and blesses us so much for every little thing that we do! Any way, I think that's all I got for ya right now :) I hope you have a wonderful week! I love you! The gospel is true! I see miracles every day and I know that it's true! Sister Cryer