I AM A WITNESS FOR JESUS CHRIST

Email dated January 25, 2016 Hey family! So this email might be a little bit on the short side just because I have to do this my training deal and we lost some of our preparation day time because we felt prompted to visit someone and ended up talking to them about some stuff going on for an hour or so. Wouldn't trade following promptings for anything! I am so glad that we did! But, it does cut down on email time! lol So let me see what I can tell you about...This week has been a little abnormal honestly. I spent a lot of time in meetings...which is AWESOME. I learned a TON this week. We had a world wide mission training meeting that was INCREDIBLE. The theme was Preach Repentance, and Baptize Converts. Oh my goodness, family. It was SO good. One of my favorite parts was something that Elder Nelson talked about. He talked about bearing testimony of the Savior. That His name should always be on our lips. As I thought about my teaching and the things that I talk to people about, I realized that, for being His representative, I do not bear testimony of the Savior very often. Or at least, not as often as I should. That is something that I have decided to change. I want to constantly be bearing testimony of the Savior. If I don't know what to talk about, I am going to talk about the Savior. I am going to constantly have His name on my lips so that people can recognize me as a disciple of Jesus Christ. Another part that I loved was a training from Elder Bednar. That man is amazing. He is SO smart! Any way, he talked about the Holy Ghost and the role we play in bringing the Holy Ghost into the lessons and to the hearts of our investigators by our preparation and our obedience, and the Holy Ghosts role in converting and teaching the people. That was a bit of an eye opener. I have always understood that I am not the one that converts people. That is the Spirits job, but I did think I was the teacher. In that respect I kind of viewed the Holy Ghost as a helper, with me, the teacher, middle stage. But that's not the way it is at all, and if it is then I've got a problem! (Houston, we have a problem! lol) The Holy Ghost is the teacher. I am the helper. I am the vessel. That's all. My job is literally to do everything I can, in the lesson and out of it, to allow the spirit to teach and convert. I'm the helper. I'm the tool. I'm the instrument. IT WAS SO COOL!!!! Any way, so that was a really good meeting, and I think that's all I have time to tell you. :( I might be able to write a letter! Maybe...no promises, but I will try. Love you all! I hope you have a wonderful week! Sam I hope you feel better soon! I just got your letter today and you said you weren't feeling that great. Thank for the letter though, I loved getting it. It made my day! Good luck on seminary and stuff dad! And mom, I can't wait to hear about he RS meeting that you spoke at! I know you did amazing! Sister Cryer P.S. here, I'll send a pic or two to make up for my lack of words! The first one is of me, Elder Connor, Elder Murdock and Elder Williams. Elder Murdock and Elder Williams came out with me. Elder Willimas is my zone leader and spanish speaking and a nut. Elder Murdock is also a nut and has some really good gospel insights, and Elder Connor used to serve here in Siloam so every one knows and loves him :) The second picture is of me and Elder Horsely. I think that's how you spell his name. He came out with me as well. He is super funny and it's been great to see him because unlike everyone else I came out with, I haven't really seen him at all! So that was way fun to get to talk to him a little bit. Both of these pics were taken at MLC this week on Friday

RUBY GETS BAPTIZED

email dated 1/18/2016 Hello family dearest! First, let me answer your question dad, I WOULD LOVE TO GO TO THE TEMPLE! Second, mom, that hat is AWESOME! I LOVE IT!!! Ok, now I will tell you about my week :) Don't know how detailed it's going to be because I blew a bunch of my email time doing "my plan". It's a training for almost RM's (Return Missionaries) to make sure we don't mess up our lives post mission :) Any way, highlights. On Tuesday we went on an exchange with Samantha T. She is from England and black so she is basically the coolest person around. She came with two of her kids, Neo (I think he's 12 or 13) and Nathaniel (3 years old). Nathaniel is SO cute! We are basically best friends. Any time he see's us he runs up with a big smile, gives us a hug and asks to come to our house! He also showed me a picture of the Salt Lake temple and asked if I would go there with him. I said yes. Now all we need is a ring! haha Any way, so the lesson. Nothing too special about it, so why mention it? Because there was one cool part. I was sitting on the couch beside Neo and I had the impression to ask him if he would share his testimony of the Book of Mormon with Ruby (that's who the lesson was with). We looked at me and then at Ruby and got a big smile on his face as he nodded. When there was a break I said that Neo was going to share his testimony and he did, and it was so perfect! You could feel the spirit! Any way, he has been struggling a little bit with his testimony and so I was so glad that I followed the spirit and gave him that opportunity to share something that he knew :) Tuesday night we had a Just Serve training meeting for me and the zone leaders and the stake leaders (not necessarily in that order lol). It was a good meeting in the fact that it was short. After the meeting me and the zone leaders, Elders Millett and Williams met in the chapel and talked about the zone. Our zone has been struggling a bit and me and Sister Millett decided that we needed to do something! Hence we had the meeting with the zone leaders. We talked about what we could do to help some of the younger missionaries catch the vision of obedience and just how to be effective happy missionaries. We talked about the five anchors and special ops that Pres. Shumway had given us and the things that Pres. Loveland has talked to us about. We planned a training meeting for the zone this Wednesday before the world wide mission training and we are hoping to squash what Pres. Shumway gave us with what Pres. Loveland has asked of us and is focusing on. Hopefully it will go good :) It was nice though because I felt like I was actually doing something helpful for the zone leaders in my assignment as an STL to help them know a little bit what I had noticed in the zone. Wednesday we visited Tricia Brown. That wasn't much different from other visits. She vented to us about how mad she was at her mom and her Dr.'s and how hard her family is making things for her and how she has to fix everyone's problems. After about an hour or so of that I felt impressed to try to commit her to come to church. We have invited her before, but never committed her. So when she stopped for breath I said "If we find you a ride to church, will you come?" There was silence for a while as she looked down. Then she started to go off on some stuff again and I said "I know you're dealing with a lot right now, but I promise coming to church will help." Silence again. She debated with herself and her husband a little bit, and then finally she said. "Ok, I'll come." MIRACLE! So her and her kids came to church this Sunday! She told us that she almost didn't come, but then her daughter, Hannah (age 10 or 11) said "but mom, you said that you have to do what you say you will if you give your word, because that's all you have." So she came. :D It was a little rough because they talked about mothers a little bit in sacrament meeting, but I think she felt the spirit (I had been praying that she would since she committed to come!) because she agreed to come back again next week! And she seemed kind of happy-ish about it! Her kids loved church! They stayed for all three hours (Tricia had to go home to fix her husband lunch after the 2nd hour) and had a great time! Brother Patterson (YM Pres.) said that Jacob (Tricia's son, age 13) did great in YM's, with lots of participation and everything. I was so grateful to the ward for taking care of the browns! Sister Garcia took Hannah to primary and made sure she got in the right class, and Chris Bailey on of the YM just grabbed Jacob without us even asking and took him to class! That kid is great! Let's see...Wednesday we went to YW's and watched them make cupcakes. And then ate them :D Friday I made an incredible sandwich for lunch and didn't get to eat it until dinner. haha I made some guacamole and then got some chicken out of the fridge and put it all on french bread and then had some little sweet peppers and sweet potato chips by the side. That lunch looked SO GOOD! Just as I sat down to eat it though Nate Patterson called and said "hey, my mom is dropping off some pizza's at my house and I have Monty Keeney over here. Do y'all want to come over and eat lunch with us?" Monty Keeney is a LA. I looked at my lunch, then at Sister Millett, then at my lunch again and said "...Yeah, that sounds awesome!" as a tear rolls down. haha jk So I shoved my lunch in the fridge and we were off. It was a fun time and I'm glad we went. And I got to eat my sandwich for dinner :D RUBY WAS BAPTIZED ON SATURDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was probably the highlight of the week! She is so awesome and you can just tell that she has a testimony! Her one problem was Joseph Smith about a week ago (kind of a big problem) and so we asked her if she had prayed and specifically asked Heavenly Father if Joseph Smith really was a prophet. She got a thoughtful look and said "no, I haven't." Well we invited her to do it and the next time we went over, she had her answer :D The gospel is SO TRUE. Well, that's just about all I have time for. Those are the highlights though :D I hope you all have a wonderful week! Tell Everybody that I love them! Give yourselves a hug from me! Love, Sister Cryer Picture: So that's me and Sister Millett with Ruby and Brother Taylor and Nathaniel, the cute little guy that I'm going to the temple with :) P.S. So there is a temple dedication in Utah March 20th...what would be the possibility of going to that? :D P.P.S. Do I need to get my FASFA or FAFSA or whatever it is, in?

WONDER OF WONDERS MIRACLE OF MIRACLES

Email dated January 11, 2016 Guess what I forgot today? My planner. No surprises there right? haha I forget that thing a lot on preparation days! haha That's ok, I will just kind of go from memory and tell you about some or our cool experiences that we have had this week! First of all I just want to say thank you so much for your prayers! We were able to see some pretty awesome miracles! First miracle that I will tell you about is that we got 20 lessons! That hasn't happened in what seems like forever! So that in and of itself was a miracle that I needed in my life! haha I was so grateful to Heavenly Father! Now I will also tell you that we didn't quite hit the standard, but we got darn close! We received a ton of referrals (they just seemed to be coming at us all the time from Salt Lake!) and we were able to contact three of the referrals that we had. One of two of them seem pretty golden so we are super excited to get with them and actually start teaching them hopefully! I will tell you about contacting one of them because it was pretty funny. Her name is Larissa and we have been trying to contact her for quite a while. So during weekly planning I had just about had it. I wanted to contact her already! So I dialed up her number and put it on speaker phone. The phone rang and rang. ...and rang and rang and rang. ...and rang. .............................and RANG. 10 MINUTES I WAS ON THE PHONE WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO PICK UP OR AN ANSWERING MACHINE TO SAVE ME FROM MY MISERY! As the ringing went on and on I started begging the phone to just put me to the answering machine PLEASE. No one is possibly going to pick up this phone. IT'S BEEN 10 MINUTES FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! Well then what do you think the shock of my life was when I suddenly heard a voice on the other end of the line say "hello?" WHAT?! Family, I was so shocked that I started cracking up and I couldn't talk! NO! I had been waiting for half of eternity to talk to someone and now that there was someone on the other end to talk to, I couldn't say anything! I tried to hand the phone off to Sister Millett but she was laughing just as hard as I was! Great. Who thought of putting the two of us together anyway? Try as I might I could NOT get myself together! So what did I do? I hung up! I pretended that we got disconnected and I hung up! I couldn't believe my life! How aweful is that?! Any way, I got myself under control and then I called her back. She was super cool after demanding to know why I had hung up the phone and my explaining that something had happened and we had gotten disconnected... any way, she was super cool and she is super excited to meet with us :D We are hoping to meet with her sometime this week I think. There was another referral that we tried contacting but she was on a bus and no matter how loudly I shouted at the phone who we were she kept saying, "Who is this?!" So finally we just gave up and texted her. She doesn't want to talk to us though. haha Any way, so we were blessed with a lot of referrals :) We have also been blessed with some pretty awesome potential investigators. One of them her name is Esther. She is in her 80's and she is the cutest little fiesty lady with a Boston accent that you ever met! She always wears a fuzzy pink night gown, she can't keep on a track of conversation for more than about 30 seconds, and she loves dolls. She took us around to see them all and told us there names and a little about them. haha It was pretty fun. The potential that we are most excited about though is Brian. We found him on Friday. We were out on exchanges with Sister Proffitt all day on Friday and to start out the day we went out to Colcord OK to try and find an investigator that we STILL haven't met. So we decided to get lost because that's such a great idea and ended up in a podunk gas station asking everyone and their dog to help us find the address of this investigator. We eventually ended up talking to and policeman named Brian. He, after some struggles, managed to help us get some very confusing directions to where we were going. When I had written down everything he said, I laughed and said "Well, be expecting a call to ask for help again! haha" He smiled and then pulled out a card and said, "If you get lost, just call that number. That's my number." We thanked him and then went on our way. Well, we never did find the stupid place and non of our other ideas for what we were going to do or who we were going to see were working out. We literally spend half the day in the car I think. We both felt pretty lame about the day when we got back to the apartment. Then at the the end of out daily planning I found Brian's business card that he had given me. "...what if we texted Brian? (I mean, everything happens for a reason.) ...And maybe just said thanks for helping us...?" I said. It took us a few minutes of deliberation, but we finally decided to do it. We sent him a short text just thanking him again, and then we did our nightly routine and went to bed. Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles in the morning we had a text from Brian! He said, "You're welcome" and then asked us what church we were from! We told him and asked if had ever heard of it before. He said that he had heard of it and that he actually had questions about it! WHAT?! Me and Sister Millett were on top of the world! We told him that we would love to talk to him more about it and he said that he would really like to do that! We don't have a time set up yet but we are totally going to see him this week and then baptize him and take him to the temple before I go home and he'll probably be a Bishop or something. :) Any way, so that was a HUGE miracle that made us feel so much better about Friday! Saturday we worked our little tails off to make up for our dud of a day Friday. And we felt good about the day when we were done :) Even though we didn't hit the standard exactly, we got so close to it, and I know that we wouldn't have been near that successful if Heavenly Father had not been blessing us and helping us. We saw SO many miracles :) I wish I had time to tell you about them all! But I think I told you about the main ones :) Ok, now before I sign off I just have to tell you a little bit about today. We got to spend our afternoon at the Pattersons (Nate and Mary). I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. The Pattersons have got to be one of my favorite families that I have met on my mission. Any way, so Nate and Mary fed us lunch and then Nate had to go to work and Mary had some things to do on the computer, so guess what I got to do as an act of service while Sister Millett took a nap on the couch? I got to play with Hayes and keep him distracted so that his mom could work! Hayes is about 1 I think... and he is SO cute and very easily entertained! haha One thing that my mission has done for me at least a little bit is taught me to love children! haha I know, it's a shock! Any way, I taught him how to open his water bottle so that he can get a drink by himself (that alone kept us busy for about 45 minutes!) and then we put Nerf bullets in a space ship, opening and closing the door over and over again and then we discovered how to shoot a little plastic missile out of the space ship! It was so much fun! He is just learning how to talk too, so there was a lot of high and low pitched "da da da DA DA DA DA DA! HAHAHA" It was so funny! Any way, I think that's all the news that I have time for right now! I am doing great. I am so happy to be staying in Siloam Springs for my last transfer. I have been thanking Heavenly Father for that. I really want to prayerfully set some goals for this transfer as it is my last one. I really want to go out strong so that I can start out stronger back home. I hope you all have a good week! Love you! Sister Cryer

PERSONAL REVELATION ABOUT THE SABBATH DAY

Hey! Didn't know if you knew about this...because I sure didn't! haha There is a mission blog! arkansasbentonvillemission-loveland.weebly.com And a facebook page! Arkansas Bentonville Mission 2015-2018 Any way, there ya go. Don't know if you knew or not but now you do for sure :) Ok, so I am still in Siloame Springs Arkansas for at least another week and a half. Transfer calls are this Saturday so we will find out what will be happening for my final transfer at that point. I hope I stay here, but we shall see. My companion right now is Sister Millett. She is awesome and we are having a great time together doing missionary work for the first time in what seems like ages! It's been awesome! We have already been able to see some pretty awesome miracles as we have been out and working and it has been so cool to see! I don't have a whole ton of time to write though so I am going to just tell you about Sunday :) We had made a bunch of grand plans to get 11 lessons and by so doing hit the standard. That was the plan. So after church we headed out to Gentry to contact some referrals visit some less actives and potentials and do some tracting. Our first stop was a referral that wasn't home. No big deal (actually in my head it was kind of a big deal. The referral, her name is Shannon, lives in a really run down trailer house with a car in front that looks like it hasn't moved in a about a year. We've gone over twice and both times it looked exactly the same and there was no answer. For some reason whenever I am in those types of circumstances I have this unreasonable fear that the person is old and sickly and is now dead inside their home with no one around to check on them and so no one to know that they have kicked the bucket. I don't know why I have that fear, but I do. haha). So we head off to find a good place to tract and as we go we text one of our potentials to see if we can come by. Well, I found a neighborhood and stopped the car and then we just sat there for a few minutes. I eventually said "is is just me or does this not feel right?" Sister Millett agreed with me. We didn't think we were supposed to go tracting. So we decided to go try and see the Hurts, less actives. Ok cool. We didn't feel totally sold on that idea either, but it was better than nothing so we headed off to their house only to find that they were not home. Our potential had not texted us back yet, so we decided to go OTM at a park near by. So off we went to the park and then when we got there we sat in the car feeling not right about it! What the heck! We decided to say a prayer asking what Heavenly Father wanted us to do. So we bowed our heads and asked for guidance and then just sat there again, thinking. Nothing. Ok, cool. We got out of the car and started walking around just so we could at least be out and doing SOMETHING even if it wasn't really anything. As we walked we talked. One of the things that we had discussed in our weekly planning was how we could do a better job at keeping the Sabbath day holy. As we walked we talked about the possibility that maybe Heavenly Father did not want us to be stressing about numbers on His holy day of rest. As we talked about that possibility I said "wouldn't it be nice if we could make sure that every week we had hit the standard by Saturday night. That way we wouldn't be worried about numbers on Sunday. Anything we got would be a bonus." As I voiced that thought, we both felt so good about it! Just think of that! If the standard was hit by Saturday night Sunday could be spent literally however Heavenly Father wanted us to spend it! To visit the sick or lonely, to make cookies for active and less active members and deliver them, to spend time with the people in nursing homes, or to do anything else that the spirit directs! We were so excited! We jumped back into the car and drove back to our apartment where we spent the next couple hours making cookies. It felt so good! I was surprised! We had planned to have 11 lessons that day and we got 1, but we felt good about the revelation we received and we were ok with it :) Sometimes Heavenly Father answers your prayers in ways that you really don't expect! Like telling you not to work on a Sunday! haha And it took us a bit to get to that conclusion, but we got there! Gosh revelation is so cool! Prayer is so cool! I just love the gospel!!! So we are excited to see what the upcoming Sunday will look like :) We have the goal to have the standard met by Saturday (20 lessons total, 60% member present, 2 new investigators, 1 investigator with a baptism date, and 4 referrals contacted). If you could pray for us, that we are able to do it, that would be awesome! Well, I think that is pretty much all my news :) Oh, the only other thing is that I have decided that I need a bucket list. We were talking to a girl the on Sunday at the Pattersons house (they fed us a dinner of black eyed peas and hog jaw) and she lived on a sailboat for about 2 years. What the heck! Me and Sister Patterson looked at each other and Sister Patterson said, "Sometimes I feel like such a loser! I have such a boring life!" haha So we decided together that I need to have some adventures in my life before I get too old! haha What could I put on my list? I was thinking getting my divers license would be a good start. Maybe live in England for a little while, study abroad or something. I want to take a cooking class :) That's not exactly high adventure I know, but I helped Nate Patterson make Chinese dumplings the other day and it was so fun and for whatever reason got me wanting to take a cooking class! haha Any other ideas of what I could do? ;) Any way, I gotta go now! But hey, this email is a lot longer than I though it would be so... :) Hope y'all have a great week! Love you! Sister Cryer P.S. You know something? My testimony has grown a lot as a missionary. I really truly believe the things that I teach.The more I learn the more I believe, and even to the point where people's arguments against the church serve to strengthen and fortify my faith rather than weaken it! I just love it so much! I had a testimony before I came out, but now I have a stronger one :) The gospel is true! P.S.S. I have been studying about spiritual gifts lately :) Do you know what the difference between the gifts of discernment and the diversities of operations is? They both seem to deal with knowing if something is good and comes from God or not. I am trying to identify one of my spiritual gifts this week. :)