March 29, 2010

Kewandra is officially a member of the church! Her baptism went well, a little different than most, but she got it done, haha. She was just so nervous to be watched by lots of people so they only let a couple of her close family members actually watch the baptism. She was so scared that as soon as she got out of the water she took off back into the bathroom. But she was in much better spirits once it was over! I have pictures to send, hopefully you are getting them? I sent some as attachments last week. Did you get them? We didn't get to take pictures in her white baptism clothes because we were too busy trying to help her feel comfortable, so they are just of us after the baptism.

Crystal with Kewandra and companion Sis. Winder

We went to the temple last wednesday! The Nashville temple is pretty small, but it is pretty! We are still struggling to find new investigators, but we have 3 progressing now! Wanda and her husband have dates set for April 24th (4 days after the transfer, so hopefully we will still be here..!) and Jana has one set for April 17th. We are praying those dates will stick! We are doing really well though out here. Missionary work is definately not for wimps. I feel like we never get enough sleep, haha! But it is great, I love it. The people out here are so nice and so many people love Jesus! We met a pastor the other day, who says his congregation calls him Pastor "Dawg" hahaha! He was very nice and had a million questions for us about our church. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he said he would read it. He is the pastor for what he calls the Beatty Swamp Community Church. We are hoping he will read the book of mormon and gain a testimony and be baptized so that his entire congregation will follow.. :) There is a quote they gave us that President Kimball said about the south. He said that there will come a time when the south missions will be the highest english speaking baptism rate in the world! He said that when the churches begin veering left and right that the people will start searching for the truth, and that there will be tens of thousands people baptized and that temples will be plural in the south states! That makes me excited! I hope we can get that rolling here soon. :P There are SO many churches here it is unbelievable! We'll get them someday though!

I need to start writing notes on what I need to tell you guys because the days all blend together and I can't remember everything that has happened! Thank you so much for your letters! I love you all! BTW, we are already 1/2 way through this transfer already! Tranfers last about 6 weeks, and who knows if one of us will be moved somewhere else or not. Anyway, keep keeping me updated on everything!

Love,
Sister Turner

Sister Winder and Sister Turner

Here is a picture of Crystal and her companion, Sister Christie,  at the MTC.

Here are pictures of Crystal's zone at the MTC.

None of the Sisters, except Crystal, went to Nashville but all of the Elders did!

March 22, 2010

It sounds like everything is going well for you guys! Hurray for your new ward missionary calling! :) We love our ward misionary leaders here in Cookeville, they do sooooo much for all of the missionaries. And there are 8 of us in one ward! We requested to have a ride coordinator for our investigators because so much of our time lately have been calling people to give rides to the investigators to church and activities, which is stressful! Kewandra is still set on getting baptized on the 27th! She has a hard time with having friends her age in the ward, but they are all really nice to her. She has lived a hard life. She lives with her grandpa, who is a member but hasn't been for a loooooong time, and her mother is in jail, her father is who knows where.. It is really sad to see how much she needs parents. But she still wants to get baptized and church makes her happy! So we are trying to find more women in the church who can take her in more.


Jana is wonderful, we decided to let her progress on her own more now. My companion felt like she was starting to rely on us too much for company, so we turned her over mostly to the ward missionaries. She is the Gladys Knight of the Burgess Falls ward, haha! We will still be visiting her about once a week though.

There is another woman we met this last week named Wanda. She is about 60 years old and is caring for her husband who is in the 7th stage of alzheimers. She is so awesome! She has had all the missionary discussions and knows with all her heart the church is true, and is working real hard toward baptism. The problem is her mother, who belongs to the Church of Christ (they don't like the mormons AT ALL), and told her the family would quit helping her take care of her husband if she pursued the church any longer. It is really sad because she loves her family and wants them to understand and support her decision. She said she is willing to be baptized even if her mother continues to reject her, but she wants to do all she can to soften her mom first. Then last night the elders came over to give her and her husband a blessing, which was really cool because even though her husband doesn't comprehend what is going on most of the time, he knew exactly what was happening as the elders gave him a blessing. She told us she wants him to be baptized as well so that they can be sealed together in the temple! She set a date for the end of may... but we want to try and make that earlier because we feel like she is more than ready, and she needs to just take that step of faith. One of the problems too is that since she can't really take her husband out, it is really really hard for her to make it to church. She has already given out book of mormons to several people though and loves to share the gospel.

This last week has been kinda hard, we have done a lot of tracting and street contacting but people out here just don't want to hear about our church. Alot of the missionary work is done through referrals, I didn't realize how important referrals were! We need to find more new invetigators. We are pretty good at finding potentials, but then keeping in contact with them is the hardest thing. Keep that in your prayers, we need to find more people to teach!

The people out here eat the craziest things. They really do fry everything! Oreos, crackers, vegetables, basically anything you can put in your mouth, they love to fry. We ate dinner at a family's house the other night and the guy was telling us how much he likes, check this out, chocolate covered....BACON. Haha, I would have never thought of putting that together but he swears it is heaven on earth. Luckily I haven't eaten too much southern food because I think people try to feed us other things thinking we are sick of southern food. I have actually lost a few pounds, well atleast I think I have. I have been trying hard to eat healthy all the other meals so that when we do eat at members houses, I have room to spare.

I keep forgetting to bring my camera cords when we do e-mails.. I was going to send some pictures. Oh well, I guess I'll save that for next time!

I am doing well! I am really tired and when night comes around I hit the bed and I am out within seconds, and the mornings come way too quick. But according to President Hutchings, that means we are true, faithful missionaries. He told us if we don't go home bone tired, we haven't done enough. Haha, wow!

Cody is doing really well too, he told me he got his first baptism and his new companion is awesome. He works hard, and says they work real hard to be obedient to all of the mission rules. Much better than his last companion! He sent me a tape recorder with a tape, it was really good to hear his voice! So, that will be fun to tell stories of the mission to each other on!

I love you guys, and I miss you all! I hope everything is going well in Utah!

Love always,

Sister Turner

Here is a picture Crystal sent.  She says "the picture of the sign at the church i just thought was funny!  there are like 63 different churches just here in cookeville, its crazy!"

Nashville! March 15, 2010

It's been like a week and a half since last p-day so alot has happened! Yes, it has been rainy all week, and I can't wait for everything to turn green! it is so pretty out here. So we arrived in tennessee at about 2 in the afternoon, Pres Hutchings was there to greet us and took us to the mission home. My first impression of tenessee was how huge people's yards were, how many trees there are, and how pretty the houses look. of course that was in brentwood, where the nicer houses are. There are no fences and the houses are like a hundred feetaway from the road. Plus the rolling hills make it way pretty! I think it is my new dream place to live! So we stayed over at the mission home over night and had testimony meeting and slideshow of the mission. Pres Hutchings is really cool! He is a real down to earth guy and super motivating! Then tuesday we drove to the church and did transfers. I got set up with Sister Winder who is from Blanding and we are in the Burgess Falls ward in Cookeville. Everyone says Burgess Falls is the best place because the ward is awesome, they even have a meal coordinator for the missionaries, and there are 8 missionaries here in the burgess falls ward! We are well taken care of! Sister Winder is a really great trainer, although she got sick on the 2nd day out here so we ended up stuck in the apartment for a day.


So, we've been teaching a couple people, two in particular who have been taught for a couple months now. I'll start with Kewandra who is 12 years old, lives with her grandpa who is inactive, and the reast of her family is anti-mormon. She loves church and loves the missionaries but she is scared to get baptized, probably because of her family. But she is praying about being baptized on March 27! She is a really sweet girl, and has some anxiety issues, but she is really cute.

Then there is Jana. She's crazy. Haha! She is an african american pennecostle, and LOVES to sing songs about Jesus. She also likes to quote scriptures in the bible. 1/2 of the time I have no idea what she is talking about. BUT she loves the Mormons, loves the missionaries, and says she has felt more love in our church than any others she has been to. So her first sunday she came, it was fast and testimony meeting, apparently she got up and sang her testimony from the top of her lungs.(I wasn't there though!) Haha, and then yesterday she came and the ward pianist asked if she would like to play the prelude music before sacrament meeting. Little did she know Jana.. so, once again she sang at the top of her lungs. The pianist just kind of sat there and didn't know what to do. One of the problems Jana has with our church is that we are boring, she thinks we need to liven up our songs. So we were told we needed to teach her about reverence. She is a sweet lady, but has strong personality and can be stubborn. She has a little too much faith, and thinks that Christ will take her cigarrettes from her when it is the right time. Its been frustrating trying to teach her about works! We talked to her last night and she feels like we are asking too much of her to change everything in her life, and so she feels discouraged. Which is hard, so we finally told her we'd go at her pace, and she broke down and cried because she says she doesn't feel good enough. It was a rough night last night! She really is a wonderful lady though, we love her to death!!! She has the cutest little grandchild who is only one years old, and I wanted to hold her so bad! So at this point we turned her over to the ward missionaries because we felt like she needs support and fellowship from the ward to help her. She loves church though, so she'll make it. It will just take longer than we were hoping for, which is okay. We don't want her to get baptized if she isn't ready.

Those are the two main people as of right now. We are going to work on getting more this week. I've only been tracting twice out here, and I actually kind of like it. Although it is a little awkward. Most people are real nice about it though.

Anyway, the mission is good! I've already learned how it feels to be discouraged, so we're hoping this week will be better! We have a car full-time which is kind of nice since it is cold and rainy but I want to get out on the bike. I haven't even finished putting it together, haha!

We get to go to the temple next week and I am SO excited! We get to go to the temple 4 times a year which is awesome! I wasn't expecting to go at all.

Here's an interesting thing Sister Winder told me. I probably would have ended up in Nashville anyway because I guess they are taking the Sisters out of Knoxville because of the crime rate over there. I guess there is a purpose for everything!

Well I should probably go.

I love you all so much!

One request, and this is for everyone! Send me more letters! Sister Winder gets a couple everyday and I haven't gotten one all week! Now I know how Cody felt! Make sure you write letters to missionaries! :) I'm just sayin.

Love always,

Sister Turner



Here is Crystal's address:


Sister Crystal Turner
Tennessee Nashvilee Mission
105 Westpark Dr Ste 190
Brentwood, TN 37027

March 3 2010

Hello family!
Real quick my memory card is a san-disk. the one i have right now is 2 GB so it can hold quite a bit of pictures, but an extra card would be nice if you want to do that! This last week has been pretty good, we have been doing a lot of practice teaching. Wd didn't quite reach our street contacting goal, wd got 103 contacts and taught 17 lessons though! We have gone to the referral center a couple of times and the first time I wanted to cry, haha. We basically call people who have called or ordered church materials and we ask them if they recieved it and what not. So the first time wd wdnt I called like 50 people and the only two who answered both yelled at me for calling them so much. It felt like I was a telemarketer for the church or something. But this last time the first person I called, his name was Demitri from Michigan answered and I ended up talking to him about the restoration and the gospel for 30 minutes over the phone! He said the last time we called for him was two years ago, when a natural disaster occured, and now we called again right after a natural disaster. So he asked me if it was a sign that he needed to get his life in order. We had an interesting discussion. He is a pennecostle and said he was afraid the book of mormon would condradict his beliefs. I told him it was a testament of Jesus Christ and that it would bring him closer to God, and that it was the most correct book on all the earth. He started telling about how he was a little suspicious of the bible because it has been changed so many times, and so I told him the book of mormon would be the perfect book for him. I told him I could refer some missionaries in his area to come teach him and he hesitantly accepted. He was very nice, and is headed to bootcamp in the next couple of days so I hope the missionaries got to him so that he could take the book of mormon with him to bootcamp. By the end of our conversation I was amazed at how much I cared about this person I hardly even knew, but he seemed very humbled and almost tearful when I had to say goodbye. It was awesome, my first experience teaching someone who has never had the gospel before! I also talked to a girl named heather who wanted a book of mormon, she had watched the together forever video and felt really good. But her address had changed and while I was getting it from her, her mom got on the phone and told to her to hang up because i was a mormon. I felt so bad because she really wanted it! I only got half of her address, so i couldn't send her the BoM :( Hopefully she can get the gospel somehow! Anyway, I had a great birthday yesterday! I did get your package! Thank you for the chocolate! :) And the card and the letters. I got to talk to Demitri on my birthday so that was a great present as well! I feel like there is so much to tell you. One week feels like one month I swear! But I got my flight plans already! I should be in tennessee at about 2 in the afternoon, and I can call from the airport, so be prepared! I love the sisters in my district and it is going to be hard to all go our different ways now. We wish we could all just go to the same mission and all teach together. haha Today is my last p-day here at the mtc! We get to go to the temple again, which is probably my favorite part of the week. It is so nice to go there and not be stressed about lesson plans! I have sent a couple pictures in the mail so you should probably get them soon. P-day goes by way too fast. I wanted to write lots of letters last week but there is so much to do and then all of the sudden p-day was over. It ends at about dinner time at 4:30. Not long enough! Anyway, time is almost up. So I will start on writing letters now. That you for all your support! I love you all! Pray for Demitri! :)
Love always, Sister Turner
Oh and tell Tyson he will not regret his decision! That is great! Let me know where he ends up going!