July 26, 2010

Well, it has been another great week here in Portland! It reached the peak temperatures we've had so far this year, and we went biking on the 2nd hottest day. I finally have used my bike on my mission. You can take a look at my nylons to see how that went.. haha.

My bike has no chain guard and so everytime I'd get on my bike it would tear some more. I don't know why it didn't come with a guard in the first place? But it was actually pretty fun, although super hot! We set dates with Barry and Deborah for August 21! We also took a drive out in the country to find some less active members, and everytime we go to the country we see some interesting things. There was a tiny little country house the size of a bedroom, and yep someone probably lives there!

Some of the homes we see are very very humble, it is actually sad to see some of the "homes" they live in. While we were driving we got stuck behind a little country man who was going about 5 mph up the road with a washer in the back being held only by a rope.. thats not redneck at all! ;)

A really cool vine grows here in Tennessee that takes over literally everything in it's path. But it looks real cool, like something from Dr Suess.

We also celebrated Sis Rigley's year mark! She burned an old skirt on our apartment patio. Don't worry, the humidity makes it nearly impossible for anything to catch on fire. We had a heck of a time get it to start burning! :D

The members out here take good care of us. Every sunday we have dinner with the Hathaways, a family that recently was reactivated and her husband baptized. Last sunday they made bbq pork chops! They are all so willing to help us, it is great! We went to a Relief Society activity on tuesday with an investigator and played the Price is Right using food storage. They had everything all acted out, and I don't think I have ever seen ladies act so silly. It was sooo funny! Then the lady we took to the activity called and told us she needed to cancel all of her appointments with us... Did they scare her away? Haha, she actually said she really enjoyed the activity but felt the Lord was leading her in another direction. It is kinda sad when that happens! Can you believe that at the end of this week, we'll be 1/2 way through the transfer? 6 weeks goes by pretty fast once it gets going! I think I'll be here in Portland for atleast another 2 transfers.

I did get Britt's address the day after I mailed the card to you, haha. So you'll have to give to her and tell her I'm sorry it was so late. Hopefully she had a good birthday! How was the reunion? I do miss going to the cabin! The camper looks nice! I've heard that Bear Lake is gorgeous. Kinda wish I could have been there. We'll just have to take a trip when I get home! :)

I guess thats about all the update I have for this e-mail. I am doing good, just enjoying it as much as I can!
Thank you for all of you love, your prayers, your letters, your support, your everything!

Love
Sister Turner

July 19, 2010

Hello hello! Well I am in my new area now! Portland Tennessee in the Gallatin Ward. Portland is pretty small, it doesn't even have a Wal-mart and Gallatin is about 30 minutes away. So we are more out in the country I guess, it covers a huge area but you have to go elsewhere to do much shopping. Which will probably be good for me.. :) Although Sister Richey took us to Rivergate to go shopping on our first p-day. BUT I did find a cute skirt for 10 dollars! Sister Rigley, my new comp, forgot to bring her wallet so I paid for her stuff too, she'll pay me back. Hmm, I need to stop spending money! Sister Rigley is a great companion. She has been out a year already, she hits her mark this week on the 22nd! On Britt's birthday! Which btw, I need to get her address so I can send her a card. I did get the headbands! Thank you!! I was pretty excited to be able to accessorize a little bit more, haha. We do a lot of service in this area, which is great! We paint nails for the elderly at an assisted living place, and we play games with some more at another center. It is a lot of fun to work with all the funny old ladies. They have so much personality! We also have several people we are teaching who are so close to being baptized with usually one thing in their way and Sis Rigley has expressed her frustrations about it. So we are going to have to work hard to get them baptized. They are great people though. One of them is a couple who lives together in our apartment complex and she finally got her divorce final so they can get married in about 30 days. Her fiance is having trouble quitting smoking, and hasn't been to church but he has a desire to change. We are also teaching a 15 yr old girl who is SO ready to be baptized, the only thing holding her back is her stubborness. Her mother was recently reactivated, and her dad was baptized not too long ago and she has a testimony and everything. She also has a boyfriend who she adores and she is afraid he will drop her if she gets baptized even though he has said he is okay with it. So we are going to back off and let her make the decision on her own. It is frustrating sometimes, but we can't take away their agency.


We went over to a member's house yesterday, the Sudekums, and he was saying that he knew an Elder who lived in La Verkin, UT! So I was looking through his mission pictures, and there was uncle Sherman! Haha, not quite, it was actually Hugh Howard.. but he looks just like Sherm! So he wants to find out if he remembers an Elder Sudekum from the Oakland California Mission. What a small world! You'll have to ask him and let me know. He was pretty thrilled about it. He said they were never companions but they served in the same district several times.

Well I love you all!
Have fun at the reunion! Take lots of pictures for me. I'll just be here in Portland! :)

Love
Sister Turner

July 12, 2010 2nd letter

Hello! It has been a busy week, but a good one. I will be transferred to Gallatin, TN tomorrow with Sister Rigley! I am excited to see a new place and get to know more people. That is the area Sister Green was in before she came to Cookeville and said it is a great area, so I am real excited! It is about 5 minutes from the Kentucky border.

In our last week here, we did a lot of service and had a lot of fun. We helped Ann weed her garden, and so she gave us all garden hats to wear, and Elder Lyon looks like Gilligan!

Haha, we had a lot of fun and she made us lunch which was probably the best meal I've had out here so far! She is so funny, probably one of my favorite people I've met out here. She is very spiritual, and she loves learning about religions but she thinks there is too much contention about church doctrine. It was so hot and I am more sore from doing a couple hours of gardening than doing 75 flights of stairs, haha. Gardening is not easy! Weeds everywhere! But it sure looked awesome when we were done!

The work is going pretty good. They are white washing our area, so elders will replace us here in Cookeville. I sure hope they take good care of our investigators and recent converts. Darby came to church and brought her son with her, she is so cute. She wants an answer so bad and is such a good person but I think she is scared of getting the answer. But after sacrament Wanda came and gave her a hug and whispered to her, "the book of mormon is true, and it will bring you so much peace in your life." She was very emotional through the whole service, which is usually a good sign that she is getting her answer. We just have to help her recognize it! Wanda called us this morning and told us Robert had a seizure or something while she had all of her children over there, and so she had to rush him to the hospital. We are still waiting to hear back from her to find out exactly what happened but they think it had something to do with his heart. It really is one thing after another after another with her. But she is holding out strong and the sisters in the relief society stepped in to take care of all the children. I am so glad the ward was able to step in because there was nothing we could really do. That is one thing I have learned so much about on my mission. I had no idea how great of an impact the members have on investigators! I will always remember to help out the missionaries as often as I can when I get home! And make sure that the investigators feel welcome there.

I am glad you had so much fun in Chigaco! Tell Amanda congrats on her gold medal, that is awesome!

I love you all so much!
Love Sister Turner

July 12, 2010

Here are a few more pictures, I can't remember which ones I sent in the last letter. Wanda's baptism and Sister Cecil! She is a jewish convert and she has done so much for Sister Green and I!

One thing I forgot to mention is that I will be a senior companion! Which doesn't mean a whole lot other than I will be driving, in an area I know nothing about.. haha. So, I may need a GPS soon. I probly wont use it around town, but when we have to drive clear to Nashville and to zone conferences, it would be nice to know how to get there. :) I know they are expensinve, and I don't need a super nice one. Let me know what you can find I guess! I can't believe we are about 1/2 way through July already! In August I will hit my 6 month mark! Which is in this transfer. I can burn some nylons! Thats the tradition anyway. I probably have a couple pair I could burn. Nylons are a hassle I've decided. They are expensive and they don't last very long!

I feel pretty good about the mission. It is extremely hard, and I feel like there is no time fore anything, not even to think. But it is very rewarding and I feel like I have grown alot since I have been out here. I see all kinds of people, relationships, choices they make, the environment they live in, and I have realized how blessed I am to have been able to grow up in such a good loving family. There are so many single mothers out here, and so many divorces. I have been able to see what I can do to make sure I live a happy life. But it has also taught me how much these people need love despite the bad decisions they've made. I have also realized how much I would do for these people. I would do just about anything for them! I feel like my time out here is being well spent. There is a million and one things to remember and do, and I am terrible at it, but there are a lot of good people out there who need the gospel! Another thing I have realized is I am way too hard on myself. In my last few interviews with president hutchings, he has told me I expect too much from myself and that if I am not having fun, I am not doing it right. That I shouldn't dwell on the things I did or didn't do, but rather improve each day and do my best. So I think that is my new motto! If I'm not having fun, I'm not doing it right.. no matter what it is!

Anyway, those are my thoughts for the day. If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right! :)

I love you all
Sister Turner

July 6, 2010

Hello!

We didn't get a chance to e-mail yesterday because the library was closed and the computers at the church were down. Happy 4th of July! I hope you all had a great weekend and that mom and Amanda are having fun in Chicago.

We finally had Wanda's baptism on Saturday and it went really really well. She was a little disappointed because the only member of her family who was there was her cousin who baptized her, but she was sure some of her family that have passed on were there. It was a very neat baptism!

Robert was able to sit through the whole thing. It is really cute to watch how well she takes care of him!

Our apartment is okay, haha. It is a little inconvenient to have to do laundry somewhere else, but it is part of the experience. I took a picture of "the cave" in our apartment, but the picture didn't quite do it justice. But you can at least get an idea of what it looks like.

We had a fun 4th of July. We had a ward breakfast at Cane Creek Park and it was a beautiful day. The weather was perfect, and surprisingly not as humid as it has been!

The work is going okay, but I feel like it is going fairly slow right now. It is probably a fault of our own since we have been moving and getting Wanda's baptism done. We have been teaching a nice girl named Darby who moved here with her husband. They had been meeting with the missionaries in Missouri and so we got to start teaching her. She has a cute little 6 month old who is adorable and she wants him to grow up in a stable home. The only issue is her husband isn't interested in our church and is reluctant to become involved. But she is very nice and a very good mom! We have quite a few new referals we are going to contact within the next few days so hopefully we will see the work pick back up again.

I am on the last week of the transfer already, so this will be my third one down! I have a strong feeling I will be transferred, and I will find out where most likely on Saturday night. I feel like it will be refreshing to be in a new area, although I am sad to leave Sister Green. We have had a lot of fun together, and she is a great missionary.

I don't have much else to say this week, but I do love you all!
I love you!

Sister Turner

June 28, 2010

I will start with the pictures first. We had just gotten back to the church from interviews and these tornado clouds blew over the sky incredibly fast! It was very cool, but very eerie. No tornadoes though! We just stood there and watched while the clouds flew past us. I hope the pictures work, I forgot to make them smaller first.

The next picture is Sister Green and I in our new apartment. We found some 2009 party glasses laying around haha. Our new apartment is... interesting. I will have to send pictures of it next week! We did get moved in, we spent friday night, and all day saturday, and a few hours sunday to pack/move/clean/unpack. It was definately exhausting. The first night we slept there we both just laid in bed and laughed because neither one of us could sleep with the streetlights shining right through our window, our window coolers making noise, and the ambulances that drive by with their sirens going... and it was sooo hot. It doesn't have central air, so it took about 24 hours to cool off. I decided I don't think I could handle a foreign country with no air conditioning. That is one thing I am definately grateful for!!

Some of the members in the ward wanted to take us to the zoo, so we actually went today for p-day! It was pretty fun, the zoo is kinda small but it was nice to do something a little different for a change!

I tried to get as close as I could to a little tropical bird, the name of it started with an L... haha.

Sister Reisender and her husband were the ones who took us, and the old house in the background actually belonged to a family who dedicated their land to educating people about animals in order to keep their land.

I guess they lost their business and were in poverty so they made a deal with a science foundation of some sort. It was pretty interesting. We went on a tour of the house and they actually had a slave house in the backyard. It was interesting to think back to the times when there were slaves. So the next picture is of the house the slaves lived in.

A goat tried to eat my pants! He was a cute little guy! I guess I'll have to send other pictures in another e-mail because I can't fit anymore in this one. It was quite an adventure though.


Ok, well I guess since what I am doing out here is supposed to be missionary work.. haha. Wanda's baptism got postponed, again! It will be this weekend and if it doesn't happen, so help me! We have never had to schedule the building in the past, but I guess someone was having a baby shower at the church all day so we had to reschedule. We were really bummed about that, but Wanda made it to sacrament meeting on Sunday for the first time since January with her husband! We have been doing a service at her house a couple of times, but she felt it was important to come to church. It was good for her too because the talk that was given was on the sacrifices we have to make to further the kingdom, and her mother had just disinvited her to her uncle's funeral. She is still puling through and it is amazing. We had a really good lesson with a guy named Tim. He basically soaked up everything we told him and he said it really makes sense. He is getting married in October I believe, and so it could turn into teaching his future wife as well! Other than that, this week has been just busy busy busy. Probably the busiest I've had on my mission so far. The temple was wonderful as always, although I had to go to the bathroom really bad through the whole session and didn't know what to do so I just held it. Probably too much information, but it taught me that it is much better to get there early enough to go beforehand. Our ride decided to take us to breakfast because we got there a little early and then it took too long so we had to rush.

There isn't nearly as much going on this week. We are doing a 40 day fast of things we need to overcome to have the spirit with us more and it has been interesting how hard Satan will work on us. We had a conference call last night and Pres Hutching said that satan doesn't know our thoughts, but as soon as we write it on paper, he knows. So we had to write down things we wanted to give up or do better on and so he is going to do everything he can to throw things in our way. I had never thought of that before, but I guess it is true. The goal is to be able to overcome things that are holding us back from our full potential as missionaries. Well I guess that is all for the moment! Let me know if the pictures worked. I have a feeling they might not since they are all so big.

I love you all!

Love
Sister Turner

ps---Josh, i love the new glasses! they make you look just like harry potter! ;) Oh, and have fun in Chicago! You'll have to send me pictures!

June 21, 2010

Hello! Well congrats to Julie and Jennie!! That is exciting! I am just waiting to hear from brittany and tyler.. ;) haha. Last week was a pretty good week. It wasn't nearly as exciting as the last one but it went by pretty fast This week however will be very very busy! We had a service project today, we have district meeting tomorrow, we are going to the temple on wed, thursday we have interviews in McMinnville, friday is our weekly planning, saturday we have a baptism, and on top of doing those things we are supposed to be getting 20 new contacts everyday, we have to plan and prepare the baptsim program, we also have to clean/pack/move into a different apartment, we have a list of 10 families in the ward we are supposed to teach every week, plus doing the regular missionary work. Yep! I don't think I have ever felt so busy in all my life! And then we will only have 2 weeks left of the transfer already. It really feels like this transfer is going so fast. The thing that stinks about packing and moving is I'll probably have to pack up again 2 weeks later because I am pretty sure this transfer will be my last out here. I think I already told you this, but just send mail to the mission office for the next few weeks and I will tell you where I will be after transfers, since I will only be in our new apartment for like 2 weeks.


We will only have one baptism this weekend because Cynthia called and told us she wanted to let up on the lessons because they are struggling and too tired to have us come over. Plus they were starting to call us to find rides for them all the time and the ward feels a bit apprehensive about them. Hopefully they will want to come back in a future day. But Wanda is still going to be baptized! She is rock solid it is amazing. I wish you could meet her! She has had a long journey to being baptized, but she is so ready for it now. It is amazing to see the difference in people's attitudes toward being baptized. Some are real hesitant about giving up their lifestyles, some jump right in, and then there is people like Wanda who wants to make sure she is fully ready to be baptized. She wanted to do her best to clear up all of the wrongs in her past, wrote letters to some of the people she thinks she may have offended, and she soaks in everything we give her.

I am glad girls camp went so well! I bet it would have been neat to have it up at the cabin. I miss the cabin alot! I am glad Amanda got to see the fruits of her labors.. :) It IS a lot of fun to plan it all and see how everyone enjoyed it. Have so much fun in Chicago! I can't believe that vacation is already here. I feel like you just told me about it a few weeks ago. Last week was the week that members decided to feed us. I think we had 8 meals with members last week, and alltime high for me. It was great but man they like to feed us everything I DON'T need. I still was able to lose 1.5 lbs last week! Pretty good I think. The goal was to lose 2 lbs but there were a couple days I didn't really exercise in the morning.

Well I can't really think of anything else at the moment. Oh, I wanted to send both grandpa's a card for father's day but I couldn't find any good ones and so I am going to write a little note instead sometime this week...But tell them I love them and I hope they had a wonferful Father's Day! Did dad get the card I sent? I think he'll like it! :)

Well I love you all!

Thank you for everything you do, i really appreciate it.

Love

Sister Turner

This is the only picture I have for you for now. I was going to send it last week and I forgot. This was at zone conference and this is all the sisters that were there. From L to R: Sister Hutchings, Sister Green, Sister Larsen, Sister Austin, Sister Blackham, me and Sister Goff. It was fun to have so many sisters there. We all lined up in order without even trying. It was pretty funny!

Thats all for now!

I love you!