The One with Sister Xiong

March 7, 2016

Greetings from Wisconsin. It's 56 degrees here!! We walked out of our apartment today in my fleece liner and  heavy winter coat and i am able to wear no coat and not be cold! Hallelujah!!!! I thought this day would never come. It probably wont last but I'm gonna enjoy it while it's here.

Bishop & Sis Petersen

 

Pat and sister B( she's holding ivy the dog)

This is sister Anderson. She is basically the mom of all missionaries. I love her :)

At lunch with our STL's sisters Brown (the blonde) and Kirkby

So this week has been a whirlwind. So i got transfer news on Monday and then had to say goodbye to EVERYONE on Tuesday. We were literally seeing people from 9 in the morning till 9:30 at night. I'll include pictures and captions at the bottom. Then our district all met at the church to sign testimony journals and so sister Killpack and I could get blessings before transfers. That was a really cool experience the spirit was very strong both during both blessings. I'm going to miss that district and those missionaries so much. I know in like every district everyone's like "Man this district was the best district, it was so legendary", but i don't think anything will beat that district. I'll let you know if it happens though. In the Rochester Zone (the zone i am in now) missionaries are hours apart from each other so we are not allowed to meet up very often. We can have a zone p-day every 3 months and a district p-day every 3 months. And now we can only have district meetings one a month. The mission is changing a lot and the rules are getting tighter. Only reason that can be is because some missionaries somewhere were abusing them so oh well. At least we can still do them. That is a bit of an adjustment though not seeing missionaries as often. I miss it.

So anywho, i was up till 2:30am packing on Tuesday and then till 4:30am writing in testimony journals so i got 2 hours of sleep. That was fun. We headed up to the mission home and sister Killpack's new missionary training meeting. She's gonna make a great trainer. Her greenie is very lucky. I got to see so many people at the mission home! I got to see elder Anderson again (He's so great!) and Sister Young, Sister Bingham and Sister Sperry. I said goodbye to everybody and left with Hermana Koopmans on the 1 and a half hour trip down to Rochester and then met sister Xiong my new comp and headed down the extra hour and a half to La Crosse. So it took 3 hours to get down here :) We literally border the edge of the mission that's how far away we are.

 

Me and sister Xiong

 

Sister Xiong is really cute, she's from Sacramento and she came out with sister Killpack so she's been out for almost 5 months. She's spent her whole mission here in La Crosse and is such an incredible missionary. She is one of the hardest working missionaries i know. She is really organized and on top of everything and is constantly calling and setting up appointments and getting joint teachers and just like everything a missionary is supposed to be and do is pretty much Sister Xiong. Now she wouldn't agree with any of that because she's also really humble and is hard on herself as we all are, but literally i don't have to be here. She could run the missionary work in La Crosse by herself and everything would be just fine. I'm gonna learn so much from her and how to improve being a missionary. Funny thing about sister Xiong though is that she is you're classic stereotypical terrible Asian driver. She cannot follow the GPS for her life and makes so many wrong turns. She almost ran a stop sign yesterday and got an aggressive driving violation (via the tiwi... remember satan in a box?) and gets SO many check your speeds. I find it hilarious and just start laughing every time. I wouldn't be surprised if we get a call saying that I'm now the designated driver hahaha.

We do have a lot of people that we're teaching here in La Crosse. The members here are very missionary minded and will give us referrals. And believe it or not the people here are even nicer than Anoka. That's pretty hard to believe for me but it's true so i like that. One of our investigator's named Alex is getting baptized on April 9th so I'm really excited for that. She's adorable and so solid. 

Firsts of the Week:

First time I've ever been in a trailer park

First time I've ever been in Salvation Army. (I've been to goodwill and DI but never Salvation Army)

Two Funny things this week.

#1. So the Sister whom i replaced here was Sister Matagi and she finished her mission here and went home. So i get here and there is a garbage bag full of clothes that she's left and necklaces. And she just happens to have amazing style and we would've just donated it to salvation army so i took like 3/4's of it. I think i acquired enough to fill a carry on suitcase. This is so bad, I've got to stop.  

#2. So all missionary cars have bike racks on them because we all have bikes (duh) and you take your bikes with you. So i stick my bike on our car to travel the rest of the way to La Crosse and Hermana Koopmans locks on the bike lock that comes with the bike rack thinking that we had the key to unlock it. Turns out no, we don't have the key to unlock it so we have been driving around La Crosse and Onalska (the city we live in) with a bike just chillin on the bike rack. Hopefully our ward mission leader (who we're seeing tonight) has wire cutters hahaha.

Spiritual Thought of the Week:

I was reading about the army of Helaman (a.k.a the 2,000 strippling warriors) begging in Alma chapter 56 and i made a really cool connection. Every mothers day we always here this story because these young men rehearse unto their leader that "They had been taught by their mothers that if they did not doubt, god would deliver them. And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers saying: We do not doubt our mothers knew it." They had been taught by their mothers and probably by the examples of their fathers to trust god and have absolute faith in him to deliver us and he will. Every time. Because of the things they were taught, even though they went and fought against armies many times there size, not one of them was killed. The Gospel truly blesses families, and this is just one scriptural proof of that fact. It was the faith and example of the parents of those 2,000 warriors, and their dedication in teaching their children the principles of the gospel as well as helping to build and strengthen their testimonies that allowed them to have enough faith and trust in God to be delivered from their enemies. The influence and affect of the gospel on families can be life changing. It is so important and i am so grateful every single day that my family and i have been blessed with it.