Missionary Letter #9 (November 30, 2010)

it's transfers this week. sister g and i are staying in canterbury, but we're getting ANOTHER sister! her name's sister k. she's so cute, and she was trained by sister j as well! she's from japan and is tiiiiiiny. perfect for that japanese family we can't communicate with. i liked having just one comp, i have to say, and was looking forward to it, but i don't know. i guess this is what the Lord thinks is best right now.

k, cool story: we were waiting for a bus one morning and this old lady comes up to us and is just like, i didn't know there was a church here! she went for a while in london, never got baptised, but her daughter did! then she came to church on sunday! a very interesting woman. kinda weird,  but she's cool.

sis g was cracking me up on thanksgiving because she read pres monson's talk about being thankful and it said good always outweighs the bad. so she wrote down everything she WASN'T thankful for and then wrote everything she was thankful for! and of course the good did outweigh the bad. so if you're ever being really real, it'll always be good, you know? dwell on the bad a ton isn't real either. anyway, i thought that was hilarious. it's something that at first you might be nervous to do. but that's dumb, because then that's saying it's a possibility that your life really is awful. haha! well, as long as you do the second part with a thankful heart.

things are good.

love,
sister emma

Missionary Letter #8 (November 22, 2010)

 in london!

well, we just dropped off sister j at the mission office. pretty sad. she's been so good to me and sister g and i miss her already. we're at a little dingy internet cafe and then we're going shopping or going to the national gallery?

also there's like no harry potter mania whatsoever! so disappointing. but we were riding a bus on friday and all of the sudden i thought, i think everyone i know has seen harry potter now. it was funny.

we're teaching a bunch of people from nepal. they all live in this one house, and five of them just gather in to listen to us when we come. they're so nice. there are like four nepalese people that have been baptised already this year. but soon we can have a whole nepalese branch! haha jk. but two of them came to church and the baptism yesterday! so that was cool. they seemed to really like it.

pretty much it. really good week. hard to go back to non-special weeks. hoping that sis g will not get transferred next week.

next monday i'll have been a missionary two months! wow. feel like i haven't done anything. it's been good. hope you all have a good week and a good thanksgiving! pet ellie for me.

love you all so much.

love,
sister emma

Missionary Letter #7 (November 15, 2010)

well, it's been a great week!

we're really excited because this is going to be like the best week ever. and the best week ever for a missionary to leave! sister j is so lucky. slash she so deserves it. but we have dinner appointments FOUR DAYS this week. that never happens! one of them is because i said to this lady in the ward, "this week is the last week you can have sis j over." it was the right type of person to say that to though because she loves us and loves church and everything, but she's like kind of fussy and like gets mad at us but at the same time loves us. anyway, it was perfect. sis g was so proud of me. "that's my daughter!" so anyway, meeting with b three times this week, sis j is playing violin for his baptism (she's a violin performance major at utah state) so i'm really excited for that.

last week we went finding on tuesday with another sister for a workover, and i feel like i learned so much from her. she's swiss, and the whole time she was just like giving compliments to people on their clothes and finding other things like that, and just being so friendly and sweet and then people would listen to her when she would share her own experiences! it was so cool. so i really liked working with her.

yesterday we sang God save the queen!! how long have i been looking at that in our hymnbook and never sang it???? so that was kind of fun.

this is sister j's last week! can you believe it?? i've only had her for less than a month and already leaving! my days of training in the mtc and now are just getting cut like no other. but i'm sure this week will go by so quickly because of it. BUT cool thing is that we take her to the office on monday next week in london, so we get to spend the rest of pday in london!!! woohoo! OH. saddest thing: apparently every missionary gets to see the lion king once while they're here. so obviously i thought, well, lion king is just an adaptation of hamlet. so...i wonder if i could see shakespeare. and THEN i realized that the globe theatre is on the OTHER SIDE OF THE THAMES. aka, it is in the london south mission. hahahaha. not like it would have worked anyway, but. i get to catch glimpses of it when we drive to the office so i guess that will have to do.

   

love you all so much! thank you for your letters i love you!

love,
sister emma

Missionary Letter #6 (November 8, 2010)

Well, first of all, i think i chose my mission plaque scripture before i forget. k i really like john 21:15. (So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs.)

so i have no idea what it's like brazil, but the people we've met here from brazil are always SO nice and SO friendly and not like mean and are always interested. uuuuuuuh, are you KIDDING me??? anyway. we also knocked on this lady's door this morning who was so excited to see and and was like, i'm christian! i'm so happy to see you! would you like to come in for tea! it's just so important for my sons to know that jesus atoned for them! all this stuff like that, but making it very clear she's very apart of her own church. but we're going to go on thursday because she said she'd read the book of mormon. it's so nice to talk to people like that. who care. so many people just don't even care, it's ridiculous.

  

okay so there are a ton of young single adults who are students at kent university, and like ALL of them are lit/creative writing students. gaaaaaaah it kills me! haha. i keep asking what they're studying. this one girl is studying the romantics so i was talking all about it to her and told her to watch bright star. and then i was like, is this allowed? ha. oh man.

  

we also went to these two sisters' house. a spinster and a divorcee. they are the best ever. oh man. one of them owns guinea pigs that are like her children. she showed us tricks where she'd put a carrot in her mouth, lay on the floor, and then the guinea pig would come get it! anyway, we practiced giving pass-along cards with them, and they were so hilarious. their house looked like it hadn't gotten anything new for like fifteen years. everything was vhs, and old movies like free willy, and then the posters they had in the room were like of horse heads and stuff. and they insist on showing every missionary that comes this video of their dad with a wig on just saying a load of nonsense and they think it's so funny. oh man, they're so good. loved going over there.

thanks so much for all of your emails and your prayers! i'm happy to be here even though sometimes it's hard not to think of all of the other things i'd rather be doing...hahaha. i'm starting to stop looking forward to any "me" time i can have. i'm not here to have "me" time. there's not really time for me to just escape into my brain and think about things that i wish i could be doing. instead i have to think about how i can get to know members better, how i can engage someone on the street, how i can serve my companions. anyway, obvious things, but hard to do and remember to do.

i love you all so much and thanks for your emails and prayers! it's been a good week.

love,
sister emma

Missionary Letter #5 (November 1, 2010)

so i've already contacted a few people in french! what the heck? so i've added five minutes of language study to my personal study every morning. we met someone last week from france and i was just frozen while my comps looked at me. didn't say anything. and then a few days ago, we met this girl from morocco, and i started speaking french to her and honestly when she was responding to me i was like, "is she speaking french?? i can't even tell because i'm understanding" and then i'd listen for the individual words and she was speaking french, and anyway. it was so awesome. and then we met another family from france the next day and i started my little street contact in french once we found out they were french, and i was putting sentences together more easily than i've ever been able to before. how cool is that?? it was so awesome.

 

we went to this couple's house who got baptised a few months ago and they're from like kuwait or something? anyway, they'd speak arabic to each other and i was so excited of course. why am i obsessed with jerusalem? i'm so annoying. anyway, by the end i said to them, "shucran!" which means thanks, and now when i see them i say "marhaba!" haha. the extent of my arabic vocabulary. so cool though.

last night we went tracting foreeeeeeever and it was pretty awkward because people thought we were trick or treaters. not quite. my trainers kept making fun of me because we had a good view of the cathedral and it looked so pretty with all of the mist around it and everything. ah, love that cathedral. 

most of the people we're teaching aren't english, they're immigrants. a few are, but those are rare. and they're boys. i wonder if that's a trend, like if elders teach more girls. seems like it would make sense, but anyway. oh yeah! we met this japanese man and he couldn't hardly speak any english and we just showed him a picture of christ and i said, " we, teach you? about christ? tomorrow?"  and then we met him the next night at the train station and he followed us to the church and showed him finding faith in christ and we're giving him a book of mormon in japanese tomorrow. we can hardly communicate, i honestly have no idea why he followed us. haha so hilarious! anyway, asians are the best because they lilke never flake on you. so awesome.

can't believe ducks are #1! that's so awesome! yaaaaaaaaay.

sister emma

Missionary Letter #4 (October 25, 2010)

CANTERBURY!!!! i was so excited. we got to the mission office, we had some orientation stuff for a while and then they brought us to this room where we had a couple people talk and we hadn't met our trainers yet and i'm just like freaking out. then they tell me and my companion-for-the-day to sit with two seats in between us, and then we each had a seat on the other side. click. i'm gonna be in a threesome! didn't know how i felt about that. but then we were singing called to serve, and on the second verse all of the sudden it was way way louder and we turn around and all of our trainers come walking in!! my trainers find me and hug me while we're singing and then we finish the song. i was just smiling like the biggest idiot for the next like three hours. especially when i was like, "where are we going???" and sister j told me canterbury! yaaaaaaaaay. so i live in canterbury now! as in the canterbury tales as in chaucer as in i see the cathedral everyday. i told her last night while we were tracting that it was the city set on a hill that can't be hid because it was all lit up!  i really really like both of my companions. this is sis j's last transfer. she's actually leaving a bit early to be home for thanksgiving, so not even a whole transfer left. she's not trunky at all and i've learned so much from her just this week. sis g is from hawaii and she's only been out two transfers. it's the best because we go out contacting and somehow i end up hardly stopping anyone because there's two of them...oops! i am trying to work on that though...but even when i do stop someone, i say a couple of things, ask a couple of questions, and then sis j comes in and makes things actually relevant and helps them understand why this is possibly something they might be interested in. haha! it's pretty funny. but anyway, i like do nothing but both my comps are so nice that even when i do the tiniest little thing, they're like telling me how great of a job i did. haha!

sis j asked me last night what my biggest surprise has been since i left the mtc. i guess it's that people actually do listen to us. not like a ton, but we meet a few people everyday who actually do care about this stuff, who actually have been searching and actually do want to know. it's so weird!

thank you thank you i love you so much! it's been a really good week. thank you for all of your prayers.

love you!

cheers!

sister emma

ps it's freeezing here. not even that rainy, just sooooo cold. okay, don't say anything cam and lauren. hahaha

Missionary Picture #1 (October 19, 2010)

I have a friend who served in the England London Mission and she sent me this picture last night she found on Facebook. Emma with her trainers! Wahoo! She's got to be the cutest dressed sister missionary ever. I was wearing Eddie Bauer and Lands End at the beginning of my mission. What a geek!