Friend?

Hello Everyone!!!

This week has been so cool. 

1. Something I love about the mission culture here, is how close are the Sisters are. Everyone calls everyone friend. It's actually really funny. You'll walk in and someone you've never talked to will look at you and say Hi Friend! I love it, especially with all the international Sisters we have here. Friend, friend. Come on Friend. It's really funny. Maybe it's a you have to be there type of thing though haha.

2. For those of you familiar with the country of Argentina, I had mate this week! We have a lot of Sisters from Argentina that make a lot of mate - unfortunately I didn't know the rule about touching the straw...I nudged it and the Sister who gave it to me actually screamed! It's fine though, I didn't know so I'm innocent. In the Argentine culture, if someone makes you mate and you touch the straw they put in it, (touch it like move it around) it's SUPER disrespectful. It means you didn't like how they prepared it. So now I know, and now I won't touch the mate straw again haha.

3. For those of you familiar with the country of China or Taiwan, I have two Sisters from those countries who have been helping me with my Mandarin. Let's just say - I'm basically a professional. Hahahahahahahahah just kidding. But! I can introduce myself and say I'm a missionary! I'm still working on the whole Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints part... Mandarin is rough man.

4. Something else I love about this mission, is I get to see my mission president every day!! Yesterday we had some questions during companionship study, so we walked down the hall to his office and had comp study with President! It was so cool. We're seriously so blessed.

5. We got an amazing investigator this week named Aaron. I'm super excited about him. He self referred for a Book of Mormon and I picked it up. I called him, and he just said he's been searching for a while. He grew up Christian but doesn't agree with a lot of things his church does, and is looking for the truth. So I got to teach him the Restoration! (When you call someone for the first time, one person teaches so that you don't creep people out having two of you on the phone haha) It was so cool. I'm really excited about him.

6. Now that our mission has Facebook, keeping in contact with all of these people has become so much easier. Speaking of new exciting things - they're switching in our tablets for smart phones! (sorry Mom) more to come on this later, but for right now what I understand is that next week they're giving us smart phones rather than our tablets and flip phones - each Sister will have her own smart device. We're so excited!!!!

I think that's about it for this week - Basically, this mission is the best and everyone who told me it would be was so right :) I love being here on Temple Square getting to meet so many people from so many places and getting to teach them about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It's such a blessing to get to do that every day for the next 18 months. A lot of Sisters got their outbound mission calls this week - many went to California, Georgia, Arizona, New York, Logan, and Nevada! It's a super exciting time. And they're putting up the lights!!! Yay Christmas!!!

My next pday will be THIS Saturday. Then the next one will be November 7th. No Pday on Halloween. Love you all!!!!

Bipolar

Hello Everyone!!!

This week was really interesting - a lot of back and forth. Bipolar weather, bipolar investigators.. it was crazy. 

1. Leo!! Leo is.... well. We don't know. So we had a really cool experience with him on Thursday. We had fallen out of contact with him, and then I was walking around on exchanges, and I saw him on the square! I went and talked to him, and ended up bringing him with me to the Beehive House where Sister Aguilar and I momentarily stopped exchanges to give him a tour together. He came back the next day (Thursday) for a lesson. We taught the Plan of Salvation, and it was really cool. He was telling us about how he had spent the whole day on Temple Square and had gone to the Organ Recital and that he just loved one of the songs. He played the little recording of it for us, and I recognized it! It was "Consider the Lillies". So we showed it to him, with the Spanish translation, and he just sat there and cried. We were talking to him about what he would be willing to do if he found out the Book of Mormon is true, and he said he would be willing to change and to get baptized but he just didn't know. Then he randomly opened his Book of Mormon after saying that to Alma 5:12. Check it out. Long story short, he believes the Book of Mormon is true and is really progressing. The only questionable part, is that he was planning on going to church Sunday but then said he didn't want to because the Elders we had brought to meet him had offended him in some way and that he didn't want to. Come to find out, he was in Washington. I mean it's fine, we just aren't sure why he didn't tell us he'd be out of town. We haven't seen him since introducing him to the Elders in the museum on Friday, buttt we have hope still. Leo is still one of our favorite investigators. 

2. I announced! Announcing is something we do every Sunday when a whole bunch of Sisters will gather in a circle after Music and the Spoken Word and will basically say "hello my name is ---- and I'm from ---. We as missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints love being here on Temple Square and we would love to have the opportunity to show you around and tell you more about the history of this beautiful place, as well as what we believe about Jesus Christ. Come see me after the presentation for a tour in English/German/Tagalog/whatever language the Sister is speaking haha. Since I'm English, I did it twice. Once at the beginning and once at the end. It was way fun! I'll try to attach the video, but it may just attach the photos.

3. I had my first English "Zone Leader Training Tour" We  call them Pass Off Tours. We aren't supposed to any more though ahaha. I took my Zone Leaders on a tour, with them acting as visitors to the square. The purpose is to make sure that by the end of training I'm able to hold a tour on my own. We're supposed to have a couple of those before we finish training, but our Zone Leaders are so funny. They said I was golden ahah. They'll come with me again though. Sister Rodriguez (one of the Zone Leaders) told me later that when she gave her tour that day she shared most of the same scriptures that I had shared and talked about haha. I'm glad they liked it.

4. I have 3 investigators on date for baptism! It's all going down in early November, and we're way excited about it :)

I think that's about it for this week - it was a pretty fast week. Now that we're a Facebook mission it's really nice being able to contact investigators so easily. However, with the baptizing process for our Facebooks, we unfollwed everyone. So if you post something, I won't see it. I'll see messages you send me, but will not reply to them until Pday :)

I hope you all have an amazing week!! Much love <3

Only on Temple Square

Hello everyone!!

This week was exciting! We had some fun things going on around here, but it's starting to get colder so the excitement is dying down as the tourists return to their warmer climate homes. 

1. We got to give our tour to the foreign dignitaries this week! We had a representative in our tour group from just about every country in South and Central America. It was so fun! I made really good friends with the representatives from Argentina, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. The guy I talked to from the DR is the highest ranking and longest standing bishop? in the DR for the Catholic church. I don't remember exactly what position he was, but it was a really important one. He was so cool, and really open to hearing what we believed, if not because he was interested but for the purposes of having a better world view and greater understanding. He was so nice! The man from Nicaragua is a pretty well known lawyer, and is on the American version of the Senate in Nicaragua. It was cool to talk to him about schooling and about what people can do to be more understanding and compassionate to those around them. We got to give them all a tour of the Humanitarian Center and talk about all the aid that the Church gives to people around the world. It was really fun, and they were all telling me how good my Spanish was for having learned primarily in high school. Made me feel good :)

2. We got to go to Elder Hale's funeral! It was such a cool experience. The square was closed that whole morning and the security to get inside was intense. I've never been so close to the entire Quroum of the 12 at one time before. They were all in line next to the door while they brought in Elder Hale's casket, it was really quite something to see. The funeral was so uplifiting, it wasn't sad at all. The talks were really hopeful and really testified of how because of the knowledge we have of Jesus Christ, that even though Elder Hales has gone now, he isn't gone forever. I love the knowledge we have of the eternal family, and how this life isn't the end. We weren't allowed to take pictures during the funeral, so look online for cool pictures of that.

2. Facebook! Our mission has been approved to use Facebook. We won't start really using it until the 13th, but we've already started the process of "baptizing" our Facebook accounts. We have to basically hide everything and start over with just mission related stuff. It was such a struggle going through all the posts I've ever made one by one and hiding them. But I think I'm about done - if you can still see stuff on my Facebook let me know though haha.

3. Tourists trying to break into the temple! This week Sister Aguilar and I were walking over the North Visitors Center, and we saw all these people from China pounding on the door that goes into the temple. A temple worker was actually standing by the door trying so hard to tell them they couldn't go in, but the Chinese people were just not having it. A Mandarin speaking Sister had to run over there and tell them they couldn't go inside. They were so mad!! I love seeing all the people from China here, most of them have these huge cameras and they have such funny poses. Whenever we're feeling down we go find a group of tourists from China and watch them take pictures. It really lifts the Spirit haha.

3. We had deep cleaning, and the whole mission achieved "celestial apartment" status. So since all our apartments were squeaky clean, President approved us for a pizza party! We had pizza for lunch on Monday!!! It was exciting. Any time we don't have to bring food for ourselves is seriously the best.

4. We got do a service project yesterday! We went to a child's therapy care center and we washed all the toys that they use during the day. It was a lot of fun! Afterwards we went to Cafe Rio. Also a lot of fun :)

5. We have had a lot of investigators really start progressing this week. I'm super excited, one of them named Carole is actually on date to be baptized! We're super excited about her! My other investigator named Traver, who is seriously so cool, is starting to meet with the missionaries as well. He meets with them this week, and I'm excited. We call him a lot and check up on him. 

6. Of course there's opposition in all things so this week we had a lot of really fun anti people talk to us too. This is something that happened last week: We were on the square talking to people and this guy got up in my face and really started yelling some vulgarities and calling us liars. We quickly left and pushed our panic button. When we push our panic button, every security guard starts sprinting to you. It's quite the sight! We haven't had to push our panic button again, but sometimes we hang up on people that call us to yell us. That's never fun either, but at least there's the End Call button.

This week has really been great. It's so true what people say about time on missions - the days are long but the weeks are short. I can't believe it's PDay already! I seriously appreciate all the emails so much. They are so fun for me to read, especially at the end of long days. I love you all and pray for you!! have a great week <3 

-- 

Sister Black

Conference Weekend

Hello everyone!

This week was crazy - especially with conference weekend.

1) I met Russell M. Nelson! We went to lunch in the Church Office Building, and we saw him in the parking lot! We were going to just walk past, but he said Sisters! So we stopped :D He greeted us and asked how we were doing and even spoke some Spanish to us. He shook our hands, it was legit. Apparently lunch in the Church Office Building is where a lot of the General Authority sightings happen.

2) I met Elder Kearon from the Presidency of the 70! I saw him on Square and recongized him because had had come to talk to us at the MTC and give a devotional. He talked to me for a little while actually, he said that I looked like my message and was really kind.

3) We have one of the senior couples as mission secetaries, and the other day I needed some static spray because my skirt was sticking to my tights. So I went and asked Sister Slade, the mission secratry senior couple lady, for the spray and she gave it to me. She said to spray it all over my tights and my skirt. I said okay. But when I was looking at it the bottle said "adhesive". I asked her if she was sure that was the right one, and both she and Sister Aguilar said yes. So I said okay.. I went and did as directed and lo and behold... it was spray on glue. I brought the bottle back to Sister Slade, this time with my skirt REALLY sticking to my tights, and asked her if she was ABSOLUTELY SURE that this was the static spray. She looked at it and was like oh no!!! We got a good laugh. I had to borrow a skirt from the rack the rest of the day. Sister Slade and I are best friends now.

4) We had a cool opportunity this week to teach this cute old couple the restoration. Their names are Steve and Maxine. They came in for a map, and we started talking to them and they had all these questions, so we actually ended up just sitting down in the teaching room and we taught them the whole restoration. At the end they were just smiling so much, and said they wanted a Book of Mormon and to learn more when they go home. They're traveling for the next month so we'll stay in contact with them and keep them staying in a place to get to hear the local missionaries when they get home. It's amazing how much people open up to us here, they told us about struggles with faith and life that I would never tell someone I had just met. And it happens so often here. We saw them again later that day as they were exploring temple square, and they stopped us and Maxine just looked right at me and said I want you Sisters to know that you glow. It was so sweet!

5) Conference was great as well, I haven't seen all the sessions yet though. We were outside working the whole day during the conference, so we didn't get to see it. I got to see the Sunday Morning session in the conference center though! It was so fun getting to be in there, the missionaries have pretty good seats too! I really loved Elder Zwick's talk from the session that I saw. I think for me it's easy to really judge some of the people I see here, especially the Anti's or those I see that came here to find fault in the church or cause problems. But I know that our Savior loves them, just as much as He loves me. And I need to try to see them that way too. My conference notes aren't on me right now, but I seriously loved getting to go conference. It's so much more meaningful as a missionary for whatever reason. 

6) I saw so many people I know this weekend! It was so fun for me to get to see so many friendly faces, especially since a lot of the people we talked to were not super kind towards missionaries or the church. I love you all!

I think that's about it for this week. I passed the driving test, so I'm officially a driver for the mission now. That's exciting for me, I like being able to drive. Anyways, I love you all very dearly. Thank you so much for the emails I get during the week, I love being able to read them and look at the pictures you send me! 

Love you all!

<3 Sister Black