Same Old

Hello everyone! I hope you've all had a good week! Ours has been pretty laid back. None of our friends will let us have a lesson with them. They pick up the phone and schedule one but then they don't answer when we call back. And people are getting pretty sick and tired of us calling them in area book. So that's been fun. We have been taking a lot of walks and our mission president challenged all the missionaries to go out and ponder the beauty of the earth while we watched the fireflies at night. The beauty of the earth was great until about 9:15pm when we started getting attacked by huge bugs and mosquitos, then it wasn't so pretty anymore. Sister Jones caught a frog and we were playing with it but then it peed on her so we let it go pretty fast. We took some pictures but the flash was very bright so we just closed our eyes. 

We get to go on another excursion Tuesday! I'm excited. Sister Jones is starting to feel a little cooped up and like she is going crazy with how little there is to do. I think it's kind of funny to watch her because I know exactly how she feels from when we first went into quarantine a little over 3 months ago. But we are still doing good. We are internalizing the doctrine in our studies and that is my favorite part. 

It has started getting really hot here so we go outside and it feels like someone forgot to turn on the fan in the bathroom! 

Well that's all I've got for this week. Love you all!

Sister Creager 

Ultra Safe Break!

Hello everyone! 

Sister Jones is my favorite! She is so cute and we have a lot of fun together. This week we have been setting up video visits with the members. Our goal was to have 12 power visits and we had 14 set up but sadly we were only able to have 10 actually happen. But that's still pretty good considering we are still working with our friends! 

We were able  to have an Ultra-Safe-Break which means that we got to pick any day and have a 2-3 hour break and go anywhere in our district. Our district was our zone so that expanded a ton of options. We were sooooo glad! We went to a place called Neabsco Boardwalk and it is so pretty there! We wore warmer clothing because it looked like it was going to be a little cold, anything under 78° is cold to me now, but we ending up dying because it was so hot! I got a nice sunburn that I didn't notice until later that night but it was fun. We also went to Historic Occoquan because it's a cute little town and Sister Jones hasn't been. She loves to take pictures which is good because I forget all the time so we have lots of pictures this week now! We also decided to stop and play the piano because we both play and like to play a lot. So it was a fun break for us, a little strange but much appreciated. 

So we have missionaries come in every two weeks so that requires a lot of transfers. Two weeks ago when Sister Jones came, they put two other sisters in as the STLs (sister training leaders). I was not sad because I didn't feel like I could do both. And I didn't like being on the MLC (mission leadership) calls because you are up so late. But because there are so many transfers within a transfer, I am back to being an STL and training. I had two weeks of extra sleep and now it's gone! So we will see how this goes. Sister Jones wasn't happy because she has to join all my meetings hahaha. But I told her it was good practice for when she becomes an STL! 

We've had a hard time getting a hold of any of our friends this week so that has been a little strange but we are teaching someone new, Georgina, and she is so sweet. We gave her a conditional baptismal invite on the second lesson we had with her and hopefully we can meet with her tonight to see how she is doing! 

We have a friend, Brother Anthony who has been missing church a lot so we called a member and got him set up to listen yesterday! He was so excited and tickled to be able to listen. We have a few people that want to join the ward services but due to lack of technology or just the general know-how, we call 2-4 people at a time and put them on a group call so that they can listen to the services. It's tiring but so worth it because they are so happy that they can join. 

We went to the Lake Ridge Marina today and it was way fun. And as most of you know, I LOVE ice cream, and so does Sister Jones! So we stopped and got ice cream. We also went for a little hike. Little being like 1.5 miles so it wasn't very long but it was pretty!

I am loving my mission even though we are quarantined, it is so worth it to be here and see how close people grow to Christ!

I think that about sums up our week. Sorry for the zillion pictures! 

Love Sister Creager

First Week Down!

Hello everyone! My new companion/trainee is Sister Jones! She is from Ammon, Idaho! I can't tell you how happy I am to not have to bend my legs for pictures anymore! She is so sweet and we get along so well! Training isn't near as scary as I thought it would be but she is also really easy on me. 

This week we have been setting up a lot of power visits with members and we got to help a young girl, Arianna, role play asking her neighbor if she would like to hear the discussions! That was so fun. We haven't heard back from her yet but we are hoping to hear how it went by Saturday.

We finally got ahold of our friend Adama! She has been so busy we haven't been able to have a lesson with her for a month. So hopefully we can continue to have lessons with her. 

This is so sad, but the highlight of our day is when we role play. Because we don't have a lot to do, we role play 4-5 times a day. But both Sister Jones and I love role playing now so it's fun. We have been internalizing the doctrine more from Preach My Gospel and we will role play listening and acknowledging so that we can become better teachers as well as disciples of Christ. 

We are not in phase one of coming out of quarantine yet but hopefully soon! Our district leaders call or text us every day to remind us to go on walks. We tend to forget but we have to send them a picture every time we go out (accountability) and we have to go out at least two times during the day so we stay sane. Sister Jones is good at taking pictures, I forget all the time. But we have fun! 

Sister Lloyd and I took a few pictures before we got our new companions and Sister Jones is just the cutest. So that's it for pictures this week! 

Love you all!

Sister Creager 

Trainer? Whose idea was that?

Hello all! 

So this week has been pretty normal. Our friend Victor decided to drop us because he asked if we could help with food and we said no. But that's okay. 

Elaine is our 86 year old friend and oh my word I love her, she is hilarious! She asked if we could give her our mom's phone numbers so that she could call them and talk with them... Sorry mom. Elaine is so sweet and she is working very hard on having a clean mouth. She prays for it every time we talk with her, she loves to shock people but she also tries really hard to follow God. 

Brother Conard turned 85 on June 3rd!  We called him that morning and told him happy birthday. He was so glad. We also texted the ward council and asked them to call him to wish him a happy birthday. About 4 people called him. When we called Brother Conard later that night he was so excited over all the calls that he had received and told us his day was terrific!! That is quite the accomplishment because Every Single Time we ask how his day has been or how he is, he says it/he's okay. EVERY TIME. We were excited that it was terrific.  Someone from the ward council told him we had let them know it was his birthday and he was tearful in thanking us. It was so cute. He told us he had a question that he had been thinking about for a while. We told him he could ask us anything. Well, he asked if he could adopt us in heart and soul. It was so touching because he isn't married, doesn't have any kids, he was heavily abused as a child and only the neighbors take care of him. We told him that we would write up a paper that said he could adopt us. I have no idea how to write up an adoption paper  but I did the best I could and we mailed it to him and he signed it yesterday. I love him and he is so special.

So two days ago we got a call. And so we answered it and the first thing we hear is "Do you know who George Lloyd is?" We had no clue who that was then when she explained he was the man who had died we realized she said George Floyd. We said we had heard about it. Then she asked what we and our church was going to do about it. She was being pretty aggressive and it surprised us because she is normally a nice sweet lady but we explained that the prophet had put something out on social media addressing her concerns but that wasn't a good enough answer for her. She asked if we even knew who God was and we said yes then she hung up. So that was interesting.

We saw our first protesters a few days ago. They were peaceful which was good because there were a couple of police cars on the median strip but there were about 100-150 people. It was a lot!  But there was no yelling or shouting, they were just walking holding signs. We were glad that they weren't doing anything scary because we were stopped in our car at the time they were walking past us. 

We got our transfer board and turns out I'm training someone new and moving back to the Lake Ridge apartment! I was kind of freaking out because this will be my 4th transfer and I still don't really know what I'm doing! But its okay because sometimes the Lord has a sense of humor when I need to learn something. 

Mmm let's see... what else.. We are getting everything packed and moved over to the apartment today and tomorrow so that will be fun. Oh! I finally get to drive again! I love driving. Also Virginia drivers stink! 

Love you all!

Sister Creager 

Pictures: Someone dropped off care bags for us! 

We found a trail and loved it

Gas Again

Hello all! I didn't feel like writing last week because literally nothing happened. Not one thing. And last Monday night I went to bed thinking "I wish something interesting had happened so my life isn't so boring." And cue the karma. So Monday night we heard a couple rounds of gunshots but it happens frequently so we ignored it. Anyways, we went to bed, I wished for life to be more interesting and then I went to sleep. 3:30 IN THE MORNING we woke up to a loud banging and yelling to open the door. I was pretty sure it was either the people who had been shooting earlier that night or it was the police. We sat up in bed and were pretty scared. They kept banging and yelling at us to open the door so we hopped out of bed and I handed Sister Lloyd my phone and told her to call 911. She just looks at me and said "Sister I don't know how to dial 911. I've never had to dial it on my mission before!" My initial thought after she said that was "Great, we're gonna die." I was a little snappy when I looked at her and said " You push 9-1-1 then hit the call button!!" She couldn't bring herself to do it and told me to go look through the peephole before we tried. Keep in mind that the banging is getting louder by the minute. I go to look through the peephole and Sister Lloyd, the chicken, backs away and makes me do it by myself!!! I looked and there were firemen. I opened the door and they told us that there had been a CO2 leak next door and since we shared a wall with them, the firemen needed to check our apt. We couldn't go back to bed so we called the Larsens while the firemen checked our apt and let them know that the firemen were there and why they were there. It took 30 minutes for things to get well enough that we could go back inside and grab some things to head over to my old apt in Lake Ridge. We could have stayed at the Woodbridge apt after they were done but we wanted to go to bed and there was a gas smell that happened while the firemen were there and we were like nope. We got to Lake Ridge at 4:30am and went to bed. Because of all the excitement we still had some pretty high adrenaline going so we had a hard time going to sleep. 45 minutes later when we were almost asleep, we heard an alarm go off. We sat up and said "You have got to be kidding me!! Not again!" It took a few seconds to realize it was a car alarm and not a fire alarm. So we went back to bed. But because of the alarm, we had another adrenaline rush! So 6-6:30 am we finally fell asleep. The Larsens gave us permission to sleep in. We slept till 8:15am and then went back to the Woodbridge apt. We were soooo tired that day. We fell asleep during lunch and again during dinner. So that's the latest adventure. After that night we started praying for safety every night in our companion prayers and we haven't missed a night! 

This week has been a bit of a struggle to get ahold of any of our friends. But we found one new person in the Woodbridge area! Side note: For those that don't know, we cover two areas. Anyways, this week has been difficult but it's okay! We are going for drives a lot more to keep sane and we go for lots of walks. Our friends are doing pretty good, we had one move out of our area which was sad, he moved to Alexandria so hopefully we can get in contact and refer him to missionaries there. 

We gave our YSA group to a different set of missionaries so that we can focus more in Lake Ridge and Woodbridge. It was sad because the YSA's are amazing and we love them. But these sisters who cover it now are great and will do good with it. 

Ummmmmmm lets see, I think that's about it. We have to do these facebook videos so I'll include a link so you can all see the videos. They are kinda dumb but not too bad. I hope you are all doing well and having fun! Love you all!

Sister Creager