Gold

Us in front of our church building, that looks like an office

Hello everyone!

This is the problem with quarantine.  We stay inside allll day.  Let me explain why this is an issue.  When we go shopping or things like that, we have to stay in our dresses/skirts because we are representatives of the Lord.  However, when we are at home, we can get into what we call "P-day" clothes. This ranges from workout clothes, to PJ's. Last Monday I was in my leggings and nice shirt and I forgot to put my skirt back on for our lessons!! Thank heavens we were over zoom but my rotten companions thought it was hilarious so they didn't say a thing.  Needless to say, I have been making sure I am ready to go this round.

Tuesday we got to work at another food drive! It was so fun but SO COLD! We were done early though so that helped!

We had a lot of referrals come in this week!  We have two people that other elders are teaching who just moved into our area and they are anxious to get baptized!! We haven't been able to meet them yet but we are SO excited to start teaching them soon! We got another referral from a different pair of elders about a girl who wanted a Book of Mormon so we got her one and dropped it off at the church so that a member could take it to her!

We got to meet with Garrett twice this week!! He loves meeting with us and we love meeting with him! He has sooo many questions for us.  We have a hard time keeping our meetings short.  We gave him 2 Nephi 2 to read and we were able to have an awesome lesson about what probation means (he's a lawyer so it was a good chapter for him).  He told us that chapter made him start thinking about the kinds of choices he has been making more seriously.  We also tabbed up a Book of Mormon for him and took as many of our Jesus cards as we could find and wrote questions on the back and put it in different places in the scriptures. It was so fun!

Wednesday we didn't do much but we did see all the fireworks go off for President Biden's inauguration! That was pretty neat.

We have had a lot of fun visits with members, Brother Heffron is a favorite.  He is a convert of 6 years and LOVES the gospel! He told us the gospel is gold. G=gospel O=of L=latter D=days.  

We also got ahold of our friend Robert!  We have been trying to get ahold of him for 3 weeks. He had talked to a friend about meeting with us and she convinced him not to meet with us.  But he finally picked up and said that he didn't feel as good with what she had been telling him as he did with what we were telling him.  Yay!  He want's to meet every other day!!

Sunday Sister Livingston and I had to give talks on D&C 4. It was fun and not scary because hardly anyone was there in person and you can't see who's watching over zoom!!

Love you all!

Sis Creager

Sister Lungren is 6 ft and taller than the bathroom stall

Sister Livingston and I are not that tall

Arlington National Cemetery

Hello hello all!

This week has been amazing!!  We got to serve at Habitat and move sheetrock.  We saw the hermanas lifting the sheetrock over their heads and carrying it.  We decided to give it a try but we have pretty major height differences between us all (Sis. Lungren 6ft, I'm 5'8, Sis. Livingston 5'3) and the hermanas are all the same height.  So it was pretty funny to see us trying to figure out how to move it with Sister Livingston in the middle!

We had a lesson with a man named JP and he is so fun! He does like to try and stump us so that's not as fun but we were able to have a very powerful lesson with him the other day and it was great!

Wednesday we got to go to Arlington Cemetery!! Holy cow that was a process! We carpooled with some other sisters that were assigned to serve there too and it took a while to get everything figured out. We had to get passes and they scan you for weapons, check your ID and have you type in your social security number so they know it's really you.  So here is something kinda funny-our little group of 5 got asked by the security guard if we were over 18 and we all said yes but then out of everyone, I got pulled aside and checked again!  I'm the oldest out of that group and almost 23!! I don't look under 18 even with a mask on. After we got through all the security checkpoints, we met with Rangers Trudy and Suzanne.  They are so nice! We get to work in the South Flower Garden beds by Arlington house.  We spent most of our time going through safety forms and having Rangers Trudy and Suzanne explain what it is we will be doing.  We are so excited to go back every week!!

Sister Lungren and Sister Livingston learned how to rope and it was really fun! We also had the AP's join our district council and that wasn't near as fun. I also taught Sister Lungren how to make a bird call and now we do it pretty frequently... Sister Livingston throws stuff at us when she wants us to stop, its pretty funny!

We have been teaching our friend Garrett and he is so much fun to teach!  He has a lot of questions about faith and the gospel as we believe it to be and we are really excited to continue teaching him. We got to have a really powerful lesson with him the other day and ask some really inspired questions.

This is my amusing story for the week. Sister Lungren and I both have rain boots. I got mine from my trainer and they are waayy too big for me but there is a lot of rain here so I just deal with it. Anyways, we were standing next to each other and she made a comment about how her boots hurt her feet because they are too small.  I said "Really?  I trip all the time because mine are too big."  We sat there for a moment, realized that we could probably fix this quickly, looked at each other and said "Switch!"  Perfect fit! Long story short, I now have rain boots that fit me and so does she! I can finally stop tripping up the stairs. 

Sister Lungren preformed a minor surgery on her ear this week.  She discovered a cyst that was really painful for her. She made it about 3 days before she decided to take a wall tack and stab the cyst to pop it.  It was pretty gross watching her push it in but it worked! And now her ear is all better. 

We have had a lot of lessons with members and one thing I absolutely love is making connections with them but also helping them connect with the Book of Mormon.  Recently, I have noticed that when we meet with members, a lot of times they say that the Book of Mormon doesn't do anything for them which hurts!! It's like a stab in the heart!! I love the Book of Mormon!!  So we have been offering to read the Book of Mormon with them a couple times a week while they read on their own every day.  It is so incredible to see their love grow for the Book of Mormon as they read it and make a connection with it! 

I think that is it for this week, I love you all!

Pictures: 

Looking out at D.C. from the Cemetery

Us at Arlington House

How Many Sisters Does It Take To Get To Walmart?

Morning everyone! 

Let's start off with the subject of this e-mail. We have a geographic area that we have to stay in unless we get permission to go out of it. Walmart is not in our area so we got permission to go this morning. So we put directions in the GPS and headed off. What is normally a 15-20 minute drive took us 50 minutes! We missed the exit 3 times! But here is my disclaimer. I wasn't the one giving the directions, so after we missed the exit for a third time, Sister Lungren and I both pulled up google maps and on our fourth try, we made it to Walmart. So the answer is that it takes quite a few sisters to get to stinken' Walmart!

So I discovered, and I may be repeating myself from last week sorry, we are covering a family, MSA, and YSA ward. It is so confusing and I still don't have who is in which ward straight yet but I'll get there! 

I've had a lot of questions about the protest that happened on Wednesday.  We were pretty safe. We did find out that we are less than 5 miles from both Capitol Hill and the White House but we didn't see or hear anything and they were also really careful so on Wednesday and Thursday we had a 6pm-6am curfew and we couldn't go outside during those times. 

We have had a pretty good week for finding, we found 3 people over Facebook and they are all so nice! Hannah loves to talk about the bible so we do bible studies with her, William is very curious about our beliefs and what the priesthood is, and Garrett grew up around members and is trying to find his spiritual identity! We were able to meet Garrett over zoom last night for the first time and he is so fun! We have a few other people we are hoping to start teaching from Facebook as well! 

Thursday we got to serve at a food drive and put food in the back of people's cars. We served with some other sisters anndddd I got to see Sister Panuska!!!!! Sister Panuska and I have never been companions but we were in the same district and got to be really good friends. I was sooo excited to see her and it was the first time I had seen her in person before! We also served with an older man named Dan, he was so happy to be serving he teared up then grabbed Sister Panuska and I in a giant bear hug. We didn't see it coming so we aren't accountable! He was really sweet and we loved serving with him. 

Okay, you will never guess where we get to serve, Arlington Cemetery!!!! We had to go to the mission office to fill out forms, give our license numbers, social security, and birthdates in order to serve. We are SO excited!! We will get to serve there every Wednesday!

We also worked at a place called Habitat. I'm not quite sure how to describe it. It's fun though, we got to move countertops, couches, and put together a bunk bed. I also got to see Elder Hutchings from my old district which was fun! 

Sunday was nuts! We had church at 9am, went back to our apt to eat lunch, had ward council at 11:45am, 1pm was back to sacrament, 2pm another sacrament, and last but not least, 3pm was ward coordination. We were running all over! Luckily our MSA and YSA buildings are right next to each other. The buildings are kinda funny looking because they are old office buildings but the inside has been remodeled to look like a normal church house. It's pretty fun! 

There is a place to eat called Weenie Beenie which I was warned about; I didn't eat the chili dog which is what I was told to stay away from!

Love you all!

Sister Creager

P.S.  Photos of us near Shirlington Street, and Sister Lungren digging through the trash

Arlington!

Hello all! 

I'm so sad!!!! I got transferred to an area called Shirlington (named after a street) in Arlington. I felt like I was leaving my child behind (Sister Cole) and it was so sad! I'm also really going to miss the South Riding ward members and friends that we were teaching there but I know they will be in great hands! But I am with Sister Lungren and Sister Livingston and they are great sisters!

Every transfer I usually do something that a little more out of the ordinary than usual. Last transfer it was the shelf collapsing and most of our dishes broke, well this time I didn't break anything but here's what happened this week! So Monday morning I woke up and didn't really want to get up but I did anyways and said my morning prayers then went to sit out on the couch to wait for my companions so that we could exercise. I didn't bring my phone with me because we can't be on it without someone looking at our screen. I sat there for what I thought was about 20 ish minutes then finally got up to check the time because I was irritated my companions weren't up. Turns out it was 5:15AM. I was really irritated then so I went back to bed. Well when we actually got up, Sister Price told me she had woke up because of the lights in the living room. So she got up, noticed I wasn't in bed and came out to find me. I was curled up on the couch and so she looked at the time, saw it was almost 1am in the morning then went back to bed! I was out there for over 4 hours.. Also, we don't even exercise on Mondays so I have no clue where that came from! 

This week we got to serve at House of Mercy which was fun! We worked in the warehouse this time and sorted clothes. 

Our zone is doing a music theme for two weeks so we got to film a short clip for it! It actually took us 4 hours to make the video because of the editing, and also none of us can really sing so we had to add the song on top of us so that people couldn't hear us very well when they watched. 

We got to meet with Grace and Molly! They are the best! We are in the Isaiah chapters right now and they are doing a great job of understanding them! Sometimes there are some harder ones but they are loving it! We also met with Kiran again. He had a lot of questions about baptism that we didn't know the answers too but we explained to him how we do baptism and that actually answered most of his questions! We finally got ahold of our friend Simon in Kenya!! He was so excited to learn about the restoration and asked if the missionaries that are in Kenya could give him a Book of Mormon!! We taught Rose and Ronnie last night and they are doing so well! They love the Book of Mormon and I'm going to miss them so much!

We have done quite a lot on Facebook this week and have start a few conversations which is great! We have had a lot to do in preparing for transfer board to come out because it wrecks us in terms of keeping track of which missionary is in which group so we didn't get a lot of time to find this week sadly. 

Okay I have to unpack but I love and miss you all!

Sister Creager

New Year's Eve

Transfers