Episode 20: The One with ANOTHER Baptism

Hello everyone! Guess what!

We had another baptism!

Souhan got baptized on Sunday night. He's the funniest kid. He sometimes wears grocery bags over his socks to keep them clean.

In other news, we had a baby shower for Souhan and Sakura's (step)mom, and it was a great success! There were tons of ward members there, and their dad came, too, which is really good because it is the first time we have been able to get him to actively participate in anything. He got lots of support and fellowship, and while we were talking about Souhan's baptism, one of the ladies told Em (the dad) that she can't wait until Em's baptism! We are hoping this is the beginning of getting him interested in learning more. He is now the only member of his family who lives at home who is not baptized.

We have a new Cambodian investigator whose name is Nyam, which is the Cambodian word for "to eat". The Spanish speaking elders found him, and he is way cool! He is already Christian, which is pretty rare for Cambodians here. He took a Book of Mormon to read, and we are going to follow up with him in the coming days.

Other than that, this week has been pretty straight forward. I got super sick yesterday, but other than that, life is good. We are setting lots of goals and working hard and praying hard to achieve them. I found a quote in my studies this week that said "Faith is a principle of action and power. Whenever we work toward a worthy goal, we exercise faith. We show our hope for something that we cannot yet see." I'm learning a lot right now about how faith and diligence relate to each other. Among other things, I think that faith that we will see the fruits of our labors motivates our diligence, and working diligently shows that we have faith that God will make up for our shortcomings.

I love you all! Have an excellent week.

Love,

Sister Lemon

Episode 19: The One with the Baptism!

This is Sakura (pronounced like saKAHruh). She is the 11 year old step daughter of one of our recent converts. Her brother is going to get baptized this weekend as well, and our goal is to teach their dad, and then one year from now take them to the temple to be sealed together as a family for all eternity.

Sakura is awesome. She has already invited 3 friends to church and church activities. She's super sassy, but she has a real desire to do good and to be a good person. Plus, she feed us babaa (I don't know how to spell that), which is a delicious Cambodian rice soup. Basically, she an Sohan (her brother) are my favorite people right now.

I also went to a Samoan baptism this weekend. I didn't understand anything because it was all in Samoan, but it was still amazing. I want to be as kind and generous as the Samoans, and as spiritual and accepting of others as the Cambodians. Also, there were more people at the Samoan baptism than at church for my area, which is awesome because people don't usually make the effort to come out for convert baptisms unless you specifically ask them to.

Ok, here is the part where I ask for your help. We are teaching a way awesome couple, Chris and Tara. They are super receptive to the gospel, and they have an amazing desire to do what is right for themselves and for their kids (they have 5 kids total from previous marriages). I honestly believe that they have been prepared by God to receive the gospel, change their lives, and be baptized. But here is the problem. They are not married, but they have been living together for a year. For those of you who don't know, they have to either live separately or get married before they can be baptized. So, I would like you all to pray that a way will be provided that they will be eligible to be baptized. I know that God answers our prayers, and I know that together we can see miracles through our collective faith.

Well, that is all for today. Until next week!

Love,

Sister Lemon

This is Sakura and Sohan. Sohan is 14 and loves basketball, even though he doesn't even come up to my shoulder. But he's about the sweetest 14 year old boy you can imagine.

I told you Sakura is my best friend! She always says that Sister Rydalch is the goofy one and I'm the thinking one.

Episode 18: The One with the Answers to Prayers

This is, from left to right, me (but you knew that), Sister Rydalch, Elder Byram (one of the assistants to our mission president), and Elder Lewis (who used to be our district leader, but then got transferred, but then was back for a day on an exchange). Sister Rydalch made them take a picture with us because we pranked their car. According to everyone, the Cambodian sisters (aka us) are the wildest sisters in the mission, but we get the work done.

Hello friends! This week has been really great. Sister Rydalch and I are just constantly moving. She likes to tell people "we work hard, play hard, and then sleep even harder".

On Sunday after church, Brother Wheelock was talking to us about being more organized and really focusing on listening in our daily routines. He talked about how to take what people say and use it to guide your interactions with them in a meaningful direction. I thought it was really insightful, but I was worried that I wouldn't know how to apply it myself. Well, later that night, we knocked into a lady named Dixie Lynn. She let us into her house, and said she wanted to talk to us, but didn't believe what we believed. In stead of leaving it at that or trying to push her, we just asked questions about her life and listened to her answers. We then were able to use what she told us to invite her to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. She was really excited about it, and said that she felt like us coming was an answer to her prayers, which I thought was awesome. We are going to go back and follow up with her later this week. (Also, she has 3 dogs, and I didn't even freak out, so progress is happening all over in my life!)

Yesterday we were walking through the parking lot of an apartment complex that we were going to knock, when I saw a lady smoking a cigarette on her back porch. I called out to her, and just asked how she was doing and if there was anything we could do for her. She said she had just prayed and asked God to send her someone to talk to about her problems who could help guide her. Her name is Del, and it turns out she is in an emotionally abusive relationship, and she knows she needs to get out of it, but she is scared to be on her own. We shared Alma 7:11-13 with her, and she was so much happier. We talked to her for about 45 minutes, and you could see her demeanor change over the course of our talk with her.

A different day (I can't remember which one), Sister Rydalch and I were walking around the International Business district (aka Asiaville, WA) trying to find new people to teach. One problem: there were no people out. None. I don't know where they all were, but we could not find them. It was really cold, and we didn't know what to do, when we heard a voice behind us yell "Hey, Sisters!". To be honest, at first I panicked a little. I figured it was going to be someone who didn't like us or something like that. But when we turned around, it was a very nice older man, who is a member on a different part of Washington. He took us into a restaurant, fed us dinner, and introduced us to all of the employees. They were all Vietnamese and didn't really understand who we were, but it was still really awesome.

Basically, the moral of the story is God is always listening. He knows us, He loves us, and He will help us. We are never alone unless we chose to be.

Oh, also, Sister Rydalch and Sister Johansen took a recent convert that they had taught to the temple on Thursday, so I was Sister Ireland's (Sister Johansen's companion) trainer for a day! It was way fun, even though we almost ran out of gas.

Well, that's all for this week! Have a lovely day and keep on being awesome!

Love,

Sister Lemon

Episode 17: The One with the Surprise!

Hello everyone! Today's email is going to be great.

So, Tuesday night we met with the leadership of our ward, which we do every other week. We were talking about how the missionaries could work more closely with the different classes and groups to find people to teach and help the ward run more smoothly. The woman in charge of the young women's classes said that the 16-18 year old girls would not have a teacher on Sunday, and that she would love for us to come teach their class on whatever we wanted to teach, in the hopes of inspiring them to go on missions themselves. We were really excited about it, and after praying and studying together, we choose to teach about humility, and how it cam be empowering. It was shaping up to be a really good lesson.

Well, Sunday came around, and we made sure our investigator got to her class, our recent convert got to hers, and then we went to teach. We started teaching, and after about 5 minutes, in walks our mission president and his wife. And then our bishop. And then Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorom of the Twelve Apostles.

You read that right. Sister Rydalch and I taught a lesson on humility to AN APOSTLE!! And our lesson came mostly from Preach My Gospel, which was written by a committee lead by THAT VERY APOSTLE.

Being the amazing person apostles are, he participated in the class, complimented us on our teaching, and told us that "it takes a very special missionary to serve a foreign speaking mission in the states." And he would know, because he is the one who assigned my call!!!

And, in case you were wondering, here is the comment he made in our class:

"One definition of humility that I like is willingness to learn."

I've been thinking about that for the past two days, and the more I think about it, the more perfect that definition seems to me. If you are truly willing to learn, you accept criticism and try to change. You see the good in others and try to emulate it in yourself. You are willing to try anything, knowing that you don't have to be perfect, you just have to learn everything you can from the experience. Sounds like humility to me.

On a less shocking note, Sister Rydalch and I took up scrap booking yesterday.

That's all for this week everyone. I love you and you're amazing!

Love,

Sister Lemon

P.S. In case you don't believe me, here is the photo evidence.

Episode 16: The One with My New Companion

Hello everyone! Happy Transfer Day!

Today Sister Humphreys is going home! Also, Sister Johansen is transferring to American Lake, which is a little south of us, to train a new English sister. Our car is crammed full of their suitcases and bags, plus the four of us. I'm amazed we fit so much in a Corolla.

This means that Sister Rydalch and I are now companions, which I am really excited about. We started our companionship by cleaning out our fridge and our closets, because the fridge was too full, and the closets had stuff left behind in them from the original Cambodian sisters, who have been gone for years! We have big plans for this transfer already, so stay tuned.

Our Elders had a really awesome baptism on Saturday. The person who got baptized is named Jeff, and he is really cool. He used to have lots of drug problems, but he decided he wanted to change and get away from that lifestyle. He moved in with a member of our church who doesn't come as often, mostly because of health issues, and she referred him to the Elders. They have been teaching him for about 3 weeks, and he just loves the church. He is going to rehab in about a month, but he said the church will always be a part of his life from now on. The Spirit was so strong at his baptism, that almost everyone in the room was crying. It was really amazing.

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of missing people recently, and I found a scripture that I think goes along with that concept really well. It is in Alma 17:2, when 5 best friends all meet back up after their missions, and it says that they rejoiced to see each other, but that what was more important than seeing each other was knowing that they were all "still bretheren in the Lord". I'm not saying that it's not okay to miss people, but it gives me comfort to know that the people that mean so much to me are still my "bretheren in the Lord", even when they are miles (or continents) away.

Well, off to stuff ourselves back in the clown car to drop off the departing.

I love you all, and am glad to have the opportunity to know you.

Love,

Sister Lemon

Elder Henderson is trying to hide the fact that he is taking 2 cheesecakes home.

Episode 15: The One with the Chick-fil-A Birthday

Hello everyone! I hope all is well with you all.

I'm sure you are all anxiously waiting to hear about my exchange. Well, it was awesome! I learned a lot and I feel like I'm doing things different already. Sister Dale does things very differently from Sister Humphreys, and she has TONS of awesome techniques and skills that I want to develop that I didn't even know I was missing out on. I feel like the bar has been raised for my missionary work, but I'm really excited about the challenge and I'm stretching already!

Things are changing a lot right now. Sister Humphreys leaves in exactly a week, and she has started packing and sending things home. Next transfer, I will be companions with Sister Rydalch or Sister Johansen, but not both, and we won't know which one of them is going to a different area to do English missionary work until Saturday! It's going to be really weird to only have 2 people in our apartment. But, I am excited to not be a greenie any more.

Sister Johansen's birthday was yesterday, as well as 2 other sisters in our zone, so we went to Chick-fil-A for dinner, and I found out that Chick-fil-A gives you a free stuffed cow on your birthday! It was a lot of fun to spend time with the sisters because we are all so different but still so awesome. I am the youngest sister in my zone, possibly in the whole mission, and some of the sisters in my zone are 26! It's really cool to see both our similarities and our differences.

In other fun stories, a 50 year old man answered his door with a billy club the other night. He said he thought a knock on his door at 7:00 was "bad news". If you've ever watched the show White Collar, he looked and sounded just like Mozzie, so I was having a hard time not laughing as he talked about conspiracy theories.

I also almost got eaten by a Chihuahua that same night. I think it just wanted to chew on something that moved, so luckily it kept getting distracted by cars. It was terrifying.

On a more uplifting note, I want to share a quote from Elder Uchtdorf. He said "You may feel that there are others who are more capable or more experienced who could fulfill your callings and assignments better than you can, but the Lord gave you your responsibilities for a reason. There may be people and hearts only you can reach and touch. Perhaps no one else could do it in quite the same way." I love this, because sometimes it is so easy to compare ourselves to others and feel like we are less than them, and therefore we should just quit. But if only perfect people could make things happen, nothing would ever happen. I know that if we try our best, God will make that effort enough, and we will see amazing things happen in our lives.

I love you all! Keep being the amazing people you are.

Love,

Sister Lemon

P.S. I promise I'm not a red head, it just looks like it in these pictures!

Episode 14: The One with the Blue Weave

Hello friends and family!

Life is good up here in the WA-TAC. It actually snowed on Sunday! It "snowed" once before up here, but I would call it semi-solid rain or slush-falling-from-the-sky. But on Sunday it for real snowed! Like, it even stuck to the ground. My companion built a tiny snowman while I was giving our weekly call-in report (which is when we tell our district leader about our week over the phone). We also had to push our car up a hill because it only has front wheel drive and the car in front of us decided to stop, and so we lost all momentum and couldn't get going again. When we finally got onto flatter ground, all of the sudden the car just took off, and I thought I was going to get left behind. But it was actually really good, because snow is so rare here that a ton of people were out playing in it, and we talked to a lot of people.

As to the title of this email, we started teaching a lady named Charmaine, and she has a super long blue weave.

We had zone conference this week, which is when the mission president and some other mission leadership come and train us on different aspects of being better missionaries. The focus of this conference was working better with the members, and it was super awesome! We will still be knocking our 5-7s every day and street contacting to find new people, but we are also trying to learn how to better use members in every step of our efforts. It was really awesome.

Today I'm going on a companion exchange, which means that I will have a Sister Training Leader as my companion for 24 hours. I'm really excited to learn a lot from her, but I'm also kind of nervous because I have to be responsible for knowing where things are in our area so that we don't get lost!

I have learned a lot this week about how the answers to prayer come to us. There is a quote in one of our teaching resources that says this about answers to prayers:

"This knowledge can be miraculous and life changing, but it usually comes as a quiet assurance, without spectacular displays of God’s power."

I know this to be true. Sometimes the smallest things are really the biggest things. And, if you haven't ever felt this before, I encourage you to try it for yourself. I promise God will answer your prayers.

I love you all bunches and I will write you again next week!

Love,
Sister Lemon

zone Christmas activity