Monday, November 18, 2013

 My turn to make dinner so I made good old American Mac & Cheese, only they call it
"Kraft Dinner" here!!

This is our newest Sister baptized, her name is Van

November 18 2013

Good Morning!

I feel like I just logged off the computer last week and now I’m on it again. Time is crazy fast here on the mission this next Saturday is transfer calls. I can’t believe my first transfer in the mission field is almost already finished! There is a really good chance that I will not be transferred because our mission president likes to keep the new missionary with his/her trainer for their first two transfers. This will also be Sister Houde’s last transfer so that makes it very good odds will both be staying here. I am very happy for that though everyone told me when I was leaving the mission home when I first got here that Dows lake Ottawa ward is the milk and honey of our mission and I will be very spoiled there. I have come to realize this these past few weeks. We teach so much and all these young people are so willing to listen. I truly believe that the church is blossoming with the youth and I get to be apart of that! At the start of the week we were struggling a little bit because sometimes it’s hard to know if certain people you are teaching are serious or not about wanting to know more. On Tuesday we decided that we would go contacting a lot to hopefully find people that are really serious. Heavenly father heard our need and now this next week is packed full of new people we found to teach. In the next two days we have 6 new potential people that are very interested. We are very excited and eager to teach them.
Wednesday was such a special day. It was mission conference so General Authority Elder Piper of the Seventy came and talked to us. We got to ask him any question we want and he was so great with answering them and the spirit was so strong in the room there was no doubt in any of us that he wasn’t a general authority from our heavenly father! One of the greatest things he said was when we don’t obey certain commandments it’s because we don’t understand that commandment. The more we come to understand that commandment we come to see how important it is and why we need to obey it. He taught us how we should be teaching our investigators by teaching us things that we need instead of teaching us things that he wants to tell us! After the meeting President Patrick stood up and told us that Elder Piper would have time to interview ten missionaries before he left. The first name he called out was SISTER DICK. I thought I was hearing things and then everyone looked at me and said good luck!! I was scared to death, but he is just like any other Idaho Farm boy.  Elder Piper was a very carrying and sincere man, he asked me about my family and how I was doing on the mission.  You could tell he really cared. He told me to say hello to my family and he is going to be looking for me in the newspaper when I get home for rodeo!
This Saturday we had a baptism for the Elders in our ward investigator. Her name is Van and She is the cutest thing in the world and what she says is "she loves Hugs!" she is so pure and a sweet girl it was so great to see someone taking that first step with baptism! On Sunday she received the Holy Ghost at church and it was so amazing we had 6 investigators show up to church and for them to be able to see her receive the Holy Ghost was so great for them!!! Van is so shy when they walked off the stand she clung to one of the missionaries arm so tight and walked down the isle. You should of seen that elders face it was so bright red as she clung to him because she was so scared I know all he was thinking was "O no, a girl is touching me and I’m in front of the whole congregation"!  We were all just laughing and smiling at the sight.
After church we were invited to a Chinese potluck the Chinese elders were putting on. I was so scared to eat half the food at it because there were some interesting fish products and who even knows what I ate, but it was so great to see how many Chinese members we are getting. They are so close to getting their own branch!
I’m really excited for this next week of lots of teaching there is nothing better then explaining to people about this true gospel! Have a great week!

Love,

Sister Dick

Monday, November 11, 2013

This is how we wait for the bus!!!

November 11, 2013


Hello!
It is very difficult to find computers in this city to write emails on and today is Remembrance Day so here I write my email on a iPad in an Apple store. Needless to say it is quit difficult! This week was of course another great one! We had a lot of lessons with people. Unfortunately I had my first drop this week which means a person were teaching doesn't want to take our lessons anymore. She was so great and I hope she realizes how amazing this gospel is and comes back. It's been starting to snow here these past few days a lot so that's been a lot of fun! On Friday we had a guy come up to us asking us if we knew where a church was because he was looking for one. With a big smile on our faces we said we sure do! It was kind of weird having someone come up to us talking about church because it's always the other way around! He came to church with us wearing his full African tribal suite it was awesome. He said he really enjoyed church and wants lessons. We had a lot of investigators come to church this week and I decided when so many come you feel like a proud mom or something.  You know that you must of done something right in the lessons with them for them to want to come to church. This week I have realized how much my testimony of the Book of Mormon has grown already on my mission. A member from our ward was telling us that through studying the Book of Mormon he had found 38 things in it about the atonement of Jesus Christ that is clarified or never said in the bible. That right there is so cool the Book of Mormon gives us such a better testimony on our savior Jesus Christ and that should drive us to obey his commandments so we can be more like him everyday! I love being a missionary so much I have learned things that I can't imagine going through the rest of my life without knowing them! Have a great week I love you all so much!!!!
Sincerely, 
Sister Dick

Tuesday, November 5, 2013


Eating Sushi with some investigators and the Elders

November 4, 2013


Hello everyone!

This week I hit my two-month mark in the mish! I cant believe how fast time goes by its so crazy when you are so busy! This week we did a lot of service projects, which was a good change and a lot of fun. One of them is helping this big garlic farm put water hoses on the garlic, which was really cool and felt more at home for me. We also did our normal service project at Ottawa mission the place where we feed the homeless. It was on Halloween so I went as Sister Houde and she went as me, but It wasn’t very easy trying to do her French accent the whole time ha-ha. This week I had my interview with my mission president. All the missionaries have them every three months. He told Sister Houde that he was really surprised how well I’m doing in this new missionary life, but I tried to explain to him that I’m a really easygoing person! He gave me advice on how I can better myself at street contacting and not be so afraid of it. I’m trying these tactics so will see how it goes. We had zone meeting the next day and it was really neat. Our zone is so big since the new missionary changed happened. The Ottawa zone use to be 14 missionaries and now there is 40! Our zone is pretty big because our mission is so big some of the missionaries had to travel seven hours to make it to zone conference because they live so far away. The zone meeting was a lot on less active members and how we should make it a big importance to help them, so this week we did just that. We went with the senior missionary couple in there car because we don’t have one and we tried to go to a lot of less actives home to visit them. It went pretty well except for the dad that yelled at me and said he was going to chew me up and spit me out Sister Houde was very confused because with her small English vocabulary she didn’t get what he meant.
One of the bigger miracles we saw this week was when we were contacting one night we met an older man who said he had met missionaries before but didn’t seem to interested to meet with us. He gave us his number anyways and we called and made an appointment with him. He showed up and we were talking for a while and we asked him when he met the missionaries before he told us in 2003 and he went on with his story and then says he got baptized and then goes on to a different story. We had to stop him and have him repeat himself we said you got baptized in this church! And he said well yes. Apparently he hasn’t been back to church in awhile because he moved, but after we met with him he was so pumped and ready to be back he told us we had renewed his faith that he had forgotten. He came to church on Sunday and thanked us again for finding him! It was so cool to see that just from street contacting the thing I have a hard time with we can make miracles!!
We have been teaching lots of French lessons lately because we teach so many Africans that would rather hear the gospel in French. Its been helping me speak French a lot. If I don’t speak to Sister Houde in French she tells me she doesn’t understand ha-ha. It’s frustrating sometimes but my French has increased a ton!
I’m getting well fed here because Sister Houde is like this amazing French chef or something. She is always cooking us something that I have never heard of, but it’s always delicious! The bad thing is I go outside and shiver it off one-day I’m going to get use to this cold weather ha ha! I hope everyone has a fabulous week!
Beacoup d'amour!

Sincerely,
Sister Dick