The third day after Christmas.......

HOW WAS EVERYONE'S CHRISTMAS?!?!?!

Man, wouldn't it just be the best thing in the entire world if we got an entire day to skype?? Talking with my family and getting to see them was definitely the highlight. My beautiful family has changed in a lot of ways, but really they are just as strange and awkward as ever. But thats why I love them so much and we all get along so well!  This week honestly feels like a blur... I don't even remember half of it. It was the epitome of bittersweet. But we met some super cool people!

So Sister Hale and her old companion, Sister Rogers, were working with an investigator named Ella who was baptized last weekend. She is the sweetest lady ever, and I already love her so much! Her son and his girlfriend came up for the holidays and she has been talking all about this new "church home" that she has found, and telling them about her baptism and everything! She got them all pumped up, and they came to church yesterday and watched her get confirmed! They stayed the entire time, and during the second hour, we had a lesson on scriptures in the gospel principles class, where we went through all four standard works and explained them and talked about why they were all important and how they were revelation from God. It was perfect! The girlfriend was taking noted the whole time! At the end of church, they both had a Book of Mormon, and said that they wanted to keep learning more after they left! It was so amazing!

And let me know how many of your lessons in church were on setting goals.... its just for fun... 

We had some great finding time this week, where we went places in our area where no missionaries had gone before!!! I felt like an astronaut... or Indiana Jones or something. But we had a lot of lessons, and met some really cool people!

Oh yeah, and for Christmas Eve, we went over to a member's house, and they had another elderly lady there who was joining us too. We had a great dinner and nativity skit, and then we offered to drive the elderly lady home so that the dad didn't have to leave his family for that long. We were all riding in the other sister companionship's car, and as were were driving the lady asked if we would sing some carols to her, so all four of us sang songs all the way to her house. The lady was crying and crying and saying that this was the best Christmas Eve she had ever been a part of! It felt so good to cheer her up, and was another testimony to me that there is more service we can do than just physical labor. There is also spiritual service that helps the soul. :) 

Thank you so much for all of your sustaining prayers and love. Your faith is what helps get this work done. Heavenly Father has blessed me so much I feel absolutely spoiled. Even when it is hard out here, His Grace is sufficient. But your prayers definitely give a lot of comfort. :) 

I pray that you all had a wonderful Christmas and have a fabulous new year!!! Don't go get drunk on New Years eve though.... Hey maybe if you watch the ball dropping in Time Square you will see me! Just kidding, we probably have to be in early that night haha. Love you all so much! 

Sister Baine 

Merrrrrrrrrrrry Christmaaaaasssssss!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow. This has been the second longest week of my life. The first being the week I came into the mission field haha.

Plainfield is awesome and I have already had so many adventures here haha. Sister Hale keeps telling me all the crazy stories about the loco people who live here... and at first I thought she was joking. Sometimes I still think she is joking... she just likes to scare me... but then again...

Anyways, story time! So my first night in the area we were driving to an appointment and found out that we were going the wrong way, so Sister Hale pulled a u-turn and driving back, but then all the cars started honking at us, and we realized that WE WERE GOING THE WRONG WAY ON A ONE WAY STREET!!!!! WHAT?!?!? We were scared for our lives for a minute... but then we flipped back around and everything was fine. Then the next day it was my turn to drive and I was parking and didnt see that there was a dip in the parking spot and I was really close to the curb, and so it totally messed up the front bumper... So neither of us are very good drivers.... -_- Then I almost ran someone over... but Heavenly Father is merciful, so everything is good. 

 

So we were door knocking the other night and we met a ton of cool people, but then we knocked on this house and a guy opened the door. We started sharing some of the awesome Gospel with him, but then he said he was an atheist and wasn't really interested. That made me really sad because I can't even imagine how hard life must be without a belief in God, so we left him with a pamphlet and our number and said to call us if he ever had a hard time and wanted to learn about God.... Well about an hour later we got a text... from someone who said they wished to remain anonymous... but then we found out that it was him... and he said we had beautiful eyes... and that he wanted to come to church and speak to our bishop.... and then he asked if he could ask us a personal question... and by this point we had really stopped responding hahahaha... We didn't ever hear back from him... and he never showed up at church... but it was still creepy.

 

Then we went out the next night and knocked on this lady's door, and Sister Hale recognized her and she let us in immediately! She was so nice and sweet, and said that she would be right back to go get something, and while she was out of the room I noticed this cute little puppy curled up sleeping on a little puppy bed in the front room! I was like "oh who is this?!" and went to go pet it...  and Sister Hale was like "uh Sister..." and when I pet it it was the freakiest thing!!!! It was a TAXIDERMIED PUPPY!!!!!!! It was totally a fake dog sleeping in their living room!!!! it felt so weird!!! And then Sis Hale just busted up laughing at me... I just pretended like nothing happened....

THEN, We went to a ward Christmas Breakfast and the had such yummy food! There were waffles and eggs and fruit and sausage! It was great and we had a lot of investigators there that we were sitting with! It was a ton of fun! So I went up to get my food, and they had like 5 different kinds of syrup to put on the waffles, but there was this blueberry smoothie kind that I wanted to try. So I put it all over my waffle and sat down. Sister Hale asked me what kind of syrup I got and I told her blueberry smoothie... and she was like "uhh... Sister..." and as I took a bite.... I realized that it wasn't blueberry smoothie... It was mashed up black bean paste... I had slathered bean smoothie all over my waffles.... -_- The whole table thought that was pretty hilarious... Then my fork busted in half and they laughed at that too... as long as we get a baptism out of it...

TTHHEENN!!!! We were rinsing out the baptismal font for a scheduled baptism we had yesterday, and it was nasty!!!! There were like  gross hairs stuck all over the walls of the font! And we had to hurry because we had a meeting right after that with the ward mission leader, So I was using this bucket to splash water all over the walls to rinse it all off... and then the bucket slipped out of my hands and water went EVERYWHERE! It splashed up onto the mirror above and all over me!!!! -_- I did my best to keep my coat over my wet skirt during the meeting... but it was still pretty bad

Ok. Enough of this silly Sister Baine nonsense... time to talk about some miracles!

So we were eating dinner really fast before going back out again to work, and Sister Hale says that she thinks it is time to visit Sandy again. Sandy is this Jewish lady that the missionaries caroled to last year, and she wasn't really interested, but lately she has had a couple of family members die, and last time they went back to see her, she was very receptive to the message they had to share. Well, after dinner we went back to see Sandy and try a couple of other people, and her house was pitch black. Not to mention that we had to go down some super sketchy steps to get to her. But we knocked a couple of times and rang the doorbell, and finally she answered. She was in her nightgown, and at first I thought she was going to yell at us for coming by so late, but then she just burst out crying and said "I can't believe you girls are here! Thank you so much for coming!" She told us that her mother and her son in law had just died in the past two weeks, and we could tell she was so distraught. We read a scripture with here about spirits and said a prayer with her, and she asked if we would come back after the holidays and teach her. Of course!!!! It was such a miracle to be able to talk to her!

Well Plainfield is unlike any place I have ever been in my entire life, but I am so thankful to be here. I am already being blessed with a love for the people here, and Sister Hale is being such a blessing to me! She just got out of training, so I am supposed to be greenie busting her and acting as senior companion, but really, I feel like I am being trained all over again. Heavenly Father is definitely humbling me! But I am thankful for what I am learning. 

We had our missionary Christmas party this week, and I had no idea I was so loved! Thank you all for the packages and letters! Sister Hale and I sang "Where are you Christmas" for the party, and it was going to be super awesome, but then I forgot like half of my parts... but its all good... 

It doesn't even feel like Christmas here haha. It is really just barely starting to get cold, and there hasn't been any snow yet.. it is supposed to be like 70 degrees on Christmas day... but oh well. It will still be awesome! I love you all and I pray that you have a merry Christmas!!!! BE GOOD FOR SANTA!!!

 

Love, 

Seester Baine

QUE?!?!

Alright, I have some cool stuff to tell y'all this week! Hope you are prepared for story time! ....you may want to grab a fuzzy blanket and hot chocolate, because this is going to be good!

First of all, I forgot last week to tell you an exciting thing that actually did happen! I witnessed a car accident! So we were at this one house on the corner of the street, knocking a door, but they weren't answering. Then I turned around and just then a car wizzed around the corner and hit the corner of a small school bus that was at the stop sign!!!! Sister Roundy didn't see it, but she started freaking out and was like "Did you see it? Flip! If you saw it we have to wait for the police to show up because they need you as a witness!! And you saw that right?! Oh Flip!!" Haha so we stayed there and looked at the damage. The car had taken out the whole front corner of the bus, and there was wreckage all over the road. No one was hurt, and there was only one girl on the bus, but the bus driver was pretty ticked haha. He was very protective of his bus. The lady who hit the bus didn't speak English very well, and she was from another country. She was driving on a permit with no one else in the car, but she was super sweet! She was so nervous and didn't know what to do, so we went and Sister Roundy gave her a hug and told her that it would be ok. The police came and they were super nice, they asked for the witnesses and got my information. Apparently the only other witness was an 11 year old boy... so they decided to trust me instead... odd. But they got the wreckage cleared up, and it turns out that we talked to the girl on the bus and she had met with missionaries before! She doesn't live in our area, but we got her contact information so we can send it to the other missionaries. So pretty much I am famous now.

Another exciting story is that I cleaned out our fridge this last week... there was some scary stuff in there, and it hadn't been wiped out in a looong time.... so I took one of the shelves over to the sink to wash it, and then just as I started to wipe it down SAFHIAOU*WEGT FHISE!!!!!!!!!!! The glass just SHATTERED into a billion and 10 tiny little pieces of glass all over everywhere!!!! -_- Luckily neither of us got cut, but it sure was a mess to clean up. ...So now we have one less shelf in our fridge... but don't tell our landlord....

Let's see, what else happened this week. So we were doing service on Friday night at the soup kitchen, and we decided to invite a couple of the people that we work with to come to the ward Christmas party on Friday, and one lady was super excited about it! She is a squat little black lady with a super high pitched voice named Julie. So we gave her the invitation and our information, and she came! It was a miracle, because we had some trouble with how to get there, but our RS president was able to pick her up with another one of Julie's friends that she brought, and they had a great time!

Guess what the absolute highlight of this week was though. CHRIS PASSED THE SACRAMENT THIS SUNDAY!!!!!!!! It was such a cool thing to see him up there with all the young men and go through the chapel and pass the sacrament to everyone. He didn't really know what he was doing half of the time, but he was so incredibly proud of himself when he sat down! He was just beaming!!!  Then he also said the closing prayer in sacrament meeting, and it was the sweetest, most profound, most humble and wonderful prayer that I have ever heard in any Sacrament meeting since I was born. We were all in heaven!!!

We didn't get to end up going to the temple this week with Chris and Alexis though, because Alexis had to go to the hospital, and Chris said that we should just go another time. Alexis was also supposed to speak in church on Sunday, which would have been perfect, but... .yeah she was out of commission. They both have limited use recommends though, and they are both working hard on their family history, so we will get them there soon!

Our Christmas Musical fireside thing on Sunday went well though! We had the best musical number of the whole program and everyone loved it! I only messed up once, but no hopefully no one could tell. And I think that we did pretty awesome considering that we only practiced it ONCE that day, and we hadn't practiced it a ton before that. But yeah. Heavenly Father totally helped me not butcher it haha. ,,,Like a fat pig.

So about 3 or 4 days ago I started thinking.... a dangerous pastime... I know. But I was thinking and praying a little bit and listening to conference talks... and praying some more, and I started praying for a mountain to climb. I have been so blessed, but I am feeling to comfortable. I haven't been relying on the Lord as much as I have been before, and we haven't seen as much success because of it. I am too confident in myself, which is never a good thing, and it is not fabulous for the work. So I prayed that Heavenly Father would send me something to work on and humble me. That He would give me a mountain to climb. Well. He did. I testify to you as a witness and representative of Jesus Christ that Heavenly Father hears and answers prayers, and that He loves His children, and will give according to their desires.

This week is transfers. Sister Roundy and I have been going CRAZY since the beginning of last week because we had no idea what was going to happen. We have both been in this area and with each other for the same amount of time, and everyone has been asking us "When is trasfers? Who is going and who is staying? When do you find out? What do you think will  happen??" and we are just like "WE DON'T KNOWWWWAH!!!!!" But we were all betting that Sister Roundy would leave and I would stay and lead out the area, since she only has three transfers left and has only been in one other area (yeah its crazy). But this morning we got a call about transfers. And guess what...??? Sister Roundy is staying here in Morristown and I have been called to go to another area and "greenie bust" another sister. I am going to Plainfield, which is apparently super ghetto and sketchy... The complete opposite of Morristown. What. The. Frumpy. I don't even know what to think other than Heavenly Father hears and answers prayers. The awesome thing is though, that when we were talking to our zone leaders, they said that it was really crazy, because at the beginning of last week they heard that Sister Roundy and I were actually supposed to stay together for another transfer (which is like unheard of for a trainer and trainee to be together for that long..... probably because I need a lot of training). They said that it was crazy that they changed their minds so fast from what it was going to be.... and then it hit me that Heavenly Father told them to change it because that was when I had prayed. HOLY TOLITO.

Also this last week we heard from a general authority. His name is Elder Evans, and he was AMAZING!!! I took like 2435 pages of notes... But I won't tell you all now because I have already written so much. but yeah. blew my mind.

ANYWAYS!!!! I hope you liked my stories so far. Next week I will be in a new place with my new companion!!!! Pray for me that I don't die!!! Love you all so much and I am so thankful for all of the prayers and blessings you already send me!!!!!

LOVE YOU!!!!!!

Sister Baine

Workin hard!! ...or hardly working?

Hello! Invisible spectators of my humble existence!

I don't know what happened this week.... It is all one big blur... Why does Monday have to come around? It always comes too fast and then I have to tell you what I did and I can't even remember half of it because it went by so fast.... CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT I AM ALREADY 4 MONTHS INTO MY MISSION?!!?!?!? WHAT??!?!! When did this happen?!?! This is crazier than the old hobos here.... at least they have most of their teeth...

Lets see.... OK! Can I tell you the coolest thing that our Stake does here?? They do this thing called Crèche (which is French for "nativity") and they spend weeks setting up and decorating the gym in the Chapel and they set out HUNDREDS of nativities all around the room! They have different musical artists come and perform and a live nativity and then they invite the community to it! SUCH a cool event! Why don't we ever do something like this at home??  They seriously go ALL out though! They even took out a whole pew!!! They had a couple groups of Presbeterian bell ringers there to perform and it was so pretty I almost fell asleep. They had some famous singers there and like 8 whole boatloads of people came! It was such a cool event! We had so many investigators and less actives there, and it was super fancy and everything was so pretty! I'll send you some pictures, but they don't do it justice... 

 

 

So that was super awesome and a great finding activity. Oh and by the way, I am in a musical performance this Sunday for a missionary Christmas deal... so I will have someone video tape it so that Mom will be proud of me. :)

It is super weird... we have been working so dern hard this week and don't really have a ton to show for it... Well, not in numbers really... Heavenly Father has blessed us with a ton of little triumphs though. And the Spirit has been with us SO strongly this week! Even though I don't have a ton of cool stories to share, I want to share with you what I have been learning!

I have learned that even though I don't remember Jesus Christ or can see Him, I can still love Him! Last night when we watched the Christmas Broadcast (which was a spiritual powerhouse and you should all watch it) I saw Elder Bednar get up and start to speak and I was overcome with a love for him! Then the same thing happened with Elder Uchtdorf! I realized that Iove all of the Prophets and Apostles SO SO much!! I literally wanted to run and give them a giant hug! I didn't used to feel that way, but because I have listened to their conference talks so much and prayed for them and acted on their teachings, I have developed a relationship with them and a love that I didn't even  know was possible! They don't even know that I exist! But I realized that because I know I love them, I know I love Jesus Christ. They teach His words and lead His Church and develop His characteristics, and they represent Him! I know that studying the Words of Christ and acting on them and praying in the name of Jesus Christ allows us to love Him. We have the potential to have  a relationship with Him!!! A relationship with the Prince of Peace who was born in Bethlehem. Jesus Christ! And the best part is that He DOES know us! He knows us personally, good and bad. Even though I don't see Christ, I do!! I can see Him everywhere if I recognize Him in the world and people around me. I am so thankful that I am never left alone. :)

Another thing that I have been learning actually goes a long with science. The equation for the displacement of an object is something like D=f1-f2.... or maybe it is D=w1-w2.... I don't know math... or school.... but this came to my mind the other day that even though there can be a great amount of work expended as two forces push against a box, if they are the same amount of force then the box doesn't move. Sometimes I feel like that out here on my mission, where I am working so hard all the time and doing so many things, but at the end, it really doesn't yield any spiritual results. Satan is working hard!!! All the time he gets me distracted pushing a box with all my might, but it doesn't go anywhere! We are teaching people and going to appointments all the time! But what is the displacement? What progress is being made? Using time wisely is the most hardest but most crucial thing out here! I came out here not wanting to waste a minute, but guess how many minutes I have already wasted? a lot. What is most important? What do I need to be spending my energy on? Seriously, please let me know if you can help me at all, because I have been really wanting to figure out how to use my time wisely, and never waste a minute, but then when I do that, I get so rushed going from place to place that it is hard to feel the Spirit, and then I end up wasting time and energy anyways because all my efforts were not what Heavenly Father wanted me to be doing that day... GAH! Missions are great... but I don't get them...

ANYWHEYS!!!!!! Protein wheys.... That's about all I've got for this week... Sister Roundy and I had some super spicy chicken this week... I realized how bad of a choice it was the next day...  

We also got chewed out by an angry mom this week... some people don't like Christmas spirit... but anyways I LOVE YOUUU!!!! Hope you are all getting ready for some wonderful holidays!!! Hey, also if you need some Chistmas cheer, go onto the church website and check out some of the Christmas videos! My favorite one is called "Kids and Christmas!" We share that one with people on the street all the time! I love technology... but not as much as you, you see...

Ok, love you all!!!

Sister Baine

TALOFA MI FAMILIA!!!!!!

Aren't you so impressed with my language skills? I'm getting pretty good at Canadian too A.

But how was your Thanksgiving?!?! Are you 89lbs heavier? Haha its funny because Thanksgiving wasn't actually that bad for us. We only had one dinner appointment to worry about, and we didn't even eat that much, but now that its over we are getting everyone's leftover pie... So we have like 3 different pies in our fridge and we don't know what to do with it... except eat it for every meal...

And before we ate dinner on Thanksgiving we had a big Turkey Bowl with some of the zones from our mission. (For the nerds like me who didn't know what that was, a Turkey Bowl is a football game on Thanksgiving.) The zone leaders did a draft and Sister Roundy and I were put on different teams... which was sad. But what was even more sad was that my team didn't win ANY games!!!! We split the football field in half shortways and  two teams played against each other on each side. And out of the 5 matches that we played my team lost all of them hahaha, but its ok, because we had fun anyways... and I got to repeatedly let my anger out by pushing elders to the ground when they went after our quarterback... Just kidding. But I did accidentally backhand an elder in the face REALLY hard... I don't think it did anything, but I felt bad because he was on my team... and it probably hurt... I guess I was just missing Ethan right then.... Then after we were done playing football we played soccer. I don't really know how to play soccer, but Sister Roundy does and she is super good, so she has been teaching me some cool moves during our morning workouts. So I am pretty much going to be a professional soccer player when I get home...

Well for the rest of this week we have been visiting a lot of less actives. We have seen some miracles come of it, but it is still a little bummy because we don't have that many investigators at the moment. We have dropped a lot who aren't progressing and then baptized the others, so now it is like we are starting all over from when we got here. But we did teach the super cool family we found last week! Their names are Steve and Samantha, and they have three cute little boys! Their youngest is three, but he reminds me so much of Johnny when he was younger! He even has his front tooth missing!

Can I brag about our recent converts for a minute though??? Chris and Alexis are progressing in the gospel by LEAPS and BOUNDS!!! It is so amazing to see them still accepting everything and flourishing in the church! Chris called us randomly on Thanksgiving and said, " So I have been being obedient for a while, and I can't see anything in the next few days that would prevent me from continuing to be obedient, so what's the next step?" WHAT?!?!?! CHRIS IS SO AWESOME! He continued by asking what else there was to work on in the gospel, and we told him that the next step for him would be to get the priesthood and then get some names to go to the temple with! and guess what? He had his priesthood interview with bishop yesterday and is planning on getting it this week! We also started on his family history work, and have already been able to connect a line in! He was soooo excited and called his grandmother the next day to get more information to put into his family tree. Then he also called us yesterday to tell us a miracle that happened with his mom, (because even though we told him to invite her, apparently she had no idea that he had gotten baptized and was a little upset about it) and then said that he was pulling into the gas station to get some food. We were like "Chris! Why are you buying food on Sunday!!" And he said "What?? What do you mean why am I buying food on Sunday?! I want some snacks to keep me awake in the car!" Apparently he had forgotten that it was part of keeping the Sabbath day holy to prepare before hand so we don't have to make purchases on Sunday. But GUESS WHAT?!?! The second we explained it to him, he said he was pulling out of the gas station!!! He didn't even hesitate or get mad or anything!!! He just got back on the freeway and kept driving!!! WHAT?!?!? He is probably going to be a prophet someday. Just kidding but he is still awesome.

Then guess what Alexis did?! She came to church yesterday to the first two hours even though she was ordered by a doctor to stay on bedrest until her surgery! She came all the way to church to take the sacrament and stay for as long as she could! She is so impressive!!!!! I mean when I was home, sometimes I would stay home from church just because I had a slight tingle in my throat and a pain in my head. This woman has herniated discs in her lower back that she has to get surgery to help and has a billion other health issues and she STILL makes it to church! She is way cooler than you are!!! Just kidding. You are all very cool. And I love you all. I am so proud of her though. I pray we can all follow these wonderful examples of souls that have truly been converted to the Lord! ...However Alexis did end up going to the ER last night.... so maybe don't push yourself too hard... haha but at least she got the SACRAMENT!!!!

Ok, juan more miracle. We went over to visit a family that we hadn't seen in a while, but we wanted to see her before we considered dropping her completely. She invited us right in and we started teaching her the plan of Salvation. Well, shortly after the lesson began, her husband who she had previously said wasn't religious at all, came in and sat down. So we began to include him in the lesson as well, and the spirit was SOOO strong! As we went through, they kept saying "that makes so much sense! I've always wondered about that!" Then close to the end, we asked the husband if Jesus Christ were standing in the room right then, what would he ask Him. He said that he would ask Christ if he would ever see his parents again. We asked him to pray about that tonight and ask that question in his prayer and he said he would! Then we were able to testify to him as representatives of Jesus Christ Himself, that he would see his parents again! It was such an incredible moment! I am so thankful for the Holy Ghost!!!!

Well, everyone says that it is usually a lot colder in winter by now, but for the most part the weather has actually stayed fairly nice for it almost being December! *she types as she knocks on the wooden table* We haven't gotten any snow yet, and it feels like it is just starting to get cold, so hopefully that means that Heavenly Father is having mercy on me and won't turn me into a popsicle quite yet...

I love you all so mucho!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you so much for your prayers because Heaven knows I need themmmmm!!!!!! Please don't EVER give the missionaries pie. They are fat enough as it is... unless you move to somewhere like Russia... Then you can probably give them pie. How do you say pie in Russian?

MUAH!!!!

Love,

Sister Baine