Hi ho hi ho

Well this week has been a lot less psycho than last week haha, we are
finally starting to get the hang of things, and Heavenly Father has
really been helping us out. And we have been making friends!!!

So every Tuesday and Thursday we teach  an English class to a few
Chinese people, and they are so awesome!! We have the English class at
the Chapel, and we we use a program created by the church, so we have
been able to start teaching them about the gospel! One of them has
even come to church for the service a couple times! Well they had a
Chinese moon festival this week, and they brought us back food from
it! They gave us some homemade dumplings and mooncakes, and it was
soooo good!!! The mooncakes tasted kinda funky, but they looked so
pretty!! (I remember learning about mooncakes and the festival from
the cat show on PBS kids when I was little... Sagwa I think haha).
Before they came to America they didn't know anything about God or
Jesus or anything about religion... But now they actually want to
start taking the lessons for real! We hope the understand it all and
are actually interested, but we figure that even if they don't want to
get baptized right now, we are teaching them about their Savior, and
they have said that they can feel peace and love (the spirit) really
strongly when they come to the church and learn. :) we are so excited.

Also, we have been meeting some crazy people haha... There are so many
people in our area, but it is hard to street contact by our house
because they are mostly either crazy or don't speak English haha... Or
both... I will send you a video haha. But we have been getting super
close with the members already, and they have already told us that
they have referrals for us, and we have already gotten specific
assignments from the Branch council to go visit less active and part
member families... Which are gold mines!!! We have also been getting a
lot of referrals from other sources as well, and Heavenly Father has
really been blessing us. AND we got a new Branch mission leader, and
he is so awesome! His name is Marcel, and he is a big Black guy with
dreads hahaha. We are seriously going to do WORK here!! :D

It is weird being a trainer.... I don't know how to describe it, but
it's weird.... Sister Phillips is super fun though... I'll send you
some of the funny videos we made haha :)
Love you guys so much!!! Hope you are all doing FABULOUS!!! MUAH!

Sister Baine :)





Ok here is the delicious Chinese food!

 

Oh, and btw we went to Ellis Island again!! It was super fun!!!

Music Street Video--Break'n in the Greenie

It's all Good in the Hood!!!

This week has been such an adventure! Sister Phillips is AMAZING!!!
She is literally everything that I have always wanted to be... She
actually won when she ran for student body president. Haha she is SO
pretty and SO nice and SO fun and just all around awesome. I was
afraid of getting some hick girl from a potato farm that never used a
microwave and had missing teeth haha. Weird connection, but I actually
asked her a couple days ago and it turns out that she knows Wade and
Josh Evenson!!! No Manchez!!!! She said she was in student council
with Wade haha so fun.

Well, one of The first things that we find out when we get together is
that we are not assigned a car to use haha. We had to borrow a car
from another companionship to get back from transfers. So we are
officially in a walking area!!!! Yay!!!! Literally I love it though,
all of my wildest dreams have come true. 😄 then we get to our
apartment, which had just had elders in it before us, and it is soooo
ghetto haha. When we first saw it I thought cute little Sister
Phillips was just going to cry. It has this creepy elevator too that
is super old.... But the manager is super nice! He didn't like the
elders thought because they would climb out the fire escape and onto
the roof... Elders...
It is super cool through, because we can see the New York skyline form
our grody kitchen window.


It is so funny walking around the main streets here, because there are
a couple guys that just kinda wander around, and they are not quite
right upstairs haha, and we have had some funny conversations so
far... The people here are so humble and down to earth though. Really
they are all so nice. We were out walking for a super long time the
other day, and just knocked on a door and asked for some water, and
without any hesitation the lady gave us two bottles! There are so many
people here that are from Brazil or Portugal and places like that....
But they are so fun.

Anyways, Then we found out some more things like we had a baptism that
Saturday and we teach Chinese people English that night, and Pres
Caycho (a member of the mission presidency) was making a special trip
down to do the baptismal interview, and we have to take the bus
everywhere. I am so thankful that Heavenly Father was helping us,
because I had never ridden a bus before on my mission, and all of a
sudden we have no car, a creepy apartment, and a baptism to coordinate
of someone we don't know!!! Wooohoooo!!!! Haha it was all good though,
and the baptism went wonderfully. Our Chinese English class has been
super fun so far, and the members already love us. I learned that one
of the families that i served with in Scotch Plains moved down here
into my ward!!! It was so good to see them again. And guess what...
For once in my mission there is a Spanish ward, and we serve in the
English Branch haha. And the branch president is Hispanic 😂 he is
super cool though.

 

So Yolanda is the one that just got baptized, and she is so cute. We
already love her so much! This area is about to explode! We are so
excited, and have a goal to get two forever families this transfer!
Heavenly Father is so good!! Sister Phillips has some great ideas for
how we can get this area going, so be prepared for some awesome emails
coming up! Love you all so much! Thank you for all your prayers!
Please keep praying, because goodness knows we need them! MUAH!!
😁😘😊

Sister Baine :)

 Guess which one is sister Phillips.... ;)

El Diablo

Sacred beef this week though.... You will never believe it....

So first of all, we had a general authority, Elder Dube from the 70
come visit our mission for a couple of days, and he was so awesome!!
We had a mission leadership council on Wednesday and he came to speak
to us at the chapel in Newark. We were driving on our way there with
one of our zone leaders and one of the APs because they had been on
exchange, and hit a bunch of traffic (also because we thought we would
be early and stopped at chick filet), and we ended up getting there
late right as they were singing the opening hymn.... It was super
embarrassing... But the meeting was so amazing and Elder Dube is from
Zimbabwe and he is so funny. But after the meeting Sister Dean and I
went up to him to say sorry for being late and to shake his hand. He
was so cool, but then the assistants grabbed us before we left, and
said that Elder Dube wanted to have personal interviews with us....
What. We thought we were so busted... But it was a super neat
experience to talk one on one with a General Authority. He interviewed
a couple others too... But We were the only sisters.... Which could be
really good or really bad. Either way, it was definitely a highlight
of my life.😁

Also, I don't remember if I have ever told you about our investigator
Donald. Donald is not his real first name, but he is from Nigeria, and
we don't know how to pronounce his real first name, so we just call
him Donald haha. But he was supposed to come to church and didn't -_-
so we were sad about that... We had a great lesson with him though,
and he started reading the Book of Mormon and when we told him how it
was written for us to apply to our lives in this time he was so
impressed and then basically told US all the how to begin teaching
bullet points in Preach My Gospel! He said that he is convinced in his
heart that what we are saying is true, and that if he could, he would
get baptized in two weeks! He opened up to us and he is concerned
about how his wife will take this because she already has a church...
So we invited him to kneel down and pray that night about this, and
the next day we skyped him and he said that he had just gotten two
jobs that he had applied for!!!!!! He was so excited and we could not
believe the miracles he had seen!!! He said that he would definitely
pray on his knees from then on haha! He has still been struggling a
bit with his wife though, so please pray for him and that her heart
will be softened!
Ok, then on Friday we had another conference with Elder Dube for the
South half of the mission, and it was even better than the first time
I heard him.... Man I love the Gospel. Being out here serving in New
Jersey is the best thing ever. I love it so much, and I am so thankful
that Heavenly Father has been blessing me with His spirit so much
lately. I love teaching the gospel, and even though it is hard, I
don't ever want to do anything else for the rest of my life. I BELIEVE
IN MIRACLES!!! I know that they are real, and that miracles are proof
that faith is a real power, and that Heavenly Father knows us
individually and hears our prayers. I know that Joseph Smith is  the
one that brought that knowledge back to the earth when he had the
First Vision in response to his prayer. He restored the truth about
who Heavenly Father and His Son are and our relationship with Them. I
love it!!!

Ok, then the last adventure is the Latino Festival we got to help with
 on Saturday.... Holy goodness that was a literal donkey show.... They
had all of the Hispanic countries represented there and the food was
SOOOO good!!!! But I didn't really get to enjoy it because..... I was
in a costume... Yeah, they had these giant 45lb devil costumes from
the Dominican Republic that we took turns wearing haha. We had to keep
switching about every 45 mins because it was so hot and they were so
heavy.... It was literally like wearing a 45lb sleeping bag and we
were SOAKED with sweat afterwards. We were SUPER sore the next day
haha but it was so fun. 😁

Ok.... Love you all so mucho!!! MUAH! ❤️

 

No way...

Ok, sorry this is so late today! We went on a zone hike, but no one
knew where it went so we ended up super far away and had to wait for
people to come get us in a car haha.

But this week was so crazy!  Mariano has officially moved to
Chicago... :( So sad... But he seems to be doing well though, and we
still occasionally skype him to teach him. We went on another couple
of exchanges this week, which are always super fun. But on this last
exchange, I went with Sister Morivil, and she is Hatian! She is super
fun, and we met the mayor of Hightstown together! He was sitting out
on the sidewalk because there was a giant motorcycle event going on.
Apparently every year for like 15 years there has been this giant
group of motorcyclists that drive cross country in remembrance of 9/11
and go from Pennsylvania to NY, and there were about 2000
motorcyclists that came through! It was so cool, and the best part was
that there were tons of people out on the streets waiting for them to
come by, so they had nothing better to do than talk to us!!!! It was
awesome!! I LOVE this country!!

Then we also did something new on Saturday night. We made a free
lemonade stand at a park, and took a couple of young women with us. It
was really fun and actually super successful! We talked to a lot of
people, and even though most of them were Hindu, it was so fun! I am
now a professional lemonade maker!  ;)

Sorry this is short, but I love you all so much!!!! Have a wonderful week! :D

Sister Baine

WOWZA!!!

 This week has been SO fun and SO crazy!!!!!!

So i dont know if you guys remember Brother LaConte, but he came down with Sister Dean and I for an evening and taught a couple lessons with us, and it was so fun! We also has some fun lessons with Mariano and raced him... Ahem what. And we also went to the temple with him and one of our members!!!! It was SO much fun, and we got to ride in his Transformers Camaro with him, and we almost died because he is a crazy Italian.... Then after the temple we literally went to a pub to eat.... Hahaha but dont tell my mission President. They had the best pizza though But it was a blast!

We have also been super blessed with meal appointments  and opportunities to build great relationships with members. And we went on two exchanges with our sisters, and man, i STILL love being an STL so much!! I have a feeling i am going to get released after this transfer because i have already been an STL for four transfers... But i will do what the Lord wants me to.

Sorry this is short, but i love you all so much!!! MUAH!



Sister Baine :)

Oh and this is a picture of our garage house haha

 

Oh man....

Well guess what??? Sister Dean and I attended two baptisms yesterday... And neither of them were ours D': But one of them was Adrienne's!!! She was a lady that Sister McAllister and I taught a while ago before we passed her off to the elders. Her lessons were SO spiritual!! Man, they were awesome, and I love her so much! Then the other was a guy named Vaughn who the Elders have been teaching, but he is in our ward, and he is SO cool! :) I'll send you some cool pics.

But we went on an exchange this week with our Princeton Hermanas, and I went with Sister Acosta... She lived in Arizona, but she is pretty much straight from Mexico haha. It was crazy with all that Mexican blood... Two resourceful Mexicans together was nutso. We almost robbed a bank. Bwaha just kidding... But almost.

But we have been getting fed a lot more this week!!!! Partly because we have been asking all the members if we can come over and then they magically invite us for dinner! See, the members here are really good, they just need a little bit of help haha. But it is super fun to use Facebook to help them send Mormon messages or inspirational quotes to their friends. We call it "Farming Facebook Friends" and if you do it on Friday, then it is FFFF. Quadruple F. And if you do it faithfully, then it is FFFFF. Anyways.

We have also been FaceTiming Mariano nearly every night, which has been really helpful with followup and keeping in contact with him. Facebook is such a blessing! It makes missionary work SO much easier and more effective! Now we don't have to spend 6 hours every day knocking doors with no success! YAY!!!! I am mad I keep forgetting to get pictures with Mariano though... I will this week though.

We also had another meeting today. It was an All Mission conference and training on Facebook. It was really fun... But man I was about to explode... That was so much sitting still.... Thanks Mom for teaching me how to do that in Sacrament meeting... Because that meeting went from literally 9 to 4:30, and that is not counting the hour and a half drive to and from Morristown... It was awful.

Oh yes, and we were also supposed to have an AWESOME Latino festival, but the guy running it (whose name is Juan... And he is a super cool guy, and is our friend) was afraid that there would be thunder and lightening storms, so he cancelled it... But then it was perfect outside all day... But oh well. It got postponed until a couple weeks from now... But Sister Dean and I are super excited for it, because we get to dress up in some SUPER awesome Dominican looking costumes and dance around. Haha back to those golden mascot days... And btw Sister Dean was a mascot too!! She was a Tiger. But I was probably better... And Panthers are better anyways. But it will be fun. :) But yeah, the day that it got cancelled we had to stay out in like 100% humidity for like 100 hours to tell all the people that still showed up for the festival. Afterwards though, Juan took us to this crazy Hispanics house to eat. It was really good though. :) So it was worth it.

Ok... Well sorry I don't have more funny stories to tell you... But next week I will. :) love you all, and hope you guys are having a fabulous summer! Thank you for your prayers and examples! MUAH!

Sister Baine :)

Let's Do This....

Well this week has been JAM PACKED with adventures. I think this has
been the busiest week of my mission. We went on three exchanges this
week with our sisters who needed some extra help, and it was so much
fun. We all learned a lot and saw SO many miracles! Wow, it is
incredible how much the Lord blesses us when we do our best to obey.
Miracles always happen on exchange. :)

The fun part is that the last exchange we went on was with Sister Hale
and Vanhoven! And guess what? I got to be companions with my beloved
Sister Hale again for a day!!! It was SUCH a party to work with her
and reminisce about old times haha. We literally died laughing at all
the memories and pictures and videos we went back through. So much fun
:D

Then yesterday we had a baptism! Lydia got baptized, and it was such a
sweet experience. Her brother baptized her, and her mother shared her
testimony with all of us. She didn't want it to be a big thing with
lots of people and speakers and everything, so we mainly just had
testimonies, and the spirit was SO strong!

THEN we went to the temple open house with Alan and Amos!!! It was a
blast, and even though the AC didn't work in the van we rode in for
and hour and a half, it was worth it :) The spirit was definitely
there, and the temple is SO beautiful! On the ride back, apparently
Alan and Amos made a pact that whoever gets baptized first has to
baptize the other one ;) so hopefully they are serious, because if not
we are dropping both of them. But they are really good friends with
the Houts (the member fam that took us) So hopefully they will stick
around.

We also got transfer calls last night! I am staying here in Plainsboro
and will be leading out the area for the first time! Sister McAllister
will be getting transferred to be with Sister Wood in Scotch Plains!
In my old apartment! It is so funny how the Lord works. Sister Dean
will be my new companion, and I am super excited because she came out
here with me! We were in the same MTC district! This is going to be a
straight up donkey show with us together haha.

Well I hope you like the pictures!! I love you all and pray you are
doing well! Thank you so much for your support and prayers! MUAH!

Sister Baine

Wow Wow Wubsey (7/18)

Hello everyone!!! Sorry this isn't going to be as long as last weeks,
but I have some AWESOME pictures for you!!! Last week for Pday we went
to a Hindu Temple!!! It was so cool, but also kinda crazy. It
definitely wasn't a spiritual experience at all (all those statues and
idols etc were kinda creepy) haha but it was definitely impressive.

So this next week is going to be SUPER crazy... But awesome. We are
going on 3 exchanges (an exchange very day!) and then this Sunday we
are having a baptism! Her name is Lydia and she is the daughter of a
member in our ward. She we have been teaching her for less than a
month because she has already been going to church and pretty much
knows everything haha. We still love her so much though, and she is so
sweet.

We also have a special temple trip this Sunday to go tour the new
Philadelphia Temple, and we are bringing Amos and Alan (they are our
two stubborn Black guys haha) and hopefully we will have Gayle and
Jamie too! We are sad because Varsha and her friends (the Hindus)
haven't met with us in a couple of weeks :( but we are praying that
they will come back soon.

Well I love you all, and I am so thankful for all your prayers. I
really feel them! I KNOW that I have been blessed with the best family
Heavenly Father could give me. My family helps and supports me from
both sides of the veil, and I will forever be grateful for it. :) love
you so much!!!

Sister Baine :)

I Can See Clearly Now, the Rain is Gone.... (7/11)

Seriously, it has been raining so much here! One day it will be super
hot, and then the next day... It will still be super hot, but it will
be pouring rain! And then it will completely downpour for like 2
minutes, and then stop... And then 30 minutes later go again haha.
This world is so crazy...

So I went on two exchanges this week, back to back, but it was so much
fun! I love my sisters SO much, and I have been growing so much from
working with them and learning from their experiences as well. Let me
tell you, these missionaries that come out are prepared to do the
Lords work! Oh and guess what? ...Maybe I already told you, but Sister
Hale is in the Zone that I cover! OH!!!! And you know what else is
super ironic?? She is serving in Toms River, which is my old area were
I served right before here! And The sisters that were serving there,
Sister McConkie and Sister Wood, both went to Scotch Plains where
Sister Hale just left, and I served before with her!! I thought it was
so funny how God connected everything. But yes, so now my beloved
Sister Hale is training a new missionary (her second time training) in
Toms River, and I got to go on exchange with her baby... .Her name is
Sister Vanhoven, and she is SO awesome! And then the other exchange I
went on was with Sister Perkinson (who for some reason I ALWAYS forget
to take pictures with... Sorry). It was so much fun though, and even
though I am super exhausted, I am so thankful for the miracles that we
could see. It is absolutely amazing what the Lord can do through you
when you are serving others. SO many miracles, and I have never felt
more in tune or of use in Heavenly Fathers hands than when I have been
on exchange. The revelations that we get to help these sisters are so
cool to receive!

Ok, I will tell you just a couple miracle stories haha. So when I was
with Sister Perkinson, We were knocking for forever (which I really
very strongly dislike with a lot of my heart) and it was SO hot, and
we smelled SO bad haha, but at the very end of the day, we knocked on
this door and an older man answered, and for some reason my mouth and
my brain couldn't work together to form words... So I stood there
stuttering for a few moments, and then said something dumb asking him
if he had heard of the Book of Mormon or something like that.... But
he ended up being super nice and we talked to him for nearly an hour
on his doorstep. He told us some of the things that he had been
through in life, and the miracles that he had seen, and we shared a
couple of scriptures with him, and introduced the Book of Mormon. It
was SO cool, and the spirit was very strong, and we said a prayer with
him before we left. Then as we were walking away, and we're almost to
our car, he called out to us, and we turned around, and he had his
wife in tow and introduced her to us, and it turns out that she and
Sister Perkinson are from the same town in Arizona! We exchanged
contact information, and hopefully they go back to teach and baptize
them!

THEN! When I was with Sister Vanhoven... Man there were so many
miracles... That girl has so much faith, and she has only been out for
like 4 weeks. So to be brief, we went to Seaside and found a less
active and taught him, which was a miracle because he hadn't been in
contact with the church in about 8 years. Then we went contacting and
knocking for about 4 hours around there (with a delicious lunch break
in between) and had a couple contacts, but didn't teach anyone, and
even though it was the PERFECT day weather wise to be contacting by
the shore, we started to get a little discouraged. So we decided that
we were going to share the video with ONE person before we left, and
then we saw a lady in her car, and Sister Vanhoven asked if she had a
couple minutes. Surprisingly, she said yes! So we showed her the
video, and then talked with her for a long time about her faith in
Christ and found out that she lives right down the street from our
church, and she said she would go and that we could come back and talk
to her more about our message!

THEN! The next day we went to go see
one of the investigators that they were working with (that I actually
started teaching with Sister McConkie) and she wasn't there, so we
started driving away when the spirit told us to go back and knock one
of the doors. So we went back, and on our way to knock the door, we
met a guy named Matt walking with his dog and nephew. We started
talking to him, and he said that he recognized Sister Vanhoven and had
talked to her before (even though she didn't remember it at all haha).
We showed a video to him and his nephew, and talked to them for a
while, then they had to go. So we knocked on the door, and there was
no one there... Oh well. On our way back to the car, I was awkwardly
doing a happy dance, when I noticed a guy sitting in a creepy white
van watching me do my happy dance... AWKWARD... So I stopped, and told
Sis Vanhoven. Then what does she do? She goes up and starts talking to
the guy!! It turns out he wasn't really creepy, he just had a flat
tire and was waiting for someone to come and pick him up. So we talked
about Jesus Christ, and she taught him about the Book of Mormon. He
took a copy, and she got his number so they could set up a time to
meet. Then we did end up seeing the investigator (Dorothy) anyways,
and she said she would come to church. :)

Wow!!! That was a lot, sorry... I kind of word vomited all over you
guys... BUT! One more thing. We had dinner at a members house with
Alan this week, and it was great! We talked about the Holy Ghost and
how we know when things are true, and everyone bore their testimony
and the spirit was so strong!!! Then we got pictures haha. We also got
another guy named Amos to go to the temple with us on the 24! I am so
excited! It is such a huge blessing that we are going to have another
temple so close to us, and that we can bring so many people to
experience it at the open house. It is going to be the best!

 
Ok... Well I think that's it for now... God is good. Love you all so
much!!!! :) MUAH!
Oh, and by the way, Happy Birthday 2 days ago to the BEST Mom in the
ENTIRE WORLD!!! Love you!!!

Sister Baine :)