May 5, 2014 Feliz Cinco de Mayo

Hola mi familia!

Parece que has tenido una semana muy ocupada! He tenido una semana de locos, así!

I hope my Spanish is correct. Maybe someday I’ll learn Spanish! Anyway, it sounds like you’ve had a crazy week, but it sounds like it was a good one. I can’t believe you got a bunny! She’s so cute, though :).

First of all, we’ve had a very “wet” and crazy week. Tuesday started the long stretch of rain that we were supposed to receive last week. It rained off and on all day Tuesday and then it rained all day long on Wednesday. On Wednesday it was a pretty steady rain, too, and it caused flooding. We drove over to the church on Wednesday and on our way home we found the road we usually go on closed because the river had flooded. Even the other way we go sometimes was closed. We were a little worried that we wouldn’t make it home... Luckily though we found another way home (even though we had to leave our area to go home...). Even President and Sister Anderson’s basement started to flood a little. Crazy rain! I wish I could send some out to Utah!

Daughters of a Heavenly Father

This weekend Phoenixville was the place to be! Friday was the first of a summer long celebration of what they call “First Friday.” They had bands playing and vendors with tables and all sorts of fun things going on right outside our apartment. We ended up volunteering at the Civic Center that night, though, for their Family Night Out activity. Saturday was the food festival where they blocked off some streets and had supposedly 50 food trucks. There was food everywhere! Sister Hanson and I have really been craving barbecued hamburgers for a long time now and we were determined to get one during the food festival. However, there was a funeral that morning at the church that we asked to come to (It was for an elderly lady who had quite a few nonmember family members), and so we decided that we would get a hamburger for dinner. Well, by the time we went to go get our hamburger, they were cleaning things up… Someday I will get a barbecued hamburger.

Tuesday morning we had a miracle happen. We were supposed to have an appointment with one of our new investigators who our zone leaders found, but he wasn’t returning our phone calls or texts. (He lives in a locked apartment building.) So, we decided to go to his apartment anyway. When we got there we tried calling him again and still no answer. After waiting a few minutes, Sister Hanson asked what we should do. I half jokingly but half seriously said that we pray and ask for someone to come down the stairs. Sister Hanson prayed, and she must have great faith because a few moments after our prayer, someone came down the stairs and opened the door for us. Surprisingly enough, it was our investigator Rob! Unfortunately, he forgot about our appointment and was trying to move things because he is moving. We did set up another appointment for next week, though, without knowing we would see him again later this week. Saturday night we were walking up to the park to find Tom (our homeless recent convert) when we ran into Rob and his buddies. We talked to them for a moment and then told them we had to get going. Rob stopped us and asked if we could teach him something. We agreed, but little did I know he was drunk. So, we sat down on a bench outside of his apartment with his friend Paul who is from West Virginia and knows the Bible inside and out but doesn’t quite live what he preaches. One of the first thing Rob did when we sat down was light up his cigar... Oh boy. It was a long lesson... We then pulled out a Restoration pamphlet and began to teach them the Restoration. Paul interrupted with his preaching and luckily Sister Hanson started to talk to him and keep him occupied, so I could teach Rob. Shortly after, Rob mentioned to me that he had a few drinks but that he wanted to learn. (Now I know what alcohol smells like...) So, I proceeded on teaching him the restoration and he accepted everything I taught him. I’m not really sure how much he retained, but I left him with a pamphlet, Book of Mormon, and a sticky note with some commitments written on it. I’m hoping that he woke up the next morning and read the sticky note and would remember to do the things I asked him to do. Oh boy, that was quite an interesting experience.

Last night I was fortunate enough to watch the CES Devotional with Elder Ballard! It was so good and hit on so many important things going on in the world today! I would definitely suggest you watch it or read it if you get the chance to!

Lastly, some great news I heard a couple of weeks ago, but keep forgetting to tell you is that one of the ladies and her daughter I started teaching in Reading is getting baptized within the next couple of weeks! I am so excited for her and her daughter. It also makes me feel good to know that I was doing something right in Reading ;)

So, for Skyping on Sunday... I still have not heard anything about it... So, I guess just let me know what time would be good for you and the Skype name again and we’ll work around that. Thanks!

Well, that’s about it. I hope you all have a wonderful week and I look forward to talking to you on Sunday!

Love,
Sister Davis :)

P.S. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! :)

April 28, 2014 What a Crazy Week!

Hey everyone!

So, this week has been an interesting one. We've done a lot of finding and we found three new investigators (with the help of our zone leaders)! But that's not really the interesting part. The interesting/crazy part happened earlier this week when we were supposed to take our car to Broomall to have it fixed.

So, Elder Jones, the vehicle coordinator, set up an appointment for our car to be fixed on Tuesday. When we asked him what time he said 'whenever.' So, we just put it into our schedule later in the afternoon because that worked best for miles. Little did we know (we should have just expected this) that the auto body shop wanted our car first thing in the morning. Around eleven they called Elder Jones to ask where we were, so he then called us but we were out tracting and didn't have our phone on us. Then we drove back to Sister Rothey's house and she wanted to take us out for lunch and we forgot to check our phone. When we got back from lunch with Sister Rothey we checked our phone.

We had six missed calls from Elder Jones, one from President Anderson and a text from him, and one from our zone leaders and a text from them as well. Elder Jones had also called the hospitals in the surrounding area, the police, and sent our zone leaders to go over to check out apartment to make sure we hadn't died from carbon monoxide poisoning! Apparently Elder Jones thought that we had died because we weren't answering our phone for a few hours and we never returned his call. He was relieved though when we finally called him back. However, he still seemed a little flustered.

Sister Hanson and Sister Davis with Sister and Elder Smuin

We rushed down to Broomall and we didn't hear the end of it from the office missionaries... They were all very worried. I'm glad to know that we are loved and they were glad that we were okay. After talking about it with Elder Jones, we rushed over to the auto body shop and found out that our car would need to stay over night because it couldn't be fixed until the morning! Now we had no way to get home and to get to the appointment we had that night! Long story short, we ended up taking our car home and bringing it back the next morning to be fixed. Lesson learned... never leave your phone in the car ha.

To add more craziness to our week, our sister training leaders decided to double in on Wednesday and so did our zone leaders on Saturday, both of which we had no idea until the night before. Now, normally this isn't a problem, unless you find out the night before! (They tried to tell us the week before, but we never got their text or FB message.) This meant that we had to double plan for our days and so planning took a lot longer than it should! We also had to get a new phone this week and so we were without a phone for a day while our zone leaders took it Broomall and brought back our new one. (Of course, the one time that we need to get a hold of someone and we can't!) What a crazy week!

Member baptism

Besides the craziness, we had some miracles this week. One of them us that we have three new investigators! We're teaching one of them tonight. Saturday, there was a baptism that we attended for a member's daughter. She is the only member in her family and so some of her nonmember family were there. Yesterday in church she told us that her mom, who she has never got along with and is very strong in her faith, really enjoyed her time here and the baptism. She said that she has never felt so welcome in her church and she has been there for a really long time! Her mom is also starting to ask her questions about the church! How awesome is that?

We also found out that people notice us walking around Phoenixville. The zone leaders tracted into some people that would say “Oh, yeah, we've seen those girls walking around.” It's good to know that we're noticed!

Valley Forge District

Okay, so for calling on Mother's Day, I don't have any info yet. I'll probably hear the info this week during our conference call, but I'm going to assume that we can Skype on our iPads. Hopefully next week I'll have more info!

Well, I hope you all have a wonderful week! Love you :)

Love,
Sister Davis

P.S. Congrats Josh and Kels on your graduation and the house! So exciting. Oh and please tell Chad and Becca congrats too! Thanks :)

April 21, 2014 Happy Easter!

Hey everyone!

Happy Easter!... A day late. I hope you had a great Easter though! Mine was pretty good. We started it off with an awesome day at church. First, Femi was confirmed and then we had an awesome Sunday School lesson on the Holy Week. Then we had Easter dinner at a ward member's home with their family. That was fun :)

Happy Easter

As you may have already seen on my Facebook page, we had a mini missionary this weekend. Her name is Sister Dunbar and she is only sixteen! She is from one of the Philadelphia wards, so she wasn't too far from home, but we had a fun time. Since we don't have any investigators at the moment, she wasn't able to sit in a real missionary lesson, but she was able to see some door approaches for meeting potential investigators, do some service, and sit in on a less active lesson. She says that she wants to serve a mission only after spending three days with us, so that's good! I guess Sister Hanson and I didn't scare her or corrupt her too badly.

Sisters Davis and Hanson with mini missionary Sister Dunbar

Earlier this week Sister Hanson and I were out trying to contact some potentials. It was raining earlier in the morning, but by the time we were going to head out it was only misting a little bit. So, I decided that since we would be walking I didn't want to carry around my umbrella... Bad idea. About fifteen minutes into our journey, making it halfway across town, the rain started to pick up. Then a few minutes later it decided to down pour! We were soaked! Everything we had on was drenched! We decided that we should probably go home and change because no one would want to let us in sopping wet. It actually turned out to be a funny experience. Sister Hanson and I laughed the whole way home.  

Caught in the rain

The rest of my week consisted of finding people, service, a couple of Skype lessons with Femi, and a less active lesson. Not really anything too exciting.

The Because of Him social media take over was pretty cool this week. I actually had ideas for things I could post on Facebook. I loved the video that the church produced for it! It was so awesome and we felt it was a non threatening way to get the word out. We showed it to a couple potential investigators and to a lot of ward members. I heard by the middle of the week it had 2 million views on YouTube! That is awesome! I sure hope you had the opportunity to see it. But anyway, I really liked being able to focus on the Savior throughout the week and the true meaning of Easter. I learned a lot about this whole Holy Week, like the events that took place on each day that I didn't know before, and a deeper, greater appreciation for the Atonement and Resurrection. It was also cool to be out here with all the different religions and their traditions.

This morning Sister Hanson and I went over to a member's home to try her T25 workout video (which is like P90x but condensed into 25 minutes). It was intense but such a good workout. We both commented afterwards that we felt so much more healthy and happy. Sister Hanson and I have been joking about doing "six months to sexy" a few months early, but at the same time we were serious, too, haha! So last week we bought a whole bunch of fruit and vegetables and have been trying to
eat healthier. Once our six month mark hits, we're going to try to cut out all sugar and I'm going to try bread. We'll see if I can actually do it, but I really want to. So, for the rest of my mission, please don't send me candy unless I ask for it, ha. Thanks!

Well, that's about it for my week. I hope you have a great week! Can't wait to talk to you in a couple if weeks! I love you! :)

Love,
Sister Davis

April 14, 2014 What a Week!

Hey everyone!

Wow! What a week! First of all, this weekend was BEAUTIFUL!!! It got up to 80 degrees this weekend and I didn't have to wear five layers! I loved it! :) hehe

Secondly, Femi got baptized yesterday!!! It was quite a sweet surprise. Thursday night we received a message from Femi asking us if he could be baptized this weekend or next. He told us that he was able to work everything out with his wife and she gave him the "ok" to be baptized. So, we quickly arranged everything and he was able to be baptized. I was actually really surprised at how many ward members came especially on such short notice. Overall, it was a great day (especially since it was warm outside, too) and Femi was really happy and said that he felt like a new person. 

Femi's baptism, April 13, 2014 with the Jenson family

Most of the rest of our week entailed service. We helped a member in our ward clean up some wood in a bedroom that she is renovating and we also helped another member move some things to her new house. We also helped fill Easter eggs for the Phoenixville's Easter egg hunt they had this weekend. (We volunteer at the Civic Center once a week which is just the recreation center for Phoenixville.) Not really anything else too exciting that happened this week.

Oh! We did have a church tour for Chris on Friday and it went really well. Basically the entire time he was just asking to be baptized. He kept asking questions about how we baptize and what he needs to do to be baptized, so we extended the invitation and he accepted. We tried to set a date with him, but he was going to be out of town that day. He did say though that he would come to church on Sunday, however he woke up sick yesterday morning so he was unable to come.

So now that Femi is baptized, Sister Hanson and I basically do not have any investigators anymore... Chris has now moved into the elders area so he'll become their investigator and then Manuela will eventually be turned over to the elders in the other ward since she lives in their ward boundaries. I guess we're just going to have to get to work!

So, I don't know if you heard about the "Because of Him" social media "take-over" that the church is doing this week, but all of the missionaries have been asked to promote this and flood their Facebook pages with it. I want to ask you if you will join me with this to flood the Internet with this. You can go to mormon.org/becauseofhim to find memes, videos, etc. or you can share what I put on my Facebook page. (This started yesterday and it ends on Easter.)

Sister Hanson and Sister Davis at Valley Forge

Oh! I almost forgot! Transfers are this week, but I'm staying and so is Sister Hanson. I'm sure you figured transfers were coming up soon since I received my Easter package a couple days ago. Thank you for it!

Well, I hope you all have a great week! Happy Easter! :)

Love,

Sister Davis

April 7, 2014 Spring is really here! And my sinuses are definitely letting me know it...

Hey everyone!

So, spring is definitely here and I love it! Except for the part where I get allergies and my sinuses decide to drain... All week long I've had sinus drainage and my throat is loving it... NOT! Can't wait for when the blossoms start to bloom now. But anyway, my week was pretty good. Conference was soooo good this weekend! I loved it :). It was kind of funny because just on Friday we were talking to a ward member and a lot of the things talked about in conference we talked about with her. That helped me to know that the conference talks were truly inspired!

Sister Hanson and Sister Davis at Philadelphia Temple site

Like I said, my week has been pretty good, although it was kind of a roller coaster week with our investigators. First of all, Femi didn't get baptized yesterday due to a disagreement with his wife over abortion as well as some visa issues. Femi still has a strong desire to be baptized as well as a testimony, but he doesn't want to cause a problem with his wife by being baptized when his wife asked him not to at this time. His wife's visa was rejected and so it's looking like his family won't be able to make it to the US until maybe June now rather than the end of this month. We believe that he may not be baptized now until his family makes it to the states. He knows the church is true and he told us that this church is what he has been looking for since last July! We're going to stay in contact with him though and still hopefully teach him.

We also found out this week that Manuela has gone through a really hard loss of a family member these past couple of weeks. However, we would have never known if she wouldn't have told us because of how strong she has been and she hasn't even shown her mourning. We also found out that she read 1 and 2 Nephi all in one night! She is also trying to keep all of the commandments and "rules" that we have. She is doing awesome!

Thursday night we had a great lesson with Chris (who is another investigator we have who I only met a week and a half ago). We talked about the nature of God with him and helped him to see that God is an actual being and not just a ball of energy, as he was taught growing up in the Catholic Church. We talked to him the next day and he told us that he actually remembered to pray that night (he has been forgetting to pray) and he received an answer to his prayer that day! We're supposed to have a church tour with him tomorrow so hopefully that will help him with a desire to come to church.

Sister Hanson, Lucy, Moira, Jack and Sister Davis at Rocky statue in Philly

Friday night we had a ward activity and one of our members brought a lady that he met just about a half hour before the activity! He said that their daughters knew each other from school and so that got them talking. He found out that Ebony, the lady, is looking for a church and so he invited her to the activity and she came! We talked to her briefly and she said that she is interested in learning about our beliefs. We're going to call her tonight to try and set up a time to teach her.

That's about it for my highlights this week! I hope you all have a wonderful week! :)

Love you all!

Sister Davis :)

March 31, 2014 It's Always Sunny in PHILADELPHIA!

Hello!

Guess what?! Guess what?! I'm in Philly! I finally made it to Philly :) We were a little worried about today if it was going to work out or not because it has been raining all weekend long... Luckily, though, the rain stopped this morning and the sun came out. (I guess Heavenly Father heard my prayers.) And to answer your question, Mom, I haven't heard of any flooding, but there was a lot of water on the roads yesterday and the creeks were very full.

Moira, a member in our ward who nannies, took us to Philly today with the kids she cares for. We started off at the touch and feel museum with the kids and it was so fun! Right now we're eating lunch in the Reading Terminal Market which is basically just a huge food court place with various types of food. Our next venture is to the temple and then to Liberty Bell and Love Park. I also believe we'll go to the art museum and anywhere else we can make it today. I love it so far and I'm so excited for the rest of the day. I'll send pictures next week :).

Since I'm emailing in the market, my email is going to be a little short today... Sorry,but I'll tell you all about it next week!

Femi's baptism is next Sunday and I am so excited! We met with him yesterday and he is doing so well. We asked how his readings were going and he told us that he is reading the Book of Mormon from the beginning and the end. He is also reading the Bible from Genesis, the Doctrine and Covenants, True to the Faith, and the Gospel Principles book! He is excited for his baptism next week and he finally told his wife that he is getting baptized! He said that he thinks she will be baptized after she gets her "trainings" in. (Femi calls our lessons trainings.)

We were only able to see Manuela on Monday night this week for FHE and it went well. We played Plan of Salvation "Life" with her and her kids. After a little while her kids lost interest in the game so we quickly finished and answered Manuela's questions afterward. She was going to come to church yesterday (she even got work off) but her son got sick. Hopefully we'll see her this week sometime!

I loved the Women's Broadcast on Saturday! It was so good and the best part was when President Eyring said that he was baptized in Philadelphia! :) hehe I can't wait for General Conference this weekend! So excited!

Well, I'm going to end there so I can get back to my Philly adventures! It sounds like you've had a busy week, though. I hope you have a wonderful week! Love you all!

Love,

Sister Davis

March 24, 2014 It's Spring Here...Finally!

Hey everyone!

Spring is finally here and I am so excited! Saturday was a B-E-A-UTIFUL 66 degrees. However, today is a little more chilly. More like 30 degrees, but hey it's finally Spring :)

This week has been pretty good. We started off the week with setting up an appointment with Manuela on Tuesday afternoon. However, she had to cancel because a water pipe broke in her house and it started to flood... Sister Hanson and I were beginning to think that we were never going to be able to meet with her! However, a miracle happened and we were able to see her on Wednesday evening after we had our Skype lesson with Femi! Manuela is awesome and has definitely been prepared! She was asking all of the right questions and even had some deeper questions or questions that would be answered in lessons later on. I also found out that she grew up in Yugoslavia (or whatever it is called today) but then moved to Austria. I'm not very good with my geography, but I told her that I had Yugoslavian ancestors and then I discovered that Grandpa Yalovich's family is Serbian and not the kind of Yugoslavian she is ( I can't remember what she said). But, nonetheless, I thought it was cool that she lived in Yugoslavia. Tonight we're teaching her and her kids as a Family Home Evening. 

Sisters Hanson and Davis with Carolyn and Moira, new converts

Like I mentioned before, we had a couple of lessons this week with Femi and he is still set for his baptism on the 6th of April! He is progressing very well and understands everything we teach him. He is willing to keep the commandments that we have been teaching him. He is awesome! Also, the members that allow us to teach Femi in their home bought Femi a quad [set of scriptures] and mini hymn book and had his name engraved on it! How awesome is that! Femi loved it.

Also this week we were trying to contact a potential investigator name Okasha. The description said that Okasha loves the missionaries and loves to cook for them. So, we decided that we would go try  to contact Okasha. Sister Hanson and I assumed that Okasha was a girl for some reason and were surprised to find out that Okasha is a guy. He invited us in and told us that we would need to come back another time when he wasn't busy but that he would make us food. We went back on Friday evening, but not to get food, just to see him and his wife. We found out that they are from Algeria and practicing their Islamic faith. They said that they listened to the missionaries in the past, but that it was threatening to them to change their religion. They were still really nice, though, and offered to make us food again sometime. (I wanted to throw this story in there because I think it is so cool how many people I have run into in this area that come from different walks of life and nationalities!)

Sister Hanson, Sister Anderson (mission president's wife), Sister Davis
and Moira at Stake Conference

This weekend we had stake conference in Broomall. It was really good and focused on Hastening the Work as well as changing and becoming like Christ. Elder Robins from the Quorum of the Seventy spoke and he was amazing! At the adult session on Saturday he talked about the idea of making first connections with people to do missionary work than to make first contact with them. When we make first connections with them we are more likely to teach them and not just a lesson and show them how the gospel can help them and pertain to them. (What Preach My Gospel is all about.) I thought this was so great!

Hump day celebrated by both Sister Hanson and Sister Davis
on March 23. They're halfway there!

That's about all I can remember for this week. I'm so excited for General Conference coming up in a couple of weeks! 

I hope you all have a fantastic week!

Love,

Sister Davis :)