November 26, 2013

To answer questions: We meet with Celeste, Melanie, and Mathew again tonight. They have been out of town every weekend since Matt has been home, so they haven't been coming to church. The lessons are going really well. Mathew is starting to remember why he joined the church and is remembering what the spirit feels like. Celeste and Melanie have been praying about the BOM but haven't gotten an answer yet, hopefully one comes soon! Celeste has a baptismal date for this Sunday, but we will have to postpone it because she hasn't been to church three times yet. We meet with the Cook-owens every sunday night. Her 12 year old son and 19 year old daughter have been baptized but the other two aren't old enough. Last time we met with them, Sister Cook-Owen's sister sat in for the lesson and we invited her to read and pray about the Book of Mormon, so hopefully she does! We weren't able to meet the Cason's this week, but we dropped some cookies off at their house. They are always so nice to us and we made a new appointment with them. Hopefully they don't cancel on us again. They just need to come to church! I know that once they come to church they will progress so much quicker, I just don't know how to get them there. We meet most investigators through i-netting (inspired contacting) which is where we go to a members house and then knock the houses around it. This week we were visiting a family that goes in and out of activity and we were able to meet their son (who is  less-active) and his non-member wife. They invited us over for dinner next week and we are going to start teaching her! I'm really excited!

Not too much happened this week. We helped the Woolley's, a family in the ward, pack, clean, move this week. It was fun and she really needed the help. They have six cute kids and her husband was working all day so she really appreciated our help. She gave us all of their food, which was really nice and we didn't have to buy much when we went grocery shopping. We also went to the Bishop's to make cookies and cupcakes. He texted pictures to Dad and sis lawrence's dad. Sister Lawrence's dad something super nice about how much he loves his daughter. Dad texted back "yum. thanks for the picture." It was really funny and he told everyone at ward council, so everyone thinks that my parents don't love me. Hahaha. 

I sang "Did you think to pray?" In church on Sunday. I sang with a black lady in the ward named Yolanda, and Sis L played. Her voice was WAYYYY different than mine, but it still sounded really good and we got a lot of compliments. 

I can't remember if I already told you this or not, but at the fair we met a guy that hasn't been active in ten years. We starting meeting with him and he was at church on Sunday!! He is excited for us to meet and start teaching his family when they move here in January. 

There is an old lady who everyone calls Greenie and she LOVES being with the missionaries. She comes to a lot of our appointments and took us to Olive Garden yesterday, which was the highlight of my week. I don't think I have anything else to say.

But everyone watch the Mormon Message "Daily Thanksgiving." And remember to be thankful!!

Happy Thanksgiving! 

P.S- We have a third dinner appointment on thanksgiving. I CAN"T DO THIS!

Also, Thanks for the letters and emails! I love them!

XOXO

Sister Koenig

 

I forgot to say this, but it was raining so hard today!! I've never seen so much rain before!

Some times I am on the computer the same time as Sister Koenig, and we can converse a little few questions.  This was in response to the lesson and interview last week with Pres. Craig, "It went well. I finished teaching the restoration in 2;58! It was a miracle! And he and his wife are so nice."
Transfers were this week, so p-day was a day late.  The good news is that she will stay with Sister Lawrence for another transfer.  Sister Lawrence has been in Brunswick for three transfers already.  The bishop texted Greg, and said he lobbied for them to stay together.

  the Woolley's

On Saturday we went to the Bishop's house and his wife taught us how to flood cookies. So we made cookies for our investigators and helped her make cookies and cupcakes for church. Service can be so fun! President Craig wants us to do 5 hours of service a week, but lately we have been doing more than that! 

All the missionaries in Brunswick

These are a recent converts cute kids. We shared a thanksgiving message with them and made these thankful turkeys. I came up with it on my own! I think I should be a preschool teacher too!

 

The Woolley's

November 18, 2013

In response to your e-mail: Melanie is Celeste's mom. And we are teaching Melanie's less active fiance Matt, Melanie, and Celeste tonight. We only had one investigator at church yesterday, Kasey, the little girl that got baptized yesterday. Her baptism was really good and Sis Lawrence and I did a musical number. The only bad part was that someone gave a 20 minute talk on the Holy Ghost. It went on FOREVER!!

I'm still really excited about teaching the Kason family. We taught them about the family proclamation and it went really well. At the end of the lesson, the dad, Blake, prayed for the first time. It was such a cool experience and the spirit was so strong!

Sister Cook-Owens is getting baptized on February 23! She is so excited! And her son Barry passed the sacrament for the first time yesterday. He loved it!

 I have gotten a lot of letters this week. I loved it! Keep em comin!

Transfers are the day before Thanksgiving. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that both Sister Lawrence and I will be able to stay here. I'm just getting to know people and we already have two dinner appointments on Thanksgiving with two really great families that I'm excited for. (Yes I'm going to get sooooooo fat :( ) Sister Lawrence has been her for three transfers. The weather is weird. Two days this last week we're FREEZING and rainy. Luckily, a ward member gave us a space heater to use. But today is hot and muggy and apparently supposed to be in the 80's. Crazy. We usually have two or three dinner appointments during the week. No one has fed us anything to different than what we eat back at home. We had some Georgia shrimp the other day and they were really good. People take us out to eat a lot. 

I absolutely need a cute floral dress from ASOS for Christmas and some short heels to wear to church would be nice too. And a rice pack. 

Exercising is good. We switch off running one day and then doing the workouts you sent the next day. We really like the ones you sent so keep sending more. It is so humid here that I come in after running dripping sweat...which is not normal for me. Also the humidity makes all of the letters I get soggy and if you leave gum out and not in the fridge it gets super sticky and gross. 

Zone conference was really good. President Craig told us that 49% of the mission is sister missionaries now.  Also, he said that in the past 6 weeks, there have been 1500 new investigators!! We also learned that we need to pray to be able to recognize how the spirit speaks to each of us, because it's different for everyone. Tomorrow we have interviews with Pres Craig and we have to teach him a three minute lesson from a pamphlet that he picks for us. I'm so nervous! It is so much material to cover in such a short amount of time!

This week we were able to find five new investigators! I'm not really sure how interested they really are yet, but I'm excited. There is one that I am really excited about. Her name is Lauren and she has a 6 year old named Allie. We knocked on their door one night and she told us that she went to a baptist church when she was younger but hasn't been to any church in a while. She connected really well with Sis Lawrence and I and we started talking about what they like to do and things like that. We found out that Allie does pageants, so I was asking if they ever watch the show Toddlers and Tiara's because I love it, and she started laughing and told me that Allie was on it last season!! Anyone that knows me knows how much I love that show and how exciting this is for me! Hahah It was really funny.  I can't wait to go back and teach them this week. 

We got to do a service project this week. It was the worst. We cleaned out a lady's trailer. It was so bad. Oh my gosh. I'm gagging thinking about it right now. There were cockroaches and she said that she just caught a rat in there the other day. She should have been on Hoarding: Buried Alive. In her bedroom, the floor of the trailer had fallen through and the only thing keeping us from falling to the ground was the carpet. It was so scary! I was vacuuming cobwebs off of the wall because everything was covered in dusty cobwebs and I went to vacuum cobwebs from behind a picture hanging on the wall and right when I lifted it up spiders started crawling out. I screamed so loud and dropped the vacuum and ran. It was traumatizing. 

Thanks again for the package and the book. Everyone should read "The power of everyday missionaries." I really like the quote in it that says "Every time you take someone by the hand and introduce him or her to Jesus Christ, you will feel how deeply our Savior loves you and loves the person whose hand is in yours." I've seen this in my life and I know how true it really is.

Read Jacob 3:1-2

I love you all!

XOXO

 

Sister Koenig

 

 This is the service project.

 Ben Perkins (ward mission leaders son)  He likes to call to see if his sister,

 Sister Koenig can come over.

 She says Georgia is making her brave!

 The Bishop messaged us these last two pictures.  The first is when they were at the fair handing out pamphlets and answering questions.  Below is from the service project.  He said these two girls were so helpful  a service project organized by the Elders quorum.  He said they are great and have a wonderful spirit about them..

 

November 11, 2013

 

This week was pretty good. On Monday night we met with Celeste and Melanie again. They are so nice! They bought us candles, and soap from bath and body works to say thank you for teaching them and they gave us cookies! Probably two of the nicest people ever. I invited them both to be baptized on December first and Celeste said yes!!! Melanie said she has to talk to her fiance (who is an inactive member) first, but if he is okay with it then she will get baptized too. I'm so excited for them! 

This week we went on exchanges with the Sister Training leaders.  They aren't really teaching anyone so we just tracted... which isn't my favorite thing. But I did get to stay in their apartment. Sister Lawrence got the short end of the stick. Their place was so nice! It was a gated apartment, and they had carpet, and two bathrooms, a dishwasher, heater and a gym!! At least now I can have better stories to compare with Logan and Skye and let them know how I was roughing it... Oh and we found a giant cockroach in our shower last night. It was scary, but we killed it with bathroom cleaner. 

There are lots of nut trees here, so when we are out tracting we pick them up of the roads and take them with us to eat later. 

I don't remember if I told you about the Kason family, but they are a family of five that we are teaching. They are really sweet. This week we got to teach them the plan of salvation. They were so excited to hear that they can be together as a family FOREVER. It was really cool to see the reaction of people learning that for the first time. I guess sometimes I take the knowledge of the gospel that I have for granted, but after that experience I realized that I am so blessed to know what I know and so blessed to be out on a mission teaching people about the gospel that has blessed my life so much. 

We didn't have any investigators come to church yesterday. Not even one. It was so depressing! I wish they could just understand how important church is!!

Last night we made crepes with the Cook-Owens family. They loved them! Sister Cook-Owens found out that her husband gets out of prison in February, so she is planning on getting baptized a week after he gets out. Yay!!

Now to answer your questions: Sister Lawrence does facebook while I just go on Mormon.org and watch videos. I'll probably be a facebook missionary once I finish my 12 weeks of training. Collard greens are gross. The area here is reallyyyyyy spread out, so we drive everywhere, but sometimes we park a little ways from the houses so we can knock a few doors in the neighborhood. 

We have another zone conference tomorrow in Jacksonville. We have to leave at like 6:00 in the morning blehhhh.

Dad- I want to see a picture of your new car! And that's exciting that your the new YM president. 

I'm glad to hear that Shelly woke up. I've been praying for her every time I pray... And that's a lot of prayers! So i'm glad to hear they're working.

Who reads my blog? Can you please send me the squires email, the recipe for the orange drink, and my grey leggings please? or should I just buy some here? Thanks. 

I love y'all and love letters! Read 2 Nephi 25:25-26

XOXO 

Sister Koenig

 Sister Training Leaders at the ward talent show

 Making crepes with the Cook-Owens family

 Bug found while planting flowers for someone

 Sister K touching cats...wow

 Cockroach in their shower

 ward member

The rest of these were taken by a ward member Melissa. She sent them to my phone.

November 4, 2013

In response to your letter: The booth at the fair was fun. It was nice to do something different for a change. We were able to talk to a lot of people and hand out a lot of pamphlets and mormon.org cards. We even met a few people that want to be taught! The ward members are really nice. We had a mission wide fast for baptisms and member involvement. We are trying to get certain families to be "proselyting families" and talk to people and find people for us to teach.  We have a lot of members that come with us to appointments with investigators. I didn't realize before now how important it is to fellowship people and make them comfortable at church. It really makes a HUGE difference. We are starting to have more dinner appointments, which is always good...Except I'm going to become morbidly obese.  This week we ate fried chicken, cornbread, peach pie, sweet potato pie, cupcakes, speckled butter beans, and more collard greens just to name a few. For breakfast we usually have eggs, toast, oatmeal, grits, or cereal. I'm scared to eat the food from our fridge because it doesn't keep anything cold and I think I'm going to get food poisoning one of these days. Our cheese went moldy in less than a week. Ew. We have mission debit cards that they put $140 on every month. We didn't end up doing our training, which was a relief. The General Authority that was there, Elder Zwick, changed up the schedule, so we didn't have to do it. The schedule is getting better, but 6:30 is still pretty early. It was nice to get an extra hour of sleep on sunday!

Here are some things that I've written down this week that I thought you would like to know. 

-There is a Federal Law Enforcement Training Center here, so a lot of the members here are FBI/CIA agents. They have told us some pretty cool stories! 

-People seem to cancel appointments a lot, so we call them and share a thought and pray with them over the phone. It was SO weird at first, but I've gotten pretty used to it. 

- People in the south talk sooooooo much! We're having a really hard time getting to our appointments on time because we just can't get out of our appoinments because they won't stop talking to us. 

- Zone conference was really good! We left to Jacksonville (which is 90 miles away) on wednesday afternoon and went to a multi-stake meeting with Elder Zwick from the 70. He mostly just talked to the members and challenged them to find someone to have the missionaries teach in their home within the next ten days. Then we stayed at a senior couples apartment. It was so nice compared to what we are currently living in. On thursday we had meetings all day with Elder and Sister Zwick and President and Sister Craig. There were 5 zones at the meeting. Before the meeting started we went and shook their hands and Elder Zwick told me such I was a beautiful girl and asked where I was from. I told him I was from Fallon and he said "There are so many missionaries coming out of that little town. It's amazing!" Our musical number went really well and after I saw Elder Zwick two more times and both times he said something like "You have such a pretty voice and it matches your pretty face" It was funny, but he was super nice and made me feel good. he also told us Sister Lawrence and I that good things are coming our way. I hope he's right! Sister Lawrence and I got to talk with Sister Craig and Sister Zwick after one of the meetings and they told us that if we only get one thing from our missions, it will be that we will be great mothers and will be able to teach our children much better than if we hadn't served missions. They are both such great people and give the best hugs. During the meeting Elder Zwick told us that starting in 2014, we'll all get mini i-Pads!! We will have to pay like $60, but then once our missions are over we can take them with us! It's super exciting. He just said that they are working out the kinks but it should happen fairly soon. One of my favorite things that was said was "Don't limit yourself. Allow the Lord to expand your abilities and He will." 

- A lot of the people here like to pray holding hands. It's kind of weird and they will just go around in the circle and everyone says something.

- Sister Lawrence is a Facebook missionary now. So we go on facebook for an hour every day and post messages and videos and talk to the people we are teaching. 

- A lot of people don't have driveways and we just drive on their grass. It's weird.

- Melanie and Celeste (a mom and daughter) are progressing. They came to church yesterday and are still really excited. We are teaching them again tonight and are going to invite them to be baptized... Wish me luck!

Okay I think that's all. I love y'all and love hearing from you. Read your scriptures! I love it here and love teaching the people of Brunswick.  I know that Heavenly Father is preparing people for Sister Lawrence and I to teach, we just need to find them. We have a great gift and we need to share it!

Write me!

XOXO  

Sister Koenig

 

 

October 31, 2013

Dear Mom, Dad, and Davis,
How is everyone doing?  In your letters to me you just ask about me, but I want to hear about YOU.
I like it here.  There are a lot of really nice people here.  Especially this last week, we had dinner at a few different members houses and they really tried to make Sis. Lawrence and I feel at home. 
Our living situation is much different than what I'm used to.  Our heater doesn't work, the fridge doesn't keep things cold, so we have to put our milk in the freezer so it doesn't go bad, and we only have hot water for like five minutes...luckily I always shower first:)
How are your gratitude journals going? Y'all better be actually doing them!  A few days ago I started the Book of Mormon over.  I don't know if it's because I've been set apart as a missionary or if I'm finally learning how to do it right, but I'm getting so much out of it.  I'm actually excited to read it every morning!
 Well I have to go, but keep writing me.  I love hearing from you.  That means Davis too.

XOXO Sister Koenig

Miss you and I love you!

P.S.  sorry about spending so much at target...but they were on sale!  And I needed some retail therapy ... and Halloween candy!