50 Words or Less - GO!

Dear Family and Friends,

Sorry this week is going to be quick. We were at the Memphis Temple the whole day so we didn't have time to email. This week was great. TAMI AND KAM WERE BAPTIZED!! And Sister Mecham and I are staying together for another six weeks. Woot Woot!! 

That's all I have time for. More next week I promise!

Love

Sister Aase

 Sister Mecham, Tami, Kam and Sister Aase

Welcome to Tennessee - on our way to the Memphis Temple

The Cougar and the Aggie can be Friends

Dear Family and Friends,

I hope that everyone had a great week. This week was awesome as usual. We were on bike week but the Lord blessed us with the best bike weather EVER. Seriously 70s and lower 80s all week long and no rain. Can it get any better!?

This week we helped an older lady in the ward paint her home. She is getting ready to sell and wanted a more neutral color. So Sister Mecham and I put on our painting clothes and got to work. It was really funny when we realized that our painting shirts just happened to be our college shirts. So I had on my BYU shirt and my companion had on a Utah State University shirt. But don't worry we have decided that even though she goes to the wrong school we can still be friends. Also she is transferring to BYU when she gets home so that helps :) We had a lot of fun painting together and this lady's house look really good.

Sister Aase (BYU) vs. Sister Mecham (USU)

TAMI AND KAM ARE GETTING BAPTIZED ON SATURDAY!!!! We are so excited for them and they are both counting down the days. Tami asked Sister Mecham and I to sing Amazing Grace A Capella. We are both a little nervous, but we told her that we would do our very best to which Kam replied "that's all we ask." Kam is 9 yrs old btw. We both love Tami so much and I have loved getting to see her life change as she has embraced the gospel. She brought her little granddaughter Gracie to church again this week. Gracie has finally warmed up to me and Sister Mecham and now won't let us leave without hugs. She is too cute. To keep her quiet in sacrament meeting, after the coloring books we had no longer held an appeal, Sister Mecham gave Gracie her EOS chapstick. Gracie loved it and kept putting more and more on. By the end she had chapstick from cheek to cheek. So funny and so cute. Also I have never seen a girl love nursery more than miss Gracie. She wanted to leave sacrament meeting early just to go to nursery. She loves it!

I love being down here. It is crazy that I'm already at the last week in this transfer! Time has flown by and I am loving every minute of it. The longer I'm here the more I get to love the people in the south. One thing I love about them is how they pray. I have never heard such humble prayers before. Everyone thanks God for getting them up in the morning, and giving them air to breath. They seldom ask for anything in their prayers and if they do they always acknowledge God's will above everything. You really can tell how much these people love God and see His hand in their lives. As I've prayed with more people I've noticed that my prayers are beginning to change. I pray less for the laundry list of thing I need and spend more time thanking my Heavenly Father for all that he has given me even the little things. A Sister in our ward posed a question this week that also has helped me to be more thankful when I pray she said "what if tomorrow you only had the things that you had given thanks for the day before?" We have so much to be thankful for! I get to teach and work with so many people down here who are struggling to get by and yet they don't ask for anything when they pray. It is truly amazing.

Anyway I must close. As always thank you for all the love and support

Love

Sister Aase

Dinner & a visit with the Duke Family

Looking cool on "Baby Blue"

The Rains Came Down and the Floods Came Up

Dear Friends and Family,

So I've been getting a few questions about what kind of food they are feeding me here in the south. Well first of all I've been eating a lot. The members of the Conway 2nd ward are very good to us missionaries and if I'm not careful I will have to be rolled to my next area. I haven't eaten anything really strange yet though we have a member who has promised to feed us raccoon and squirrel next time we come over. Don't quite know how I feel about that yet. But I have had a lot of southern staples over the past month and people are always so surprised when I tell them I have never had _____ before. For example chicken fried steak, southern cheese dip, banana pudding, and chicken spaghetti. Also EVERYONE here has a garden so every veggie that we eat is home grown which is really cool. The best food that I have discovered here in Conway though are pineapple whips. OH MY GOODNESS SO GOOD! They are kind of like pineapple ice cream but without the ice cream and added stuff. So Good! 

Sister Aase & Sister Mecham with Pineapple Whip - YUM

This week was awesome as always. It is really cool to be missionary. I wake up everyday with a purpose and with excitement to go forward and I go to bed each night exhausted but so happy to be where I am. This week we started teaching Tami's grandson Kameron who is seriously the most spiritual 9 year old I have ever met! It was really cool we taught him about the restoration and he was absorbed! He brings his Book of Mormon everywhere, even the grocery store! We asked him after our first lesson to pray about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Then we came over the next day and before we could even ask if he prayed he says "Just so you know I prayed last night and I got a really good feeling and I know that Joseph Smith is true!" #coolestkidever! I wish I was more like him. He is so excited about the gospel and he truly loves the Lord and loves learning about the gospel (I mean seriously who takes their Book of Mormon to the Grocery Store!) He is a great example of why Christ tells us again and again to become like little children. So he is getting baptized with his grandma and he is so excited! Tami and him both came to church along with another one of Tami's grandkids Gracie who is two and the cutest thing ever! I wish I had taken a picture of her on Sunday she was dressed in a pink dress with sunglasses and high heels and she strutted into sacrament meeting #socuteIcoulddie

Also this week Sister Mecham and I became inspired and decided that our ward needed to have a big activity so that members could invite their friends to the church. So we are putting together a carnival. It is going to be awesome! And while the carnival is going on outside we will be giving church tours inside. We are pretty excited!

Yesterday in church the sacrament theme was missionary work. One of the speakers was talking about how members don't need to be worried about knowing everything before talking to a friend about the gospel and he quoted the same thing I've been quoting to myself since I got out here that is "You know enough" Then he added and if you don't know something ask the missionaries. And I suddenly became very aware that the ward looks to me and Sister Mecham a lot. We are suppose to be the experts they can come to with questions about sharing the gospel or teaching the gospel. That is a little overwhelming for a month old missionary. But I love that I'm learning along with the members how to share the gospel and how to be a better missionary and I hope that I would be able to answer their question if they ever came to me with them. 

As always thank you for the emails and letter I read and appreciate all of them!

Love

Sister Aase

PS   This week the rains came down and the floods came up and my raincoat was amazing! Also I am loving my little bike basket. Bike picture next week for sure.

Fourth of July Fun and Bingo for Bananas

Dear Family and Friends

Happy Belated Fourth of July! We had a very fun fourth down here in Conway. First we went to a zone meeting and met our new mission president and his family. President Wakolo is from Fuji and he is so cool! His accent is a little thick so you have to really listen when he speaks but he is powerful and has such a love for the missionaries. He is excited to move this mission forward and I think we are going to have a lot of success under his leadership.

 

After our meeting, we visited a few people and then went to a member's house for dinner and fireworks. The people had dinner with, live right in between their brother's house and their sister's house, so we really ate with the whole family which included two sets of grandparents, 9 little girls and one lone boy. All of the kids love the missionaries and we were surrounded all night long. One of the best parts of the night was when Brother Davis pulled out his guitar and played while his nieces sang and all the other kids danced including Sister Mecham and I. So much fun! Fireworks were lots of fun too though as missionaries we aren't allowed to set any fireworks off it was still lots of fun to sit and watch. 

Sister Aase & Sister Mecham - 4th of July

 

The rest of the week was good though it started a little rough. After emailing last week we played games with some other missionaries which was lots of fun. Sister Mecham got beamed in the face by a volley ball by one of the Assistants which resulted in a baby black eye. Then we found out that the car we were suppose to be getting the next day ending bike week was in the shop. Apparently the elders who had it got into a little fender bender. However they also had driven through some flood water and totaled the engine. SO after lots of confusion and complications we had an extra bike day and are now on a new bike/car rotation. And of course after having an accident free bike week, I totally wiped out on our extra bike day. But fortunately all those years of ballet payed off and it was a very graceful bike crash which resulted in only a few bruises and no bike damage. 

After that rough start though we have had a very good week. We are still teaching Tami Scroggins and getting her ready to be baptized later this month. She is so excited and we just adore her! We have also found a few new investigators that we are excited to start teaching. 

Another highlight of the week was bingo. As missionaries we have many opportunities to serve in the community and one of our regular service gigs is calling bingo at an old folks home. The old folks sure love bingo and the prize for winning is candy or bananas. The old folk also really like their bananas :) It is a lot of fun and Sister Mecham and I really enjoy ourselves. Bingo is no joke to these people though and they get very upset if you call too slow or too fast. But they also can't really hear and so we often have to repeat things and they get very upset if someone breaks the rules or takes more candy than is allowed. We have a blast and we are always given a huge bag of goodies to take home. 

I truly love serving down here! I love getting to meet new people and serve them and help them to come closer to our Savior Jesus Christ. The people we meet have all sorts of challenges and are often in need of hope. The gospel brings that hope into their lives and even though their challenges may not go away they are able to get through them and to have that hope. I love that I get to a part of bringing that hope into their lives. 

Thank you as always for all the love and support. 

Love 

Sister Aase

Sister Mecham & I in our apartment