Another wonderful week of walking!

Dear Friends and Family,

We survived another walk week! Luckily the weather was pretty mild all week and so we weren't freezing like last time. We had a pretty good week. We were able to talk to many people and do lots of service which always makes for a good week.

Trina is getting baptized this Saturday!!! I think the only person more excited than Sister Kalahiki and me is Trina. She cannot wait to be baptized. It has been an amazing experience to get to teach her. She has just fallen in love with the Book of Mormon and the gospel. I love getting to see the change and the light that comes into people's lives as they begin to embrace the gospel. It makes walking for a whole week totally worth it!

On Monday we taught Trina in our mission President's home. We found out at the last minute that the Otter Creek Sisters were also coming and bringing a recent convert. We were a little nervous about how five sister missionaries were going to be able to teach two lessons combine into one altogether in a unified manner. But it ended up being so good. The Spirit guided the lesson from the beginning and everything just went so smoothly and perfectly you would have thought the five of us had been teaching together for months! I am so grateful for the Spirit that takes over when I don't know how I am suppose to teach or what I suppose to say. I'm so grateful for the promise that if I will just open my mouth I will be given the words. I have seen this happen time and time again.

We had our Christmas Sacrament meeting a little early. It was so great. I absolutely love this time of  year. I love Christmas decorations and music and cheesy Christmas movies. I love spending time with family and friends. I love Christmas traditions. Because I'm a missionary for Christmas this year I am giving up all that. But the thing I love most about Christmas is that everyone' s thoughts are turned to the Savior a little more this time of year. And that I don't have to give up. In fact this year more than any other Christmas I am focusing on Christ. I am out representing Him everyday this holiday season. And it is the best Christmas present ever!

I love this work and I love this gospel!

As always thank you for all that you do for me.

Love

Sister Aase

 

 

I Believe in Miracles!

Dear Friends and Family,

The Christmas season has officially started! Tis the season for miracles and we saw many this week!

On Tuesday our mission sent home 21 missionaries who had just completed their missions. We got to spend the day with Hermana Smith whose parents were picking her up that night. There is power in three and we were able to meet lots of new people and have a really great day. WE also got to meet the 14 new missionaries when we dropped off Hermana Smith back at the mission home.

On Wednesday we were all invited to the transfer meeting where President announced what the final baptism count was for the month of November. If you will remember the mission had a goal to baptize 100 new converts in the month of November as well as have 100 reactivations. Throughout November we all sacrificed half of our p-day and fasted and prayed and worked and worked to achieve this goal. The final results were......drum roll.........92 baptisms and 231 reactivations!!! Have miracles ceased? I say unto you NAY! We are so excited and we hope to continue this momentum into the new year!

We continued to see miracles and tender mercies throughout the week. The biggest miracle happened last night though. We have been working with an investigator named Trina who is just amazing in so many ways. Throughout the whole week we have been trying to see her and we kept missing her. We could not get a hold of her. Sister Kalahiki and I prayed and prayed that we would be able to get back in contact with her. She didn't come to church and so we invited her to come to watch the Christmas devotional with us at a member's home. 

 

We also have a recent convert who is just as amazing who we also have not been able to see because she has been out of town and super busy. We invited her to come to the devotional too.And finally we have another investigator that we just love who we have invited to church many time but hasn't been able to come. At the very last minute yesterday we invited her to the devotional as well.

The miracle....every single one of these amazing women were able to come to the devotional and feel the spirit as apostles and others bore their testimonies of our Savior Jesus Christ. The spirit was so strong and I was so grateful for a Heavenly Father who heard our prayers throughout the week and made it possible for all to be there.

We also were able to watch the new video that the church released for Christmas called He is the Gift. If you have not seen it take two and a half minutes and watch it. It is powerful! The church is inviting everyone to share this video and message with others. The best way to bring the spirit of Christ into Christmas is by sharing it with others.

As always thank you for all that y'all do. Have a great week! 

Love

Sister Aase

It is Good to Give Thanks

Dear Family and Friends,

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. There were many things to be grateful for this week. These are just a few 

1. Our wonderful ward members! Not only did they make sure that we had some place to go on Thanksgiving but we had three back to back to back Thanksgiving meals on Thursday :) Though by the end I thought I might die of a food overdose, I was very grateful for the love of our ward members

2. Trina. This girl is on fire! She has already read the first two books of the Book of Mormon and she came to church this Sunday. Her baptismal date was set for the 20th but at her request has been moved to the 13th. She is amazing and everytime we teach her the Spirit is so strong. She has such a love for our Savior and I love getting to share my testimony of Him with her.

3. Christmas Decorations. We were able to help decorate three homes this week including the mission home. It was so much fun! One member even gave us an extra Elf on the Shelf to decorate our study. We have started decorating our study and it really is beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Until you go outside and it is 60 degrees, another thing to be thankful for!

4. Sister Kalahiki and I are staying together in Pinnacle Mountain for one more transfer! YAY! 

Most of all I am so grateful to be here serving a mission. I truly love getting to represent my Savior everyday. Missions are not easy. They are not always fun. But they are one of the best things you will ever get to to do and I am so so so grateful to be serving the Lord in Little Rock. I am also so grateful for the person I represent each day. My Savior Jesus Christ. I am grateful for the Atonement that He performed for me and for each of us. I am grateful for this time of year when our hearts and minds are turned a little more toward Him as we celebrate His birth. And as always I am so grateful for all the love and support that I receive from all my friends and family.

Love,

Sister Aase

If you haven't seen this short video, it's really good.  He is the Gift.  Go to christmas.mormon.org

Young Women (and Missionaries) in Excellence!!

Dear Friends and Family,

I cannot believe that it is already the end of November! Where has the month gone?! We had a great week this week! We had a fabulous specialized training meeting where we did not get our iPads, but we were taught some very important things. We also spoke at our ward's Young Women in Excellence night which was lots of fun. And most importantly we were able to set a baptismal date with someone!

The person who accepted our invitation to be baptized is named Trina. She is awesome! We taught her a little bit and gave her a Book of Mormon on Tuesday and when we came back Thursday she had already read into 1 Nephi without us asking her to read that far! That never happens! We taught her the restoration and invited her to be baptized on the 20th of December and she said yes! Sister Kalahiki and I are so excited to keep teaching her and helping her to increase the amazing faith she already has. We are also still working with Carmelita who is in the hospital again and Felicia who is really cool and is also reading the Book of Mormon on her own.

I have really gained a testimony of the power of the Book of Mormon on my mission. I have been able to see first hand the power this book has to change lives and to convert people to the gospel. I have always enjoyed the Book of Mormon and had a testimony of it. But I love it now and am coming to understand what it means to feast upon the words in it. I love getting to bear my testimony of the Book of Mormon to people because I know that it will bring us closer to our Heavenly Father and that it contains the answers to ALL of life's questions no matter how "modern" we think they are. The prophets in the Book of Mormon truly saw our day and were inspired in their writings. Everything in that book is for us. If you haven't read the Book of Mormon or it's been a while I encourage you to pick it up. It truly will change your life!

So Sister Kalahiki joined the Church when she was 14 with her two older brothers and never had the opportunity to receive her Young Women's medallion.  So she was given permission to get it on her mission and guess who her mentor is?  That's right, ME :-)  It has been lots of fun to help her work on Personal Progress every morning and she actually is pretty far and hopefully she will be able to get it while I'm still her companion :-)  Maybe then I'll get my Bee :)

Anyway I hope that everyone has a great thanksgiving. Thank you to everyone who is sending me emails and letters I love them! Thanks also for all the prayers and support!

Love

Sister Aase

Do You Want To Hear Our Message?

Dear Family and Friends,

Winter came to the South early! We had our first "snow fall" this week. My companion was so excited she screamed and wanted to play in the snow. I helped her make a baby snowman which was about the size of my hand. She was so excited :) We were on foot this week out in the cold :) We walked a ton but we also saw many miracles and had many wonderful ward members who took pity on us and gave us rides :) Thank goodness for ward members :)

 

Because we were walking everywhere and therefore had lots of time and because we were cold and needed to keep our spirits up and because it had snowed I made up new song. It's called "Do you want to hear our message"

Tune of "Do you want to build a snowman"  from Disney's Frozen

(Knocks) Do you want to hear our message?

Or just let us in to pray?

We never see you anymore please come to the door we know you're not away

You used to be so golden and now you are avoiding us like the plague

Do you want to hear our message? It's all about Jesus

(silence) Ok Bye

(Knocks) Do you want to hear our message?

Please don't pretend like you're not home

I think some new 'gators are overdue we've starting talking to crazy people on the phone - hang in there Travis*

It gets a little draining walking everyday just watching the hours tick by....

(dramatic music: imagine my companion and I walking all bundled up just hoping that someone will want to talk to us)

(Knocks) Do you want to hear our message. We know it will change your life. 

We know what we teach it true and you can too....just let us in. 

We don't want to be a bother we just want to share our testimonies with you.

Can we please share our message? 

 

That's it :) That pretty much sums up the week. We had lots of appointment fall through and people not want to talk but we also meet some amazing people that did want to hear what we had to say and are interested in learning more and came to church. Miracles happen everyday on a mission. 

 

As always thank you for all that you do :)

Love

Sister Aase

*Travis is a former investigator who gave us a call this week. We talked with him for a while and within our conversation he informed us that he had died already, apple products are associated with the story of adam and eve, and he was checking himself into a metal institution at the end of the week. Never a dull moment :)

Starting Bike Week - It's When Miracles Happen!

Dear Family and Friends,

I hope that everyone had a wonderful week :) This week was a little slow especially compared to last week. Some highlights:

• We had Family Home Evening with our investigator, Carmelita, in our mission president's home on Monday. It was really great and President Wakolo was able to answer some of Carmelita's questions which was awesome!
• We had a fabulous zone meeting on Tuesday. I am in the same zone as Sister Mecham and so it was fun to see her at our meeting. We learned about the importance of being diligent as we work toward our goals. Each day we have the opportunity to set goals and our zone leaders talked about how we need to "own those goals" everyday. 
• We found some really cool new investigators. Hopefully we will be able to see them continue to grow.
• We had 21 baptisms in our mission last week YAY! We are definitely on our way to reaching our goal of 100 by the end of November. 

Sister Kalahiki and I are on bikes this week. It is supposed to get really cold this week so wish us luck :) We are excited though because we know that miracles happen on bike week!!

 

Thanks as always for all the love and support. Hope everyone has a great week!

Love

Sister Aase

Ousheta! Halloween and a False Break in

Dear Family and Friends

I hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween! We had a crazy week here in Pinnacle. We taught, we found, we passed out candy and we had a lot of laughs. Some of the Highlights

1. We carved pumpkins with the other Sisters for P-day. Lots of fun. If you can't tell from the pictures we carved an Arkansas :)  

2. We were teaching one of our investigators who is getting baptized on the 15th about receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost this week. At one point in her life she was Pentecostal and in that church often receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost is accompanied by speaking in tongues. So we were explaining to her that that is not the case in our church. We were getting ready to go when all of the sudden this old black lady bursts in and, I kid you not, starts speaking in tongues. She kept yelling OUSHETA! It was all Sister Kalahiki and I could do to not just start laughing. 

3. We are living with members and so we borrowed some of the Halloween costumes to try on. 

4. On Halloween night we went to our Ward Mission leader's house and passed out candy and pass along cards. It was a little cold. I was fine but my poor Hawaiian companion was freezing!

5. On Saturday Sister Kalahiki and I were studying when all of a sudden we heard a loud crash. 

Me: "Do you think someone is breaking in?" 

Kalahiki: "Probably."

So we quickly armed ourselves with the first things we could find, a mop and a vase, send a text to two church members who live close and our district leader "Hey we think someone might be breaking in could you come check on us?" and then we go to investigate. It was so scary! By the time Brother Whiteley got there we were pretty sure no one was in the house but we were sure a window was broken somewhere. However upon further inspection by Brother Whiteley, we found that the "intruder" was actually a ceramic jar full of change that had fallen from a bookshelf. So embarrassing! And to make matters worse the Elders showed up as well only to find that we were worried over nothing. 

The best part of the week though was that we found a wonderful new investigator named Felicia. She is amazing and has such strong faith! She loves the Book of Mormon and is excited to learn more! Stay tuned.

As always thank you for all the support and prayers and love! Hope everyone has a great week!

Love

Sister Aase