WhiteOut

Dear Friends and Family,
We had another really great week here in Searcy!

So I have always had a love for office supplies but since my mission there is one particular office tool that I have come to love.....white out. One of my companions used to use it all the time and I confess I totally judged her at first for being a perfectionist. But then one day I made a mistake while writing in my study journal and it was really bothering me. So I humbled myself and asked if I could use some.  And it changed my life.  Now I can't imagine studying without my whiteout. I use it nearly everyday because I tend to make a lot of mistakes (especially spelling mistakes) but it is good to know that I have a way to fix them.  Sometimes my mistakes require a lot of whiteout and sometimes just a little itty bitty bit but no matter the mess up, it can always be fixed. I am very grateful for whiteout. 

Whiteout is a little like repentance which is something else I have learned to love on my mission. Because of our Savior, we don't have to live with our mistakes. We can change, mistakes can be whited out. Sometimes our mistakes are big, sometimes they are itty bitty, but they can always be fixed. Like it says in Isaiah "though your sins be scarlet, they will be as white as snow" We taught this principle to two men we have been teaching from Kenya named Alex and Edward. They had a lot of question about repentance and forgiveness and the process of it all. It was so amazing to testify to them that we can repent. We can repent every day. And as often as we will repent God promises to forgive us. What a wonderful message and blessing that is. I truly love repentance. I love that we can always change and become better. And I love getting to help people as they go through the repentance process themselves. I love getting to see others change for the better.

We are excited for this upcoming week. We are going on exchanges which is always lots of fun :)
As always thank you for all that y'all do! Have a wonderful week!

Love
Sister Aase

1) Arkansas Sunset
2) Me and my young women
3) Sister Captain America

God's in the Blessin' Business!!

Dear Friends and Family,
This week was AWESOME!! We were talking to this older black lady this week and she told us that "God's in the blessin' business!" Yes ma'am he is and we were definitely blessed this week!

Our week started with a baptism. Which is the best way to start a week, I highly recommend it. Morgan was baptized Tuesday and confirmed yesterday. She has been investigating the church for almost a year and was finally able to get baptized. The devil was working hard on her all week long but the baptism happened anyway and she was so happy.  She was glowing afterward and just said it felt so good to be clean.  I'm so happy for her!

The week continued to go well. Sister Mathison and I were determined to reach all of our goals this week and we came mighty close thanks to a few miracles and blessings from the Lord. One such was Francis. We found Francis early this week. She just moved into the home of a potential investigator we had met at Walmart and never have been able to get a hold of again. We were driving past the house and saw a car and so we quickly turned around and instead of the Walmart lady being there we met Francis. She is so elect and let us right in and we starting teaching her. We set a baptismal date with her for September and hopefully all goes well!

We also saw lots of little blessings this week like a member taking us to chick-fil-a for dinner, and a member bringing us brownies, and having an investigator come to the baptism, and having an awesome leadership meeting, and seeing someone come back to church.  Truly the Lord is always showering us with blessings. Sometimes those blessings are easier to recognize than others like a baptism. But even when they are in disguise (like when all of our appointment fell through but we were able to have time to help drive a sister missionary to Heber Springs) we are still constantly being blessed. May we all have eyes to see all the ways that the Lord is blessing us this week. After all he is in the blessin business :)

As always thank you for all that you do!
Have a great week!
Love
Sister Aase

Right Place, Right Time!

Dear Friends and Family,
We had a great week down here in Searcy. We weren't always doing what we had originally planned but we were doing the work that the Lord needed us to be doing at the time. Something I've seen many times on my mission but it still amazes me is how we can be exactly in the right place at the right time if we follow the Spirit. Likewise if we aren't following the Spirit it is very easy to miss perfect opportunities to teach or serve. That's why the "spirit is the most important single element in this work." -Ezra Taft Benson

For example we were in the right place at the right time to be able to deliver groceries to a family in need. And to be with a sister who needed someone to listen and feel the Spirit in her home. And to vacuum someone's home who is having some health problems. And to teach when everyone was home.  We were doing our best to listen to the Spirit and so even though the week didn't go as planned we were in the right places at the right times for the Lord to do his work. And hopefully this next week we will continue to be so.

Transfers are this week and I'm staying in Searcy with Sister Mathison. Yay! We are getting 27 new missionaries this week. Holy Guacamole! That like a whole zone! Areas are going to be opening and there will be lots of people training. It's so exciting!!  Tomorrow we are having a baptism for our investigator Morgan. Morgan, who just graduated and has been investigating the Church for a while now and is finally getting baptized! She is so excited and so are we :)

As always thank y'all for everything that you do, but mostly for who you are :) have a wonderful week
Love,
Sister Aase

PS.  To my friends in Minnesota, bet you've never felt a 'wind chill' of 109 degrees.  What the what????  Thank goodness we have a car and AC.

Joy!!

Dear Friends and Family,
This week was really great. Sister Mathison is feeling better and we are ready to get back to work. We had some really fun/amazing/joyful experiences this week.  We got to go to the temple on Wednesday. I love the temple. It is such a peaceful place and going to the temple brings so much power in our lives. It was so much fun to get to go with the whole MLC. It was also lots of fun to get to road trip to Memphis with a bunch of missionary friends. Waking up at four in the morning to get to the temple on time was less fun but worth it.

One of the highlights of the week was getting to be reunited with some of my favorite people. My trainer Sister Mecham made a surprise visit to Searcy this week. It was SO good to see her and catch up for a little bit. This week was also the 40th year mission reunion which brought back a few other old missionaries including Sister Kalahiki and my original mission president and his wife, The Petersons. It was also fun to see lots of people from the Pinnacle Mountain Ward at the reunion as well. I was asked to conduct the mission choir at the reunion. I was told that the choir needed to sound like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir #nopressure.  I'm not sure we sounded quite that good but I think we did a pretty decent job.

Prior to the reunion fireside, a very special and much prayed for event occurred. Sister Maggie Davis is a bit of a legend to the missionaries in the ALRM. She lives right across from the mission home and she comes and bears her testimony to all the arriving missionaries. Maggie starting investigating the church about three years ago and has wanted to join the church for about that long but hasn't been able to. I met Maggie my very first day in the mission field. She was at the airport with the Petersons when I arrived in Little Rock and gave me huge hug when she saw me, I was inspired by her testimony and her story. I got to know Maggie even more when I was serving in the Pinnacle Mountain Ward. She came teaching with us and would sit by us a church sometimes. She was a great example to me. Well right before the fireside started, Maggie was finally baptized! I've never seen anyone so happy to be baptized. She was just glowing. I can't even express how happy I am for this girl. She is amazing and is finally able to experience all the blessings of being a member of the Lords church. 

I am so grateful to be a missionary here in Arkansas and to help people like Maggie to enter into the Lord's church. I know that this Church is true. I love that this Church offers absolute truth in a world where truth is hard to find. I love this gospel and I love this work!

As always thank you for everything and have a wonderful week!
Love
Sister Aase
 

Sister Kalahiki & I

Sister Mechan & I

 

Sister Mathison & I

Sisters at the Memphis Temple

Walking in Memphis

Dear friends and family,

Another wonderful hot humid week here in the south. This week we went to Memphis. We spent Tuesday through Thursday working with our sisters over there. Memphis is a whole other world. I don't exactly know how to describe it but we crossed the ridge and we both could definitely tell we were not in Arkansas anymore. One thing that is really cool about serving in Memphis is that these sisters get to work super close to the temple and so when describing what church they are from they often refer to "the white building with the gold man on top" aka the temple. They get to talk to lots of people about the temple and describe to them how it is a place where families can be sealed for time and all eternity.

 

Speaking of the temple, this week for our Mission Leadership Council meeting we get to go to the temple. Sister Mathison and I are so super excited! Also this week is the 40 year mission reunion celebration. All the past mission presidents will be coming back along with lots of returned missionaries from this mission. It should be a really neat experience.

After we returned from Memphis on Thursday night Sister Mathison got sick which meant we were stuck inside until she got better. Being sick on your mission is the worst. The next worst thing is having your companion be sick on your mission. Luckily she is starting to feel better and hopefully will be 100% healthy by the end of the week.

 

As always thank for all your prayers and support. Y'all are the best

Have a wonderful week!

Love

Sister Aase

 

Photo - this is what you do to not go crazy while your companion is sick in bed.  Here are some of the other things I did to keep myself occupied.

- read scriptures

- read Jesus the Christ

- organized the area book 

- watched "together forever" which made me laugh and cry my favorite quotes "chance of a life time jack" and "you bet your life"

- cleaned the house

- wrote letters

- made cute things 

- ate food because what else are you suppose to do when you are bored

- danced

- did a puzzle

- took a nap

- ate pie

- started transferring all our records into the iPad.

 

Where in the World is Sister Aase?

Dear Friends and Family,
This week was crazy! I have been traveling all over the place and I'm exhausted. But I have gotten to spend time with lots of awesome people and see some really cool new places. I'll recap the week with something I like to call "where in the world is Sister Aase?"

Day: Monday
Location: Searcy, AR
Details: normal p day stuff

Day: Tuesday
Location: Paragould, AR
Details: drove two hours north to go on an exchange with the lovely Sister Pochop. We almost got caught in a HUGE rainstorm but fortunately the investigator we were trying to see let us in and we were able to teach her even though she thought she was too busy.  Sometimes God has to send a thunder storm to get people to listen to the missionaries.

Day: Wednesday
Location: Paragould, AR Jacksonville, AR Memphis, TNDetails: we had specialized training in Jacksonville. It was awesome. I got to recite The Living Christ in front of our whole zone. It was powerful! I know that Jesus is the living Christ. After the meeting we headed to Memphis to do it again the next day.

Day: Thursday
Location: Memphis, TN Searcy, AR
Details: specialized in Memphis! I reunited with my MTC zone. We saw the temple. And we got peach milkshakes on the way back home. #yum

Day: Friday
Location: Mountain View, AR
Details: drove two hours north west to get to Mountain View which is one of the prettiest places I have seen in Arkansas. So beautiful! I spent the day with Sister Sanders who is bold! We walked all day long out in the heat and humidity but it was awesome!

Day: Saturday
Location: Mountain View, AR Jacksonville, AR Searcy, AR
Details: returned home and taught one lesson then went to Jacksonville for a blitz with the sisters there. We found a cool new investigator. Then we went down to the river for the Elder's baptism. Their investigator was baptized in the Little Red River.

Day: Sunday
Location: Searcy, AR
Details: spent the day back in Searcy after a long week of being away from my Searcy home.

This next week we are going to be in Memphis again! Yay for being a sister training leader! But as tiring as it this week has been I have loved it. President Wakolo likes to say he is happily exhausted. After this week I am happily exhausted too.
Thank you as always for all y'all do!
Love
Sister Aase

Smells like Salvation

The subject line is a quote from one of our investigators this week

Dear friends and family,
We had a great week here in Searcy. We are finding new people to teach and helping our investigators progress and I'm getting to know the Ward and this zone more and more. This week I not only played in sacrament meeting but I also gave a talk. Life is good.  On Wednesday Sister Mathison and I instructed at our zone meeting. The topic we were asked to speak on was "Priming the Pump" which is something Elder Kopischke spoke about when he was here. The term priming the pump comes from a really old church video that Sister Mathison and I wanted to show as part of our instruction. So we searched and searched for this video. And finally found that it was on an old family home evening supplement video that our church library happen to have. We were so excited until we tried to actually play this old VHS tape. We tried two different VHS players but the tape was
not going to work. Then we ejected it and it broke completely. We panicked a bit and called everyone we knew to try and find this video. No luck. Until the very end of the night the very last person we saw happened to have the family home evening video supplement on DVD. Yay!  It was a miracle and our instruction the next day was a success.

I also got to go on a very fun exchange with Sister Armstrong in Jacksonville this week. Sister Armstrong and I served both served in Conway a year ago at the beginning of our missions so it was fun to get to get to be together again. Jacksonville is great area. We got to have dinner on an air force base which I thought was super cool!  The rest of the week was pretty normal. Finding and teaching and helping and serving that what we do as missionaries. This upcoming week is going to be lots of fun. We are exchanging and going to Memphis for a meeting. Road trip!
As always thank y'all for everything and have a wonderful week!
Love
Sister Aase

PS Detrick got baptized in Pinnacle Mountain this week. Yay! This is an investigator that I was teaching while I was there. Pictures next week.