chic fil a?? on a sunday??

During the one hour of Monday that isn't P-Day (or we're not at correlation) Sister Peterson and I decided to call some grey dots. Grey dots are people in area book that were being taught in the past, but aren't anymore. We scrolled through the list and both felt pretty good about calling a lady named Brandy; so we called her. She said she'd be able to meet and we decided to plan on Friday. I was only 60% sure that it actually happened because she was so nice and willing to talk to us.

That was a miracle in itself, but another miracle was that it actually happened! On Friday we went over and talked with her and she's so cool. She runs this day care and has had the craziest life. This lady is literally so strong, I want to teach her so bad. She was so sweet, we didn't teach much, just got to know her; but we shared 2 Nephi 26:24 (my go to for teaching that "God is Our Loving Heavenly Father). She told us she really liked that scripture and told us to get in contact with her sometime next week! :)

Tuesday we had our usual shift at the clothing exchange, halfway through the day the lady in charge told us there was someone outside that wanted to talk to all four of us; so naturally we went outside to talk to her. The lady started talking to us, and it became apparent she was a member, who we've never met before. She then introduced herself as Jamie Boast, who we've been trying to get in contact with since before I got here! Jamie got baptized a little over a year ago, but after covid hit no one had really heard from her much. We've called her about once a week since I've got her and GOT NOTHING! So that was pretty amazing! She asked us to come over and move some plants for her; and that's how we accidentally did seven and a half hours of service on Tuesday! It was exhausting!

We did some more service on Wednesday for a guy named Bruce (from our Facebook post). He recently lost a leg and couldn't do a lot of the yard work that he used to; so we helped him out. They had this huge flower bed out front, and wanted us to remove the gardening fabric in it along with the weeds. That fabric stuff quickly became the bane of my existence. The lady was bringing the garbage can closer to us and fell down! So that was actually incredibly awkward, she fell really hard and I had no idea what to do.

We also did service for a lady named Vicki this week! She was so cute, she found our post on Facebook and asked us to, and I quote, "move a couch about one foot, and a cupboard about three". And she wasn't joking, easiest service ever, and she was so sad she couldn't pay us! We talked to her for a bit later and it turns out her daughter is a member! She asked us some questions and we ended up talking about the plan of salvation a bit! She's super cool, and we're planning on going back on Thursday (not to talk about the gospel or anything, but still cool!).

The worst of the service came later though, on Friday morning when we found ourselves scooping up dog pooh for a few hours in the rain!   2/10 recommend, also what the heck do some people feed their dogs!

We got a self referral a week after I got here, and have yet to get in contact with her since our first phone call with her; so we decided to make cookies and drop them off at the address we had for her! Sister Peterson and I made Oreos (which took a hot second because our hand mixer is garbage), and got them already and wrote this cute note and everything (Sisters will be Sisters after all). Only to type the address into Google Maps and realize that our self referral had given us the post office as her address. I felt played, and I was angry about it for a minute; but honestly well played Marty, well played. 

We got to have a few member lessons in-person! One with the Lees who are adorable and still have their Christmas tree up! Another with the Larkins who are so cute and have the most relaxed dog of all time. They both have been doing the 21 Day Missionary Challenge (something we invited members to do a while ago) and have been thinking of some people in their neighborhood that they think would we should talk to! Yet again we got to go to the Seversons in person, this week we learned that the Seversons don't like milk (all four of them) and only use it to "soften cereal, but only barely"- Sister Severson. I personally don't disagree, but Sister Hawkins loves milk and felt personally attacked.

We also got to have our usual member lessons too, Fitzsimmons as always was a highlight! We talked about baptism and he told us about when he got to baptize his dad! We also had our with Sister King on Sunday. We still have them even though Alan (her new husband that the missionaries where teaching) doesn't get on anymore. She's super sweet and every single week when we ask if there's anything we can do for her she just asks us to keep praying for Alan's heart to be softened.

We painted rocks with the Christiansens this week, which once again displayed my lack of artistic ability. Sister Mitchell was over there painting a temple and I was trying to make dots. My entire rock ended up smearing too, as overall it wasn't a good outing for me; but it was fun to get to talk with them for a bit!

One of the Elders had to go up to the hospital in Portland this week, so two of them where up there and kept sending us pictures of them by the temple, and doing all these cool things. Which was rude! But on Sunday all four Elders showed up to the YSA branch (which is incredibly rare, because usually not even the ones over the YSA branch shows up). They also brought the YSA age kid they have on date from Newport, which doubled the number of YSA kids in attendance!  After sacrament was over one of the Elders ran over to us, and told us they had Chic-Fil-A for us in the car. Sure enough they brought a sandwich for each of us home from Portland; so Elder Hull has now been forgiven of all past offenses. Because not only is there no Chic-Fil-A for miles, we got Chic-Fil-A on a Sunday, miracles happen every day! Huge shout out to Elder Hull, hopefully whatever he had to go to the hospital for all went well!

Today we went to the aquarium, I love aquariums so that was epic! The only down side was that they decided to make a OUTSIDE aquarium on the Oregon Coast! What a mistake! It was kinda cold, put the puffins made it all worth it! 

Anyway we had such a good week, so many miracles happening all around! Can't wait to see what this week holds for us in good old Waldport Oregon! P.S. everyone pray for Madrid, just heard that by the end of June they'll be done to 30 missionaries in the entire mission!!

the relief society room is haunted, but it's down pretty far down on our concern list

I know I start out every email by talking about how crazy this week has been, but this week has aged me four years! What a wild ride we've had here in Waldport, Oregon.

Sister Peterson and I had a bible study with a lady we had done some service for a couple weeks ago -for those of you who pay really good attention to these emails you might remember the story ;)- at a cute little café here. It was pretty cool, we read Matthew 14 (which I had already gone over with the institute manual and added a few sticky notes). She had a new living translation of the bible, which is just the bible for hipsters; so when it was her turn to read the verses it felt a little off, but overall it was super cool. Unfortunately she refused to give the Book of Mormon a try and doesn't want to meet again, but overall it still a pretty cool experience. 

During our weekly lesson with the family that zooms in from three different devices we had some issues. One of the kids had left his "Zoom machine"- the mom's words not mine- at school and couldn't get on (so apparently he was just excused from the lesson at that point?? I don't know he just never showed up). The mom was sitting there on her phone wearing one of her sons' gamer head sets, and I almost lost it as soon as we logged on, then she couldn't hear us, and her voice was just crackling and I thought we were done for; but luckily Matthew - the oldest kid- took everything into his own hands and figured out the technology for his family. After that it was a pretty good lesson, aside from the part where they kept talking about horse therapy, and I was just so uncomfortable thinking about anyone willingly riding horses.

We met with Teresa again for the last time, we actually dropped her which is a very different experience for us; but I'm pretty sure she was trying to convert us to a cult, so some actions had to be taken. :)

Some service we had planned cancelled on us last minute, so we went to the church and practiced this dance we have to do for this video one of Sister Mitchell's friends from home is putting together (it's honestly the only reason I was low key hoping for her to get transferred). Once we were done we needed to change back into proselyting clothes for dinner (because a member was bringing it for us). This might have been a bad move- in fact you will soon learn that it definitely was- but we decided we'd quickly change in the computer room that is right next to the relief society room. I finished first so I went and tapped out Sister Mitchell who was lookout. A minute after Sister Mitchell went back there the door opened and the bishop walked in!! 

I frantically went over and kicked the doorstop out of the computer room door and slammed the door shut, Sister Mitchell- who was just chilling in her garments- looked at me real confused as the door shut in her face. The other two Sisters were sitting on the couch putting on their shoes, and I watched their eyes go so big. Bishop then made small talk with us and we told him about the dance we'd been filming, and I stood there with the door to my back, blocking his entrance to where Sister Mitchell had been changing. Now 99.9% of the time, we're the ONLY people that go into this computer room, naturally though, today was the day that Bishop wanted to make copies! The exchanged glances with the other two sisters then said something absolutely genius like "I'll go make sure the copy machine is on" (it's literally always on).

When I walked in there I saw Sister Mitchell curled in a ball on the other side of her room in her garments, she looked up at me and I've never seen her so scared! Looking back that was probably one of the funniest things I have ever seen, but in that moment everything was dead serious. She was hiding from the window I could tell, so I grabbed her dress from a chair by me and scream whispered "Put a dress on, he wants to make copies!". I saw her grab the dress then I went back outside, where the most awkward conversation of all time was going on between the Bishop and the other Sisters; I finally decided I couldn't bear the awkward tension anymore and offered to make the copies for him. This was genuinely one of the most awkward experiences of my life, but I've been laughing about it non-stop for the last five days! 

We've actually gotten to have a few of our member lessons inside this week, which has been absolutely amazing! One of them we got to go to in person was with Connie, she's a convert (as is a LOT of this ward) and she told us about her first time doing baptisms (she'll be going through to get her endowment in the spring, she hopes!). Anyway it was such a powerful lesson, she told us about how she got baptized for her mother and her grandmother, and it was so sweet!

We had another in person member lesson with the Seversons, but they actually told us they'd teach us this week, which was a fun change of pace. Hamilton (age 6) and Oliver (age 8) taught the lesson, and then we played a game with them! It was so cute, they're such a cute little family!

We have some new Elders in the district! Elder Hull (the Spanish Elder that stayed) got a new companion Elder Imbler. I get the vibe that both of them know about as much Spanish as me, so this will definitely be a big learning and growing experience for both of them, wishing them well. Our new district leader may low key become and apostle one day, he's given five spiritual thoughts so far (he keeps forgetting to assign others to do it) and they've all been so good!

Little fun fact I forgot to mention, we've been hearing voices in the church at night, so that's super fun! Most nights were too tired to be scared though, so it's kinda just a minor inconvenience.

Once again this week we had to speed out of our lesson with our guy Jeffrey (resent convert) because someone had to pee, this time however, it wasn't me! :) We such a good lesson with him though, he's so sweet!

Pictures: 

-us and BP

-Sis Peterson and I with Jeffrey Geiger 

-Me and Sis Peterson sporting the shirts BP got us

-coast family portrait 

-sis Hawkins and i's accidental selfie :) 

God won't lock you out, but my landlord sure will

We got transfer news last night. The four of us coast sisters will be staying here!! Which translates to me "killing" my companion, Sister Peterson, and Sister Mitchell spending seven and a half months here (which for her is over half her mission, because she was apart of the group that got shafted some time in the beginning of COVID). We're getting two new Elders on the Coast though (since our District leader got shipped off to Africa last week).

The clothing exchange had been getting a LOT of donations, I think because people are forced to stay at home, so they've decided to get rid of a lot of stuff. Unfortunately the clothing exchange is only open one day a week (I don't know why and I won't pretend like I do) so not enough is being taken to compensate for how much is being donated. The entire warehouse was full last week (it had been getting close in the weeks prior), so they asked us to sort through it and to only keep the nicer things. The rest would go to goodwill. This was only four days after the hoarder situation, so the three of us ended up PURGING everything! Soon enough they had half as such as they used to and still more than necessary. The pile of bags for good will was overtaking the room by the end.

On Wednesday the FHAM Elders came up and filmed Brother Fitzsimmons' testimony. It was so cool, he did it so good it only took one try. The Elders told us that was the fastest member video they had ever done! Hopefully they edit it soon so we can see it, it was so powerful!

We had an apartment inspection this week, which apparently is a thing? So, we cleaned our apartment and left a note asking if they'd fix the blinds for us (one of the blinds over the sliding doors in the back fell off), and of course leaving out some Book of Mormons. When we got back to our apartment (on a spiritual high from filming Brother Fitzsimmons testimony), we couldn't get in. We've only ever locked the door handle of our apartment, but the people that "inspected" our place locked the dead-bolt. Which we had never had to unlock before, after trying all three keys on our key ring, we admitted defeat and drove to the Yachats apartment and did our studies there. Thankfully, I remembered that when we changed cars there had been an envelope in our glove box that said "Waldport Spare Keys"; so later when we went back we were able to get back. Which was a small miracle that I am very grateful for.

Unfortunately though when we got inside we had some other issues. First off, no one took a Book of Mormon, disappointed but not surprised. Secondly they had pushed all of our clothes to the sides of the closet and then left some weird foam stuff all over the ground off our closet. That was a bit suspicious, but I was willing to overlook it, until I went into the kitchen. Not only had they not fixed the blind, but they had broken ANOTHER one and just left it there, with a sticky not that read "He uhh... broke it." For obvious reasons I had to have a minute to just lay on the ground and stare up at the ceiling. Especially when you add on to this by the fact that right before this we had just had a "trash can on fire" kind of lesson with a non-member. BP brought us chocolate milk though, and all the sudden I was over it; he's 100% the MVP of this story.

On Thursday we had another lesson with Geoffrey (the one who got high and saw Jesus). It didn't go as well as last week, mostly because he talked for most of it, and we could barely get a word in. It wasn't that bad though, until it was; so Geoffrey always tells us that he prays for us (he phrases it "prays over us" but I assume he means the same thing). For fifteen uncomfortable minutes, he told me about how he views my soul, and prophesied about where he sees me going in life. I really wish I could give you more details, but I'm pretty sure that Heavenly Father did me a solid and blocked most of it out of my memory. As soon as we got in the car I put my head in my hands and just heard Sister Peterson laughing. 

For new missionary training I was working on teaching the law of chastity this week, which is as much fun as it sounds. Hermana Hawkins and I (the two newbies) role-played a lesson with BP and his son. They asked every question you don't want to get, and some I've never even thought of in my life ("Is Michelangelo's "David" considered porn?"). BP goes by Fred during role plays and Fred has an open marriage, so we had to navigate that which was really fun! The bright side is that after that teaching it to the people at our NMT was a piece of cake.

BP came with Sister Peterson and me to go see a lady named Peggy (we're not allowed to knock on people's door without a member), she used to have lessons with the missionaries, but doesn't anymore. She wasn't there (turns out she's living somewhere else for a while), but her neighbor came out and talked to us for almost an hour. I think he managed to tell us his entire life story, my companion brushed off her old tracking skills and pulled out a Book of Mormon. He took it, I don't get the vibe much will happen there, BUT it was the closest thing to tracking I may ever get to experience!

Every Saturday we go to Jeffery's (new member, not to be confused with the Geoffrey who gets revelation about my soul). For those of you who are unaware, I have to pee A LOT. The other coast sisters think I should go see a doctor, but I just told them this is how it is. I pee before we go anywhere, because I know I'm a ticking time bomb; so I peed RIGHT before we left for Jeffrey's. Jeffery, as almost everyone here, is a TALKER. He loves to talk, about anything! We actually had a pretty good lesson with him, and it was on topic for the most part! It was going very well, but I really needed to pee. As we started to close up our lesson it started to get really bad, but we were closing the lesson so everything was going to be okay. Of course I should have known that wouldn't be the end, not in this ward. Jeffrey started talking about his usually things: his wife, books he's read, covid, etc. Now I've heard all topics come up about five times now, so I knew that we weren't leaving anytime soon. I was right. Eventually Sister Peterson and I managed to have the closing prayer (I quickly volunteered) and leave. Once we got in the car I told Sister Peterson we needed to high tail it home. Two miracles come to light from this story: one I made it home before, and two, we somehow managed to keep a lesson with Jeffrey under an hour and a half.

Stake conference was Sunday, which was really good, until the broadcast broke down RIGHT when the stake president went to speak! We also had our outgoing missionaries devotional; I only knew two people on there, but it was still pretty sad. It was really cool to see all the missionaries on there that were going to their original assignment (one was even going to LONDON!!!). For those of you wondering Hermana Hawkins, Mitchell and I have still heard absolutely nothing about Spain; so you'll catch us chilling on the coast!

I've been reading the Book of Mormon with the institute manual this time through, and that thing is low key a gold mine, do it! Also read through the new testament with it, I just read through Matthew 14 with it, and it was super cool. I do have issues with the fact that Matthew 14 has three incredible stories and has the audacity to only be 36 verses, but I'll get over it one day. We have a bible study set up for tomorrow and we're talking about said chapter, so we'll see how that goes! 

Anyways that was my week, we put out a service add on the Waldport buy and sell page and have been getting replies, and setting up a lot of service; so hopefully those will provide some people to teach as well as a more interesting email next week!

Much love, Hermana Shelton

PS:  Concerning the attached photo:  Just thought you should know that Oregon is Oregon, but at least it's closed on Sunday....

"YOU GET A NEW CAR"- Oprah Winfrey I think

Good Monday evening,

I am once again trying to remember what was this week and what was last week. They all kind of blur together on the mission. I can't remember what planet it was (I think Venus) but I learned that it takes longer for a day to pass (one rotation) than for a year to pass (a revolution around the sun). That's exactly how time works on a mission, days go on and on forever, but weeks fly by. I've been informed that transfer calls are in six days (?!?) I just figured out how to get to the church, and now there's a chance of me being shipped off? This should be illegal.

Tuesday we once again got to go to the clothing exchange, where Hermana Hawkins and I snatched ourselves some grandma fits, some lady had these engraved shirts that had me dying. Hermana Hawkins' says "Grandmas are Special" and mine says "I'm retired, do it yourself". I personally think we found the holy grail of donated clothes, I can't wait until we can wear these to a service project or something together.

Tuesday night we had perhaps the worst member lesson of all time; so this family likes to sit on three different screens for the lesson. One of the screens starts playing "Staying Alive" by the Bee Gees and we couldn't tell which one it was for half the song. Then finally one of the kids (who's nickname is 'Bread', no idea why but it felt relevant to set the scene properly) asked if he could keep playing it throughout the lesson. That was the first five minutes, things never improved from there and after it was over we all went and laid on the ground for ten minutes trying to recover. I've had very few 30 minutes last that long in my life.

We had our second lesson with Teresa this week, and she brought five pages of notes (each of us getting our own copy). She claimed they were her thoughts while reading 1 Nephi, but I cannot see how they could connect to a single verse. Mostly there just bible verses and her thought that almost had something to do with the bible verse. We also had our second lesson with Geoffrey later that day, which went a lot better than the first one, but we'll see what happens next time (it's always a guessing game). 

I've been friending a lot of old people on Facebook (the new knocking doors), and one of them messages me A LOT. She's recovering from a surgery so she doesn't have much else to do, but it's been very refreshing having someone respond to me for once. 

As always Wednesday's Water was a good time, we even had the STLs there this time. It did kind of hurt to watch them beat me like a dirty rug at the game that I made up, but in the wise words of Sister Johnson (my STL) you have to take some L's to form half as many W's. Also I will be providing no context on the game in question, if your curious go check it out on Coast 4 Christ and pad our stats a bit.

Thursday we drove all the way up to Eugene to get our BRAND new car. Little buddy only had 23 miles on it, which felt morally wrong; but who am I to question it. I personally think our old car was fine, but this one is blue and I enjoy it. After we got our new car (and I sniped the ONLY mini Precidad Mi Evangelio in all of Oregon, take that Hermana Hawkins) we drove all the way over to Corvallis (I understand the geography means nothing to y'all, but needless to say it was a DAY). Our zone was filming a musical number and we had a three hour practice that stole my soul.

Only to then have to drive BACK to Corvallis the next day to film the musical number. I honestly couldn't tell if it was an big win or an epic loss until later when one of the Sisters sent us a recording she had on her phone (she had one of the three mics on her), and needless to say it was one of the biggest L's I have ever taken. I'm physically ill over the fact that my voice somehow contributed to the sound that came out of that. It'll be playing for the whole mission this Monday, on the Facebook live for all the dying missionaries to say their testimony (including our district leader who's being shipped to his OG mission on Wednesday).

Saturday was an experience. The Elders posted a service add a few weeks ago, and a lady responded to it that she needed help cleaning out her garage. Naturally they were really hyped they went over there about two weeks ago with high spirits, and found a garage where EVERY crevice was filled; so they left and contacted the rest of us to schedule a day where the rest of us could help too. 

I was pretty nervous going into this because I thought that we'd go and she wouldn't let us move anything because she'd want it all. I was half right, she wanted everything, but she rented a U-Haul for us to transport everything to a storage unit. Things started out pretty well, I personally had a little bit of a freak out when we found a petrified rat. Legit only its skeleton was left, all the meat and hair was gone. It didn't help that like four minutes after that incident, the lady stated-and I quote- "I have seven dead people in here". I had to take a moment after that and go say a little prayer, because that was not what I needed to hear when I was in a dark garage grabbing mystery boxes that haven't been open since 1983. Obviously after a minute I realized that she meant seven dead people's stuff, but the damage had already been done. She also took like seven on my loads in a row and took them into her house because she "needed" them. She hadn't been in the garage for THIRTY years and some of the cardboard boxes where practically decaying! Elder Hecht got a NASTY mystery substance ALL over him and I was incredibly grateful it happened to him because I would not have mentally recovered. It also was raining (because we're in Oregon) so all the boxes got super wet and I'm certain that storage unit smells awful right now. All that being said, I found it pretty fun in a weird way, but as soon as we got back I panic cleaned out my desk and threw a lot of stuff away. 

For P-Day we went to a lighthouse with all the Sisters in our Zone (8 total). We got soaking wet, but it was really fun. Kinda crazy how the transfer is almost over, I'm going to start campaigning for longer ones, I just got the hang of things!