¡I killed my trainer

Hey everybody, it's been a good week! Pretty slow, and a lot of it was just transfers, pero está bien! :) 

Monday night we had a goodbye drive through for Sister Peterson and Sister Mitchell. Elder Imbler once again showed up with his trumpet and played tabs (or taps we are a quad pan are currently arguing about which it is). 'Twas a good time! 

We then went to correlation, BP gave us all ice cream, then proceeded to start his goodbye ritual. He picks out a car part that reminds him of you and carves your nickname into it with the dates you served here. It was so cute, and genuinely one of the saddest things I've ever seen. He gave Sister Peterson part of an old car radio, because she always plays the ukulele! 

We didn't have to be in Eugene until four the next day, so we ended up moving the beds from Waldport over to Yachats with BP. Sister Peterson and I were in dresses the entire time, which was quite fun. Sister Phillips and I have since went back over and stole everything else worth taking from the old apartment; so we're pretty much moved in. There are still some things to work out, like how we have way too much furniture in the back room. But all is well.

We then ate a subway sandwich while sitting on a rock looking out the ocean, and then headed to Eugene. We took the coast so it was SO pretty. It was low-key, really sad to say goodbye, but it's all good. After a bit of messing around in Eugene (because the transfer van was late, shocker!) I took Sister Peterson to the mission office, essentially killed her, and picked up Sister Phillips. 

Sister Hawkins and her greenie (Sister Poulsen) didn't get back until around 5 the next day, which was rough because they were bringing groceries and the only cereal we had was Sister Hawkins' nasty raisin bran. :( That crud should not legally exist (sorry dad). Being in a "quad pan" is honestly a pretty good time though, so far so good. 

Another reason that this week has been so slow is because both Brandy and Jodi are in the hospital. Both have quite a bit of health issues it seems. Jodi we're planning to go over and help her move in some more once she's back home, and Brandy said she'd call us when she's out too (she'll probably forget, but it's all good). So if you have any room on your prayer rolls, add them.

At district council we were told we can get vaccines now, which was really exciting; but when we tried to look them up on the church computer, none of them said we qualified; so obviously some communication got lost somewhere down the mission grapevine, before it found us here in banishment. Hopefully we can get them soon, though that'd be hecka nice.

Sister Phillips and I went and saw Jeffrey Geiger on Saturday. It was the shortest lesson we've ever had! Only a little over an hour, and he actually answered the questions we asked instead of talking about his time in Washington D.C. instead! Go Jeffrey! He also showed up to church and bore his testimony, which was so cool! 

YSA this week was actually super good, five YSA people actually showed up! Which is such a good turnout, the best I've ever seen actually. Three of them spoke, which was the first time I've ever seen a member of this ward speak since I've been here. Clay Evans (he's in the Coast Guard, and is the person who shows up in person the most often) brought the house down. He was asked to talk about who Jesus Christ is to him, and after admitting he had forgotten until 10 p.m. last night, he absolutely killed it! Shout out to YSA, I have so much hope one day we'll have a turn out that's in the double digits!

Anyway it's been a pretty slow, and semi-quiet week, but that will definitely change because Waldport isn't ever short on stories. I'm so excited for all the new people to meet the members, and all the wild people we know here, it's going to be so fun!

Here's hoping I have a lot more interesting things to tell you next week,

Hermana Shelton :)

i'm moving!!...sort of!

I'm going to just start out with the transfer news for y'all! I'll be moving...10 minutes away! I'm staying in Waldport and getting a new companion (once Sister Peterson is officially dead). Her name is Sister Phillips and I'll be picking her up Tuesday. We'll be moving into the Yachats apartment with the other Sisters, because there have been some...issues with ours... so yeah! Sister Mitchell is leaving Waldport after a legendary stay of 7 1/2 months and will be moving to her second area, to be an STL in Medford, and Sister Hawkins will be getting a baby on Wednesday, so we'll be in a trio for a epic 24 hours! It should be a good time! We're not sure what's going on with us moving yet, so I'm sure that'll be a major part of my next email! :) 

We did some service for Jodi this week, she was the referral we got last week. She just moved here, and has a broken leg so she needed a little help. She had us put all these nails in the wall so she could hang hoodies. It felt incredibly wrong, because she didn't have us measure or anything before drilling in these nails, I honestly felt like I was committing a crime more than I was helping her. But she was very thankful to us, and we're planning to go back and help her some more later (well I guess just me, and Sister Phillips now, but still).

We also did some service for a lady named Kristal, she may or may not be insane, jury's still out on that one. What I can tell you is that her house smells like she has a few pet skunks, if you know what I mean; but Oregon, will be Oregon I guess. We helped her move a bed from her house to her sister's, who's house smelt like she owned about 27 pet skunks, so that was epic. Luckily BP was there and managed to get everything done in record time so we could high tail it out of there! What an MVP!

Speaking of the best ward mission leader in the history of the church, BP comes with us to lessons with the Youngs on Tuesday nights. They're a newish member family who are still learning quite a bit, and are growing a lot. This week Bishop asked us to teach them about patriarchal blessings, so we ran with it. We talked to them about it, and then we asked BP to share a little about his experience with his blessing. He told us about how his blessing said he'd be blessed with many daughters, and then he only had two sons; but he said that he knows that it was talking about all of the Sister missionaries he's gotten to know during his time as WML. It was the most wholesome thing ever, and all of us were tearing up, including Sister Young, who told us she wants to get her's soon!

As I've mentioned a few times already, I'm killing my trainer tomorrow; so naturally on Thursday I planned a "FUNeral" for her. Emphasis has been given to "fun" because it was in fact very fun. I went to the dollar store and got some decorations, and wrote her this eulogy, it was a grand time. We pretty much got birthday decorations and crossed out everything that said "birth" and wrote "death" on it instead; so it could also be referred to as a "Deathday Party" if you prefer. We don't have many pictures unfortunately, because the Elders had to run off right after for some service... 

I also finish new missionary training this week! Wahoo! I taught the interim zone-leader who's only going to be one for five days (our ZL got shipped off to Brasil last week, and our STL will be heading out next Friday!). He was so uncomfortable and at one point asked if I was supposed to teach him. Which made me question how he did new missionary training when we was a greenie, but all was well.

Our district leader made us all matching friendship bracelets to remember this district. Each companionship picked a color, I obviously wanted it to be purple, and Sister Peterson wanted yellow, so we had to compromise for maroon. It's super special, and I'm going to miss this district a lot, it's been an epic six weeks. Every companionship is changing this transfer though, so that'll be exciting!

This week has mostly been a lot of lasts with Sister Peterson, and a lot of her saying goodbye to people. Mostly we did the same thing, but people got sad at the end, and asked her to pray every single lesson because "You'll be going home soon." 

Waldport, as always has been fabulous and I can't wait to let y'all know about all the adventures we have with some newbies next week!

Much love, Hermana Shelton!

Also duolingo played with my emotions a bit this week, but it's all good. I've decided that it's actually prophecy and that one day I will receive an email saying this from the church. :)

"spelling is fun!"- just not our skill set...

Hello my people! I honestly don't know where to start...

The Elders joined us at the clothing exchange this week, after months of seeing our scores, I guess they wanted in. We got done early - thanks to the combined power of four extra people, and the donation bin having been closed for a couple weeks- so obviously we went to the church and played "Secret Hitler"! :) 

Sister Peterson and I got a referral Tuesday night! It was for a lady named Jodi, who just moved here from Alaska! We texted her and made plans to go over on Thursday. Jodi warned us about five times to text her before we came in so her dogs wouldn't bite us; so when we got there we did just that. We parked the car and called her, it became pretty apparent that she had forgotten we were coming. Eventually she told us her friend was coming with a truck in 30 minutes, and asked if we could help unload. We figured service a better way to build a relationship anyway and told her we could be there in 30 minutes- while sitting in her driveway- and went to go put on service clothes (she lives like 5 minutes from our apartment). When we came back, we saw her talking to someone in a TINY little Honda in her parking lot. Something had gone wrong and the truck didn't end up making it to Waldport yet. But she invited us in and talked with us for a while, and we actually ended up teaching a bit (very very small bit, but still) of a lesson in our service clothes. She teared up a bit at the "Because of Him" video- because honestly who doesn't- which was super cool! I'll be a long road, but she seems really genuine so I'm excited to see what happens there!

Wednesday's Water and Fridays Feast had an ambitious cross over this week where we played "District Feud" courtesy of my mom! Unfortunately while making the event for Wednesday the Coast District had a complete brain collapse and forgot how to spell. I misspelled feud (spelling it fued) and I was all embarrassed; but Elder Zimmerman then named the event "Wesday's Water" which was phenomenal. I think I laughed for forty minutes after we realized. Thanks to anyone who still watched it, despite the horrific advertisement! The Sisters somehow won, even though we had a HORRIFIC showing for the first part of Wednesday night. For obvious reasons we played Secret Hitler after our live videos ended.

We had to go to Corvallis yet again this week, we were having a combined district council for some reason (I don't know I just work here); so us coast sisters left at 7:30 so we could be there for New Missionary Training in person. One of the zone leaders came and joined our district council and played our closing hymn. I literally did not know that someone could make a piano sound that loud. I'm pretty sure I was screaming "How Firm A Foundation" yet I couldn't hear my own voice. Turns out the Elder is really good at playing the piano and after he asked if we had any requests. I asked him what her knew by Billy Joel and he played "Piano Man", which was a really basic choice, but I was so happy. The next thing I knew another Elder had whipped out a harmonica (he keeps it on his key chain?) and we were having a whole musical production. 

Elder Zimmerman had decided we would cook burgers after, it started out pretty sketchy; but luckily some random Elder that had worked at "Five Guys" in the past so he took over. After we played "Secret Hitler" obviously! (You may be sensing a theme here). 

Our apartment has been having some absolutely crazy construction done on it, for a time period on Saturday we didn't even have a door... but today has definitely been the best part of it, Sister Peterson and I left for Walmart only to be greeted by our deck having no railings of any kind (earlier in the week they'd taken out the bottom part by our apartment leaving a gaping hole, which is now covered by a piece of plywood that is desperately near snapping!). I have never doubted my ability to walk more, never have I ever touched any of the railings, but I like to know they're there I guess. Anyway that's been a wild adventure, and the constant banging against our apartment has made study time a bit difficult this week. 

Sister Johnson and I were companions for a day again (any excuse to come down to Waldport again I guess), and we had the glorious experience of teaching Jeffrey together. Jeffrey is a new member who TALKS a lot! He's so cool though! He tends to go on rants every once and a while and it's kinda hard to get things back on track. It was super fun though, and we ended up being there for two hours on accident, time moves differently on this man's porch I'm telling you. Over the weeks with Jeffrey there are a few topics I've learned to avoid, COVID, Family History, Latin, YouTube, and Washington DC. He lived in DC and could talk about it for HOURS (one time I think he did). I prepped Sister Johnson, and then ended up being the problem because we were talking about missions and I mentioned my sister served. He asked me where, and I painfully had to say "Washington D.C. South". That was a good thirty minutes I burned there, but you live and you learn.

As always this ward is the cutest and this week has been nothing but amazing! (except losing an hour of sleep Saturday night, but it not being dark at 6 even made that worth it)

Hope everyone had a great week, and if not then have a good one this time for me! :) 

Much love

Hermana Shelton :)

the coast district turns communist!?!?

¡Hola mis amigos!

Sister Johnson and Sister Bennett came up for exchanges this week. On a Tuesday so they had the pleasure of sorting, folding, hanging, and most importantly purging clothes with us. Sister Johnson and I each personally made six garbage bags in under thirty minutes at one point. It was a pretty fun time being companions with Sister Johnson for the day, hopefully she'll remember us when she gets sent of to Brazil shortly. :( Sister Johnson forgot shoes to go with her dress once we had to change after the clothing exchange, so she ended up rocking the epic fit that you see pictured below! What a legend.

Our apartment has been a bit of a construction zone lately (they're redoing a lot of stuff I guess? everything looks the same to me). Wednesday's Water was as always a legendary last minute performance. We planned it the morning of, but the printer didn't work at the church (we should have guessed) so we ended up writing all of it five minutes before we were scheduled to start. 

The lady that was supposed to make us dinner that night ended up falling asleep and forgetting (how can I blame her for living my dream?) so we ended up eating a frozen pizza in the car of the church parking lot. It felt very reminiscent the time a group of us bought milk and Oreos before softball practice and ate it in Whitey (the 2000 civic I drive at home) so we didn't have to share with the rest of the team. :)

Thursday 'morning' started out pretty interesting. Sister Peterson turned on the lamp and woke me up before going to the bathroom and I - in my very groggy state- was very mad that she didn't have the decency to just hobble to the bathroom in the dark like the rest of us; but I got over it and turned over in my bed and tried to go back to sleep. I felt like I had been run over - and then promptly backed over- by a truck. I fell asleep for another few minutes before Sister Peterson came back and woke me up by saying, "Good Morning." I was so enraged by her saying this, not even really at her, just at the concept of it being morning and me having to wake up. I turned over to her, and with the most pain I have ever heard in my own voice, and tears in my eyes asked, "Did the alarm go off?" We both looked at the time on our phones for ten seconds before Sister Peterson softly whispered, "No?" My phone's clock read 1:23 a.m. Sister Peterson was trying to get us to start morning planning before last call at the "Moose Bar" across the street! Turns out she has a history of sleep walking, and she started to 'sleep pray' and woke up in the middle of it and assumed it was morning! I was just thankful we had five more hours to sleep after that, because for those thirty-seven seconds I thought it was morning I was in pure agony!

Later that morning, when the day was actually supposed to begin. We drove to Corvallis (or I did because I'm the driver this transfer). The Blueberry is still a little broken, so some wind was coming in during the drive; but other than that it was pretty fun! We also ate some Thai food while there, it was Sister Peterson's 18 month mark so she got to pick and she picked correctly! She's literally knocking on deaths door, but all is well. When we got back to Waldport we went to BP's house and Sister Peterson burned a dress, and her copy of 'Adjusting to Missionary Life' (which is in fact the book with a young Tim Ray on the cover, so RIP to him), we figured she is well adjusted by now. 

Friday's district council was a pretty good time, the Zone Leaders showed up out of nowhere, which I thought was weird but it turns out they heard we were playing "Secret Hitler" at the end so they drove an hour from Corvallis just to join. I do not blame them, it was epic. Nothing creates a group bonding experience like yelling at each other for being a fascist! As always I was completely innocent and everyone accused me of being Hitler the entire time (I thought it was a Murray family thing, but I'm starting to think I might just give of suspect vibes). District council may or may not have gone over by about an hour, but all is well. 

The FHAM sisters game down from Eugene on Friday, so we went around filming pretty much all day. We filmed a lot of members for a video we're making, so hopefully it all went well. If it doesn't at least I learned how to set up and take down filming lights and a tripod in a minute flat. BP made all of us burgers that night, which was really good!

Saturday we did some more service from that Facebook service add we posted about a month ago. We cleaned a car and two boats. The car legit had moss growing out of it, which I still don't understand scientifically. Nonetheless the water that came off of it was green, and we scrubbed for a LONG time! There was also a really weird smelling smoke coming out of this building next to us the whole time. It just kept getting stronger and stronger until we all put our masks on to smell our own breath instead. We still aren't 100% sure what was going on there, the lady we were doing service for claims that her neighbor "brews his own coffee" but I've smelt coffee and that ain't it! 

YSA yet again was amazing! Chris (the Newport Elder's friend who got baptized last week) bore his testimony again, and the Elders looked like such proud dads. It was so cool! Also three members showed up, which matched the Branches record from last week. One of them was Clay Evans, who has come before, but works for the Coast Guard so he works a lot of Sundays. He actually bore his testimony too, which was so cool! I was actually really shocked when he got up, but his testimony was so good! It was the first fast Sunday since I've been here where Sister Peterson and I didn't have to go up after a long pause!

We had a "Sister P-Day" today, so us Coast Sisters drove up to Corvallis for the day. Our original plan was to hike "Mary's Peak", we drove up there and there was all this snow! It felt like home for a bit, especially when the other Sisters manage to get stuck in the snow! Gotta love the snow! Luckily some nice Oregonian appeared out of thin air to help us. Dude got an axe and chopped up this tree and used the wood to barricade them from falling off the mountain then managed to push them out of the snow and into a safer zone. He may or may not have been a heavenly messenger, because the dude really disappeared into thin air right after helping us. We then couldn't find the trail, so that didn't go as planned... but still a good time. We went and got some gyros (so good!) and played volleyball for a bit. I consider it a successful outing.

Have the best week everyone! And don't 'brew your own coffee'! ;)

P.S. Also enjoy this picture of me in the cowboy hat that has a picture of our mission president wearing a cowboy hat. Long story.

we wrecked the blueberry?!

Don't worry, we'll get to the title eventually; but first lets talk about the rest of my week here in Waldport Oregon ("where the forest meets the sea" or so the sign says).

The clothing exchange is bursting at the seams. Apparently, the Newport Goodwill has been closed to donations for months, and the Florence one is now unreachable (part of the road fell into the ocean or something fun like that, not really sure, us missionaries don't exactly know 'the word on the street'). So, everyone and their grandmother have been bringing all their old clothes to us. We honestly don't have anymore room to put stuff, they have the four of us go through stuff occasionally and "only keep the best of the best", needless to say our discard pile is getting wildly out of hand. At one point I had to help one of the people that work there make a "Closed for Donations" sign. He was using Google Docs and couldn't figure it out, I helped him figure it out, even though it wasn't Word (I am after all "proficient" in Microsoft Office, at least that's what the test I took in 10th grade told me. It's one of my top five skills). 

Near the end of our shift we found a bag full of wack dresses. Dresses may not even be the proper word, let's go with muu-muus. We found FOUR of the exact same ones so we all took one, mine is one of the ugliest shades of pink that's ever touched my body. We wore them to sleep that night because we spent the night at the Yachats apartment so we could get ready together for Zone Conference! 

Unfortunately we couldn't take the drive along the coast to Eugene, because the road kind of fell into the ocean; but Oregon's still pretty without the ocean. We also took some pictures before Zone conference courtesy of our FHAM (family history and media) Sisters; so I now have a Facebook profile picture with a tag on, whoops!

After Zone conference we bolted to Five Guys, only to get beat there by the Elders from our district. Also they don't have fry sauce here obviously, and I'm kind of ashamed to admit, it just didn't slap as hard without it. :( We also went to Voo-Doo Donuts, which is weirdly famous throughout the mission (and in Oregon). I was quite saddened to see the menu and see the one donut I wanted was one I couldn't order because it had a bad word in the title, and I have the Savior's name written on my heart. Growing experiences my people, growing experiences.

Hermana Hawkins may or may not have almost drove us through a field on the way home from Eugene. Okay fine, she totally did. She turned like 10 feet before the road, and I was dying. She just awkwardly backed up and we went on our merry way though. If only TIWI (our driving monitors) had a setting for off-roading.

At the end of district council we played a round of "Taco-Cat-Goat-Cheese-Pizza" genuinely one of the dumbest card games I've ever played; but it does provide quality entertainment. It was nice to have the Elders there because when we play with just the Sisters I get beat like a dirty rug. But the Elders managed to be worse than me so that was nice. It felt good to be one of the winners for a change.

We've been planning this video to make when the FHAM Sisters come down for a little bit. We wanted a lot of members to be in it, but some of them were going to be gone that day. Luckily we have a professional photographer in our ward so he filmed them with his NICE camera. It was super nice of him, and he drove to both their houses and filmed for us! Unfortunately once we were done, him and his wife left before us. We were still talking with the family that was being filmed; and they came back about 10 minutes later to inform us they had hit our car. 

Funniest part of all of this is that the car literally hit 1,000 miles an hour before this; so big rip to the Blueberry! The blue 2021 Equinox is no longer pristine. We haven't really been told much by the mission on what will happen either, so that'll be fun to figure out this week. I had high hopes that they'd take away my driving privileges, but then I remembered the car was parked and I wasn't even in it so the chances are pretty slim. The car is still drivable though, so that's nice, the door's just a little wacked. One of the Elders pointed out to me that when the Blueberry got wrecked in Psych they got a cranberry, so perhaps that's out destiny. 

Yesterday we may or may not have held Catholic mass instead of sacrament meeting. The speaker didn't show up again, so the Bishop just started reading out of Mosiah but changing everything to first person. He was replacing words, like "King" became "Bishop" and so on, it was wildin'. I wasn't paying too much attention though, because all four of us were frantically preparing a thought just in case Bishop called one of us out of the audience again. Luckily (or unluckily) his reading of King Benjamin's address took the entire time. 

But 'oh how the tables have turned', because YSA this week was amazing! First of all three members showed up! Well technically two members showed up, and then one got sustained as a member during the meeting. Which was epic. Chris had gotten baptized literally 90 minutes prior to the meeting. He was glowing! Then he ASKED if he could speak in our ward with the Elders. He did such a good job! It literally made my entire month! After we went and talked to him, he told us he didn't know what he was going to say at first and then a story came to his mind and everything clicked and he just started talking. Hermana Hawkins jokingly told him "Welcome to the Holy Ghost." His eyes went so big as he said, "that's what it is!". It was like everything just clicked in his brain. He was so excited, it was so cool! 

Anyways that meeting made my whole week and to quote Sister Mitchell once we got into the car "The Church is so true guys!" Much love from the OEM.