bigfoot, pears, glowsticks and miracles

¡Hola! Hope y'all are doing well, it's been another great and crazy week here in K-Falls! :)

T H E   P E O P L E : 

Betty! Okay quick recap on my lady Betty, all of Betty's family was baptized in the seventies, but she was going through a rebellious teen phase and refused. She then spent a lot of time with the one sister that went anti- and that was that. Until one day her sister Terri Long (of the Klamath Falls 4th ward) was going on a road trip with her and put in a CD. On that CD was a talk by none other than Sheri Dew.  When the talk was over, Betty was crying, and she started meeting with missionaries a while later. That was a while ago, she hadn't been taught for a while until she heard us speak in sacrament meeting and asked us if we'd come over sometime. Did I tell you that long story just so that you could know that Sheri Dew is the largest converting factor of Betty so far? Yes, yes I did. You all had the right to know. Anywho...this week we taught the restoration! She went on some long tangents, and told us some long stories, but it was SO good! She very obviously already has a testimony of the restoration and the Book of Mormon. We just have to figure out what's holding her back from being baptized. None of our notes really say anything, except that she smokes (which if she does, shout out to her for at least stepping outside because her apartment smells delightful). She's so sweet and feeds us lunch after our lessons too! ♡ 

Lori! Shockingly I'm still crazy confused by this lady. Quick refresher, Lori's son was a member and he died a few years ago, somehow the missionaries got in contact with her and started reading the Book of Mormon with her. Not sure if lessons have ever been taught, but here we are. :) We read Moroni 8 and 9 with her last week. She didn't even flinch at Moroni 8, which isn't exactly flowery. Lori seems to agree with everything about the church, and believes that there's more than the Bible to God's word. She thinks it makes perfect sense for there to be modern prophets, and revelations, and another testament of Christ; but she doesn't believe in the church. I can't explain it, or make it less confusing for you, because I can't make it less confusing for me. She believes in almost every principle and teaching of the church, but not the church. She changes the subject when she feels the spirit, won't accept a church invite, but was SO excited when she learned that her son's proxy temple work was moving forward. We'll be finishing the Book of Mormon this week, and I plan on asking her about fifteen questions about it, and to ask her to follow the council of Moroni 10:3-5. She's holding back, and I just need to figure out why. Super weird, I always feel like I'm unraveling a puzzle when we meet with her, if there is any room in your prayers this week, ask for me to know what to do, because your girl is CONFUSED.

Anthony! What a precious child of God. Anthony is the sweetest child, we taught him CPR this week (Church, prayer, and read the scriptures). We then invited him to come to church, which he happily accepted....sadly that didn't happen. Apparently his dad decided to take him for the weekend (even though it wasn't his weekend, which is why I specifically asked this week). Anthony was apparently VERY upset about it because he promised us he'd be there though! Very sweet of him, he has SO much excitement about everything! :) Oh to be nine. Our only holdback with Anthony is that he lives with his dad every other weekend; so to get him there the four times required for baptism will take a while. :( Also, before we started our lesson with Anthony, I literally witnessed a three year old playing with matches and almost passed away... Long story, well actually that's the whole story, but the context is quite long.

L A S   O T R A S   C O S A S  : 

One of of the less active members we have lessons with straight up believes in bigfoot, not even in a joking way; so that's pretty great. Bigfoot is the unofficial mascot of Oregon though, so it makes sense.

Glow in the dark Volleyball! Okay so the YSA has Volleyball every week, and if we find a person to come we get to go! :) For obvious reasons this has been a goal this whole transfer. God really was out here answering my prayers to get Campbell and me there....sadly it took one of the STLs having to go to the ER (it has not been the greatest transfer for the K-Falls Zone). Pretty much a girl I'd been messaging a couple weeks ago, somehow ended up going to bible study with one of our FHAM Elders in Eugene? They then wanted to invite her to an activity here, and needed someone to fellowship her....I had a messaging history with her, and Sister Gough (who is actually over YSA) was out of commision. So here we are. ;) One woman's L, is another woman's W. We helped set up and everything, and it was SO fun. Sadly I forgot to take pictures, but just know it was cool. Most of the Zone was breaking glow sticks for close to an hour to prepare!

The pear farm! We ended up going to the pear farm again this week! The member driving some other Sisters had more room so we hitched a ride! It was SO cool! We got to platform pick this time, and it was epic. We were all harnessed in and picking as fast as possible trying to get all the pears without having to make the platform stop moving so we could catch up. Campbell and I did pretty well, the other sisters (who are BOTH shorter than us), were behind us and were supposed to be reaching the higher pears; but it wasn't working very well. Overall though, that was a great time, 13/10 would do again! Even with the sore shoulders the next day! & the very scraped up arms that come from the platform practically moving through a tree.

We got cancelled on last night so we went and saw the Articles of Faith church here in Klamath. Apparently there are only two in the world, and one of them is in good old K-Falls! :) Not sure why or how this church building ended up with it, but it's pretty cool!

Much love from Klamtucky! Hope you all have a great night, and pray I stay here in K-Falls for another go around, it's transfers next week!

F O T O S : 

1 - don't worry his comp was sitting shotgun in the golf cart and didn't make the selfie 

2 -   

3 - these baskets are the ultimate sympathy bellies!

4 - Asian pears are actually amazing!

5 - me and the AOF wall

6 - AOF wall

7 - ♡♡♡

8 - took a stroll to Elder way! :)

9 - NMT be wildin' in the Falls.

the klamath curse?

Wow, okay. I have no idea how to begin with this one. It's been one of the craziest weeks of my entire life, but none of it is my story to tell. The Klamath Curse seems to be raging quite hard, for almost everyone except my companion and I, so here's what I can inform you of.

 T H E   P E O P L E : 

A N T H O N Y :  

My dude Anthony is doing so good! We've taught him The Restoration, and the Plan of Salvation! They've both gone so well! He's super epic and is working on his prayers! :) Best of the best. We love this kid. He actually says some pretty good prayers to end our lessons! :)

J O A N N : 

We went over to Joann's this week and helped her paint! She was painting her bedroom purple, living out all my childhood dreams.  Sister Ruegner and I- ended up going on illegal exchanges due to the circumstances of the week- came in and got it down in two hours. Ruegner is practically a professional edger so it all worked out.

M C C R E A D I E S : 

Wow this is a group of purebred humans. They're one of the key families in the ward but I haven't met them yet because everyone and their dog is vacationing all summer. They had us over for dinner on Saturday though, and I've never met more outgoing humans in my life. I was awe-struck. Also Sister McCreadie has a set of scriptures that have to be fifty years old. They are straight up deforming in front of my eyes. I learned more about that family in one hour of talking to them, then I learned about some of my comps in six weeks.

B E T T Y : 

My lady Betty! She's the sister of one of the members here, and wanted to meet with us after we talked in church. :) We went and met with her and it went so well. She's met with missionaries before, but she has some things to overcome. She's the sweetest though! Such a sweetheart she even made us lunch after our lesson.

F U N   T H I N G S : 

 

We went to Jalapenos to celebrate my NINE MONTH mark! Say what. Only four of the six sisters could make it, and one of the ones who didn't make it was my companion; so that was interesting. But it was still a good time! Sadly, the month mark curse that has formed on my mission seems to still be in effect (don't think I've previously mentioned this, but every third month mark -3,6,9- have been a train wreck). The Mexican food was good though, so yay!

Third Thursday, I have no idea what it's about but it's some community thing all us missionaries went to and made a booth for. Not much interest was shown, but it was a light in this week for sure. Especially when I watched some local band do an awful cover of Hotel California. Still better than nothing I guess. :)

My district leader, Elder Anderton - or Senator as well all call him, due to his dream of being a senator- dug through his suit coat and showed me that he is always carrying the US Constitution with him. He also listens to that one Dallin H. Oaks talk at least once a week, so he's got my vote. 

We headed up to the pear farm this week! Who knew picking pears was such serious work? It was pretty fun though, except for the mean workers that kept yelling at us for picking the wrong row. Still 8/10 would recommend. The only downside was that our only way there was the youth in the ward, so we ended up having to go with them to some family fun center, and playing the LONGEST round of mini golf of all time. I thought I was going to die. Then once we were finally heading home, my comp slammed her phone in the car, and that's the end of that. Three weeks out and onto phone number two. :(

I learned this week that my mission president proposed to his wife while in the movie theatre watching Karate Kid II. So, at least that's not your life story.

Also some of the Sisters and I went to Crater Lake today, and it lived up to the hype. The craziest blue I have ever seen! So cool, I can't believe it's real!

Sadly I don't have a lot of the photos from this week because we took them on Campbells phone....but here's what I got!

halfway there?!?! minus two days

My people what is up? 

The air here smells like the lame campfires everyone wanted to have in high school; so that's like a 4/10 experience, but it's all good. 

Quick update from the email last week, we went bowling and apparently bowling is the one thing in the state of Oregon that's cheaper than in Utah. So yee yee, my kind of place. :) Also I bowled a 130 both times, not bad considering it's been almost a year and a half since the last time I had the pleasure of being on a lane. Straight serotonin stonks were had. 

We once again had the incredible experience of joining the Mortenson family and Gary for family home evening. They forgot to tell us we needed to plan a little lesson, but all is well, because the spirit told me to take the stepping stones, and we had a fun little object lesson about the gospel of Jesus Christ. :) Cody (who is like 6, pienso), tried to cut a whole watermelon with a butter knife for a bit, and it was comedic gold, at the end of the night he also stepping in Turkey pooh. These people apparently have pet turkeys....for fun. I-. As a Mendon resident, I cannot relate. 

We had the pleasure of driving to Medford for Zone Conference (a little over an hour and a half); so in my almost nine months of mission experience I have one had one Zone Conference I haven't had to drive an hour and half to! :) And that's on banishment, but we love it here. 

While there I saw the Medford temple, it was the first time in almost eight months I've seen a temple! Let alone been in one! Crazy to think how much I take advantage of them being on every corner in Utah; and we have big ones too. This Medford baby is tiny! The stake center that shares a parking lot with it is JUST as big I swear. 

Zone Conference was good, we all low-key got dragged for never writing P Weeks, so I should probs do that today I guess. I was also crazy hungry the whole time and VERY hyped to visit the only Chic-Fil-A in the mission....until I received some tragic news. The Chic-Fil-A was temporarily closed, because they felt like they were overworking their staff. I don't know if I've ever been that sad, but anyway, the world moves on I guess. I certainly haven't yet though.

The other Klamath sisters all wanted to go to In N Out, so we did; and yet again I can say that everything about In N Out is disappointing to me. I later learned that my comp doesn't like it either so we really went for no reason; so RIP. 1/10 experience. Also the Sisters had us over to do Facebook finding together and had us do face masks, and yet again I'm disappointed by face masks. Don't get the hype personally. 

Joann had us over for dinner again (she made fajitas and some absolutely bomb guacamole). During the dinner we talked to all three of Elizabeth's kids a lot (it's actually so hard for me to keep track of which kids belong to who); and 9 year old Anthony point blank told us we wants to be baptized! Which is incredible, sadly we haven't taught him anything yet, so that'll need to change! Hehehe. We're super hyped though, and I'll get to polish off all my old object lessons from the days of teaching the Severson boys a lesson every week! :) We have our first real lesson with him tonight! He apparently watched all the videos that we send to Joann with her too! :) Also he taught me so much about Pokeman my head was spinning that night. 

His siblings (Jamie- or Jaynie, can't tell how they're pronouncing it- and Michael) also have a slight interest, they just seem to think they need to make a decision about joining the church before being taught? Weird, but we're hoping to change that soon! Both of them are super sweet and talk to us every time that we come!

People I had the Pleasure of Meeting:

Finally had the pleasure of meeting the incredible Snow family this week. In the past, missionaries have come over and had correlation (they're both over missionary work in RS/EQ) and play Book of Mormon DnD. We didn't play, and words cannot express my disappointment, pero está bien. They were super jet lagged that night, so hopefully we will this week! :)

Lori - low-key an eternigator; but I also don't think she's ever actually been taught anything...? Sisters come over and read the BOM with her. She's in 3 Nephi now, and I don't think she knows much. Super confusing, she really likes the Book of Mormon and believes that God would still talk to His children, and give further guidance; but doesn't seem to have any faith towards this faith..? Her son was a member, and when he died she wanted to know more about what he believed I guess. IDK... I'm still very much confused, and now I understand the lack of clarity the notes about her have.

Song of the week that I'd give my right pinkie toe to listen to right now: "Don't Throw Out My Legos"- AJR. Please listen to it for me. Idk why but this one has been haunting me recently. I'm also haunted because I was just informed by my father- over email- that Whitey (the 2000 white Honda Civic, I drove all throughout high school, and my older siblings all drove as well) was sold; so now I know I will never live out my daydream of this entire week were I drive around the empty roads of Mendon with AJR blaring. Actually tragic.

Also apparently I hit NINE MONTHS in two days!!! I'm halfway there, I only get this much more time!! What? Seriously the craziest news of all time, semi-depressed about it. Can't believe I'll have to leave the beloved OEM one day. :( No me gusta. 

F O T O S : 

1 - Klamtucky Sisters take on Bowling :)

2 - I have no memory of taking this, but here's me & Sister Zimmerman

3 - Klamtucky Sisters @ Zone comf. (ft. the smallest temple I've ever seen).

4 - me and my second born

5 - grandma Delores.

6 - the air tastes like burnt toast

7 - ruegner y yo ft. self care

8 - ruegner brought me a diet coke during district council (she has a VERY generous supply!!)

9 - if I've learned anything recently it's that Facebook is the wildest place.

i learned how to pick a lock. not clickbait

¡Hola a todos, espero que habeís tenido una gran semana! :) It has been a boppin' time here in Klamtucky! Also the title of this email, was truly an experience, proceed to read to learn of it!

S O M E    C O O L    P E O P L E:

Jaynie - I don't know her last name- she's a member of a few years, and is straight up WILD.  We went over for a little member lesson, and it was such an experience. No notes were left about her, so both of us were completely unprepared going into it as well. We drove into her trailer park, passed a lot of normal looking trailer homes, and then got to her's...which had a ton of weird plants growing out of it, and about 900 cats roaming around it. I almost cried when I walked onto the property and smelt the house, but God is good, and we luckily didn't have to go in! Luckily she's like crazy scared of COVID so we got to sit outside with masks on to mask the smell! I think seven stray cats touched me in the thirty minutes we were there, and I almost lost my mind. She owns 10 cats, and four dogs, but has about 7 stray cats that live in her yard and she feeds!! She also low-key might be a witch low-key, but that's another story; so all in all it was just an average Tuesday with the people of Klamath Falls. Got to love it.

My Lady Joann! We went to Joann's and had the first new member lesson with her! She's such a legend. Her roommate Elizabeth was baptized in the 90s- which was actually a huge revelation because all our notes say Elizabeth wasn't a member- but hadn't been to church in years; but when Joann was starting to search for some answers, Elizabeth told her about what our church believed, and Joann contacted the missionaries. :) Elect of the elect. Both of them got divorced around the same time, so they decided to move in together and help each other our financially. Both of them have 3 kids (five of which live at home, and four of which we've actually spoken to), so there's a whole mess of humans running around that house, and the energy is immaculate! None of the children are members, and all but 3-year-old Braydon are old enough! So we just found a whole mess of potentials! :)

Joann also texted us randomly one night and asked us if we wanted to come have dinner with them! Which we can do not on a weekend, because there are non-members in the house! :) When we showed up it was just Elizabeth and one of her kids, Anthony. He's 9 years old, LOVES Pokeman, and most definitely has some ADHD! :) Such a sweat kid! He was teaching us all about Pokeman for quite some time. Eventually Joann showed up with a car load of kids. Two of which were Elizabeth's other kids, Jaynie and Michael. I have no idea how old those two are, some tween age though. We talked to them for quite a while too! :) Plus dinner was absolutely banging! Chicken enchiladas! 

Dwight! So when I showed up here, there was a lesson in our Area Book every Wednesday that just said, "Boot Barn" and I was incredibly confused. Turns out it's a member lesson with Dwight, the owner of a boot repair shop called "Boot Barn" at the shop! Hehehe! It smelt like burnt leather and it was fantastic! We went over Come Follow Me with him and it was SO wholesome. 

 

Sister Campbell and I had to talk in church this week, which is funny because we prayed in church last week; but 'tis the life of a missionary I suppose. Guess it was worth it though, because one of the Sisters in our ward brings her non-member sister to church every week and how she want to meet with us! How fun. :) She's met with missionaries a few times before I think, and comes to church almost every week, despite not being a member, so this is bound to be interesting; but VERY exciting non the less! Huge blessing, that definitely made writing my talk on my phone worth it (the Elders wouldn't leave the computer room, and the OEM is against Elders and Sisters existing in the same premises).

S E R V I C E:

We went over to Delores' house again, she's the old lady that all our notes refer to as grandma and forced us to get a blizzard at Dairy Queen with her last week. We're trying to help her organize her garage. My moving all these boxes she hasn't looked in for years into clear tubs for her not to look in. Not a bad time though, would recommend. 

We went to a run down Methodist church and fed the homeless! It was quite the time, there was a guy who thought he was a prophet and kept spewing out prophecies while we handed him a sandwich and salad. It was such a cool service beside the part where the building was 439° and all the Methodists working there were very judgmental and rude to all the homeless people! :(

The other Sisters asked if we could come wash windows with them, so we showed up, along with half the Zone! The people are remodeling this really old house so they had A LOT of work for us to do. I also didn't know that windows could be that dirty. They were straight up brown, and the dude gave me a razor blade - with a handle don't stress- to scrape it off. It was crazy satisfying though, and after they fed us all pizza! :)

F U N   T H I N G S:

Sister Goth and Sœur Ruegner - it's sister in French, and it's pronounced like "Sir" and I think it fits her personality perfectly- came and pounded on our door at 6:53 in the morning (mid morning workout). Asking us if we wanted to join them on a McDonald's run. We both shrugged and went with them. It was chaotic and at one point Ruegner flipped a U-Turn (which are apparently illegal in Oregon, but drugs aren't?) to pull into a Taco Bell drive-through because she was craving a Doritos Locos Taco. What a Queen. 

I also learned that our apartment has a garage, but it's locked and I don't posess the key. Not too sad about it though, I don't want to know what's in it. 

Last but certainly not least (not the click bait being at the bitter end of the email, LOL my bad), I learned how to pick a lock this week. This might require some historical context, so here we go. For those of you unaware - we don't knock on people's doors like door to door salesman anymore, and a lot of missionary work is online. Which is great and divinely inspired, but we only have phones; so you will often see missionaries living in their local family history center to use the computer. Well, for some reason the great stake leaders of Klamath Falls have decided not to give any of the missionaries here a key. Reason still unknown.

That has led some missionaries here in the beloved Klamath Falls to get very creative. So far I've only just show up, and a set of missionaries are already there and we ask them to leave the door open for us when they leave, and I haven't asked any questions about how to door got opened; but on Friday night, for the first time in forever, we were the only ones there; so it was our time to step up. 

Long story short I ended up video-calling my Zone leaders for ten minutes as they walked me through how to pick the lock with a butter knife from the church kitchen. Say what you will about Elders, but they truly know how to adapt and overcome. It felt highly illegal, but after a few attempts, I got us in. The skills you pick up on the mission truly are incredible, and can never be predicted! :)

The next morning in ward council we asked how we could go about getting a key for the family history center, so we could you know, further the work of the Lord. They pretty much told us we'd never get one and only like five people in the stake have one. They then told us we should take the one that the Zone Leaders have, I nodded along because I didn't know how to tell them that we have the same key the zone leaders have sitting in a drawer in the kitchen; so pretty much that went nowhere, pero está bien. 

Everyone should send me mail, because I have a mailbox for the first time in my life, and have received nothing in it, but a Burger King coupon page. 

     address: 1925 Bryant Ct. Klamath Falls OR 97603

Anyways I gotta run, I talked the Sisters into going bowling this pday!!  Don't tell Mads White I went without her though, I'm really banking on her not reading my emails!

Much love from your favorite Sister missionary/lock picking extraordinaire,

Hermana Shelton!! ;)

1 - lunch with the other sisters!♡

2 - the "key"

3 - post break in victory selfie

☆i have no idea what i'm doing☆

Hello everybody! It has been quite the week here in various parts of Oregon! Since I've last written to y'all I spent a day in Garden Valley, over two days in Medford, and almost four days in good old Klamath Falls! What a ride!

Monday night I said a lot of goodbyes and got all upsetty spaghetti. Tuesday morning we headed to the transfer spot, and after a brief encounter with a homeless lady in a bikini (long story, not even sure if I could put it into words!), I was put in a transfer van heading south! :) Two stops and a few hours later I ended up in Medford to spend the night until my greenie flew in Wednesday.  I spent the night at Sister Mitchell's apartment, and it was hecka weird to see her again, but it also felt like we were just back in good old Waldport! :) We even broke out some of the old card games too!

During my stay in Medford we went to the pear farm owned by the church, and I lived out Jacob Chapter Five. I was really out there nurturing grafted trees? Wild. I also sniped a free haircut from Mitchell because these ends were getting rather ridiculous. God is very good for that one. 

Shockingly the transfer van got really behind the next day, and the greenies didn't roll into Medford until around 9:15, so I ended up staying a extra night with Mitchell and McLean, before heading off to good old K-Falls in the morning!

My new companion is Hermana Campbell, she's from Kaysville Utah, went to a year at Utah state, and was originally called to Salta Argentina! We don't have like any pictures together though, whoops!

Klamath Falls is something else. It's got very hardcore 'Merica vibes, and I'm kinda scared. Guess it isn't called "Klamtucky" for nothing. Our ward is pretty old, from the one week we've seen of them. Our ward mission leader is like 92-no joke, he's actually that old-, so that should be interesting. They asked us to show up to ward council yesterday, and it was a comedic masterpiece. Absolute chaos and anarchy. Kinda of amazing to witness honestly, they'd be talking about things, and be almost done, then some old dude in the corner would very loudly say something someone else had said five minutes ago, and they'd have to loop back around. Then when I asked who was in our missionary huddle, they had never heard that word before, so that's gonna be fun to figure out!

The ward seems very sweet though, and very willing to help us in our massive confusion. I wasn't super scared white-washing in at first, because every Sister keeps amazing records...but I was wrong. Apparently there are at least two who don't and they lived here before me. Honestly low-key feels like I'm pink-washing, but everything is going to be fine. We'll figure it out...slowly. 

We went and ate with the other Sisters after District Council (at Jalapeños- thanks for the suggestion Sister Johnson :)) and we saw the two dirtiest people to ever walk the earth. No exaggeration at all, I was actually dying over it. They were literally covered in dirt, and their van had trash overflowing out of it! They also were straight up holding three rats each, this image has been haunting me for four days now, and I don't think I'll ever actually we able to describe how dirty they were. 

People I've met so far:

Brother Nash: our 92 year old WML

Delores: a 93 year old member who we go over and visit with once a week! She's a straight up boss, and has some incredible chaotic energy. She forced us to drive to "Dairy-Queen" so that she could buy us shakes, then she flew past the turn while we watched, and we had to wait for her for like seven minutes in weirdly packed "dairy-queen" parking lot. What a boss. Her kids tried to put her in a nursing home last year when she broke her leg, but she said no.

Jesus: what a man. was baptized like 5 years ago in Cali, and is just now starting to come back to church. We met with him, and talked about the story of Enos and it was hecka cool. He came with his fiancé, who he lives with though...so that's a problem.

Gary: Gare-Bear, former eternagator, now member of two months, legend. Is going to Provo for the first time this week to attend a wedding for one of his first Sisters. :)

Joann: new member as of last week! super sweet, only briefly talked at church, but I'm super exited to have a lesson with her soon!

Lori: investigator we have very mixed notes on. Very confused, we will be going in 99.9% blind when we meet with her this week!

Much much love, hoping a less confused Hermana Shelton writes you this week, but until then...

Hermana Shelton :)

p.s. I have a mailbox for the first time in my life so that's kinda cool!

F O T O S:

1 - goodbye to Maria, Karla, and Oscar♡

2 - goodbye lunch selfie with Haylie!

3 - nota de the Forsloffs ft. the Bro Forsloffs amazing artistic ability

4 - service at the pear farm!

5 - haircut in the Medford STLs kitchen

6 - bye-bye Hermana Peterson

7 - bried reunion with Sis Philly, who was getting moved to Medford(ish)!

8- the only photo I currently have with my new comp. RIP, I'll do better next week.