Friday, October 14, 2016

Everyone and their Dog has a Dog in Oregon

September 12, 2016

Hello my sweet fan club!
This week was a great week! Then while I was emailing we got a call from my Mission President telling Sister Nowell and I that we are going to be transferring a week early. Sister Nowell and I thought we had 2 weeks left but it turns out that we are transferring next week. Sister Nowell is going to the Eugene YSA, on U of O campus, and she will be a Sister Training Leader up there. She is freaking out because of that. But also I will be staying in Roseburg and I will be getting Sister Sorensen, who was my companion in the MTC! I am really excited to be with Sister Sorensen again but I am freaking out a little too. Both of us have only been missionaries for 3 months and that will be really interesting. President Russell reassured me that on his mission he was a companion with an Elder and they both had only been out for 3 months. But that it was the best companionship they had their whole mission. I am excited but I am really sad to be leaving Sister Nowell. We were both uncontrollably crying in the church hallway when we were on the phone with President. It will be okay. It will be a great week here in Roseburg and it is nice to know a little ahead of time that we will be separated.

Now I will start my weekly email!
On Tuesdays Sister Nowell and I volunteer at this food bank called UCAN. It is a lot of fun to be put in the community serving those around us. This week while at UCAN they had us sorting produce that was donated by local stores. To do this we had to open boxes and take out anything that was moldy. At one point I picked up a box that was super heavy. I picked it up and it was FULL of tomatoes. I threw away so many moldy tomatoes. For those of you that really know me, you know that I LOVE TOMATOES. Well, since this day every time I see a tomato I have been gagging. I really hope this passes.
After getting an email this past Monday, I decided to take some of my fathers advice, and that was to be more creative in my missionary efforts. At times we realize that we are stuck in a rut as missionaries. And right now Sister Nowell and I are in the rut with finding people to teach and staying busy all day. It's hard when your schedule is ALL trying to find people to teach and everyone you talk to, doesn't want to talk to you. My Dad reminded me that my stepbrother used his Rubik's cube on his mission to get people to talk to him. Well I can't Rubik's cube, so we sat in the car and didn't leave until we thought of a new way to do missionary work. We ended on an idea of service. One thing that Sister Nowell and I love is Sticky Notes. We decided to start sticky noting some homes of people who serve us constantly. So now we are trying to find short quotes or sayings that are uplifting, so if you have any ideas send them my way. We also are going to be doing a lemonade stand with free Books of Mormon and free church yours. One thing about Oregon is you see everyone outside ALL the time. Walking their dogs, going on runs or just walking. So we hope to find some success in these ideas.
Sister Nowell had an idea with a new dinner message that we are now putting in place. I took a picture of it and I will attach it to my email. It is an effort that we are trying to bring members more into our missionary efforts and to help them with their own efforts to be member missionaries. With the bullet points members will have to pick a task, before we leave their home, to do in the coming weeks. And because leaving a commitment with anyone and not following up is hollow, we will be following up with members to see how it went. I invite anyone reading this email, if you have missionaries in your Ward, UTILIZE THEM. Growing up in Utah we didn't have missionaries in my Ward. I wish we would have, I feel like it would have helped me as I was preparing for a mission. But as we help the missionaries with their efforts in serving our Heavenly Fathers children we will be blessed and I know that is true. 
Every week I talk about how much I love Sister Nowell. Well this week I really showed that love by dying her hair not only once but twice because we ran out of hair dye the first time. We have pictures and she looks beautiful and her hair is all one color. She even trusted me to dye her eyebrows, I don't know what she was thinking but they look good, it has really enhanced her facial features! Gotta love the adventures of Sister Nowell and Sister Harrison, I don't know what we are going to do when we are separated, I don't want to think about it because I might cry, so let's just move on.
Sister Nowell and I were able to meet a 75 year old lady who is a less active in our Ward. She lives out in the middle of no where and right when we pulled up to her house she was outside greeting us, it was honestly pretty frightening. But she was a very nice lady. She has been working on her ranch for about 15 years now and she has LLAMAS, horses, peacocks, goats, sheep, cockatoos, and cows. She basically lives on a zoo. It was so cool when we were out talking two llamas came to the fence just to say hi. She was telling us that the llamas are the protected of every thing else. That once they smell your breath and know that you are not going to attack that they don't bother you. She said that if cougars, foxes or raccoons try to get the other animals that the llamas will stomp them to death. Crazy right? I thought of the llamas as our protectors, it was really cool to hear all the stories of them saving the little animals. Really they are like the guard dogs of the ranch. Mom I think we need a llama. Pat, the rancher, said about a year ago some sisters came out when her llama had babies and was able to pet it. #jealous I now want to pet a baby llama. Sister Nowell thinks that Pat should name one of her llamas kuzco like from Emperors New Groove, I agree with this idea, we need to go back and get a picture with Kuzco.
We had a lesson with Elena and Zach, our family that we found last week. And as we started talking with them Sister Nowell and I both had the problem of trying to figure out how to start the lesson. I think to Elena we are becoming more friends and she just likes to chitchat, which isn't a bad thing by any means! And when we finally get to a lesson we have been teaching and older audience for quite some time. So Sister Nowell and I are now trying to put on our children hats and begin to teach to a younger audience. One thing that was very cool about this time that we went and saw Elena and Zach was that we asked if we could say a prayer with them before we left. They said of course and we knelt down on the floor like we did the time before and Zach said he would say it. He did amazing! It was the first thing Sister Nowell and I talked about when we got in the car.
We had a lesson with Cameron, who is our 13 year old recent convert, this last week. His family is so awesome. We didn't really know what to teach and we felt like we needed to talk about The Book of Mormon. Right when we did Cameron got really excited and started interacting in the conversation. He hasn't been able to read consistently and he wanted to know what it was about. We were able to talk about the 1st Nephi and only some of the things that happen in that chapter and he turned to his stepmom and said wooah I think we should read this as a family! Yes. Yes you should. There was a quote by Ezra Taft Benson that I found during my personal study and it goes like this:
“Every Latter-day Saint should make the study of this book a lifetime pursuit. Otherwise he is placing his soul in jeopardy and neglecting that which could give spiritual and intellectual unity to his whole life. There is a difference between a convert who is built on the rock of Christ through the Book of Mormon and stays hold of that iron rod, and one who is not”
I know that the Book of Mormon is true, I know that it testifies of Christ and that everyday it gives me strength. Sometimes when we are tracting, people think that we believe in a different Christ. We believe in the same Christ that every other Christian religion believes in. 2 Nephi 25:26 says "And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins." I know this is true. The Book of Mormon brings me more happiness and more truth then any other book that I have ever read. I am so grateful I am given time everyday to study from the Book of Mormon. It's really cool because when we teach Cameron we also teach his dad Ron who was baptized in February. I SO wish that Sister Nowell and I could have been here when he was receiving the lessons. Ron doesn't know a lot, at all. But he believes everything. He has one of the strongest most pure testimonies that I have ever heard. Whenever he speaks I feel the spirit immediately. I am so grateful for the opportunity I have been able to meet him. Also, Cameron and Ron went to the temple for the first time this week. On Saturday, Sister Nowell and I were driving and we realized that They were at the temple, it was a pretty special moment. Cameron texted us later that day and said it was super cool and fun, we hope the he continues to make the temple a priority through out his life. 
The last couple of weeks we have really been trying to focus Ward council on the missionaries, the Elders in our Ward brought up a new idea that we all are trying to implement. This idea is called Ward Rescue Night. The point of a Rescue Night is to try and get members out with the missionaries to be able to work on reactivation. So the idea of this was that each week auxiliaries would switch off coming out with us, 2 representatives would come, either a member of the presidency, class or quorum. This would mean that Sister Nowell and I would go on splits, and the people going out with us would come with names of people to visit. And we as missionaries would have names as well, but we didn't tell them this because we wanted them to think of their own names to go visit. The way it should work out is that we would be able to visit more people in just an hours time, and we would be involving members in our missionary efforts. Well it didn't go quite as planned. The message that these people we supposed to bring names didn't get relayed to the people that showed up. Then we also hadn't figured the driving situation, and the people that showed up really weren't who we were expecting. But this was a growing experience and it should be better next week, Rescue Night has a lot of potential and we are hoping that it is awesome!
Also Elder Broshears, one of the Elders serving in our Ward, told us that when he got assigned to serve in the Melrose Ward he asked who he would be serving with. A random missionary told him that he would be serving with Sister Nowell and Sister Harrison and that they are basically the same person. Elder Broshears told us that comment has been proved to be true  since he has been serving with us. We took that as a compliment, Sister Nowell is seriously the Best Friend I didn't know that I was missing! #thankyourandommissionary
We had a Zone Training Meeting this week and it was really great. We were able to learn about a new way to plan, prayer and we were able to have the wonderful presence of our Mission President and his Wife. This week Sister Nowell and I were reading in our mission binders, basically has all the information that you will ever need in the mission and we read a page of it a day, and in the binder it talked about how our Mission President could show up at any time to do an apartment inspection. Well on Friday Sister Nowell and I remembered that and we began to pick up our apartment, well then guess what. He showed up at Zone Training Meeting! We didn't have an apartment check but we did get to have a great time with our Mission President and I always learn so much form him. He is truly inspired.
We had a lesson with our investigator, Vickie, who has not come to church yet. She reads the Book of Mormon faithfully and prays all the time to our Heavenly Father, yet we haven't seen her at church. We taught the Plan of Salvation, or like how I like to call it the Plan of Happiness, and it was perfect timing because she has recently had death in her life. She was able to ask a lot of questions about what happens in the plan and we were able to put questions that she has asked in the past in the lesson. She also read 1 Nephi 10, as an assignment we leave her a chapter to read, and we were able to talk about that for a minute and in that chapter Nephi desired to know that these things were true, and Vickie was able to connect with that. We talked about as Vickie seeks answers from her prayers she needs to pray, read the Book of Mormon and come to church. We talked about church and the importance of it and Vickie talked about how she is really making steps to come to church. We were able to talk about ways we could decrease her stresses when she comes to church. We invited her to come to the church for a lesson and she agreed for next week!
We had dinner at the Harkers this week and it was pretty amazing! They are a really fun family to have dinner with. Well for those of you who don't know Sister Harker likes to take pictures of us missionaries and send them home to our families, I don't look good in these videos at all. Well this day Sister Harker texted the picture then freaked out and started recording me without telling me! She then told me that my step brother Tyler is engaged! I am so excited for Tyler and Megan!!! I can't wait for them to be married!
At our Zone Training Meeting our Zone Leaders taught us a new way of planning. Well Sister Nowell and I decided to implement this way of planning the next day. The main difference in this way of planning was that we make our goals for the day before we plan out our day. Sister Nowell and I started calling this planning the Lords way. Well, the first house that we knocked on was a girl named Krista, and now we are working with her! I know that they things that we have been learning in our mission are inspired and I know that as we continue to use these tools and steps that we had been given that we will be able to find those who are ready for the gospel. I can not wait!
Going along with this new way of planning, Sister Nowell and I have been walking. A LOT. And tracting. A LOT. We are also starting to eat healthy starting this week which will be interesting. Pray for us.
In Relief Society on Sunday we talked about how much Relief Society and Church in general how it can help them become who they really are supposed to become. During this the Sister that was giving the lesson talked about how her son is doing his Eagle Scout project at the Elementary School. He is making a Buddy Bench at the school. This will make it so if a child doesn't have someone to play with they can sit on the Bench. She talked about how in our church we do not need a buddy bench. I think this is a concept that we forget about a lot. We don't put ourselves in others shoes and we forget about the people around us. I know as we begin to get up and sit by someone during sacrament meeting, or if we call someone just to see how they are doing and not worrying about our visiting teaching numbers that we will be able to make a difference in the ward that we live in.
Today in Ward Council we spent 45 MINUTES talking about Trunk or Treat. The ward has decided to not do a Trunk or Treat this year, but why did it take 45 minutes might you ask? I am not sure fan club. I am not sure. But I know that was a waste of a 45 minutes for missionaries. We hope to be able to help our Ward Council by being there and talking about missionary work... but right now not so much!
Sister Nowell got a call from President after Ward Council telling her that she will be playing the piano at Zone Conference this next week. She is literally freaking out. So we hope that with 20 minutes of practicing every night that she will be pro by Thursday. I will be praying for her.
I really liked this quote this week, they quoted it in Ward Council and I literally searched for it for a good 20 minutes while Sister Nowell was practicing the piano for Zone Conference. We talked about 9/11 and how things may happen in the world around us but we will be able to continue the fight and that the work of the Lord is going to go on no matter what. I am so grateful for missionary work. This quote reminded me of the Standard of Truth, I have it memorized but you should look it up!
"We have become as a great army. We are now a people of consequence. Our voice is heard when we speak up. We have demonstrated our strength in meeting adversity. Our strength is our faith in the Almighty. No cause under the heavens can stop the work of God. Adversity may raise its ugly head. The world may be troubled with wars and rumors of wars, but this cause will go forward."
—Gordon B. Hinckley







I hope everyone has a great week! I love you all so much, and like I say every week thank you so much for all of your love and support that you send me in your emails and notes. I am so blessed to have the fan club that I have.
I love you all and miss you!
Love, Your Favorite Sister Missionary,
Sister Harrison

 

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