Halloween Zone Pday!! 🎃 👻

10/24/2017

Hey Fan Club! It’s been a great week here on the Oregon Coast! Today we spent the day today having a Halloween Zone Pday! Sister Orr and I have been preparing for a bunch of fun games and activities and then we had a bunch of members want to donate pumpkins to carve, it was such a success! Check out the pictures below!

After the Temple Trip on Thursday Sister Orr and I decided that we had been sitting for just too long, so we decided to go out walking and contacting. Well little did we know about 5 minutes into our walk it started pouring rain and then about 30 minutes we heard some very impressive clashing of thunder and lightening... but at this point we were about 20 minutes away from our car so we just walked. But we met a lot of great people and got a little wet, nothing new for serving in Oregon! We have been getting just a small taste of the Oregon Winter Weather, more to come!

This weekend we decided Saturday was going to be our finding day, we prayed to be lead and guided to those Heavenly Father is preparing for and guess what, we found Jordan! He is a young adult who has recently decided that it is time for himself to come closer to God. He talked about how he went to church a lot growing up and the happiness that he felt when he did, and that it might be time to go again. Well we introduced the Book of Mormon to him and he said the only time he had heard about it was when he was watching South Park... we told him it was a little different then that probably. Well after introducing it to him he was really excited to read it. So yesterday morning we took a member with us and taught him the Restoration! He soaked it all up and asked some great questions, then we invited him to be baptized and he didn’t say yes but he also didn’t say no. He said basically ask me again after I read the Book of Mormon, he said once he knows that it is true that he will be baptized! So we are excited to meet with him more!

We also had a lesson this week with this lady Monica. She was found over a month ago while some Elders from another area were doing some tracting in our area. Well when we knocked on her door to schedule something with her she said “oh I have been waiting for you!” Okay literally in the 16 months on my mission no one has ever said that to me after meeting me for the first time, so she is pretty special. Our first lesson with her we taught her the Restoration, and she is super into history and so she loved every second of it! As we talked to her about what she knew about her church, she actually knew a lot! Apparently she did a research paper a couple of years ago and she compared our church to the church that she was going to at the time and she really liked the things that she read! So we continued teaching her and read her the promise in Moroni 10 and asked her if she can to know that these things are true, if she would be baptized. And she said she wouldn’t give us an answer yet, but that she is really interested! So! We are REALLY excited!

We had interviews with President Orton yesterday, and my favorite part of the whole interview was, with a big smile on his face he said, “So Sister Harrison, what are you planning to accomplish during the next 6 months of your mission?” I love my mission president and his wife, literally everything that he said was an answer to a prayer for me! Such an inspired man!

We had an awesome lesson with this lady named Vanessa, and we taught her all from the Book of Mormon, seriously it was such an amazing lesson. We asked her what she thought our purpose was as missionaries and she explained that it was to help her grow closer to Christ, um that was perfect. Then Sister Orr and I both testified of the relationship that we have been able to grow with Christ because of the Book of Mormon and she realized that she wanted to gain that relationship as well. We invited her to read the Book of Mormon everyday and she accepted! As of yesterday she was doing well and we have a lesson with her this week! Woohoo!

This week in the Coos Bay Zone we are having an Invite week! We are inviting everyone in our Area Book right now to enter into the waters of Baptism! We may have received a lot of 1/2 answers this week, but next week we will have some people on date! Booyah!

This week I was reading a conference talk from April of this year by Jeffery R Holland. It is entitled Songs Sung and Unsung. There was a quote that I want to share, it says, “In those moments when the melody of joy falters below our power of expression, we may have to stand silent for a time and simply listen to others, drawing strength from the splendor of the music around us. Many of us who are “musically challenged” have had our confidence bolstered and our singing markedly improved by positioning ourselves next to someone with a stronger, more certain voice. Surely it follows that in singing the anthems of eternity, we should stand as close as humanly possible to the Savior and Redeemer of the world--who has absolutely perfect pitch. We then take courage from His ability to hear our silence and take hope from His melodious messianic intercession in our behalf. Truly it is “when the Lord is near” that “the dove of peace sings in my heart [and] the flow’rs of grace appear.””

I am so grateful for the hard times in our life that we have the opportunity to stand shoulder to shoulder with the man who has the greatest pitch, that isn’t a member of the MoTAB, it is our Savior, Jesus Christ. He knows you and he knows me. He knows that man walking down the street. And if we are going through hard times in life we are promised that if we stand with him, that we will not need to fear! I’m so grateful for the message that I was able to read in that talk, I invite all of you to go and read it!!!

Alright Fan Club, thanks for the emails this week! I’m forever grateful for all of your love and support that you show me. I hope that you all have a great week, stay strong & stay believing! Love you all, WORK HARD!

—Remember who you are and who God EXPECTS YOU to become—

Love, Your Favorite Sister Missionary,

Sister Harrison ️

This is the Coos Bay Zone!!

This was in Coquille the other day, we found a library that didn’t have a Book of Mormon!

Sister Orr really did this pumpkin, I was mortal support and collected the pumpkin seeds to cook haha

This is actually my pumpkin, he plugs into a wall and has no mess! His name is also Pete, I like Pete!

It is now Fall on the Coast everyone!!

Love you all!

TEMPLE Thursday!!!

10/19/2017

Hey Fan Club! As I am typing this email I am currently on the way to
the Medford Temple for a Temple Trip! Woohoo! I seriously would give
up my Pday every single week if I could go to the temple every week.
But I am really grateful for the opportunity that I have to attend the
temple on my mission so today is a really happy day! So because I
didn’t have a Pday on Monday I feel like I have a lot of different
things to tell you!

So lets start off with my new companion, lets just say we have gotten
really close over the last week and a half that we have been together.
Sister Orr is from Laie, Hawaii. So yes that is where the temple is in
Hawaii and BYU Hawaii. One night this last week we were both sick and
she ended up giving me a tour of Hawaii on her ipad and I learned that
her town is super small. I have also learned that they pay $10 a
gallon for milk and that her dad has a fish farm in her backyard. They
moved to Hawaii when she was 3 years old, her parents are both
originally from Utah. But her dad teaches psychology at BYU Hawaii, so
she is not Hawaiian but that is her home! She went to BYU Provo for 2
years, studying Art History and she has been on her mission for a
year, today is actually her year mark!

Basically our whole zone has been down and out sick this whole week.
One of the Zone Leaders is going on 2.5 weeks with having Bronchitis,
so we are hoping this week that we will all stay away from the
sickness that is going around! Pray for us missionaries to stay
healthy and strong!

At some point this last week we were walking down the street
contacting some people and we saw a man carrying some groceries, so we
started talking to him and offered our help. We got to know him and
then he said , “So I know you are going to ask, so I will just tell
you, this is how I gained my faith...” and then proceeds to tell us
all of these miracles that he and his wife have seen over the last 5
years. As we continued to talk with this man, named Don, we got his
address and scheduled a lesson with him for the following day. Well he
lives out in the boonies, meaning way far away from town. Like a good
30 minute drive! When we went out to visit them one of the times we
did this week we were able to get to know their religious background
and we found out that Don may actually be a member! Crazy! His dad was
a bishop at some point but then his whole family stopped going to
church. But his wife Linda is not a member! So we have continued to go
out and visit them and one day this week we knocked and knocked, they
said they would be home, so we called and we could hear the phone
going off inside, and nothing. So we decided that they were probably
ignoring us and we left. But as we got to the end of their driveway I
felt prompted to look back and on the side of the house I saw smoke
and a head bobbing up and down. Well, it was Don! Apparently he left
his phone outside and had forgotten that we were coming. They had a
burn pile going so we went over and talked to him while they were and
talked to Don and scheduled another time to come by and happened to
teach a little lesson for them right then and there. I am grateful for
the spirit and the prompting that I had to turn around. So pray from
Don & Linda, Linda will be getting a invite to baptism this next week!

So this week, something happened for the second time on my mission. My
companion, at dinner with the patriarch and the bishop, got a piece of
cauliflower stuck in her throat, to the point that when she would
drink water the water would just come back up because it could not go
down. Well long story short we ended up going to the ER because our
mission nurse said we needed too and then while at the ER, after
waiting for 2 hours, the doctor told us that we didn’t need to be
there. Eventually the cauliflower went out on its own and now we are
fine. But this same thing happened in my first area with my trainer,
and I just thought it was HILARIOUS. Seriously. I just kept laughing
when things got worse and worse and I think I helped lighten the mood
a bit. I love her a lot, my companion that is (:

 

 

Sister Harrison thinks she is SO FUNNY :)

Exciting plans after mission life!

RISE AND SHOUT!

STAYING ON THE COAST 🌊🌊🌊

10/9/2017

This last transfer literally came and went in a blink of an eye, I swear! But it was transfer day today here in the OEM. BUT I didn’t leave! I am still here in North Bend doing the work and loving it. Although Sister Huang is leaving me here, sad to see her go! But she is going back to the Corvallis YSA ward to do Chinese work so she is pretty excited about that! I am going to be getting Sister Orr as my new companion! She has been out for about a year I believe and is from Hawaii! So that is going to be a lot of fun. She will be here later today so I can’t wait to be able to get to know her better!

This week Sister Huang and I had the opportunity to go to Eugene for a Leadership Meeting and it was SO GOOD. There were so many good things about it but I just want to share one experience with the Fan Club. Alright so President Crooper, a member of the Mission Presidency, got up and began talking about the Book of Mormon and how we as missionaries don’t really utilize the Book of Mormon as much as we should. It was really good and I was taking a lot of notes when suddenly he was standing right in front of me handing me a box of Books of Mormons. Well does anyone know how many Books are in one Box? 40. And how much does one box weigh? 30 pounds. Alright so I take the box and he makes me stand up and hold the box in front of all the leadership of the mission. Well then he goes and gets ANOTHER box. But this time he hands it to Sister Huang, oh good I thought, I thought he was going to give that to me! Well not two seconds later he decided that he changed his mind and gave me the other box of Books. So now I have 80 copies of the Book of Mormon in my arms, weighing about 60 pounds. Then he starts talking and asks me questions, expecting me to answer these questions! At this point I am visibly shaking holding all of these Books, missionaries were laughing and I literally thought that I was going to drop all of them in front of everyone. Then he asked me, “Sister Harrison, are you supposed to be carrying the load of missionary work alone for your ward?” I said no and then he opened the box and told Sister Huang to start handing out the Books to the “members” as he was motioning to the missionaries. So 1 by 1 she took the books out and then finally another Sister jumped up and started taking like 6 out at a time, man she helped a sister out on that one because I thought I was done for haha. So I learned from this object lesson that 1. I need to be better about utilizing the members in the work and 2. That I maybe need to lift some weights! Haha. So for all of you out there, don’t let the missionaries carry the work of missionary work by themselves, because they cant do it alone! I now know that from experience (:

There was one point this week that Sister Huang and I were walking up a pretty large hill to get to the church building and it was so funny a man pulled over, rolled down his window and said, “Chins up girls! Smile! It’s a beautiful day!” It is so good to know that there are still good people in the world today! Really we were just dying from the hill, our spirits were still high, but that man made our day!

This week we were teaching our on date Lindsey and guess what, she brought a friend to her lesson! Man, she is already doing missionary work! We taught them the full restoration and it was so funny because the entire time Lindseys friend, Madison, kept asking a lot of questions that she kept saying were “dumb questions”. But my goodness, no questions are dumb questions and her questions were literally spot on. She asked about the Godhead, Joseph Smith and she even asked why our church is called the Church of Jesus Christ. It was seriously just a spirit lead discussion and at the end she said that what we talked about was refreshing and that she was excited to read the Book of Mormon this week! I am excited for these girls, it is fun to work with the YSA members here in North Bend to try and get these girls involved in the church here!

This week for district meeting we got to go up to Reedsport to meet with all of the missionaries and then we got to go out and do some tracting in their area. It was so much fun because I was able to go for an hour with Sister Wilson to do some tracting! Sister Wilson and I came out in the mission together and we have served in a lot of the same areas, so it was fun to talk about investigators and such. While we were tracting we didn’t find any new investigators but we did get attacked by multiple spiders, we found an active member that we thought was inactive, apparently he is the the bishopric, and talked to a lot of different not very interested people. We did have someone pray for us that we will find success in what we are doing, so that was nice! We met a nice lady too, Sister Wilson asked her if she was religious and the lady responded by saying “I don’t like the word religious”. We then started to ask why and she explained that she thinks when you talk about religious people that they are just people who go to church on Sunday and then do their own thing every other day. But then when you are spiritual that you have Christ in your heart always and that you are able to really come closer to him. I liked that!

We had the opportunity to be part of a baptism this week. Brother Roberts in the North Bend Ward got baptized, for those of you who remember he is the one who took us crabbing last transfer. Baptisms are seriously the greatest! The spirit is so strong because they have made that decision to come closer to our Savior. So Brother Roberts was part of a part member family, so his wife and his kids have been members, it was an amazing experience to see the family come together and feel unified in their believes. So cool. One of our investigators was able to come to the baptism and she turned to us at the end and said “I can’t wait for MY baptism.” Wow, what an awesome experience.

This week we were asked to study Christ like attributes in preparation for District Meeting and I took the opportunity to study Humility. A couple of weeks ago I was trying to figure out how I can more apply the attributes and I felt like I should study the Saviors life when he is exemplifying that attribute. So with Humility I studied the story of the Savior washing the disciples feet. The Savior knew that he was going to be going through his hardest trial, but he also knew that his disciples would also being going through a hard trial of their own. In humility the Savior was able to go and serve his disciples by washing their feet and caring for them. As we begin to become more Christlike in our lives we will be able to show the humility that our Savior showed in our service towards others. I am so grateful for my Saviors example and I know that as we try to follow that example, especially in sharing the gospel with friends that they will be able to see the light of Christ in our lives!

Well Fan Club, it has been a great week here in North Bend! Thank you so much for your love and support, I am excited to see all of the miracles that come with this next transfer! Love you and hope you have a great week!!! WORK HARD

— Remember who you are and who God EXPECTS you to become —

Love, Your Favorite Sister Missionary,

Sister Harrison ️

Sister Huang and I at the beach last Pday!!

Part of our Zone on Friday!

Our District last night, we are all getting split up!! So sad!

We had to let Sister Huang say goodbye to the beach!

Opening her "Conference" Box

No pictures this week, they were too BUSY! Which is awesome :) But, here is a cute video she sent that she made when they came home from the Saturday morning session of conference. Can't help love, love, loving this cute sister missionary <3

Why does the Super Bowl have to end? 🏈

Hey Friend and Family! It has been a good week here on the Oregon coast, hope you all were able to tune into conference this week, and if you didn't, don't worry you can go repent right now and tune into lds.org! Well we were also able to do a lot of great missionary work this week, the work still goes forward! So here we go....

This week Sister Huang and I have been doing a lot of walking, not because we were out of miles but because it was just too beautiful to drive! It was funny because all of the other missionaries were out of miles... so we all had a lot of car fasts this week. But it is just so funny to me that in middle school I hated running the mile, and had such a hard time running it in 12 minutes! But now, some how, I can walk 4 miles in a matter of an Hour. How is this possible? Because God makes all things possible, haha! 

This week we had the opportunity to go down to Bandon this week for District Meeting and to do New Missionary Training. It has been really cool to see how much these missionaries change over just a short period of time. I mean they have only been here for like 6 weeks and they are already doing it! And I am learning from them every time. This week we had a couple of really good raps that people made up in order to help them memorize some of their things. If you want to see the videos let me know! District Meeting was really good, it was a discussion set up which is always my favorite. I think I learn more when I hear from experiences that other missionaries are having rather then just going over the bullet points. I am also so grateful for the spirit as it guides the different discussions that we have, seriously the spirit is so important!

Sister Huang and I had a cool experience this week, it was Book of Mormon week in our Zone. So basically we invited the whole zone to focus on teaching people about the Book of Mormon and to try and invite everyone to read it. We were walking down the street and I saw this lady across the street, I had a really strong impression that we needed to talk to her, but she was across a very busy road at the time. I said a prayer and kept walking, in the prayer I basically said, okay Heavenly Father, I will talk to her if she gets on this side of the road some how. A little bit further down the road I heard some one literally right behind us. I turned around and it was her! Apparently this girls name is Cheyanne and she is so awesome! She is going through a really hard time right now in her life and she said that she is really trying to rebuild her relationship with Christ. We basically taught her the whole Restoration on the side of the road and invited her to read the Book of Mormon, the spirit was so strong and she even got a little teary eyed! I am grateful that we had the spirit in that moment, because I know Cheyanne needed that message, we are meeting with her again next week!

I think the spirit was in all of our finding experiences this week, one day Sister Huang and I were tracting and it was about 7:30 at night. We talked to a lady and she informed us that most of the street goes to bed pretty early so that we wouldn't have much success. I turn to Sister Huang and was about to say, why don't we come back a different day and she said "lets go down this street!" Oh okay, lets follow my companion I guess. Suddenly I am talking to this guy who was chopping some wood, yes he had an ax in hand, but you know seemed safe enough! He starts telling us about what he believes and says that he is searching for a church to take his girls to. Wow. Thanks for following the spirit companion! We will be teaching him this next week! Again, so grateful.

We had the opportunity to have an investigator watch conference this weekend and it was cool to be able to see the spirit work with her. Even though she isn't baptized and doesn't have the spirit with her always, she received answers to her prayers by watching conference that day. I am so grateful for that, I am grateful that Heavenly Father knows me and my investigators personally. And he also knows you personally, so don't forget that!

The last finding experience was kinda funny. We felt prompted to go and talk to this former investigator. Well, the former investigator had moved and we talked to this other man, but as we talked he was acting a little weird and I thought maybe he was on some type of drug. But he kept talking to us and he was really nice and even accepted a Book of Mormon and told us that he was excited to read it! Well as we got back to the car I looked over to Sister Huang and I said, you know I think he was on drugs. She was like, I don't know if he was on drugs but he was definitely drinking a lot of wine! I didn't even notice that part haha, so next time we go talk to the wine guy, we will have a woman on our side (:

Last Pday we spent all of Pday trying to get all of Sister Huangs pictures off of her tablet, well it took all day and we still didn't finish! We were going to finish it today but then we were talking to a member about it and she told us that she would do it for us, oh how I love members! So now instead of spending all Pday taking pictures off of a tablet, we get to go to Bandon for the day with a member who offered to take us! #sacrificebringsblessings

Well as all of you know it was General Conference weekend! We had a lot of investigators tune in this conference to be able to learn and feel of the spirit. It was a very humbling experience because I was also able to receive a lot of answers to my own questions in my life. The reason I call Conference Super Bowl weekend is because it is probably the weekend I look forward to the most! This year I was pretty sad at the end of the last session of conference that we were not able to hear form our dear prophet. I think this is the first conference in my life that I wasn't about to hear from him. I remember being little and my parents gathering us saying, okay okay sit down for just a few minutes to hear the prophet speak. And I always thought that was so important. As I was thinking about this so many thoughts popped into my head, and as I thought about it we heard a lot from our prophet this weekend, because he was mentioned in almost every single talk! If it was quotes that he had said in the past, one of his favorite scriptures (including Proverbs 3:5-6) or even many of them talked about his challenge issued last conference! HE WAS THERE! I am grateful that we have a living day prophet on the Earth today, I know that even though he wasn't there this weekend that he was there in spirit, and that he still leads and guides this church! I love this church and I am so grateful to have the opportunity to be a part of all of this.

Well thanks for tuning into another week from Sister Harrison, sorry there are no pictures from this week. We were lame and realized last night that we had no photos! Maybe I will try to send some pictures of us at Bandon today (: Love you all and I hope that you have a great week!!!!

---Remember who you are and who God EXPECTS you to become---

Love, Your Favorite Sister Missionary,

Sister Harrison ️