Saturday's baptism!

here's pics from our baptism on saturday!!

more pics!

random! some cute ones in the car . . . the one where we're holding up 3 fingers was on father's day. our goal was to teach 3 lessons while tracting (we only had like 1/2 hour) and we only had 2. it's hard to explain but we just got really pumped up about getting the third so we kept going to doors even though time was up and we finally found someone who listened! yay for being victorious!

a cute one cuz we all had bright cardigans on :)

more pics!

more pics :) sis bush and i had to go through the font to get to the baptismal clothes because we didn't have keys to the dressing room. so we took a pic! hope that's not bad . . . haha. then some fun pics from sis bush's birthday!

pics of the week!

here are some pics from the last week. our first pic as a threesome, our healthy dinner one day, a couple of me because i'm vain and i thought i looked cute hahaha.

pics: me and the MTC district at transfer meeting, our cute toenails one night we were feeling girly, and me and sis sawyer!

you heard it! we're staying :)

"hi fam! well i know you've already heard, but we got transfer calls on saturday and found out we're both staying in maple valley!! the big surprise came last night when Pres Moffat called to tell us we need to go to transfer meeting today to pick up another sister! we're going to be in a threesome!! it was mixed emotions . . . we are kinda sad just because it won't be QUITE the same. we've had so much fun just the two of us. BUT we are excited because we know that this is what the Lord wants :) . . . we spent this morning cleaning our apt and getting it ready for a third occupant. we both know sis sawyer from doing exchanges and she's great so it will be fun! our ward will all be surprised too because they know we're staying but they're not expecting a third!! everyone's been so sweet to us in this ward. a couple members called us just to see if we are staying or not. a member of the bishopric was so sweet . . . he said they talked about us in bishopric meeting and how they would trust us teaching any of their friends so they wanted the ward to get to work getting us referrals!

"we had 3 lessons with member families last night, so basically we had 3 FHE's which means 3 rounds of treats haha. we're going to get fat if we keep that up. BUT we've gotten up to 2 miles in the morning! we actually feel like we're becoming runners and starting to enjoy it (it's not 57 miles/week pops but 2 miles about 4 times a week ain't bad huh?).

"the other bit of news from this week is we put [*] on date to be baptized june 27th!! [*] is not interested . . . YET . . . we think she's softening :) so yeah, two baptisms this month if everything goes as planned! [*] and [*]. pray for them! we want them to strengthen their testimonies before then.

ok couple stories from the week: a member of the primary presidency (sis collings) asked us to do part of sharing time this sunday! we had done this thing in her home that she wanted us to do for everyone: we have a rat trap, and we tell the story of nephi and his bros going to get the brass plates. because they tried twice and it didn't work (i trigger the rat trap with a pass along card, it's super loud and pretty intense) but nephi doesn't give up and has the faith to try a THIRD time (i take the springs off the trap but make it look like it's set) and we have one of the kids come touch the fake cheese and they don't get hurt! (they're a little nervous, but we give them a pep talk about having faith and then they do it) anyway maybe you have to see it. but the kids just love it and they all thought we were way cool :) the funniest part though is when we did it for the collings family, i had the set rat trap in my hand, and i was going to put it on the table, but one of the little kids bumped me and triggered the trap! (scary!!!) we made the kids back away (we don't want to break any fingers . . . i don't think that'd be good for getting the members respect and trust eh?) and it was all fine. BUT what the collings family didn't see was that the trap had barely caught the inside of my hand and the tip of my thumb and i was bleeding all over the rat trap haha. sis bush didn't notice either. i was trying to hide it so i didn't freak anybody out. so now our rat trap has my blood all over it haha. maybe you had to be there but it was great. no worries mom, i'm fine. it was kind of a miracle though. if my finger had been in there it would be broken now. the Lord is watching out for us!

"i thought i had another funny story but it's not coming to me. we have to run pick up our new companion!! i'm doing great, loving the work and just chuggin' away :) LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!!!!"


* Liz has asked me not to use the names of her investigators.

pics of the week!

sis bush and i with the moffats at interviews (interviews were so great, i love the moffats!)

us with our cupcakes we made since it was our last time all together as a zone before transfers

me pointing at a cow to document us getting lost in enumclaw on our way to a zone activity

a panoramic shot of the zone with the moffats at interviews

me and sis eria on exchanges (she's so cute. she's from a small island by the marshall islands)

sis bush and i with the phone after the transfer call when we found out we're staying!

pics of the week!

"The first pic is sis bush and i with our finds of the week! we found those fake flowers by the dumpster so we stole them to make our apartment more cute :) we later discovered they smelled like cigarette smoke, but we cleaned them with lysol wipes and now they're fine. good times dumpster diving.

"the 2nd pic is me ready to go out tracting! we thought i looked ridiculous holding so much stuff so decided to take a picture! this was the day that it reached about 100 degrees!! and it was muggy! (luckily it's cooled down since.) we were pretty nasty while tracting. so that's what the big jug of ice water is for haha."

"so yeah then the last one is sis bush and i last night! we decided to take a picture to remember the weird day we had had. the highlights from yesterday: we slept through an appointment and burned a non-member kid hahahaha. so first of all, we were taking a nap during our 2 hr break -- it's so glorious because President decided to combine our 2 one hr meal breaks into one big break so we get a nap :) -- anyway we set an alarm but for some reason it didn't go off and we woke up 30 min after we were supposed to be at a member's house!! we died. they were nice about it though. they bailed on us last week so i guess we're even. luckily we had scheduled that appointment during our break which means it wasn't like we took a LONGER break than we were supposed to. that made me feel better about it. anyway! then at night we were teaching another member family, and they had their non-member friend over. we do this cool demonstration about faith where we light a tea bag on fire and it burns down really close to your hand but it floats away before you get burned. anyway, this kid didn't trust us i guess cuz he got scared and moved his hand INTO the flame and then went off about how we burned him. anyway he was fine, you couldn't see anything on his hand so i think he was exaggerating. there goes that potential investigator haha. gotta love those weird days!


"everything else is good!! on saturday we find out if we're getting transferred or not. we really hope we stay!! we'll see where the Lord wants us. sounds like Pres Moffat likes to keep people in areas for longer, so hopefully that means he'll do the same with us. this next transfer we're getting like 20 new elders and 1 new spanish sister. since ALL the english sister companionships were changed when i came in, we're thinking he might leave most of us how we are.

"we love the ward here! Member lessons are a big focus in our mission. They want it to be more and more member referrals. so that means we get to be in lots of members homes challenging them to set a date to find someone for us to teach. we get to know the families well so it's fun! a lot of them are getting excited about missionary work so hopefully we'll start getting investigators from them! anyway they're all so great. we have TONS of young families. we have 4 nurseries and 120 primary kids. CRAZY. it's kinda loud in sacrament meeting with all the kids, which is weird after being in singles wards for so long. oh random but so cute: there's this cute little kid about 4 years old (in a less active family we visit) who can't say his R's, so he calls us "sissy bush and sissy gibbons" haha. he's one of my favorites.

"oh another random story, so we have tracted into this group of friends (a bunch of boys josh's age) a bunch of times (they'll be at a different house every time) and they're always playing croquet. one of them is a less active in our ward who seemed pretty embarrassed the first time because we introduced ourselves and they called him from the other room " [*]! it's your people" haha. anyway we talked to them for a while the first time about our beliefs and invited them to take a church tour but they said they weren't interested. but anyway we keep running into them so now they know our names and they'll see us on the road and say stuff like "hey it's sister bush and sister gibbons!" it's just fun to have people know you when they see you. so yeah we call them the croquet crew and maybe one day they'll let us take them on a church tour! we'll see. pretty random story sorry!

"not a ton has changed with our investigators this week . . . [*] is still on date for baptism (except it was changed to a week from saturday because of scheduling problems, so hopefully we'll both still be here!!) [*] and [*] came to church again! he's definitely more interested than her . . . after the joseph smith story she said she didn't care if it was true or not, it wouldn't change anything for her . . . we'll work on her. [*] and [*] are kind of flakey but still always way excited to see us so we need to decide how to help them. we had another appointment with my miracle from tracting [*] and she'd read half the BofM already! she's so great. she says she believes it's the word of God and now she's going to pray about Joseph Smith. she told us that she let us in that first day because of me! she said i smiled at her really big and it touched her heart so she let us in :) that made me feel really good. everything would be fabulous with her except her husband doesn't want her to meet with us. we're praying his heart will be softened! she's going to try reading the book of mormon with him to show him that it's like the bible. she went to church with her LDS brother in olympia yesterday, so we're excited to hear how she liked it!"

* Liz has asked me not to use her investigators' names!

miracle of the week!!

"it was really hot on friday (87 degrees!) and sis graf and i were tracting (we were on exchanges). sis graf said (half jokingly hehe) i think we should be done tracting. and i said no no sis graf, we need to tract until we find a new investigator! she said, or until it's 7 (we were scheduled to tract til 7), whichever comes first. haha. we were both really hot, thirsty, sweaty, etc and no one was really listening. a few doors later, ______ opened the door, invited us in (that had never happened to me before), and gave us cold, bottled water!!! not only that, but we ended up teaching her the restoration and getting a return appointment! her brother is mormon and has been bugging her to go to church so she finally agreed for this coming sunday. she said she always gets bored and tunes him out when he talks about the church, but that when we spoke about it, she felt something! (which we were quick to point out was the spirit of course). anyway she promised she'd read and pray about the book of mormon and we were pretty much giddy!!! SERIOUSLY a miracle."

too much fun?

"sis bush and i have just been having a blast! sometimes i think we have too much fun and we need to repent :) we honestly feel so blessed! the Lord has been providing people for us to teach. it's all about having faith and working hard, and He provides the miracles. sis bush and i are already planning our road trip to come back and visit all our friends :)"

a sweet testimony

"well, i'm very happy and loving the work! i'm just trying to keep getting better and better because there's SO much we can do to improve. i want you all to know that my testimony has grown so much! i knew it was true before, but i've come to recognize how amazing it is that we know this is true! there are SO many christian churches here, seriously one on every corner. and lots of people we talk to say we already have a church, we've already found Jesus, etc. i've realized how unique our message is . . . the message of the restoration! we have the authority of the priesthood on the earth! a living prophet! god still speaks to us! revelation hasn't ceased! i never knew how unique it was to know that until i came here. i know that joseph smith truly saw Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, and that through him they restored their church on the earth. with the authority to perform all the ordinances we need to return to live with them and become like them. I know Jesus Christ lives, and knows us and our pains. He loves us so much. The power of the Atonement is real and we can apply it to every facet of our lives. I'm so grateful we know how to be together as a family forever. I'm excited to live my life in such a way that we can all reach our potential together. I love you all!!"

pics of the week!

"here's pics from the week! there's one in the car to document our pre-tracting enthusiasm :)"

"there's a pic of me, sis bush (in matching outfits by accident . . . we were on exchanges so she got dressed in puyallup and i got dressed in maple valley . . . so it really was an accident haha), sis graf, and sis sawyer! i've been companions with both sis graf and sis sawyer for a day each and they are awesome!"

"there's also a pic of us enjoying our package (THANKS MOM! IT WAS AMAZING! sis bush now shares my love for the muffins and banana bread and we've almost finished the muffins hehe)"

"and the last one is me pointing to our many investigators on our whiteboard because we are so blessed to have people to teach! yay!"