6 on Date and Other Assorting Things

October 15, 2013

Suasedai, y'all.

I learned y'all from Sister Packard who I went on exchanges with this week! How did this happen, you ask?

News 1 is that I went on exchanges this week with the STLs (not to be confused with STDs) or Sister Training Leaders. They're other fellow missionaries who are like zone leaders in that they're called to watch over a certain number of sisters in the surrounding areas. They try to go on exchanges once in a while to see how we're doing in our area and if we need any help with anything, etc. I went to their area, and one of them came to my area and spent the day with my companion. The reason this is exciting is because I was with Sister Sarah Packard (friend from BYU, and niece/cousin to the Boston Packard Mission-President family) that whole day! It was super fun catching up with her and learning from her example and experiences. She hit her halfway mark the day I was there, which means she only has 9 months left. I'll send pictures of us next week.

News 2 is that we have 6 on date this week! When you invite someone to be baptized, and together you set a goal date for them to work towards to be baptized on, that's called having someone "on date". So this past week, we invited 6 different people to be baptized, and each of them committed and set dates to work towards to be baptized on. This is kinda a big deal! That's why we're out here as missionaries, is to invite people to take the steps that will lead them to Christ, and baptism is a pretty significant one. Having people on date means you have people progressing towards baptism, and a baptism is always a reason to celebrate. So I have decided to throw 6 tiny parties in a row to celebrate each of them. I will be inviting my companion, my pillow, and the spiders that insist on living in our apartment. It will be a rager, I'm sure.

News 3 is that we had a tiny miracle-
we had a coupon for buy one get one free Wendys chicken sandwiches (coupons are the only reason to ever set foot in a fast food place because we can't justify affording it otherwise). So, we're in the Wendys, pooling together all the change we could find in our couch and car and pockets in order to pay for lunch, when this less active guy finds us and introduces himself. He insisted on buying us lunch, talked to us about his conversion story, and committed to come to church on Sunday for the first time in a long time. So we got a free lunch, an unexpected lesson, and were able to remind the guy why he was baptized in the first place and help him want to return to church. Hooray!

News 4 is that my companion Cassell and I have taken to naming the missionaries in the zone after the Disney characters they are most like. We have a Zazoo (lion king), a Kronk (Emperor's new groove) a Flynn Ryder (Tangled) and a Prince John (cartoon Robin Hood), just to name a few. At first the Elders acted like they were too cool to care what Disney character they were named, but as of late they've dropped the facade and started begging to be named the character of their choosing. I have to say, nothing makes me happier than yelling out, "Piglet!" and having a 20 year old Elder spin around and respond immediately to the name we picked for him.

I've been in the WA-TAC 20 weeks, in the MTC for 10 weeks, and a missionary for a total of 30 weeks! And yes, even in Tacoma, the church is true here too.

Love,

-Sister Diddly-homeslice knick knack paddy whack J-McQuiverly

The Shortest Email of Your Life

September 30, 2013

Transfers tomorrow. I am staying in my area (duh, I will stay forever) but I am also staying with my companion! President doesn't like to keep English speakers with me for very long but Sister Cassell is unreal and we get along so well we begged President to keep us together. Hooray!

I am happy and healthy! The church is true here too!

McQUiv

The World's Best Story Coming Atcha from McQuivs

September 24, 2013

Alright, I'm gonna go ahead and warn you before you read this. It's only fair.
DISCLAIMER: THE HILARITY OF THIS STORY IS SUCH THAT YOU WILL LIKELY PEE YOURSELF WHEN READING IT (on account of laughing so hard). It would be wise to use the restroom now, and then don't consume any liquids until after the completion of this email. Disregard this at your own risk. Sister McQuivey will not be held responsible for any accidents that occur as result of not heading her words of wisdom.

Ready? Here we go:

The world's best thing happened this week when we went to our appointment with investigator Theresa.
Okay, background on Theresa: she's a 70ish year old black woman with no teeth and no memory. It's a little bit like teaching Dory from finding Nemo. Like, one lesson she'll start asking questions about the church so we'll introduce her to the Book of Mormon. She'll yell that it's from the devil and she doesn't want it in her house. But as we're leaving, she's like, well this has been lovely, when can you ladies come back to teach me about your church? The next lesson we'll teach basically the same exact thing (because she'll ask the same exact questions), and when we get to the Book of Mormon, she'll say, "Oh how wonderful! How can I get one?" so we'll leave her with a copy. We've been teaching her for a few months now, and every time we make a little progress, she'll totally forget it all by the follow up visit. But she's a sweet lady and really does want to learn, so we keep trying and praying that she'll retain something we teach.

Back to the main event: Theresa's not in great health, and she's always home so we thought she'd be a good investigator to bring a member to the lesson with because she wouldn't cancel on us or randomly not be home. We pick up the investigator, 17 year old Stephanie from the ward and go to see Theresa. We start knocking on the door..no response. She sometimes takes a while to get to the door, so we wait a little, and then knock again..nothing. We assure Steph that Theresa's never missed an appointment with us before, that she's always home, and that she'll answer any second..not a sound from the inside. We get out our phone and call Theresa, and can hear the phone pick up from the inside and a groggy voice answer, "hello?"

us- "Hi, Theresa! This is the sister missionaries!"

T- "WHO?"

us- "Sister Cassell and McQuivey"
T- "WHO?"
us- "The sister missionaries! From the church? We've been teaching you?"

T- "Oh, that's right. What can I do for you?"

us- "Well, we have an appointment with you today"

T- "Okay"

us- "Like..right now"

T- "Yes"

us- "Well..we're here!"

T- "Where?"

us- "Standing on your front porch"

T- "Oh, you are? Well I'm not feeling too well today. I went to the doctor and when I came home I wasn't feeling too well so I just laid down for a bit. I was resting until the phone rang"

us- "We're so sorry to hear that! Do you feel well enough for a short lesson and prayer with us?"

T- "No, no, I'm really not feeling well. Let's reschedule for another time"

us- "That's too bad! We'll try back tomorrow and see if you're feeling better!"

T- "Okay, have a nice day now"

us- "You too! We hope you get some rest and feel better soon"

We apologized to Stephanie and walked back to the car to take her to our back-up appointment. Our phone is hooked up to the car via bluetooth, so when a call comes through we can hear it loud through all the speakers. As we get the in car and start driving, we receive a call from Theresa. Thinking maybe she wanted us to come now after all, we picked up and said, "hello?"

On the other end, we hear this noise. First it starts as a low rumble. Slowly it builds until it reaches the volume of a chainsaw at close range. Briefly the volume lowers, and then..jackhammer status. It took us a while to realize that after we'd left, Theresa had gone back to sleep, had called us in her sleep, and was now snoring over the phone the biggest and loudest I'd ever heard. Imagine an entire colony of full-size polar bears, all with terrible colds, hibernating in the deepest sleep of their lives, and you might have a slight understanding of the noise we heard that fateful day. We laughed our heads off for 5 minutes, and then decided this was just too precious and too sweet to keep to ourselves. So we 3-way called in our zone leader, Muir.

M- "Hello, this is Elder Muir"
us- "just listen.."

M- "What the..oh my gosh, is that someone snoring?"

us- "Yeah, our investigator called us in her sleep"

M- "Are you serious? That's hilarious!"

us- "We're thinking we'll just go ahead and do the lesson we had planned. Maybe she'll absorb it in her sleep"

M- "I'm game"

We went on to teach the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ over the phone. Every once in a while we through in something like, "when you wake up, you'll be in love with a man named Elder Muir" to which he responded, "No, you will not". After probably 15 minutes, Muir finally ends it by announcing he has to go eat lunch before their next appointment. But they're on the street corner when this is happening, so he has to kind of yell to be heard over the traffic. When he gets done, all of a sudden we realize with great terror that we no longer hear snoring on Theresa's end. We're panicking that she woke up, but Muir doesn't notice so he just yells out a loud "goodbye!". On Theresa's end: dead silence. We hesitantly respond, "goodbye". And then, breaking through the silence, we hear a sleepy 70 year old voice mumble, "bye". Theresa had woken up at the very end of the conversation, she'd fallen asleep talking to us, and said bye. We about died laughing as we recounted the story to everyone we could for the rest of the day.

I've been in the Wa-Tac 17 weeks, and the church is true here too!

-Sister McQuivs

This is my companion's blog. It's great and she writes lots of things I don't mention.
sisterkatiecassell.wordpress.com

Buried Alive-

...in the service project to end all service projects. Here's the sitch (short for situation. my new comp abbrevs so I'm getting in the habit now of not finishing any of my words. It's amazing how fast you and your companion become the exact same person when you spend 24-7 with them) : the Spanish Elders (our best friends) knocked into this woman Joanne like 8 months back. Whenever we knock into someone who's not interested in the church, we ask them if there's anything we can do for them. Most of the time people say no, but depending on where you tract, we'll get a lot of, "yeah, take out my trash for me/mow my lawn/wash my dishes/vacuum my floors, will ya?"And then we do whatever they need done. Joanne was one of those, but her yard is so overtaken with blackberry bushes that it took weeks to get it done the first time. Wild blackberry bushes are all over Tacoma, just growing casually on the side of the road, and they sell blackberry killer everywhere. Funny thing about blackberry bushes: you can't use a weed-eater on them, they're so tough and large that it will actually break the weed-eater. We have broken several. Same thing with a lawnmower. And with most gardening shears. So we pretty much have to go in there with a chainsaw and our eyes closed and hope for the best. But it only took a month or so before all the work the first missionaries did grew back and so a whole new group of missionaries came in and did the same thing. Missionaries have been going back and re-doing this same project every 2 months since December. I am determined for it to end with me. 

So, our days at Joannes are as follows: we cut down every branch so we can get down the the roots without killing ourselves (I'm talking thorns that slice through heavy duty work gloves, rubber boots, and could probably impale a small bear). Then we dig up each individual blackberry root (the base roots are the size of soccer balls) and drench the ground where we pulled them from with blackberry killer. Then the Elders usually lift the roots above their heads in some sort of caveman/He-man display of manliness and cheer and joke that they're going to mount the root on their wall like you would when hunting. Then we put all of it in a huge pile, wheelbarrow it one load at a time around to the front yard, and go back to find the next bush. This process is slow, and no matter how many layers we wear in the hot humid August, we always come home looking like we just lost a fight to all the felines in Aristocats and the show CATS combined.

But I say 'buried alive' because in addition to a yard that would make Hercules himself tremble, Joanne has a hoarding problem. My comp and I left the Elders outside to hold roots above their heads and grunt manly things and we sisters braved the inside. We filled 2 giant recycling bins and trash bins just from the stuff in the entryway to the house. Much of it had its own full ecosystems living and thriving in it. I'm pretty sure we discovered new species of animals in that house. You know how you can cut down a tree and look at the rings in the stump and tell how old it is and how each year was?
Yeah, same thing with Joanne's. There are layers from the floor to the ceiling, and each layer has its own distinct smell and tells us about what kind of year it was. Ah, here you'll see that back in 2007, Joanne had a craving for Marie Calender's pot pies. And a few layers lower you'll notice that Joanne watched a lot of QVC in 2003, based on the layers of unopened As-Seen-On-TV boxes.
 I debated calling the local school district and suggesting they bring 3rd grade science classes down there to take sample and study the life there. Then, we uncovered what appeared to be human feces. So we decided maybe we'd had enough for one day. We'll be back next week.

I am serving the bejeebies out of Tacoma, and still alive to tell the tale.

I've been in the WA-TAC 14 weeks, and the church is true here too!

-McQuivalicious

Yeesh, I'm the Worst at Sending Emails Ever

August 26, 2013

Okay, new transfer, same area, new companion. My companion is an absolute doll. I love her to death. She's hilarious, hardworking, and we think the same way. We get along so well. We never disagree about what to teach an investigator, and we're always having a blast, no matter if we're studying, knocking doors, or teaching lessons. My favorite thing is that she love, love, LOVES this area as much as I do. She can't get over how incredible the people here are, how much faith they have and how strong they are even through really tough living situations. It's so fun to be able to show someone something which I care so deeply about, and have them appreciate it the same way. I just love my new companion and this is going to be an amazing transfer. 

Reasons you should go on a mission (I'm gonna put one in every email):

1. Being on a mission helps you learn a lot about yourself. For example, as it turns out, I'm slightly super incredibly competitive. My wonderful zone leaders know this and know me. So they will set goals for us as a zone, and then tell me what the set record is so far for it, and that just sets me off and motivates me to beat it. Exhibit A: a few weeks back, the goal they set for us was to contact 2000 people in a week (a contact is an invitation extended, whether to go to church, be baptized, read the Book of Mormon, visit mormon.org, or have us come back to teach them more about the church). There are 16 of us in the zone, so that means we each have to extend 125 invitations in the week. The Zone Leaders told me that the most contacts in a day was 156. So I set my sights at 157, just to find out later that the 156 was between the 4 of them in that area, not a single person contacting that many. Whoops. Doesn't matter, because it was the motivation I needed. I ended up contacting 175 that day, and 405 that week. So as it turns out, I  might be slightly competitive.

We had a baptism this past weekend, a woman named Sara. She's 33, and has a 12 year old, a 10 month old, and is expecting twins in February. She's never been married, but has had some really tough relationships in the past that have helped her recognize that living the ways of the world don't bring lasting happiness. She's been looking for a church to raise her kids in, so that they can grow up with morals and values that she wasn't taught as a kid. We've been teaching her for 6 weeks now, and finally Saturday she was baptized. She bore her testimony at the service about how she's excited to make covenants with God and take the first steps to return to live with Him again. She was confirmed yesterday in Sacrament meeting. The spirit in the service was so strong, and I was so touched by how anxious she was because it showed that she really understood the significance of what was happening. I asked Sara why she felt nervous, and she said, "the first time I was baptized (in a different Christian church), it didn't feel real. But this time, it feels real". I was happy to testify to her that it was real, because our church has the priesthood authority of God to perform baptism ordinances. In the bible, Christ walked 60 miles to John the Baptist specifically to baptize Him, when there were any number of Rabbis along the way that He could have asked to baptize Him. It's because only John, had that proper authority of God to perform the baptism. It was important to Christ to be baptized by that authority, so much so that he walked 60 miles to allow it to happen. If we want to follow the example of Christ in all things, then we too have to ensure that we're baptized by someone who holds the authority of God. Sara was baptized and confirmed by that authority, and the spirit testified to her that this time around, it was 'real'. She is an incredible woman, and it's been such a blessing to teach her and see how she's been blessed as she applies the gospel of Jesus Christ to her life.

I've been in the WA-TAC 13 weeks, 13 is my favorite number, and the church is true here too!

-Sis McQuiv

Weird Obstacles to Missionary Work

August 12, 2013

There's the things you anticipate might be difficult in missionary work..

and then when you're in Tacoma there's all kinds of other weird things that slow down the work and just make you go, "really, Satan? That's the best you can do?"

Case in point: knocking on a door, saying, "Hi, we're the Mormons. Tell me something good you've heard about us". Their response: "Oh, Mormons, you guys are the ones who don't use spoons, right?"

So, that's a new one. For those of you who may not know, Mormons do use spoons. We eat cereal. We eat ice cream. We eat soup. These things are all difficult to eat with a fork or chopsticks. I know, because sometimes I'm too tired at night to wash the dishes, so I end up trying to use miscellaneous clean silverware to eat dinner. Some foods are just meant to be eaten with spoons, let's just leave it at that.

But weird rumors that are just laughable? Good try, Satan. Too bad for you we've started carrying spoons with us when we're tracting. 

Other unexpected obstacles: angry guard fowl

As a missionary in Washington, you expect dogs. Everyone has dogs. Even their dogs have dogs. They are huge and they are teensy and everything in between. In fact we have one investigator who I'm quite positive is actually a werewolf because whenever he's home, the dog is mysteriously gone, and when the dog's at the house, the wife tells us her husband is either sleeping or at work. That just seems a LITTLE TOO SUSPICIOUS to me, so of course the logical explanation is we are teaching a werewolf the gospel of Jesus Christ. How cool is that? We'll just have to plan his baptism around the full moon. 

But I digress: dogs are not a surprise. What is a surprise is when you go up to knock on the door and a rooster comes out of nowhere and flap attacks you and pecks your ankles until you leave. I kid you not, I have bloody rooster-pecked ankles (do not worry, I purchased Phineas and Ferb band aids so I am in good hands). This is not a joke. Neither is the fact that we've been up on a doorstep and a peacock will just wander around from the backyard and stand next to us and follow us around from door to door like it's a little pea-missionary. 

This email had no point. But pretty much the moral is this:

Tacoma is absurd. I love it here.

I've been in this crazy town 11 weeks, and the church is true here too!

-Sister McQuivey

10 Weeks and I'm teaching in Vietnamese

August 5, 2013

A neat thing that happened today- so we just got back from a mission-wide barbecue and while we were all eating and chatting I saw this familiar face in a white shirt and tie that didn't make any sense. I went up to him and sure enough, the name tag read Elder Lowe. He didn't know I was in this mission, and I didn't know he'd been reassigned here so we had a lot of catching up to do. So, for some background, Mitchell Lowe is a good friend from BYU who I met through Justina. He's from Bellevue, Washington, and got his call to Brazil. He went in the MTC in June, got his original reassignment to the Seattle mission, but that's his home mission so he'd be running into his parents and friends and stuff (no good if you're trying to stay focused on missionary work). So his stake president let them know it was his home mission, and they re-reassigned him to the Tacoma mission (so he could still take the same flight and everything, but not be quite so close to home). He's been here since Tuesday. Craziest turn of events! It was so fun to see him though, and I'll be sure to keep his visa in my prayers (before he loses all his Portuguese language in the states). I introduced him to my companion, a visa-waiter for a different mission in Brazil, which was a mistake because then I was caught in the middle as they simultaneously recited scriptures in Portuguese to each other (think: surround sound).

I am the only non- English or Spanish speaking missionary out here, which means that no one knows what Cambodians look like. So I usually receive a lot of Cambodian referrals that turn out to be Vietnamese  Korean, Thai, Laos, Filipino, or Japanese - ie, some other kind of Asian with a completely different language and culture then the one I learned in the MTC. We just keep every language of Book of Mormon in our car trunk and most of them that we give out aren't in English. I've learned basics in all the languages we run into a lot so I can at least find out if they're interested in learning more.

Super cool- There's a 17 year-old girl in our ward who was baptized only 2 years ago and is Vietnamese. She's only been in the US 6 years, and is the only member of the church in her family. She's not very comfortable in English, and is very shy and reserved so I didn't know all that much about her. Yesterday we took her to a lesson with us with a new Vietnamese investigator, a man named Tan Ha. The girl Truc was clearly uncomfortable and kept shaking her head when we asked her to share something in the lesson. Tan was really struggling to understand what we were teaching, and so after trying to explain it several different ways, Truc finally just repeated it in Vietnamese. The rest of the lesson, we'd teach a principle, he'd ask her questions about things he wasn't clear on, and she would answer in Vietnamese. The more questions he asked, the more comfortable she got until she was teaching him bible stories without being prompted, reading scriptures she thought to share on her own, and bearing her testimony of all of it. It was really remarkable how quickly she was able to come out of her shell and share the things she knew to be true. Tan was able to teach it all back to us at the end when we were checking for understanding, so it was clear he really grasped the lesson. Truc was just beaming as my companion and I recalled all our favorite moments of the lesson during the car ride home, like you would after just seeing a great movie. It's a really amazing thing to see, and I wish the Elder who taught and baptized Truc 2 years back could see what an impact she's making today.

I've been in Tacoma 10 weeks, and the church is true here too!

-Sister McQuivey