Trunky day!

Here are a few pictures from my Trunky Day!  All the departing missionaries get together and do what they call a "Trunky Day" where we go to the temple and spend all day doing trunky things.  (except at the end, I got to go back to work for 4 weeks but they all got on a plane the next day.  hee heee)  The temple was wonderful.  I sat in the celestial room for about 20 minutes with my eyes closed as I talked silently with Heavenly Father.  I havent been able to do that for a looooong time.  I've really missed it.  Since it was Trunky Day, I thought it would be alright to reminisce and remember the scripture that helped me decide to actually serve.  

D&C 4:3  "Therefore; if ye have desires to serve God ye are called to the work."  

I then decided to read my favorite scripture, the one I put on my missionary plaque:  

Mosiah 2: "I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another--I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants." 

Then, I decided to read the whole chapter because I love it so much.  I was again touched by verse 17:  "And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellowbeings ye are only in the service of your God."  This mission hasnt been a service of my fellowbeings, its has been my service to the Lord.  After the temple, they gave us 2 hours of FREE TIME.  uhhh.....I dont know what to do with free time.  bad idea.  But I ended up just chatting to sister Sellers.  She's been with me since the MTC.  We've been through a lot together.  Soon after free time ended, we had a dinner and a testimony meeting.  It was a wonderful day.

  Especially since everyone else had to end their missions, but mine kept going.  I think its the only reason I made it through was because I could say "yeah...but I'm not done.  I'm not done yet.  I still have 4 weeks!"  

It was a really great week!!  Remember our Ukranian Deaf investigator??  Well, we gave her a Russian Book of Mormon and went to visit again.  SHE'S IN JACOB!!!!  She can read it just fine!!  I was soooo happy.  Deaf people rarely get to the point where they can actually READ the book of mormon here, and she loves it.  Now, we have the name of a guy who speaks Russian and we're going to take him to our lessons with her to communicate better.  

DOMINICK IS GETTING BAPTIZED!!!  (after she gets married to her boyfriend who she lives with)  But I get to go to both the marriage and the baptism on Valentines day!  This will be the best Valentines Day I've ever had!!  I'm soo excited for her.  I taught her for 3 transfers in Stockton.  Baptisms are my favorite.

We had another Deaf branch fast and testimony meeting.  I guarentee there are no other testimony meetings like the ones in the Sacramento Deaf branch.  We have everyone come up and give travel logs and whatever else they want to say.  (We're working on it!)  My favorite testimony came from Stuart, a severely mentally handicapped Deaf man who sneaks into the nursery and steals the snacks when nobody knows where he went.  He stood up in front and said "Jesus.  Jesus Christ.  You friend, church church church, church, church, I love you. Amen."  He's going straight to the Celestial Kingdom.  

We added a new investigator this week, her name is Laura.  She's Deaf and shes also schizophrenic.  She called us one night on our VP and she was very concerned that her Dad was going to hell because he killed a cat.  We explained forgiveness and that her Father, in his anger, could be forgiven of Heavenly Father.  Oh, how the gospel brings peace to people who dont understand such simple concepts like Heavenly Father's love.  The church is true!!

Time is passing by quickly!  AAAAHHH!

Love,

Sister Wilson

Randomness:

*I got asked if I was a nun again.  pah.

*I'm reading the Old Testament cover to cover and I officially reached the halfway mark.  lets hope I can actually accomplish this goal of mine.  halfway mark took FOREVER to get to...

*So, I forgot to tell you a crazy story from last week!  As were driving in the car, I pulled into the suicide lane ready to turn left.  There weren't any cars coming, but there were 2 men crossing the street, so I had to wait.  They noticed that I couldn't turn until they crossed the street, so they started jogging to get across a little quicker.  I thought it was a very nice gesture, so I gave them the Utah "thank-you" wave.  Well, apparently, the Utah "thank-you" wave means "Take me, I'm YOURS!" in California.  I drove down the street and they both turned around and started following my car, waving and smiling at me!!  I was confused for a second, until I realized that they thought I had flagged them down!  They thought I was hitting on them!  I started screaming because I didn't know what to do!  "Sister Acker!!  They're following us!  They're following us, Sister!!  What do we do?!?"  I didn't want them to follow us into the apartment complex!  Then, I realized that they were on foot and I was in a car.  And I could drive away really quickly with no harm done.  So I did.  Oh my.  No more "thank you" waves will come from THIS arm for the next month!!

I Love Sacramento!!

What a great week!!  Sister Acker and I have been truckin along and I'm doing really well at NOT being trunky!  :)  She's keeping me hard at work!  The weather has been really nice, in the 50's to 60's all week, I walk around without my coat most the time.  This January has been really warm and dry, but I'm not complaining especially since I keep hearing about Utah being in the single digits!  Whoo cold!  Brrrrr!  We went to breakfast this morning with the zone, here's a picture of  me and my comp!

I woke up the other day with a bad migraine and during our morning workout, I started to go blind.  I blame my mother's genetics for getting migraines. I chugged a mountain dew for breakfast and went back to bed.  It knocked me out for the whole day.  But I was up and running again the next day and back to normal.  Wow, I feel like I've been sick a lot this past transfer!  Then, on Sunday, our branch president was sick.  And he has no counselors   Which meant that nobody had the authority to run a Sacrament Meeting.  hahaha.  We all sat there for a long time while until the stake president finally answered his phone and approved another man to hold the meeting.  I hope the branch can get more priesthood soon.

As for my recent convert, Kelly Brown (The paralyzed one), she was driving along a road the other night in her wheelchair and didn't quite catch the curb.  She fell of the side of the curb into the road, and if that weren't enough, into a DITCH.  It was dark, and she had a 5 year old girl with her who was holding a flashlight.  Kelly obviously couldnt do anything to stop herself and her 200 pound wheelchair from falling into the ditch, and she hit her head against the cement wall.  The little girl with the flashlight, Crissa, waved it in circles and circles and yelled for help until a car pulled over and called 911.  We went to visit Kelly in the hospital and she got a blessing from elder Hudnor and Walter Price.  She was happy to see us, and she was smiling, but she has bleeding in between her skull and her brain, and might need surgery.  We'll see. (*sidenote* THEY DIDNT PROVIDE AN INTERPRETER FOR HER IN THE ICU.  Frustrated sister wilson!)

On a more positive note, I get to go to the temple tomorrow!!  (because I'm going home.  Its my departing temple trip with all the other people who are going home)  The whole day is just going to the temple, eating with the mission president and his wife, and chillin' with all the other people who go home.  Except, they all leave on Thursday, and I stay another 4 weeks.  :)  I'm actually really happy that I wont be sobbing yet.  I can thoroughly enjoy this last party and remain emotionally in tact because I still have a month.  haha.

I love you all, thanks for the encouragement of helping me endure to the end, it helps. Don't stop writing me!

Love, Sister Wink

Bunches of random stuff:
*We were allowed to have a facebook presence for the deaf branch.  We already have 8 Deaf friends.  YAY!
*Its a little chilly, so the other day I decided to wear fuzzy socks under my black nylons.  I looked slightly like I had cankles, but I didnt care because my feet were warm.  Yeah....its time to come home and start caring about how I look again....
*Our investigator, Paula, had her window busted through with a rock.  yay for drunk men.
*We finally got our fireplace to work and burned a fire one morning.  No smoke billowed into our apartment because we remembered to open the flue.
*Story: the other day, we were sitting at an "enter" gate and waiting for another car to let us go into an apartment complex.  There was another car in front of us waiting as well.  One other car came out the "exit" gate and the car in front of us thought he could make it through, but as he floored it, he didn't quite clear the bar on the side and dented the whole side of his passenger door.  Ouch.  Probably no less than $1,000 worth of damage. 30 seconds later, another car let us in.  I'm glad for the Christlike attribute of patience!  :)

Transfers!

So....as it turns out the closer I get to the end...the less I seem to have to say in my emails.  I dont know why.  We had a CRAZY surprise this week!!  Sister Oliphant was emergency transferred away from me.  :(  boooo.  But I got Sister Acker as my new companion!!!  She's been in Stockton, and now she joined me in the deaf branch!  Sister Acker is from West Jordan, UT.  She's the youngest in her family, too, and we love each other.  She wants to be an interpreter after her mission, and her sign is really good.  So, she will kill me off through these last few weeks I have.  *gasp*  Sister Acker is a bit more shy than I am used to my companions being, but shes very sweet and she is excited to work with our little deaf branch.  Sister Oliphant and Sister Sellers are now in a trio with the new MTC baby, Sister Repman!  (Sister Repman was born deaf, but she has a cochlear implant.)

I did exchanges this week with another Islander from Kiribati, Sister Angimarau.  She demanded that she braided my hair for the day, so I let her.  Pretty cool, eh?  I told her I liked French braids and she responded with "no Russian!!"  So, apparently, this is the way they braid in Russia.  Other than that, this week was pretty uneventful.  We taught the gospel, which is still AMAZINGLY AWESOME to do, and we bore testimony!  yay!  We currently have 5 Deaf investigators, but its so hard to get them to be able to come to church!!  

This is a picture of all the ASL sisters together and my beautiful roommates who just teach in English.  I love all these friendships I've been able to make on the mission.  

Love, 

Sister Wink

No bones and sickness

Hello loved ones! A few crazy stories from this week:

-A few days ago, we were sitting on the floor and looking at the Deaf people on our wall that we could visit.  I saw a piece of lint on the ground and a few other large pieces of garbage and figured I'd pick them up and throw them away.  I picked up the black piece of lint and realized it was exceedingly wet.  Instinctively, I dropped it right away and watched it wither and die because it was really a spider.  Yup.  I popped open a spider with my two fingers.  He died.  I shuddered for the next hour and scrubbed my hands with soap and water.

-That same day, we left our apartment and saw a SNAKE!  I took pictures to show you, he was red and tiny and cute.  He wasnt moving very fast because it was cold outside...

-The elders play this RIDICULOUS game called "no bones."  One elder will walk up to another one and poke him with his finger and say "NO BONES!"  Instantly, the other elder has to fall to the ground as if his body has no bones.  The game usually breaks out with the office elders and AP's.  Its very entertaining to watch because they will fall on top of each other without mercy.  They tell us stories of how they play it at home in their apartment and when one elder is boneless, the other ones will do crazy stuff to him like rub toothpaste on his face and shove stuff in his mouth and he cant do anything about it because he has no bones.  You can only get bones if someone pokes you again and says "bones."  So on New Years eve, because the sisters were all in jeans for our zone activity, a crazy epic game of no bones broke out and all of us were falling to the floor.  Oh elders.  Normally, they avoid the sisters like we have leprosy, but we had a great time that night, within mission boundaries of course!  Little do they know that without bones, you would be DEAF. 

-All the sister missionaries in our zone were sick this week.  All 6 of us.  There's a really bad cold-bug going around all the missionaries and even our mission nurse has it.  I stayed in for 2 days coughing and sleeping a lot.  Bleagh.  Sister O and I did facials because one of the senior sisters gave us this expensive mud-clay stuff and said it was good for our skin.  I feel the same.  

I did exchanges with Sister Vaughan (picture).  She knows Marci and Aaron so its funny because we always talk about them when we see each other. She's a fairly young missionary here, and it's fun to see her grow and develop as a new missionary.  Its fun to do exchanges with different sister missionaries in our mission, I love it!!    

That was basically my week.  Not much else.  

Love,

Sister Wilson

P.S. for those who don't know, I officially fly home on February 19th.  So you can continue to write/email me until then.

Merry Christmas part 2

Hello peoples of mostly Utah!!  Where did the time go??  It kinda hit me yesterday that I basically only have one transfer left.  I freaked out a little.  Moving on...

Christmas Eve: We had a zone activity that night and did a white elephant exchange with the elders.  It was fun, then we came home and pulled our 4 mattresses into the front room and made a fort out of sheets that we then slept under!!  Christmas morning we woke up and immediately started a fire in our fireplace (yes we had approval!) because we thought a fire on Christmas morning would be fun!  One problem with starting a fire in your wood-burning fireplace on Christmas morning: you need to remember to open the flue.  Smoke came billowing into our living room but we couldn't open the flue because our hands would get burned!!  So, we set off the smoke alarm at 6:30am and opened all the doors and froze to death until the fire finally died and stopped smoking with the help of some water.  It was a grand adventure.  Then we opened our packages from home and washed our bedding because it smelled like smoke.  (the smell of smoke doesnt really bother me anymore, though, I'm kinda around it a lot as a missionary!)

Christmas Day: After we got ready, we went to eat Christmas breakfast with one of the senior sisters!  Obviously, the best part of my day was skyping with the family!!  The rest of our day was pretty chill.  We did nothing except write letters and talk.  

This week was pretty chill as well, we were able to add a new hearing investigator because she doesnt want elders.  Thats always fun to teach in English again.  She's a sweet black lady named Johnnie with 3 children.  There was yet ANOTHER lady down south that didnt want to be taught by elders named Lorie, so we picked her up too!  So...we are teaching two people in English!!  Yay for English!  Except I cant speak it very well anymore...I say things backwards sometimes.  So, we get to teach them, but obviously, they dont come to the deaf branch, they go to their own hearing wards.  Should be some bapamatisms commin up soon for us!!  Kathy the used-to-be Wiccan is doing very well since her baptism.

New Years Eve: We started with rootbeer floats because sister Oliphant got to break her LAST years resolution of no soda.  So we chugged soda and then we were exactly obedient and in bed by 10:30 with the light off.  But we may have stayed up until midnight talking on purpose, just because it was new years eve.  

Not much else to say!  I miss you all!  

Sister Wilson

Merry Christmas!

Happy Christmas from Cali!

Honestly, missionary work has slowed down because of the holidays.  People tell us to come back "after the holidays" or that they're busy until January.  okay.  During the end of the world on Friday, the 21st, I was in the temple.  Talk about the best place to be for the apocalypse, right??  We had a temple conference with all the missionaries and got to do an endowment session, it was amazing.  I miss the temple so much.  I want to go all the time when I come home.  We live so close to the temples there and don't visit them often enough.  Now that I cant go as often as I'd like to, I wish I had gone more when I had the chance!  Santa Clause came on Saturday and passed out all of our packages from home.  Or...I mean from him.  He came early.  :)   I have had enough patience to let them sit under the tree though I've been very tempted to open them.  I'm being a good girl!

Well, there isn't much to say today.  And I will see you all tomorrow....so....here's a random fact: Sister Hudnor (the Deaf branch senior missionary) lived in Mr. Roger's Neighborhood.  Literally. And she said the whole tv show is real.  Its really his house, he really lives there, they film it all in his neighborhood, and they visit the surrounding factories to see how stuff is made.  I was amazed and very excited to learn that.  Sister Hudnor is so much more cool now.  

My mother sent me two text messages on my phone this week.  I about had a heart attack.  (I have ideas about who gave her my phone number, but receiving texts from home is NOT a good idea for me!  I love you, Mom, but dont make me trunky!)

I was reflecting on my mission the other day and I am so blessed and grateful to have come on one.  I'm glad Heavenly Father waited patiently for me to agree to serve.  I love being a missionary!  I will see you all tomorrow around 1pm!!  

Love,
Sister Wilson

my birthday week

My birthday was great!  as great as a birthday can be on a mission, anyway!  This amazing friend of ours, Marsha, made us cupcakes and she gave me my favorite gift: a phone call telling me where RYLEE IS GOING ON HER MISSION!!  I'm sooo happy for my niece, Rylee!!  Houston Texas mission already has 2 of my friends and now it will have my niece.  I'm not sure, however, how I feel about missing her completely.  She enters the MTC 8 days before I get home.  erg.  Maybe they'll let me chat with her for an hour.  Or I'll just walk in with my name tag on and meet her.  I was hoping we could talk for hours before she left, but I guess not!  I also got tons of great presents and packages from home on the birthday, thanks all of you!!  Sister Oliphant made a banner and hung it over my desk!

We had a Deaf branch ASL Christmas dinner last Friday.  We had 34 Deaf nonmembers there!!  Holy cow!  Most of them are just friends of our members or they heard about free food or whatever, but we were so happy to have all of them come.  The dinner went really well and hopefully they were touched enough to be more curious about our church!  Our Deaf investigator Leon came, and he missed his bus home, so he sat outside at the bus stop after the Christmas party until midnight.  It was freezing cold, too.  We didnt know until the next morning but we felt bad!  Hopefully he will come to church soon.   

I spoke in Sacrament meeting with a 3 minute warning.  Our branch president doesnt really prepare people to give talks, we just all have to be ready each Sunday.  Its kind of annoying, but I did it anyway.  He just said "give a talk.  and relate it to Christmas."  okay.  So I did.  Yay for impromptu talks.  Speaking of Sunday in the Deaf branch, here are my two favorite quotes from our Sunday School lesson on the Milennium:  

"I dont care when Jesus comes, I'll already be dead."

"When the morning of the first resurrection happens, all the Deaf people wont hear the rooster crow, so we'll all sleep in!"

Sister Oliphant and I have discovered that we attended a party together in March of 2011.  haha.  Oh Provo is so small.  Even though she's from Wisconsin, she's spent the last 3 years in Utah county at BYU so we really feel that Utah is our home.  She knows people that I know and understands Utah county.  We talk about Provo all the time.  

We have a stinky Deaf investigator.  She has 13 animals that live with her.  One night, we went to go contact her and we couldn't even approach the door because we almost threw up.  She loves animals so much that she takes in all the strays.  She's only 20 years old.  Instead of being obsessed with animals, I wish that she could instead see how important Heavenly Father is in her life!  We'll keep working with her, but it's hard to even be in her apartment.  I heard that on the Hoarders tv show, the people put Vicks Vapo Rub under their noses and it helps them stand the stench.  Maybe we'll try that next time we go.  She's really nice, though!  You know whats funny?  She told us the other day that she has a "Deaf nose!"  She doesnt smell anything, so its hard to control your stink if you have no idea you're stinky!  Poor girl.

So...I may have mentioned the socials that we have here, but I'm not sure I explained them well enough, so I am going to do so again.  ASL missionaries have discovered that we can meet tons of Deaf people in concentrated places, like Deaf socials!  Starbucks is probably our best one.  So what do we do?  Go into Starbucks (I hate the smell of coffee.) and seriously just chat with people.  We invite all the ASL students to come to the branch and count it for a school assignment.  We try even HARDER, though, to meet Deaf people there and it's probably the most success we have in one night.  There's a pizza social twice a month, icecream once a month, and other random ones.  Its really fun to just go and show people that Mormons arent that weird.  Its not a great place to pray with people, but we always teach when we can and do our best to explain why we sign so well and what we do with our ASL.  This way, we aren't attacking Deaf people at their doors.  (Some of them flip out.  "How did you know I lived here!?? How do you know I'm Deaf?!?")  So...yeah.  We chill at Starbucks all the time.  No biggie.

This is Kathy, one of our Deaf investigators.  And this is an example of a "Deaf Doorbell" that the mission is always looking for.   The wire attaches to a light inside that blinks when you push it instead of making sound.  We have one other investigator who uses Ukranian sign language.  I dont know Ukranian sign language.  She doesnt know ASL.  Its interesting to communicate with her.  We're trying to teach her, but all she does is sign back all these weird signs that we dont know what they mean and she speaks in Russian.  So....I kinda wish I could speak Russian.  Oh well, pictures will have to do!  

To end, I call all of you who have procrastinated writing me to repentance using Alma 60:6  "and now behold, we desire to know the cause of this exceedingly great neglect; yea, we desire to know the cause of your thoughtless state."

I love you all!  

Sister Wilson