Week 44-Pictures

 Sister Urie and her Companion got a new car this week

She had 64 miles on her when we got her. named her Celeste.

 Fire at the church

 Made Egg Rolls!

 This food is called bitter melon. very bitter. a member who served a  mong speaking mission had us over

Went to party city for a pinata, we are having

a party at transfers next week.

Week 44:The church was on fire! annd we found our missing investigator..kind of..‏

Dear Family,


Can you believe it! I am alive, after 10 months i am still alive.. To be honest the time has gone by extremely fast and I pray everyday that I can do the time I have left justice and make every minute count.


Another great week though in Clinton, MS. Learning lots.. got a couple stories for ya'll. The first is why this email is going to be shorter then normal.
So since it is our p-day we can get permission to go outside our area. Well we got permission to have an awesome member take us to Flowood. We ate lunch and then got to go to the party store where I got me a pinata for my birthday. yes mam I did. We are going to have a birthday party for most of the April birthdays at transfers next week. Its gonna be awesome. Don't worry..ill send ya pictures :) (that wasn't that great of a story was it..?)


Well! This week was interesting. First, Wednesday night we drive up for Book of Mormon class and everyone is running out the church! Some how the new ac unit thing they put in caused an electrical fire or something and so they had to cancel all the activities for the night. ( don't quote me..but i think that is what they said the problem was.) Thankfully there was no actual fire, just smoldering. The church was fine and back to normal for Sunday services. (Not to mention is was pouring down rain that day!)


The next exciting thing you could say that happened was we finally found our investigator that has been missing for two weeks. She was missing from us, as in she would not return our phone calls and we could not catch her at home. Not life threatening mission. We had planned a day and time to go see her and set off. Well we drive past her house and as usual her car is not there. So we keep going down the road and I see this house with a few people out front and have the distinct impression that they are our family! So i turn the car around and we drove back to park in front of our investigators house and walk over to the house. As we got out of the car and were walking who should drive by but our missing investigator! She then proceeds to tell us a bunch of things about how the blessing that the "two men from our church gave her" Saved her life and that she is so grateful, The whole time she is looking around nervously. Then a car started to come and we asked her to just pull over and wed talk with her for a second, but she said it was alright and wed be in touch and drove off.. I did not feel she was sincere at all which made me really sad. I really feel like she is scared. It does not help much that she has not been keeping any commitments. ( hello red flag!)
Well the story doesn't end there.. So I felt like maybe i had had that impression because we were supposed to go back to be able to see our investigator, but I knew we still needed to talk with that family. Walk down the road and talk with the man in the drive way. He was working on the car. Turns out that missionaries used to go by there and they had attended church once. Both he and his new wife did not feel comfortable at the church. It was weird because I was so bold with him and normally I am not as blunt about things, but different words came to me and I knew what I was supposed to say to this man. I know it was the spirit speaking though me. We challenged him to read from the book of mormon again and explained and helped address his concerns of a modern day prophet as well as why we need the book of mormon. His comment was "well, i guess Ive got a lot of reading to do." he might be coming to church on Sunday.


The last story which isn't to much of a story is our other investigator. We are helping this sweet lady, who i think i told yall about, paint and get her new store ready for her grand opening this weekend. She has been through a lot in her life, but is a great woman with so much faith. This weekend she said she would come to at least one of the sessions of general conference. We are very excited!


Things are going well. Training is going great. I love this area, the people are wonderful and the members, especially the bishop are very mission minded.
We are going on exchanges with meridian this week as well as transfers are coming up for the following Tuesday. Until then..
Love ya'll and I pray yall have a great week!
Sister Urie


Scripture: Alma 22:15-18 Just like Lamoni's Father we can each ask ourselves..What would you give up to know God? I like to read this along with Moroni 4 and 5 when i am taking the sacrament. While doing so reviewing my week and seeing what things I can do better and give up, leave on the alter in a sense. 
Southernism: MC is not pronounced as it sounds "MC" it is pronounced Mac. Also Al is pronounced with a long a..as in all.. Gotta love the south! :)
Tracting tips..none..

MJM Birth Announcement

Sister Urie's new companion

Week 43 pictures

Week 43: Service at the other church.. and painting!‏

Dear family!

Another great week in Clinton, MS. Things are going well and I am definitely learning a lot. We have a few new investigators and people we are working with. Progress of these people is definitely exciting and we are working really hard to help them make steps toward baptism.
For some reason it has started to get really hot down here. We did not have a very cold winter so here we go bugs! Just when it started getting nice it gets humid again. It sure is beautiful here though..
This week i have a few stories for ya'll..
So.. do ya'll remember that lady I talked about back in February? We wanted to go to her shop because it looked so cute in the inside ( yes..purses and jewelery). So we called the number and we were able to go do service for her? ( long story short..?) Well we haven't been able to catch her or see her for weeks! Finally the other night it was about 8:00pm and sister Aebischer and I had just gotten back from the ward cook-off camp-out thing. People had found bugs on them and we had just had it..smelled like smoke..you know. So we decided to call it a night and go plan and study ( we get an additional hour of study for training for 12 weeks). About this time sister A decided she really wanted a pizza, yet every time she would call in to order it they would put her on hold, she would get impatient and hang up. So we decided to just go over there and order it. It just so happens that the pizza place is next store to the shop of the lady we were telling you about! The lights were on so we stopped in to saw hello and see how she was doing. Come to find out she was there because they were blowing up balloons for a race that was taking place the next morning in Jackson. They had ordered 200 balloons from her and they were in there getting the order ready. So we got to help her blow up balloons. I got up the courage and asked her if she would be interested at having us over and we could teach her more about our church. Her answer scared me for a second then I was so excited..she said " No! I told ya'll.. I'd love to have ya'll over. We'll make dinner for ya too!". I bout had a heart attack. This woman is amazing!
So we get to talkin with her and it turns out she is having to move to a different location ( much bigger space!) and she was going to paint it the next day. So we volunteered to go help paint!
The next day the elders and us ( we needed lots of help) went over and helped her paint her shop. We still have more painting to do but it was such a great chance to talk with her more about the gospel. She asked us so many more gospel questions and about different things we believe. She is coming to church this coming Sunday. We are really excited. Tomorrow we are going back to help her paint some more and on Wednesday we are getting the elders from Vicksburg ( who will be here for district meeting) and the zone-leaders here in Clinton to help her move heavy furniture. She wont let us sisters do it because she says we have to " bear children" one day. lol She is awesome! We are working on getting some good fellowship for her right now. Just keep praying she will progress.

Next story.. do ya'll remember that family that ran from us? well.. they never told us not to come back..so we went back yesterday afternoon. We were visiting the family in our ward that lives on their street and the wife walked down with us to meet the people. The couple that we met originally would not come to the door because they were "sleeping"..but we were able to meet another person that lives in that house. As we speak there are three copies of the Book of Mormon in that home. One of them is bound to be read! lol. yet another prayer..

We have another investigator that..well do you remember me tellin ya'll about the lady we gave the church tour too and who received a blessing from the bishop?.. well we saw her Monday..and then we went with her to help out at her church on Tuesday night.(we brought a member with us.. best part..she wore her bright yellow mormon helping hands shirt! oh yeah!).. Let me tell you.. I have never felt so unwanted in a church before in my life. We showed interest in wanting to help out and fill food orders ( they do this on Tuesday nights there) and I got a response from a lady at the church telling us that they get enough help from their people. Please do not take this as me saying anything bad about other churches. They are good people. It just amazed me how much of an oxymoron it was.. They have to be nice to us because we are in their church..but yet they want so badly to kick us out. go figure.. The sad part about this story was is that we currently cannot get a hold of our investigator. I am really worried that the church people told her that she couldn't talk to us anymore or shed loose her calling there. Everything will work out.  ( I have included a picture of me and a lady i met there..she collects canes and decorates them..awesome!)

So Wednesday the magnolia sisters came up because we had a temple square sister going back..and one coming! So sister VanRoosendaal was with us in Clinton for a while. It was really great to see her again. I have included a picture of the new sister from temple square..sister Platt..pretty sure she is from England. She was very nice and has been out about a year. One thing that is really cool about being here in Clinton..Is pres and sister tucker say its kind of like being the sister assistants.. gotta love it.  Sister Tucker is really funny and keeps sayin.."If she were an elder She would be an assistant..or very least a zone leader.." Don't know why she would say that..but I thought it was funny. It means a lot that they trust me. I just hope that I can continue to do a good job.

Well that is pretty much it on the week. Things are going great and I am learning lots! Thank you for your prayers and support.

Love, Sister Urie

Southernism: "I'm a red letter Christian" ( we ran into this lady tractin..she said that she was a red letter christian. i had never heard this term before..she said If its in red and he said it..i do it.) hm.. right on..lol. to that i replied come follow me! lol
Scripture: Hebrews 12:1-2 'one of my new favorite scriptures! let us with patience run the race that is set before us.'
Tracting tips: Uno penny!

Week 42 Pictures

Gumbo

They really love LSU

Week 42- and they ran from us...and weeping wailing and gnashing of teeth.‏

Dear Family!!

 

How ya'll doin? Things are going really well here. Surprisingly enough there are not to many stories this week..but we did have some awesome days..

This week we had zone conference on Wednesday. We learned and were taught great things about finding and getting the mission ready for the new mission president. One way we are going to do this is by additional inviting 10 people everyday and having 4 new investigators a week. Additional inviting is where you go up and talk to someone on the store or on the street find common ground, testify about the gospel, offer them hope through the restored gospel..invite them to church or to learn more about the church and get a referral. These are supposed to be short. Also someone is considered an investigator when they have been taught a lesson and have a specific return appointment. 

We talked about miracles and how our God is a God of miracles. Miracles do not stop because God does not want to bless us anymore..they stop because of our lack of faith. 

Monday we had some really good seafood gumbo for family night with this awesome family. ( isn't it funny that eating gumbo makes me feel at home..?) I tell you about this because I have included a picture of me with the seafood gumbo.lol
We also had another family night with the other family and their house feels like a temple.

 

Do you remember me telling you about that really great family we had found 555ing before a dinner appointment?.. well They ran from us.  We were going to see them and their front door has a window and you can see right through it. As we are walking up to their door you can see someone run, we look through the front door and then two adult figures run to the back of the house. Laughing we knock on the door. This other man comes to the door and we ask to talk with either the husband or the wife of this house if we could, that we had talked with before. He said " I don't know what ya'll did but they just ran from ya!" ..We said we didn't know what we did either and we are really nice. So we asked him to go ask them why they ran from us ..he went back and a few seconds later came back and said " They wont tell me why they ran from ya'll, you're gonna just have to catch them when they're outside." we said OK and away we went.. The golden family has gone into hiding..funny part about this is one of our favorite members told us not to give up on them because they did the same thing to the missionaries before they joined the church. We'll get um one day!

 

We did service for a member this week, helping her clean out her girls room. She told the girls that "the sisters are coming on ( this day) at ( this time) to help me clean your room unless ya'll clean it.." and they didn't..so we went through and threw away a bunch of stuff..took out a bunch of their toys that their mom hid in another room and cleaned the whole room. Now it sounds cruel but they still have a lot of toys. After we were done cleaning the room it looked so good. We weren't able to leave before the girls got home from school though and they came in and ran straight to their room. Then came the noise..you would think they would be so happy that their room was clean and they do not have to do it..but no weeping wailing and gnashing of teeth came from the back room. They were so sad and thought we had taken all their toys to give to the people we are teaching. The mom reassured them that if they kept their room clean for a few days, they could have some of their toys back. It was too funny. The whole time we were cleaning I just kept thinking how I needed to write home and apologize to my mom for being so messy. Mom..I am sorry for being a hoarder, pack rat, messy child. I promise I have changed and seen the error of my youthful ways. Also thank you for all the times you have cleaned my room and picked up after me..I am forever in your debt. Please forgive me! :)

 

Saturday we went into Jackson and met this Japanese lady. We were trying to find her daughter who is a member who lives at that address. The lady would not give us her daughters number, we did, however, loan this sweet Buddhist woman a copy of the book of mormon. Sister Aebischer had the impression to ask for it back and sadly, we are pretty sure she turned around and burned it. She got really mad when we asked for her daughters number. She said no! its a secret! and was not happy when I told her that missionaries would keep coming back until she gave it to us. One good thing out of it though.. I learned that my name in Japanese is a flower.. urie is yuri..pretty cool.

 

last story.. we went to visit this cute little old woman who lives in this apartment complex on Sunday. After visiting this sweet sister we had 20 minutes before our dinner appointment. We felt impressed to knock on some doors. The first door we knocked on is the one I sent you a picture of. The woman really liked LSU and put that thing on her door. ( it is made to be put on a tree). She was nice but was not interested in our message. As we turned the corner to knock on another door we saw a man sitting at the top of the stairs. After talking with him for a little we learned that he lived upstairs in the apartments and that he was waiting for his ride to come. He had a copy of the book of mormon at his house and had talked with missionaries before. We asked him the question what he would ask the prophet if there was one of the earth today. He humbly said he would ask him for forgiveness of his sins. We read him some scriptures from the book of mormon and testified to him of what the prophets have said about forgiveness and repentance. Also, we asked him if he would want to be baptized and he said that would be something he is really interested in.

I am really excited for this week and the area. Spring break is this week and I know that we will be able to find a lot of families together and at home. Bring It on! We just keep praying that we will be led to those prepared to receive the gospel, 

May God be with you this week family! I pray that he watches over and protects ya'll. Hope you are able to see many miracles in your lives this week, as I pray we do here in the field.

Love ya'll!

Sister Urie

 

Southernism: Did you know that a switch is a twig or a tree limb that is used to " whoop a child"..pretty awful..I learned that this week.

Scripture: Mosiah 25:14-15

Tracting tips: Zero.

 

oh ya! we went into Jackson this week and didn't even need to use our pepper spray! oh yeahh!

Week 41- Pictures

Week 41- Society Activity, Piccadilly and The Hurricane.‏

Dear Family!

How are ya'll doing this week? So I forgot to tell you the rest of the story..remember the one I told you about last week? The Man and his wife that we met at 'Nawlins grill?'.. Well the end of the story that I forgot to tell you was is after I shared my scripture thought with him and he told us that he knew what I had said was true because we had already witnessed it all night, he called over his friend. ( The friend that is very prominent in their church) Well we learned that this man witnesses to one professed non-christian everyday. He carries cards on what he says to them, to give to them, in his pocket in 3 different languages. English, Spanish and Chinese. It was great to be able to meet him and It was one of those times where I wish with all my heart I hadn't run out of Article of faith cards to be able to give him one. He gave Sister Hawkes I each a card of the one he gives to people. So that was the end of the story. We got to meet the man who he was very good friends with. I felt very honored. They are good people, with good morals and It was wonderful to be able to share a meal with them. We are going to go and visit them this week so I will let you know how it goes..

Now you know the rest of the story..;)

So This week was a semi slow week..but good. We have had crazy weather as of late and as a result a hurricane watch was issued for Friday afternoon/evening. The sirens never went off, but the rain, thunder and lightening were pretty good. ( no don't worry..this is no kind of heroic story..We were safe inside the whole time.)

As far as people we taught this week, We visited a lot of members of the ward. One story that I wanted to share with you was.. Do you remember the lady I told you about a couple weeks ago who yelled at us and then called us back to apologize?.. Well we got into see her again, finally, this week. We have not been able to catch her at home because she has been so busy, Saturday of this last week we were able to see her. She invited us right in as we knocked on her door. The visit with her was very warm and friendly. She is redoing her house and said that shed love us to come help. One thing she does is re-do furniture and sells it, so she might let us come help her with that. The scripture we shared with her was Heleman 5:12. After we read this scripture form the Book of Mormon she was very impressed and expressed her gratitude that we came by to visit her. ( we also found out that her daughter goes to school with one of the girls in the ward! So great!)
Next story takes place four doors down from our friend whom I just told you about.. She is this sweet lady, probably in her mid 60's. We knocked on her door a few weeks ago and she politely told us she was not interested. Well last Sunday when we were eating dinner at a members house they told us we should go visit this lady, who happens to be the members friend from where she works. The member told us to tell the lady she sent us.  So come last Saturday we knock on her door and when she answers we tell her we are friends of the member ( we said her name) coming to visit her and see how she is doing. To this she was happy we came by, but told us she was busy right now. Then she looks at us and asks us if we are cold. The weather outside has been a bit crazy and it was a little chilly so we said yes..she let us come inside and go through some clothes she was going to give away to the thrift store. ( this got us in the door) Then I told her I was going to give her a scripture for her kindness.. Shared the famous Phillipians 4:13 ( love that scripture) and she was so impressed by the spirit it brought that right following the scripture she turned to us and said " are ya'll hungry? Have ya had lunch yet?". She had ordered a pizza and half of it was left and wanted to share it with us. We said of course wed love some! So we got to visit with her while we ate. She was physically injured a few months ago and is recently starting to go back to physical therapy. We offered to have someone come and give her a priesthood blessing, to which she said she would love one, but was a bit hesitant because it would be a "new experience for her". She also said she would love to come to the church and do her family history sometime soon and is looking to set up an appointment in the upcoming weeks. After we ate we said a prayer with her and left. Such a sweet woman. ( oh I forgot to tell you.. her house has pink walls and red couches.. her two favorite colors. Love it! lol)

We have one of the most amazing recent converts in this ward. On Sunday she turned and read Moroni 6:4 to me, replacing all the they's and them's for me and I, and asked me if it makes sense. I was in tears when she was done reading it. I love how much she loves being apart of the church and how she wants with her whole heart to do everything she can do stay true to her baptismal covenants. More towards the beginning of my mission I struggled a lot with my recent converts going less active for strange reasons. Yet I know that that is not always the case and some really are converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ. We work so hard to prepare them for baptism as it says in D&C 20: 37, which states the qualifications for baptism..

 "All those who humble themselves before God, and desire to be baptized, and come forth with broken hearts and contrite spirits, and witness before the church that they have  truly repented of all their sins, and are willing to take upon them the name of Jesus Christ, having a determination to serve him to the end, and truly manifest by their words that they have received of the Spirit of Christ unto the remission of their sins, shall be received by baptism into his church."

Great week. All is going great. The work is going great. Great great great :)

Thank you for all your prayers and letters. Ya'll are the best family any missionary could ask for!
The work is great and true. I know that Jesus Christ, our savior and redeemer, lives today. God is our Father in heaven and I know that obedience to his laws and ordinances of the gospel will bring us great joy and peace.
Love ya!
Sister Urie

Scripture: 1 Nephi 16:28 ... This is the story of Nephi and the Liahona or the ball of curious workmanship. I wanted to share this verse with you because it goes perfectly with the way the spirit works with us. The Holy Spirit can only be with us if we are choosing what is right and not sinning ( sinning being falling short of the mark) It says in this verse that the ball " did work according to the faith and diligence and heed which we did give unto" it. We can liken the ball to the holy spirit. As we are diligent and faithful ( obedient) two of the key things we need to do to have the spirit with us, then we will feel him in our lives so much more.
Tracting Tips: none..
Southernism: instead of saying I have 'goose bumps'..they say i got 'chill bumps'. ( not all say this..but most.)

Week 40 Pictures

Week 40: Well I'm training again..annd the Mardi Graw beads! ( and a story from last week)‏

Dear Family!

 

How have ya'll been doing? Things are going great here! Beautiful sunny day and a great day to find people to teach. We have really been focusing on finding people on the ward list that no one knows who they are..which has been an adventure.

I don't know if I told ya'll much about who I am training.. but her name is Sister Aebischer. She is from Riverside California and is 25yrs old. Sister A is an awesome missionary and I am so excited to be serving with her.

There are two people we are working with right now that have a lot of potential. The first is a lady that the sisters here have been working with for a while. Saturday was the first time we have been in to teach her since I have been here. She had a lot of concerns about the book of mormon, its origin, who wrote it and the purpose of it compared to the bible. It was definitely a 'teach people, not lessons' lesson. Very great experience. I just hope we were able to help clear up all her concerns so that she will start progressing.

Our other investigator, who i know Ive told you about..she is the one we had the elders give a blessing to a few weeks ago because of her health? Well she has still been really sick. We got in to see her Tuesday night with a member and she was very weak, poor thing. We cleared up a lot of her concerns about the holy ghost and she is continuing to pray about and read the book of mormon. Our return appointment with her, for Thursday, fell through because she was sick again. We just keep praying that she will recover well and she will give place in her heart for the restored gospel.

 

So not to many stories this week.. One of the members in our ward went to New Orleans for Mardi graw and let us have a lot of beads! it was sweet.

 

There was one story from last week that I didn't tell ya'll..well here it is..

So Sister Hawkes and I really wanted to go to this restaurant called 'nawlins grill' ( no joke..that's its real name..spelling and all.) So we go in and the place is packed. The only table available is one in the middle of the room with 6 seats. So we sit at it and a lady comes up and asks if her and her husband can share the table with us. Which of course we tell her we would love to. As they sat down we got to talking and they were the sweetest couple. Come to find out he was a ( i cant remember what its called..wrote it in my journal I'll have to look and tell ya'll) but he went to seminary school a long time ago..was a preacher. Super nice guy. When we was in school he said he took a class about other religions and said that he asked for a copy of the book of mormon. With the copy of the book of mormon came two very persistant missionaries that tried to get him to get baptized.

I then proceeded to ask him what he thought about the Book of Mormon and he gave me a round about answer of how he thought the people of our church were really nice.. and I asked him again a little too loud and that ended the conversation for a little while our waitress was taking our orders.

As we started talking again he told us that there was a man in the room that was a very prominent member of his church and we needed to be quiet in a sense so we did not embarrass him.. was what they said in so few words. ( the couple we are at the table with was in their 70s). So we start talking again..they were so sweet and ended up that I had ordered something that the lady had recommended.. When it came it was "soggy" and she felt bad that she had recommended it and it was bad. So she had them bring her another plate of it and she gave it all to me ( plus they charged her for it! awful) To top it off they took our check and paid for our meal! It was so sweet.. So I felt like we needed to share something with them.. I told them I couldn't ever repay them but I could share a scripture with them. So I shared with them Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through Christ which strengthen me.. I proceeded to bear my testimony to them of Christ and how I knew that the atonement was real and covers all pain. He told me that he knew that what I was saying was true because we had already witnessed to him through our actions and how we conducted our selves that evening. It was very sweet. I am grateful for their examples.

They know a member couple from the ward and I am also grateful for the member couples sweet example.

Well those are all my stories for this week. I will work on getting some more stories for ya'll!

 

Love ya! Be Good..Share the Gospel!

Sister Urie

 

Scripture: D&C 130: 18-23.. Obedience and diligence to the Law will help us to have the spirit with us always..So be obedient. Just because we receive the Holy spirit when we are confirmed does not mean that it is with us. We must be obedient and earn his companionship.

Tracting Tips: 11 cents

Southernism: We were at someones house and the little girl said.."She had shut up talkin'" in other words.."She was done talking.." haha.