April 9, 2012

Transfers are May 1st and I'll get a new companion then cause sister juliano is going home. :( she can't leeave me!!! We have so much fun together.

 

So this week consisted of tracting... tracting... tracting... tracting... and moreeeee tracting. It was fun though. Except it is kinda difficult when we don't know where previous (the last set) sisters have tracted before. and it is a litttttle bit frustrating when we get half way down a street and someone mentions missionaries came by like 3 months ago. we don't want to be labeled as Jehovah witnesses because yeah. anyway

 

our recent convert Vai is AMAZING!!!!! We taught her last week and she bore her testimony to us and it was beautiful!!! She is going to be so strong in the church and her husband is just as determined to be strong in the church as well.  Vai also got confirmed yesterday and the things she was told during the confirmation were absolutely amazing.  I know she and her husband Kalili are going to be so strong in the church. :) (kalili is already a member)

 

we also spent a lot of time looking for a service opportunity cause we don't have one yet and we are supposed to do 2 hours of service a week. It's kinda frustrating.
 

we taught sunday school yesterday... that was an adventure and a half.  I don't think I ever want to teach sunday school again! Well for a while. Or I need more than an hour and a half preparations.  but everyone in our ward said we did a good job.  The Spirit did a good job. He is the one who influenced us the most.

 

anyway that was basically my week sorry no pictures I forgot my thing to load pictures.

Loveeee Sister Davidson

 

April 2, 2012

 Me in front of pittsburgh. 

 The beautiful city of pittsburgh!!

 me and a cool statue in pittsburgh

 Kahli my old investigator

 Jill and Meghan

 KIm!

 Sister Carter and I at transfers 

 Sister Denton and I the day before she went home.

  oh Pennsylvania road signs. they make me laugh

 sister juliano and I don't mind that it's upside down.

 Vai!!! At her baptism!!!

My beautiful companion glaring at me after me teasing her.

I LOVE my new companion.  It doesn't seem like we've only been companions for 2 weeks. We get along so well. 

So this week was FANTASTIC! It went by faster than any week of my mission yet! I am seriously contemplating whether a prank has been played on me and last Monday was actually yesterday. Heavenly Father must be playing an April Fool's prank on me. There is no way that week could have gone so fast.  

We had a lot of good things happen. And we don't feel as though we don't know what is going on as much anymore. I definitely don't feel as frustrated as I did when I first got here. But the reasons for that will have to wait until another day.  Because all that is important now is that I am happy and love this area and I love my investigators and my district and the other missionaries we're serving around. I am getting to know the members of my ward I am getting to know my area. And honestly I am so glad that Sister Juliano and I doubled in here because some of the things that were becoming traditions were not okay in this area. Not saying that missionaries were being disobedient but just the traditions needed to change desperately.  And Sister Juliano and I were able to stop some stuff without having to put up a fight with a companion. 

So we had a baptism this week!!! Yay!!! The woman's name was Vai and she is the sweetest girl ever.  So she and her husband Kalili are both from American Samoa and their families are still there.  Kalili's family are members and they wanted to participate in the baptism.  His dad was able to speak via Skype!! It was sooooooo cool.  Then his aunt did a musical number from Alaska! It was perfect for her.  The service as a whole had some glitches namely the font wasn't completely full in time for the baptism. Definitely something I learned for future reference. Missionaries will just need to fill the font. Cause it doesn't get full in 3 hours.... That font.Don't get me started. But she was baptized and that is what matters.  She was able to use the Atonement in such a big way.  Then she was so excited for conference as a baptized member.  And she is so excited for her confirmation this Sunday. It's great. I love her!!! 

I'm so thankful to Heavenly Father for allowing me to be here and allowing me to learn so that I could become better. It's amazing how much I feel like I have changed since last September. I know I'm not the same person. 

Anyway I'll send pics in a minute. love ya !!!
SIster Davidson

March 26, 2012

Before I get to my new area let me tell you what happened in Pittsburgh right before I left. So we meet with Kahli our investigator and taught her the Gospel of Jesus Christ (faith, repentance, baptism, Holy Ghost, endure to the end). and when we were talking to her about repentance Sis carter asked Kahli what she thought about it?  And Kahli said well I heard about it at church and how you needed to do it everyday.  So I've started asking God for forgiveness everyday since that Sunday. And it was amazing. AMAZING!!! We didn't have to do the awkward will you repent commitment? cause she's already doing it!!

then transfers were probably the most awkward day of my life. My companion was in Harrisburg all day. So I got to spend alllllll day with Elders... being the only sister.  Okay I'm complaining and it really wasn't as bad as I said. It was actually pretty funny. I went out to lunch with them and my zone leader asked who I wanted to ride with and I said whoever will feel the least awkward with a sister in the car. Pretty funny. 

but now....
I am in the greatest county in Pennsylvania!! I'm in Lancaster again. I love this place.  I am serving in the Elizabethtown ward which is the neighboring ward to the Lititz ward where I was serving before. And it's weird cause there are now Elders in the Lititz ward.  So it's weird to be telling my companion this is the Elder's area when we drive through part of their area.  cause it used to be MY area. but whatever it's cool. 

So my companion is Sis Juliano. She is from southern california and she is fabulous. we have so much fun together. She is going home at the end of this transfer though. it's rather sad. But this is going to be an awesome transfer. Details coming in a few minutes. 

So it's weird my whole district doubled in. which for mission lingo means that both companions are new to the area.  I doubled in with Sister Denton when I was getting trained and had a great experience but this time around things are not so great.  There have been a few challenges but it's okay.  We had a handful of miracles fall out of the sky. 

both sets of elders in my district are training. It's kinda funny. They definitely had a deer in the headlights look about to them last week at district meeting. It was great. Ha. I shouldn't make fun of them but I remember my first week out and I was the same way. So it's funny. 

Then we called our bishop on Wednesday to tell him who the new sisters are and he told us about the ward a little bit.  He told us that there was a woman in the ward who was just waiting on some stuff so that she could get married so she could get baptized!!! So the stuff was finalized and this couple got married on Friday and she is getting baptized this friday!!! I'm so excited!! It's my first baptism. So it'll be awesome!! 

Then yesterday at church one of the members of our ward came up to us before relief society and pointed out a woman and said she is an investigator. So to make sure we met her.  So we went up to her and introduced ourselves.  and she was really nice. then after rs she asked how do I join the mormon church?  and I was kinda blown away.  But I said well we have to teach you some lessons, and then you get baptized. Is that something you want.  And she said yeah it is.  So we will be having another baptism coming in a couple of weeks. it depends on how quickly we teach the lessons.  But it'll probably be a couple of weeks. 

Then General Conference is this weekend!!! I'm so excited!!!

Love Sister Davidson

March 19, 2012

Well... it looks I am getting evicted from my apartment again. I'm getting transferred but I don't know where I am getting sent. I will find out tomorrow.  I've been going crazy the past 3 days waiting. I'm sick of packing.
It's hard to pack up my whole life again and be ready to move. I guess all my moving in college helped me prepare to packing here. I will laugh if I end up moving every 3 months of my mission. It could happen. Hope not but it could.

This transfer right now is kinda emotional.  Sister Denton is going home and I'm really sad.  I know a couple of the elders that are going home as well.

That is so crazy that the Condies moved to Pittsburgh! I guess I can't look for them as I probably won't be in the Pittsburgh area anymore  considering my area is the only sisters area here unless they open a new sister's area.  Who knows? It could happen. Probably not but it could. But there are 2 stakes in the Pittsburgh area.  There is the Pittsburgh stake, and the pittsburgh North stake.

My shoes are holding up. I think I might buy some galoshes for when it rains. The boots we bought in El Paso were NOT good for the rain and snow. my feet would get wet. So I bought some snow boots... grrrrr. and they got holes in the bottom!! So frustrating. So yeah galoshes all the way. I have socks so that when it snows next winter I'll just layer up to keep my feet warm.  I just need them to stay dry!!! 

We taught Hans again this week.  We invited Dann a recent convert to his lesson and it was awesome! Dann and Hans have the same type of background so they were able to connect and it was just great!
It made me laugh cause Hans came to church yesterday and I found out I was getting transferred on Saturday and had told some girls Meghan and Jill about it.  So Meghan and Jill were talking about where I might go and Hans was like what? And I said I was leaving and he asked when? where and when did you find out? and I said yesterday (Saturday) and he said so much happens in 48 hours!!  It made me laugh.   But happy at the same time to know that the people I've taught love me and don't want me to leave. cause I don't want to leave. But I know that I am supposed to.

Jill gave me a ring. and it turned my finger green yesterday. I hate when rings do that. It's a turquoise fish and it's kinda big(I'll send a picture). I was wearing it at the ward's linger longer yesterday and one of the Elders from my district came in and said what is that? and I said that it was a fish. and he asked if I wore that ring often making it seem as though he didn't like it. Ha! Elders are silly. I enjoy making fun of them.

I really don't know what else to write this week. My mind is kinda gone for now because of transfers. Like I said my mind has been focused on transfers. and the fact sis denton is going home and just everything. It's crazy.

Love you alllllll!
Sister Cherilyn Davidson

 Trader Joes! I think of Spencer Davidson whenever I see this store. So I had to take a picture. :)

 The district. Now I'm leaving! The blonde elder on the far left is leaving too. But everyone else is staying the same.

 first time I ever filled out a march madness bracket in my life. Don't get it at all. The institute director printed it off for us. So I had to fill it out. ha. He's funny.

 BEAR! Look how close I was to it! I'm glad it was stuffed or else I could've died!

 We're fishers of men(people to teach).

 This reminds me of Spencer in Yellowstone when he said no no buh bye to everything he didn't like. and that it was sooo cute! So I want Michelle to show Spencer this picture to see what his reaction is :)

 This bird reminds me of the movie ice age and I was kinda excited about it. as you can tell.

 This picture is for Dad. Who always says 2 legged deer. I became a 2 legged deer! quite literally! hahaha! I just needed the antlers. :D

 Emily Riley one of the girls we've been teaching. She is a recent convert

BEAUTIFUL treee! The spring is so pretty here. I hope the rest of PA is just as pretty.

Sister Carter and I doing what we do quite frequently waiting for the bus. We're experts at waiting for the bus and running after the bus and yeah. We ran down at least 2 buses on Saturday. Wish I could say that wasn't a regular occurrence but... it is. Running is good... for my health...

March 12, 2012

  there may have been a cantaloupe shoved in that backpack. (sorry if I've already sent this picture...) We didn't get grocery bags!!! 

 What? Classic Pittsburgh or Pennsylvania in general move. No cars beyond this point and then there is a car there. Of course.

 cool train tunnel that we wanted to take a picture by. It reminds us of the song Long Black Train. Which is what we've entitled this picture ha. we're weird but we love it!!!

 picture I stole from sister carters camera from when we went to the cheesecake factory for her birthday! Delicious! I want cheesecake! (I lost 4 pounds last week so I can want cheesecake okay?) 

Thanks for sharing your testimony with me Dad. I really enjoyed it.  I really enjoyed looking at the pictures from Hawaii as well!!  And I LOVED the postcards. also i love that they were sent from El Paso. ha. 

So I wasn't originally going to tell you about the shooting that happened in my area..  Yes Mom it happened in the area I walk almost every day. But sister Marshall told you we were safe and we were extremely blessed. so I want to share with you this experience.

Let me give you some background details before I tell you how we were so blessed. I don't know if you remember me telling you about Kelda. Well Kelda actually is a patient in the hospital where the shooting occurred.  And we visit her on Tuesday at 2.  It is usually always that time. We were really glad we had visited her on Tuesday rather than being busy and going to see her another day. But that wasn't anything unusual. Also we were blessed was that we had zone conference on Friday. and you're probably thinking Friday? what does that have to do with what happened on Thursday?? But it has a lot. We usually have weekly planning on Friday mornings unless there are other meetings scheduled for Friday. So we had to pick a different day this week because of Zone Conference. and we just decided to do it early and do it on Thursday.  Cause then we had service at 3 and an appointment at 4:30 in downtown Pittsburgh. Then we were just busy the rest of the day.  We were kinda unusually busy... for this area. Also Emily a girl we're working with canceled on us the night before and rescheduled for Thursday. 

Now to Thursday more detailed. We had weekly planning and that usually lasts from 10 am to about 1 pm. and then we have lunch and we take an hour for lunch. So we didn't even leave our apartment until after 2.  Which is about when the shooting happened.  (don't worry our apartment is like 3 miles from that hospital.) So we walked straight to service cause we needed to catch a bus early to get to downtown by 4:30. (service is an hour 3-4). So we got to service and it's at a nursing home and the tv is always going. And everyone was like did you hear about what just happened. and they told us details of what they knew. and so we called Kelda and made sure she was okay.  And then we got a flurry of texts and phone calls making sure we were okay and that we weren't in the Oakland area. a couple of members told us to stay in the rest of the day but we couldn't do that we still had to be out but fortunately we had appointments and bus rides that took of the rest of our time that day.  So long story short Heavenly Father put us in situations that didn't require us to be in Oakland near that area at all that day.  Except for riding on the bus to downtown.  The streets were so jammed packed with emergency vehicles. it was nuts!!! Cause usually we are out in oakland before service on Thursdays. We walk past that hospital a lot. Not always exactly right next to it but a street down from it. 

Then I am soooooooooooo happy!!! Yesterday David was officially reactivated in the church.  Cause he has come enough times. Then he received the Aaronic Priesthood.  We went to see him get ordained and it was weird to be in Elders Quorum... A lot of the guys noticed we were there during the opening song and they would look around and give us funny looks. It was awesome. Then I cried during the ordination. Cause I love that kid so much!! And I just love the things the Bishop said in the blessing part. It really made me feel as though I did my job as a missionary. and I just feel like David is never going to leave the church now because he just started a series of events that are going to really solidify his testimony. He got his patriarchal blessing last night.  He will get to bless or pass the sacrament next week probably. He is going to the temple for baptisms the week after that. It's just amazing. I am so proud of him!!

Then I am so happy.  We are teaching this girl named Kahli and she has come to church twice now. :D We always ask her if she had any questions about the service and she doesn't. She just easily understands how it is all done. and I love her!!! She is reading from the Book of Mormon and praying on her own.  

Then Hans. I think I told you about him last week. He is awesome!! We weren't able to meet with him because he was home for spring break but he left us a voicemail saying see ya next week and that he would be coming to church next week!!! Wahooooooooooooo! We are so excited. I have a stronger testimony of my prayers and the prayers of those around me cause we were praying like crazy that he would get an answer to his prayers about attending church. and he is going to come and so this week I am going to pray that he loves it and has a fabulous first experience and wants to keep coming back. Like Kahli. :D 

But yeah life is great. I love life as a missionary. 

I'm going to send you pictures now... :) 
love sister davidson

March 5, 2011

Hi to you from ME! :)  it's time to read a letter from your favorite missionary again. he. he. 

this last week literally flew by. I do not know where the time went. Seriously. It's crazy how fast time flies when you are on a mission just because you are so busy all the time!!

So many good things happened this week. We had a lot of crazy adventures.  We have 2 main less actives that we are working with and both of them were at church yesterday and both of them bore their testimony!! It was great to see the progress both of them have made since I have been here in this area. I love them both so much. The one less active Kelda is going deaf so we were working on getting an interpreter for her. We were able to find one in another ward. The woman's name is Sister Burton. Kelda was able to meet Sister Burton this last week. And they were able to communicate. It was really good. Kelda was able to understand everything Sister Burton was saying to her. It was great!!!  Getting to sister burtons was the adventure but that is a story for another day. We got lost but all was good. 

Then with the other less active, his name is David.  We have been wanting for him to be able to attend the temple trip with the ward and be able to be ordained in the priesthood. And last week he had a meeting with the bishop and he came to our lesson with both a temple recommend and a patriarchal blessing recommend. It was so exciting!!! He is going to love both so much. David's lessons have been really good. 

Then all of our investigators are awesome!! We have talked to all of them about baptism just recently and they're all on the same page of not wanting to get baptized until they know everything is true.   So I keep praying that as they are praying about the message we are sharing and as they are reading the Book of Mormon that their prayers will be answered and they will know that they need to get baptized. We will keep inviting them to be baptized though. 

So one of our investigators named Hans is really awesome. He told us that he knows the Book of Mormon is true pretty much.  He said that he is still praying about getting baptized though but he is pretty sure that he will. We invited him to church and he was honest with us and said he would feel awkward going to church.  We explained the importance of church attendance and he said he would pray about coming.  So I am praying a lot that he will get an answer that he is supposed to come to church and that he will come. He has such potential to be such a strong member in the church. 

Then we had another lesson with Archer, another investigator.  We have been reading with him the last couple of lessons because he is Chinese and doesn't quite understand old English so we explain a lot to him but he is starting to get it! It is so great when he can explain a verse to us.  I know that he can probably understand a lot more from the scriptures than he realizes but it helps him to have us explain.  

Then we had an investigator at church yesterday!! Her name is Kahli and she is great.  She really liked testimony meeting.  She also really like Gospel Principles.  She had to leave before Relief Society though because she had a school group meeting. It was great in Gospel Principles because we talked about prophets and in our first lesson with Kahli we talked about President Monson and the Quorum of the Twelve. So she was able to understand a lot that was going on in class because of that. It was great!! 

I just love this area so much!! I love all the people that we are working with. I love the ward and yeah they're just great! I don't want to leave. It is amazing how much I have been able to love the people here in only 3 months. 
I have been reading in Alma the last week or so and I just got past reading about the sons of Mosiah missionary experiences and it seems like whenever I pick up my Book of Mormon the last few days everything in it is about missionary work and it is just amazing to apply it to my life now.  I just love the scriptures!!

Life here in Pittsburgh is great great great! the work is wonderful and I love being a missionary!!! 

Love you all. Sister Davidson

February 27, 2012

I am excited to share with you everything I'm learning cause I am learning a LOT! I love being here. I love my area and I love the people in it. I think it's funny that you got on my mormon.org profile.  Most of the missionaries here have one too.  

In the ward I am serving in they had a mormon.org initiative to get the members to share the gospel.  They had a race between the elders quorum and the relief society. and it was a great success! Of course the relief society won.  Then the "prize' was the elder's quorum had to throw a party for the relief society.  I don't think it ended that way cause the ward mission leader just ended up inviting the whole ward to his apartment and they had a 90s party.  I heard it was a lot of fun cause missionaries don't go to stuff like that. 

So I finished my second journal since being out last night. Crazy!! I write so much cause I don't want to forget anything that happens while I am out!! I have to remember it ALL! haha. 

So we had one of the best lessons ever this past saturday. We have been teaching this kid Archer for a while. Sister Carter was teaching him before I got here.  And he is Chinese and he didn't have a concept or belief in Jesus Christ until just recently. And we were trying to figure out how to teach him about sin and repentance and we were struggling with the ideas how to do it.  And while we were planning something about reading the book of mormon  in preach my gospel stuck out to sister carter and we talked about the idea and we decided to do it. So we used the first chapter this activity gave us. it gave us 1 Nephi 10.  And that lesson was amazing!!!!!!!!!! I can't even describe how good it was.  He understood so much cause we struggle having him read because he doesn't understand some of the words so he can't understand the doctrines.  I will forever remember Archer whenever I read the word dwindling and dwelling now. 

So we challenged one of our returning actives that we are meeting with to read the Book of Mormon by April 1st which is his birthday.  And coincidently is conference as well. That's great! I am so excited about it! We challenged him before Sister Quijano left and I have been reading 10 pages a day.  And it has been so amazing. I love what I can learn from the scriptures every single day.  I am also way ahead of everyone else but I know that they can catch up.  

But that's it for today... no pictures this week sorry. I left my camera at the apartment. Plus I only had one picture from our adventure with sister marshall last week to a grocery store that you had to pay for bags. Love ya!!! :)

Sister Davidson