Pictures - (12/15/14) Gelato Celebrations, Beautiful LA Temple, and Special Baptism Day:)

What a wonderful Amazing Christmas time week I've had 

serving as a missionary!

 

Sister Zimmerman, our wonderful Relief Society

President, took us out for Sister Reneer's Birthday!

 

Yummy Italian Gelato for the Birthday Girl!

 

We were able to visit the LA Temple for Sister Reneers Birthday

One of the Best Days! Sweet Sister MacClain made it

possible by driving us and going with us.

 

I Love to See the Temple!

 

 Going to the temple made

Christmas time even more special! <3

I picture that the first Christmas night 

had palm trees too!:)

 

You did it again mom, you made six very

happy Sisters and Hermanas! And they

arrived before Transfers! Thank YOU! 

 

Brother (J) ready and going for his 

Baptismal Interview. Yay!:)

 

Awesome Day! I will always remember 

this time. I am humbled and very blessed to be

able to be a part of (J)'s Baptism Day.

 

Lots of support for (J) that day!  And there is the 

Christmas tree I told you about in the background, 

with all the primary kids pics for ornaments! It's beautiful.

 

More people supporting (J) I love these Ladies!

 

Sister Fillerup is such an amazing person

and friend. She said we were her

Christmas angels. She is so kind!

 

Sister Reneer with Sister Fillerup's family.

Their home is beautiful and it feels like

Christmas. <3

[25] Sunshine in My Soul, We Need You, and More Blessed to Give:)

Hello Family and friends!!

I'm sorry my letters lately have been so rushed and unfinished. I don't think my letter last week made any sense at all about our Thanksgiving. I'm sorry!  But I have great news to announce this week!!! 

There is Sunshine in my Soul! 

The words to that song have been going on in my mind this week.   (J) is doing so well! We had another uplifting lesson with him this week and he decided to be baptized this Saturday, December 13th!! He told us he needs to not care about what his friends tell him, or what other people may think, he wants to do this for himself because inside he feels it is true and he needs to be baptized. After he chose a date he was so happy and it was like a weight was off his shoulders, we could all feel the Spirit strongly. 

The next day we had another lesson with (J) on exchanges.  It is always a fun day to do exchanges with a new companion, because I learn so much from each companion. It was so great to be able to work with Sister Hegstrom for a day! She is such a great example (I may say that a lot about Sister missionaries being a great example to me, but it's true:) It amazes me how sweet and spiritual and knowledgeable all these Sister missionaries are. I feel blessed to be around and learn from them):) Sister H is a wonderful missionary. She taught me a lot just in the short time we were together. 

Sister H was also extra great in our lesson with (J). While we were teaching, (J) said something that really struck me. He said "I fell I need the church and also, I think the church needs me". When he said that I knew he was being taught by the Spirit and what he said is so true! We need each and everyone who joins our church. Just like something President Uchtdorf said, "We need everyone.  Not for numbers, or statistics, but for their talents and personalities."  

This same thought was again taught to me this week, with our less-active member, sweet (S). She is so goodhearted and she really has a desire to come back to church, but she told us she doesn't know what her purpose is. We brought this up to our awesome Bishop and asked if he could extended to her the calling of being a greeter. He did and (S) accepted! She passed out the Sunday programs yesterday and welcomed everyone to church. Everyone who talked to her had a smile on their face. By using her talents of being a happy and a welcoming type person, she was able to help everyone feel the Spirit as they walked into the chapel. As I watched this, I felt the Spirit confirmed to me that we really need everyone. Whether their calling is one thing or another, we need them and God loves them, because He loves each and everyone of us. He needs you too!:)

More Blessed to Give

In my scripture studies, I came across this verse in Acts where Paul is quoting the Savior "It is more blessed to give than to receive". I have found that out more and more on my mission.  Our Savior and Heavenly Father needs us to give. I use to think of that scripture as the  'tangible giving and getting things', but now I also see that the giving is more than that.  It's the giving of your time, of your love, of your service and that lifts you up, brings you happiness and joy and you really do become blessed.  I know that is true and as we share what we have with others we will be blessed. 

Hope everyone is starting to feel the beautiful Christmas Spirit, Have a great week! We also had a great Ward Christmas Party, but I am out of Time so I will let the rest of my week be told in pictures:)

Love and Prayers to you all!
Send a Christmas card if you have time!;)
Sister S-K

Pictures - (12/08/14) Children Singing Silent Night, New Born Baby, Love This Time of Year:)

 My sweet missionary companion, Sister Reneer 

and Sister Collings on a 'exchanges' day.

 

So fun spending a day with Sister Hegstrom,

she is super loving and sweet missionary.

 

More blessings of rain yay! We are wearing

pants because we were going to go

do some more service.

 

Rain and Service two wonderful things!

 

Went to the Golden Gong for our PDay lunch!

Yummy Chinese Food!

 

Mirror Selfie of these wonderful loving

and fun Missionaries at the Golden Gong.

 

Rolling tables, everyone shares! Great for 

missionary companions. Haha.

 

"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas"

All ready for the Ward Christmas party.

We also love our little Christmas tree!

 

Yay Santa! He told us we were 

on the Nice list:)

 

Sister (S) Loves Santa, so glad she 

came to our Church Christmas Party. 

Everyone was so welcoming!

"Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly!" 

Lights, and red and green, it was great! Lots

of members invited friends and we had

such a good time talking to people.

Christmas is a great time to talk about our

Savior <3

 

Sister Burk just had a baby, so she and Brother 

Burk, were Mary and Joseph:)

 

The kids were so cute and excited about wearing tinsel 

and seeing a sweet 'Baby Jesus'.  Sister Burk also conducted 

the primary kids as they sang "Silent Night", 

for the last verse we all joined in and I might

have started crying a little:) The Spirit was so strong!

 

Can you tell I'm in a festive mood! Red and

Green for Christmas! This is my friend,

Samuel from our ward, and since he found out I 

like Zelda he wore his cool Zelda tie! 

Awesome!

 Our little fresh branch tree makes

the whole apartment smell like pine!

Love this little tree. We

might have to give it a name like

Kenny and Kevin always do for our 

family trees:)

[24] Extra Blessings with Extra Thanksgivings, Busy Time of Year, and A Little Seed:)

Happy December! (Christmas music time, yay!)

Hello dear family and friends,

Time has really flown by. I cannot believe it is December already. Without snow here it is sometimes hard to guess which month it is. Luckily we are blessed by having festive people in this area that have been putting up Christmas lights to make things feel more like the Holidays and Christmasy =)

Thanksgiving! 

This has been an especially terrific week with lots of service and great lessons. Plus Sister Reneer and I had a wonderful Thanksgiving Eve and Thanksgiving. Since Sister Mastin was having us over for Thanksgiving we went over the day before to help prepare the dinner and it was so much fun! We love sister Mastin!! Also on Wednesday (J) gave us a Thanksgiving dinner, he had bought it for us and it was really nice of him, and tasted yummy too.

On Thanksgiving we started the morning off as usual with prayer and our scripture study and then the other sisters, the Hermanas, in our area, came over and we made my Thanksgiving traditional corn muffins for breakfast! (Thanks mom for sending the mix and the cute fall muffin papers! They turned out scrumptious:)  I also  made two chocolate cream pies to take to the two homes we were celebrating Thanksgiving at.

We also had a special gratitude District Meeting in the morning and right after that we went straight to a sweet less-active's house (Sister S) for our first dinner. It was a great time and we laughed and talked a lot.  I've sent pictures today that I took on our happy Thanksgiving week:)

We then went to Sister Mastin's home and we felt so blessed for the kindness of others to share their celebration with us, and to spend time with us, helping us feel loved and cared about.  So we ended up having two wonderful Thanksgiving dinners on Thanksgiving, and one on Thanksgiving Eve. Plus my companion and the Hermanas were able to do my other family tradition during the day, and put jigsaw puzzles together! (Thanks again the puzzles mom and papa!)

Busy Time of Year for Everyone

We have met a lot of great people in this area, the only hard part is making return appointments with them. Everyone is so busy so we are trying our best to work around everyone's schedules. We understand that there are lots of things going on at this time of year. It's the little things that make us happy though, like we have an a great investigator that we gave a CTR ring to and she wears it all the time. 

Happily we were able to have a great lesson with (J) on Wednesday. We had him teach us the Restoration to see how much he understood it. He did really well using the cup activity.  We had a great discussion afterwards and answered more of his questions. At the end of the lesson we had an amazing miracle... but I don't have time to write all about it! I'll write about it later.  That's a cliff hanger for you guys  haha! And mom, I know you don't like to watch too many movie trailers, so it doesn't spoil the movie, so I wont give anything away for now:)    Just know we know he has such wonderful faith, he just needs to make the personal decision to take that Leap of Faith and act on it! 
 

Faith is Like a Little Seed

Speaking of (J)'s faith, that is what my thought is on today. In sacrament yesterday one of the speakers used Alma 32:21 - 'And now as I said concerning faith - faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true."  And the speaker reminded us of how Jesus Christ would say that "faith is like a little seed".  

Sometimes we wonder why we don't have something big in the beginning, but I have been thinking if you look at a seed, most seeds are very small. Some seeds don't look like they will grow into something like an apple tree at all.  So things that are going to be wonderful can start little or small.  When we act on our faith and water it with lots of scripture study and many prayers it will continue to grow each day. It is great that we can each increase in our knowledge (our own knowledge, not someone else's level of knowledge) and our trust will grow in our Savior, Jesus Christ.  And as we act on our faith, than we are showing our love to our Heavenly Father too. This is a marvelous work and I hope more people will want to 'water their faith' more each day so it can grow:)

Love you all!

Sister Karissa:)

Pictures - (12/01/14) Thankful for; CTR Rings, Service, Food, Friends and Family:)

 

Thankful for Service. We were doing 

Service at the Food Pantry.

 

Grateful for everyone's prayers.

Still searching to find out where my

 headaches are coming from.

 

Thankful for cute Sister Scarecrow

decorations! (Thanks Mom and Papa!)

 

Grateful to have an amazing missionary 

companion and friend.

 

Thankful for church projects like this one, 

typing quilts to donate.  And for 

wonderful people like Sister S.

 

Grateful for investigators who want to

wear their CTR ring:) and to learn and know

 the Truth and to Choose the Right.

 

Thankful for things to celebrate.

Congratulations Sister Reneer! It was her 

Sixth month mark day! <3

 

Grateful for this sweet missionary!

 

Thankful to have such wonderful and spiritual

men in our ward/church who are a loving example to 

others. Bishop Silva (who is amazing!) and the Ward Mission 

 leader Brother Bensen (Bro. Bensen is the one who dropped 

everything to help us move the lady that one day.)

 

Grateful for our Daily Planners for keeping us on track:)

Sweet Sister Reneer made me mine. It's awesome.

She is super talented and I like it so much!

  

Thankful for the small uplifting things

all around us, like the McDonald Frozen 

Strawberry Lemonades!

 

Grateful for a Free Supreme Car Wash

after five car washings. Hahaha!

The colorful soap made us smile!

 

Thankful for all our many blessings like our

multiple Thanksgiving meals:) ( (J) has plants 

and flowers all over in his gardens.)

 

Grateful for Sister Mastin and 'day before

Thanksgiving cooking-baking'!

 

Thankful for meeting wonderful people

on my mission. I love Sister Mastin!

 

Grateful to be able to do some pre-Thanksgiving baking!  

 

 Thankful for our First Thanksgiving 

meal with Sister (S) :)

  

Grateful for festive table settings:)

 

Thankful for my serving of my favorite 

Thanksgiving food! Haha!

 

Grateful for my Zone.We went to 

Zone activity last P-day and the Elders 

just played this the whole time. 

I called it "Elders Game" hahaha 

I hope someone gets that reference:)

 

Thankful for Rain. And even some of the trees colors

here in Pismo Beach, California helped look a 

little like the Thanksgiving Holiday! Yay! 

 

Grateful for Beautiful Sunrises and Sunsets.

 

Thankful for fun Thanksgiving Traditions 

(Thanks mom and papa for the puzzles!)

  

And we are very very grateful for Mail! <3 <3 

Just a little smiling reminder:) Haha! I'd love to

hear from you and be added to your Christmas card list!