Mortensen, Annalise

Hi everyone! We had transfers this week and I'm with Sister Brown! She was in our zone and I'd been on a few exchanges with her so she's in some of my pictures. Her companion went home this past transfer, so she was in a trio with Sister Miller and I on Tuesday/Wednesday. We went to transfers together and then became companions which was hilarious. I love her so much!! I'm so excited to be with her! A lot of our friends have stopped progressing recently, so it kind of feels like we're building a new teaching pool. We had a few lessons with some old friends and met a lot of new people! Butttt today we had a lesson with Cricket and she's on date for December 15th!! This time it'll go through, you need not fear. I love our wards so much and am excited for the member work we're going to do this transfer! Sister Brown goes home in December which means I'll be staying here for 6 months lol. I love it though so no complaints. I've had the worst cold of ...

Elder Wada from the seventy came to our stake conference this week! He's awesome and I learned so much from him about the importance of diving into the scriptures and really studying them. We had a mini meeting with him, the missionaries in our stake, and the youth! It was really cool experience! We met someone named Jeff and had a great lesson with him! He's hilarious and gave us a bag of limes from the tree in his backyard. When we got out of the car, I had a bit of a rough go and ended up locking the keys in the car. We called the towing company and they came a while later to help us out. You'd think something catastrophic happened with the volume of the beeps from the tow truck holy cow. Jeff texted us a few days later and was like, "I think you'll be happy to hear I started the Book of Mormon and read it for 3 hours straight. Thank you for sharing the word of God with me." SO COOL. We had to send Julian to the other ward because we found out he's not ...

We had a great week! The sun is shining so it doesn't feel like November. I miss the seasons but happy for the warmth as a missionary. Julian's update is that he can't remember for the life of him not to drink coffee. It's interesting the things he remembers and the things he doesn't. Every time we see him with coffee we're like "Julian! Remember the Word of Wisdom?" And every time he says "Oh I thought I just had to quit smoking." He feels bad and wants to prepare for his baptism so please pray for his brain to remember. When we were on an exchange this week, we felt like we should go visit Jan earlier than we'd planned. We got to her house and knocked on her door for a while but didn't think we should leave. We finally heard her say "help" so we went in and she'd fallen really badly. She was stuck between her couch and side door, and seemed to have hit her head really hard. We called an ambulance and they took her to t...

It was a quicker week with pday being on Tuesday but awesome nontheless. To get right into it, Julian is on date for November 17th!! We had a few great lessons with him and when we asked him if he would prepare for baptism he was like "Sure! I don't see why not." He's been the greatest example to me of trusting God's plan. He always talks about the miracle of meeting us and how grateful he is for the things he's learning about Christ. He came to church yesterday and called after to thank us for inviting him! He said he's excited to come next week! On Wednesday, we had a zone wide goal to invite everyone we contacted to be baptized. Wow it was crazy and we saw so many miracles from it! We came together at the end of the day to share the miracles we'd seen. It was really cool to reflect on the day and made me so grateful to be bringing Heavenly Fathers children home. Halloween was pretty chill. We had to be in by 6 and nobody came to our apartment door w...

We went to the temple this morning and it was amazing! I hadn't been since there were changes in the endowment session so that was really cool.  I read "The Holy Invitation" by Anthony Sweat this week to prepare for the temple and I would HIGHLY reccomend it. In the beginning, he talks about how God promised Joseph Smith that if he went to Ohio, they would be endowed with power from on high. As they were preparing to make this covenant, they worked to cleanse themselves to be ready to enter into God's presence. Later, they had a very sacred experience of seeing Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father face to face.  While I was reading this part in the book, I felt the spirit testify to me so strongly that these things are true. I remember looking up at my wall with all my pictures of Jesus Christ and I was overwhelmed with a sense of His presence. I know Jesus Christ is walking right along side us. He is in every part of our lives! He appeared to Jospeh Smith and other pries...

I said this week would be a good one and it did not disppoint. This has been my favorite week on the mission! So many amazing things happened and we saw so many miracles!!  Elder Pingree from the seventy and Sister Pingree came to our mission for zone conference!! Last week after we put Nora and Fransisco on date, President Carter called us and said "Sisters, next Wednesday at 6:30 can you have a lesson with Nora and Fransisco?" And we were like "Sure we'll ask them President! Why?" And he says, "Sister Carter and Sister Pingree are going to join you for a lesson." WHAT?! We were so excited and so nervous all week hahaha. Story time. Sister Carter calls us the day before to ask about the lesson plan. We told her that we needed to teach the Word of Wisdom and Law of Chastity (as I mentioned last week) and she was like oh boy okay. Wednesday night rolls around and it was time for the lesson. At first it was so awkward because Nora and Fransisco only have...

  What is up everyone. Transfer 4 let's go. Nora and Fransisco are on date!!! I haven't really talked about them because we just met them recently but they're awesome. They've been loving the lessons and have been commited to learning more. Teaching them is the best because they're so chill and funny. We're talking about the Word of Wisdom in our next lesson and they have this massive thing of alcohol in their house hahaha I can just imagine Nora's face when we tell her. Don't worry they'll pray about it and be good- both have strong testimonies. We still have faith in Luisa but I'm not sure she'll be getting baptized soon. Her husband is an atheist and it takes a lot of sacrifice for her to come to lessons and church. She loves the gospel so much so we're going to keep teaching her, but she told us she's not ready to be an active member. Keep her in your prayers! Oh Jan. She's still in the hospital and we tried to visit her but s...