God is the ORIGINAL O G

I jumped the gun.  Here's the email - finally!  And it's a good one!  Enjoy!

So since the last email a lot has happened. 

After our emailing session last week we went to Wallace and Mable Spencer's house. Wallace is an investigator and Mable is a less active. 

Anyway they have the funniest arguments! Sister Conder and I have to do everything not to laugh while we are there. 

Here is a sample:

"You can only get corn in Nebraska"

"Watcha talkin bout you can digest corn!"

Also Mable is the one who told us that "God is the original O G" 

I about lost it at that because it was so dang funny!

On a more spiritual note, Wallace came to church yesterday and so that was awesome. It was awesome because he told US that he was coming!

We had a very good week for tracting. Everyone that opened the door listened to us. 

Side note, people in the south are never home and they go to bed so dang early. 

So anyway one of our best investigators came from tracting. 

Her name is Olivia and when she opened the door she told us that she didn't want to talk to us but she felt like she should invite us in, so she did. She has a lot of questions, and a lot of her beliefs match up with ours! The Lord has truly prepared her for the Gospel.

And the next time we visited her she had a noticeable happier countenance. She is golden!

Oh my, the sisters before us left a list of people for us to go see and a man named Deon Frazier was at the top. 

We were finally able to get a hold of him and oh my goodness. He is ready! He flat out told us he wanted to be baptized. Well he had been praying about it before and he felt like he should be then his dad died and his wife wanted a divorce. 

Now he is slowly getting over his dad's death and it looks like him and his wife are working things out and he still wants to be baptized. 

And oh my gosh! He has the cutest kids ever! When we first visited his youngest Ayden was on the porch with us. He was just sucking on his blanket and staring at us. Just when we were about to leave he ran up to me and hugged my legs!

I just about died! 

AND THEN when we were walking away he puckered his lips and he wouldn't go inside until we let him kiss our cheeks.

That is when I did die!

Okay the funniest thing ever happened to my companion!

We were over at a member's house and there was a kid there that wanted Sister Conder to hold her. So Sister Conder let her sit on her lap and guess what the baby did! 

The baby. Peed. On. Her. 

I laughed for days!

We also went to find a less active member, Almedia Henderson. When we found her she let us in and we found to her nephew, William, was living with her. He is super interested about the Gospel and so we left a Book of Mormon with him and he was SUPER excited to read it. 

Okay so I met the coolest guy in the world!

His name is Brother Anthony. He is a less active member because he can't go to church. He is on oxygen and he is 91. He was 85 when he was baptized.

Anyway we went to visit him because his wife just died on February 6th and we wanted to check up on him. He was born in Trinidad and he moved to the Broncs when he was in his 20s then to the south when he was 85.

He has the coolest accent ever! He sounds like Sebastian from little Mermaid and Rafiki from lion king mixed. Also he speaks in proverbs. Pretty much everything he says sounds like scripture.

Pretty much I will brave Rock Island anytime to go see him!

RAIN! Its pretty much rained all day long!

Monday means picture day, I guess

Leslie posting again - - -  For whatever reason, Markee sent me an email with a few little bits of info and then just sent pictures.  No informative email detailing her week.  I knew I would get little from my boys when they leave, but I thought that I would get great emails from my WRITER daughter. Hmm. I hope she's just figuring all this out and it will get better over the course of her adventure. Anyway, here's what I have to share this week from her cute self:

The members here are absolutely FANTASTIC! The people here a wonderful and I have already seen how the Lord truly prepares people for the Gospel. A few of our 'gators, Investigators, are extending commitments to themselves! They all want to either go to church or read the Book of Mormon. It is awesome. They are doing the work for me.

Yes that is snow. It melted pretty fast but it still snowed. Sister Conder was so happy. I was not..

​This leaf looks like a starfish!

Sister Conder made me a planner!

This is how big all of the Baptist churches are in the south. 

Ps that is just the front half

This is Brother Anthony. I love him so much. 

I look bald. I tried to do the hairdo from the new star wars movie but I ended up just doing my own Jedi hairdo. I will probably do it again and when I do I will take a picture of it because I think it was awesome!

Yes, folks.  That is all that I got today.  I know some missionary moms don't get much of anything so I will try to be grateful.  I know that she is safe, happy and doing the work of the Lord; that should be enough. :)

El Doorayda (That's how they pronounce it)

My First week has been a whirlwind!

First off, leaving Sister Greenhalgh was I lot harder than I thought it would be. She was seriously so awesome and we grew so close. 

But, with that being said, I love Sister Conder too! She is super amazing! She is from Castledale, Utah. I am so glad that she is my trainer. We have so much in common and her strengths make up for my weaknesses and vice versa. She reminds me a lot of Tamsyn. You guys have the same sense of humor, and you have a lot of the same quirks. It's like I'm serving a mission with Tamsyn.

So when we got to the apartment it was like 10:30pm or something and we were tired. 

Oh awesome thing, our apartment in HUGE! It's really nice too, it was just a little messy when we got there. And by a little I mean a lot. 

I forgot to bring my journal but I can tell you what I remember. 

We have mostly taught members so far. By "taught" I mean talked. People in the South LOVE to talk. They will chat with you all night if you let them, which has happened a couple of times.

We are in a car share with the Elders and they had the car this week and so we had to purchase bikes. We have had lots of issues with them but it was getting better plus we get the car tomorrow. Yay!!

This is my companion, Sister Conder

This is my bike

It was getting dark. We were busy helping a man drag branches out of his yard to the side of the road. Because that is a thing here. His name was Joe, and he said we are welcome back at anytime. Whoo! Go us!

Nobody here in the mission has seen a gator. I am so disappointed. 

I haven't had to eat anything wild yet. Sister Conder and I were talking about this today but we have pretty much only had Mexican food.

Yeah. Weird.

Trees are EVERYWHERE!!!

​There are super cute houses like this every where. This is from my first day of tracting.

This is a member's kitty. Sister Kyle. She has a lot of animals! They are all adopted. She lives in a rougher part of town and people don't take care of their pets so she takes them. 

She is an awesome lady! She is a convert and she loves the Gospel so much. 

This kitty kept on attacking me during the lesson. Then the dogs would get jealous and try to get her away and take her spot. I was in heaven.

The ward members LOVE sister missionaries and so they invited us out to eat. Sister Conder, then the Andersons, then I have no idea who the old people are, The Oneals, and the Craigs. 

People are super nice down here in the South. 

Southern hospitality is real.

*Cursty* The End.

I love you all. 

I will stay strong! No Y'all here!

Mississippi . . . Arkansas . . . Louisiana

12 January 2016
Markee hit 3 states in one day!  She is in the Jackson Mississippi Mission so the mission home is in Brandon, Mississippi.  She is assigned to labor in the El Dorado, Arkansas area which is in the Monroe, Louisiana Stake.  She's all kinds of southern now! Here is her weekly letter and pictures and I've included a map of her mission as well.

My last day at the MTC was a sad one. I grew to love it so much! I grew to love my district and I will definitely miss my Elders. 

My companions and I are being split up and I am dreading that. I love them so much. Nobody ever talks about their MTC companions but I absolutely loved mine. We laughed together...a lot. We cried together...a lot. They were honestly the best and they will be my friends forever. 

Well, I am in Mississippi now! The plane rides were actually awesome. For the first flight I sat by Elder Hingano, he really helped me out with my first flight. We had a lot of fun. All the other missionaries on the same flight sat near each other and then Hingano and I sat kind of separated and we just played games and stuff. The second flight I sat next to Elder Nielson and that flight wasn't bad at all. In fact I slept the whole time. That flight all the missionaries were only in one spot on the plane. Oh there were only 9 of us so it wasn't bad. 

When we got to Mississippi we drove to the mission office and ate food and had a small devotional with just us. After that we went to the mission home where the pres. and his wife live to sleep. We stayed the night there and then in the morning, during breakfast, we got our assignments.

DRUM ROLL PLEASE!! Jessica is going to love this....

El Dorado, Arkansas and my trainer is Sister Condor. or something like that. 

It is kind of chilly outside but very humid!

​It is very green here with lots and lots of trees. Marin would love it!

From the plane ride 

Sister Greenhalgh and I!

El Dorado, Arkansas!

Sister Olson, me, President Olson

​The new missionaries and mission president!

https://www.lds.org/maps/Mississippi Mission

Markee's first week

6 January 2016
I happened to be online when Markee emailed and she was having trouble with uploading pictures so we emailed back and forth.  I felt bad about that, but at least I got pictures because of it! :)  Here is her first official email and now the blog will mostly just be her letters and pictures.

For the first day, we got checked in and got our tags and everything then me and my host stopped at residence and dropped off my stuff. Finally I went to my class room and got to know my companions and district. I caught a glance at Levi. 

Then we went to this welcoming thing and met the mtc presidency and went to dinner.

I had Sarah for a teacher as we taught our first investigators in a group. 

Second day,

STUDYING LOTS OF STUDYING.  I HAD the greatest teachers ever but now because of school they aren't our teachers anymore.

Day 3. I don't really want to talk about it. 

Day 4. So our teacher pretend to be investigators and then we teach them. So Brother Lim was acting as Phil for us sisters, and nate for the elders. We got to watch him prepare for Nate and watch the elder's lesson through and two sided mirror and oh my gosh it was so powerful to watch him. I won't lie, I cried a little. 

Day5. Fast sunday! I made it through. Oh because we were the only one in our district they brought missionaries from the Japanese mission to be our zone leaders. Two of them are Aussies and two are American but one of the Americans is part Japanese.

I only remember one of their names and that was Elder Manapori and that is because he comes and talks to us all the time. Then there was a devotional and it was really good. I wrote in my journal so I will probably send that home when I'm done with it and you can read thru it. 

Day 6. I found and talked to Levi and we may have set a time for me to see jaybe [Jessica Benson] even though it is against the rules. I AM A REBEL! We had another devotional and it was Bishop Dean Davies. It was really great.

Day 7 We went to the temple then did our laundry and went to the mtc store and now we are doing this and we have a investigator lesson later today.

That is my week! This time next week We'll be in Mississippi!!

Sister Jones

Sister Anderson, Sister Jones, Sister Greenhalgh

Sister Anderson, Sister Greenhalgh

Sister Greenhalgh(green-halj), Sister Anderson, Me, BROTHER LIM, Elder Ledbetter, Elder Crawford, and Elder Sanders

This is what the Randalls sent me in a new years package. It was a surprise.

MTC bound - the adventure begins

30 December 2015
Markee was packed and ready to go about half an hour earlier than planned so the morning went really smoothly. We had heard that IHOP provided a free meal to MTC bound missionaries so we decided to go there for breakfast - turns out it is not true.  But we had a good meal and nice sitting around a table bonding time so it was not all for naught.

At IHOP

Markee had a headache and said she hadn't slept the night before because she was all stuffed up (nothing to do with the excitement, I'm sure) so we decided to stop at WalMart on the way to the MTC.  We picked up a few last minute items and medicine and headed to the Provo Temple parking lot for a last few pictures and goodbyes.

How appropriate to have the misty mountains behind her

My world

We took a few pictures and both Marin and Daina (she came with us to breakfast and to see Markee off) had to go to the bathroom.  There are no bathrooms in the temple parking lot, of course, so Doran went one way to find a bathroom for his mom and we went another to find one for Marin.  After her pit stop in Taco Bell down the street we went back and said our goodbyes.  Both Peter and I were teary, but I think everyone else was dry. :) Doran and Daina never made it back so it was just us and at 12:40 we hopped back in the van and drove down to the MTC.  When it was our turn to stop, a sister missionary came up to the car, and Markee and I got out and took her bags out.  I had time for one final hug and "I love you and am proud of you" and she was whisked away.  I got back into the van . . . and dissolved into tears, crying the entire way home.
It was as if Markee had died; I couldn't stop crying and feeling a hole in my heart.  It was the strangest and horriblest feeling ever and it lasted all day.  Jared and I played a few games and while we were playing I was fine, but the moment my mind wasn't occupied the waterworks started right back up - full-on sobs at times.  Marin stayed in her room all day and when I checked on her a few times she expressed the same thing - the same mourning feelings.  I would like to never feel that way again, but I have a few more missionaries to see off so I thing I will have to get used to it.
Markee was able to email us that night and my friend and neighbor, Fawn Benson sent me a picture of her daughter, Sarah, who works at the MTC, with Markee.  I think this helped with the sorrow.  I sure love my girl and I'm proud of her.

Hey everyone! I am having a great time already. I only have 10 minutes so it will be really short. 

I am in a trio and my companions are great. 

I saw Levi and Sarah! Sarah was my teacher and Levi just walked into my classroom with my district. 

I am only here for 2 weeks, so its going to go by super quick. P-days, I think, are on Wednesday for me while I'm here.

It is going to be great and you'll be happy to know that I am participating. We taught some people already. The first one was kind of off but the other two went very well. 

I am looking forward to my time here and I look forward to growing in the gospel while I am here. 

I love you all and I hope that you guys don't miss me too much.

Sister Jones 

Officially Sister Jones

29 December 2015
Markee was set apart tonight.  What a beautiful blessing President Richards gave her to guide her through the next 18 months.  It's official - the first missionary in our family is now Sister Jones.

What a wonderful opportunity to have her brothers stand in on her blessing.

Surrounded by the priesthood

These girls just go together. <3

So glad Mark's family could be here this evening.

Love those cousins!

Photo shoot!

Sometime in December
Marisa so generously offered to take Markee's missionary pictures.  They are beautiful!  We are grateful to have such a talented friend!