Too Much Fun? - September 21, 2015

Priscilla on the far left with the other Sister Missionaries at Zone Conference

Hello family and friends and happy Missionary Monday! Wow, we are already mostly through September! When did this happen?! I remember twenty days ago when it hit September and Sister Banda told me it would start looking and feeling like fall and I have heard multiple reports from members and people from home that say the leaves should start changing colors soon. Well, from my own experience here in Manch about 1 out of every 25-30 trees are STARTING to change color and the weather has FINALLY started staying below the 80's which is what I can guess it what fall is supposed to be. But there will definitely be pictures when the leaves are no longer green because apparently that's super cool looking. I'm just excited for the pumpkin flavored everything to be honest.

Well this week definitely had it's ups and downs so I'm going to be staying focused on the ups because we always need to recognize the blessings in our lives, right? One of the best blessings we received this week was the opportunity to strengthen members in their missionary efforts with member meals! We had one almost every night this week which was awesome because if you know me you know I love food. Sister Banda and I spent a lot of time this week encouraging members to prepare for General Conference which is coming up here fairly quickly and we have heard some pretty powerful testimonies from members about the blessings of General Conference. A scripture I love that promises some pretty powerful blessings of listening to a prophet’s voice is Jacob 4:6, "Wherefore, we search the prophets, and we have many revelations and the spirit of prophecy; and having all these witnesses we obtain a hope, and our faith becometh unshaken, insomuch that we truly can command in the name of Jesus and the very trees obey us, or the mountains, or the waves of the sea." I know I have testified of this before but I know General Conference is an inspired meeting and gives families and individuals wonderful direction and I challenge all of you to watch it starting this Saturday with the General Women's session!

Another fun blessing we had this week was we had district P-Day on Monday which was really fun. We had a Nerf war with Nerf guns provided by the Elders (how they ended up with so many is beyond me) and we would split up in teams either Sisters versus Elders or Bedford versus Manchester. It was super awesome when the Sisters team won the first round. We didn't do so well the following dozens of rounds but hey, we won once. The best part was when the Assistants to the President showed up [late] and they joined in because I was able to get one of them out in the first minute. Haha.

An experience I'm hearing a lot of people have seen that I had was my first Zone Conference which was this Wednesday. That was a wonderful, spiritually strengthening experience. I had spent a lot of the beginning on the week wondering what I needed to do to be a better missionary and the guidance and direction given at Zone Conference definitely answered those questions for me. It was also neat to meet so many other missionaries and catch up those who I knew at the MTC or had transferred out last transfer and seeing how much we have all grown in just a short amount of time is great.

The interesting down side to Zone Meeting was the installation of the Tiwis into the mission vehicles, also known as "The Black Box" or "Big Brother". We named our Tiwi Tim. Tim the Terrible. Tim sounds like Jason from War Games. I understand why the church wants every missionary car to have Tim but Tim is slightly frustrating to have. Tim means a lot more responsibility. Tim also has a GPS so the mission president can track where we're driving, hence "Big Brother". Tim sometimes yells at you when you are going over the speed limit, which so far has only happened ONCE when we were leaving the Exeter Stake Center parking lot and probably only going 2 miles over the speed limit of like 5 mph. We did give the Elders the car last night and apparently Tim yelled at them for "aggressive driving" because they stopped at a yellow light too hard. But yeah. Expect some interesting stories about Tim in the future.

Besides that, Sister Banda and I are keeping things cool in Manchester. I love the members and people that I work with out here. I appreciate all the prayers and letters from those back home. I love being a missionary. May we all press on in the work of the Lord and be prayed to listen to a prophet's voice!

Love,

Sister Wright

More pictures from Zone Conference 

And the one tree that's STARTING to turn colors

Too Much Fall - September 14, 2015

Sister Wright didn't send any pictures this week, but a ward member in Manchester posted this on the mission facebook page a few days ago. I love seeing her so happy!

         Hello everyone! I hope you all had a good week. I know my weeks are always blessed by the prayers from everyone back home and around the world so, as always, thanks for the support!

         Well this week has been a week of learning. Definitely a better week than last with a lot more teaching appointments which is always awesome. We also had another experience where we went to contact a potential investigator and they said they had prayed earlier that day for help and there we were (I wrote about that happening last week, right?)

         Anyway, this week was just overall really cool. Not necessarily in the temperature, it got up to the 90's Tuesday and Wednesday! I am still shocked it has gotten so hot, I thought I was escaping that kind of weather! Of course Wednesday night, after we walked everywhere we needed to, the clouds started rolling in and they haven't left since so the weather has been cooling down. Sister Banda's had to explain to this Arizona girl that this change in temperature and the reason the leaves are starting to change color is called "Fall" and it will only get cooler from here on out. That's frustrating. Why can't the lows be in the 50's in the morning and work up to the 70's or 80's by the end of the day? Seasons are weird.

         We also had exchanges this week and I stayed in Manchester with one of the Sister Training Leaders. We were frustrated when we heard when exchanges were going to be because that was when Sister Banda and I officially "crossed over" is days she has left versus days I have in [which sometimes we ignore because Sister Banda doesn't want to think about how short of a time she has left. She's old]. Sister Davis was super cool though and I loved spending time with her (I still love Sister Banda, don't get me wrong!) and we were even able to pass out a Book of Mormon [because I was taking Sister Davis to see the TARDIS we have on a street in our area]. But yeah exchanges went well. If anything it taught me I can handle change like a new companion [which is a thought that still scares me].

         Other than that this week has been fairly good at teaching me that change is coming. Compared to last week you could say we had more "success" because we had a lot more teaching appointments and opportunities for service. But I have learned "Sometimes good things fall apart so that better things can fall together". I have also learned that Heavenly Father is constantly guiding me, even when I don't notice. This week we just went with hearts full of faith because last week was so frustrating. As we went forward with hope for even just little miracles we were able to be blessed with many teaching and service opportunities that I know could only be given by our loving Heavenly Father. May we all continue to walk by faith!

Love,

Sister Wright 

Note from mom: I just wanted to add something that she messaged me today. A motto she chose for her mission is "Have courage and be kind." She wrote to me, "I realized I spend a lot of time focusing on the 'kind' part but not the 'courage' part so I added a section with Joshua 1:9." Love it!

Something's Rotten in the state of Denmark/Manchester - September 7, 2015

I was so excited she sent me a selfie! - Mom

               Good Missionary Monday everyone! Hope you all had a good week! Sister Banda and I had, well, a week. We don't have much to complain about but not a lot to rejoice in either. Manchester is just full of surprises I guess. Don't get me wrong, I love it here. It’s just hard being a missionary sometimes.

               To answer the question on everyone's mind, no we have not started to teach the mom we tracted into the week before. We texted her to confirm our appointment and she texted back to let us know they weren't interested anymore. That was rough. But it's ok, she now has a Book of Mormon in their home and as Sister Banda puts it "One Mormon closer to accepting the gospel". And the trend of our investigators and less-actives dropping us the day of the appointment just continued throughout the week and they were all for legitimate reasons (illness, kids, family problems, Labor Day weekend plans) but it was still really hard to accept.

               On top of that Sister Banda and I had a weird feeling later in the week whenever we would pick a street to tract or even before appointments (which ended up falling through anyway, but still). We initially thought we must have ate something bad but it was more in our chest and we just felt ill at ease a lot of the places we would go. It's just weird. We just feel something is up with Manch that we don't know about but we can just FEEL it. Something rotten in the state of Denmark as Hamlet put it or "I've got a bad feeling about this" in the words of almost all Star Wars characters.  Oh well. Maybe we'll never know why we weren't supposed to be on those streets yet, but it still makes us scratch our heads.

               Well, there were some fun things and miracles that happened this week, it wasn't a total bummer! On Tuesday we felt prompted to look for a potential investigator we had been looking for a whole day a few weeks ago and felt like we should look for her in the neighborhood next to ours. Low and behold we were able to find her address and we knocked she opened the door and was so excited to see us. She said she had just got home from her church and prayed for help and there we were at the door. That was a really neat experience. We made rough plans to see her again in mid-September so we'll see how that goes!

On Monday I was able to buy a Blu-Tooth keyboard which has been a huge blessing with the iPads. And Saturday we had two service opportunities, the first one helping a family move their stuff out of a storage unit. There was a cool pile of stuff to be donated and being the weirdo I am went through and found some cool things, most notably a Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat CD with Donny Osmond. Obviously we haven't listened to it because that's against missionary rules but it was funny to see. The second service thing we did was help a non-member tear some wall-paper off her walls. That was actually pretty fun; exhausting and tedious but fun.

               Finally Sunday we saw a baptism of the Assistant's investigator! It was such a cool experience to be a part of that for her, to see someone take on the sacred covenant of baptism and dedicate themself to coming unto Christ. Even after the rough week we had, to feel the Spirit of Baptism, along with the just the Sabbath Spirit and the Spirit of Fasting, it gave me strength and hope that I can go out there and find the lost sheep. I can find people in Manchester who want to come unto Christ and invite them to make covenants as well. What a wonderful opportunity we have out here. May we all come to Christ a little closer this week!

-Sister Wright