Time to Leaf - October 24, 201

"Just me and my best friend"

               Hello and Happy Monday friends and family of the world. I am coming at you from sunny and windy Old Orchard Beach, ME where the leaves have abandoned the trees. It is honestly one of the sadder experiences of autumn, when you walk out of church and look at the trees by the parking lot and realize ALL THE LEAVES HAVE LEFT. Boo. But at least the colors were beautiful while they lasted. Despite the drought potentially"ruining" the colors we still had a beautiful leaf season. So on to reviewing the week.

                Monday was P-Day and unfortunately not much to report on. Today though Sister Mann and I hope to go down to the beach to have our last "photo shoot" before Sister Mann leaves. Yes, Sister Mann is leaving and heading to the Logan area aka she is going home for health reasons. Honestly, this is one of the saddest things either of us have had to deal with and I will miss her so much but I know she is going to be a wonderful service missionary in HOPEFULLY the Logan Temple. And seriously, only the coolest people can say they did two missions in one year? Only the coolest super hero ever SisterMann! (I know you are next to me as I type this but I want it known on the internet where your mom has found my blog that you are AWESOME!) Ok I will stop bragging about Sister Mann and talk about the rest of the week for realsies.

               Tuesday we had our last "less active" lesson with a less active sister we work with. For all 

intents and purposes she is active now because she has a calling (nursery workers for the win!), goes to church, and is keeping the commandments the best she can. We are also helping her go do baptisms for her family by November so hooray! We also got a new phone because we thought our old one wasn't sending messages but apparently the new one does that too so we are just crossing our fingers we can talk to people effectively by the time we get a new new phone later on. And Tuesday I got to talk to Brother and Sister Mann with the companion sister Mann. That was pretty fun. Especially since Sister Mann's younger brother sounded like Nick. That freaked me out. (Happy shout out Brother and Sister Mann and Josh!)

             Wednesday was district meeting. Besides that nothing too exciting happened. But Thursday I had three sandwiches that inevitably killed my stomach. We had lunch with a member who made us burgers and I made the smart decision of having two. I neglected to remember that after our lunch appointment we were going to the Assistant Ward Mission Leader's for coordination and he was making us BLTs with may and avocado. Avocado-My weakness. So two burgers and a BLT later I was dead. But the sister who made the burgers also trimmed my hair so while I was dying at least my hair looked nice.

             Friday was what I call Asian food heaven. We had one member who lived in Japan make us sushi rolls and fried tofu for lunch. Oh and miso soup. And for dinner another member made postickers and fried rice. I have decided Sister Mann is my favorite because she agrees if there was one restaurant that you would eat at for the rest of your life it should be an Asian one. And Sally (who is now just short for Salvation Mobile) got new tires.

            All week was fairly overcast and drizzly but despite that we were able to meet twice with one of our investigators, Billy, on his front porch. Billy is an interesting case because he loves spirituality but has a hard time with organized religion. But we had the opportunity to give him a large print Book of Mormon he accepted. He says he likes what he's read so far. We have another investigator who really likes bow hunting and we read a bit about Nephi's bow to him which he enjoyed.

            However, the rain wasn't so bad until Saturday when it was pouring all through the festival we had a booth at, The Saco Pumpkin Harvest Fest (pronounced: Hah-vest). Our booth was right next to a cool eco-preschool with hedgehogs and a tortoise. I got a picture of the tortoise but failed to get one with the hedgehogs. Lost opportunity. But our booth had coloring pages, a prize wheel, and Halloween prizes. Sister Mann and I had fun talking to people and inviting them to the ward trunk or treat next weekend and a lot of people seemed excited to attend. We will see how that turns out Saturday! 

           We also had a baptism for one of the elder's investigators! It was such a beautiful service and we tried to get our investigators to go but no one was able to. Oh well, it was still really cool!

           Saturday night I found out my fate of staying here in Saco and I will be co-senior-ing with Sister Lescarbou, who is currently in Portland. I will pick her up tomorrow in the land of my inheritance, Manchester, but obviously have to lose Sister Mann in the meantime. This week has really taught me the importance of companionship and I want to quote from General Conference Elder Yamashita to all of my companions: "I know one reason you came here. You came here for my benefit. I have come to understand what a great young (woman) I have been serving with. I am blessed to know you." I love you all and hope we all continue to be ambitious in Christ!

Love,

Sister Wright

"Rex the tortoise. Cool neighbor at the Saco Harvest Fest. You're welcome Nick"

"District picture because #week6"

"Updated fandom map"

"I AM THE LAST ______" - October 17, 2016

"Selfie because we forgot to take photos during the week and you wanted to see my face"

                    Hello Friends and Family and Happy Mission Monday! I hope you all have had a great week. Sister Mann and I have been enjoying this autumn weather with the leaves changing. We have been collecting leaves and keeping them flat in a book. What was cool was during zone interviews during the meeting Sister Blair had her own collection of leaves and used them as an analogy for our change during the mission. We all change but we don't all change into the same thing nor do we change at the same pace. We are all beautiful because we chose to change. Take those thoughts and ponder them in your mind and expound on them in regards to the Plan of Salvation and the Savior's Atonement. The mission is cool stuff!

                    Before I get into the cool missionary moments this week, a "fun" experience Sister Mann and I had last night was ten minutes before bed we were quietly getting ready when we hear this relatively loud buzzing and then it suddenly stop. We look up and there is this huge gross beetle crawling around our bathroom door frame and we had a minor freak out followed by catching the unwanted visitor in a tissue, running down the stairs in our slippers, throwing him (tissue and all) out the front door, and proceeding to take five minutes to make sure all the window were ENTIRELY closed. Luckily earlier in the day the landlord had mentioned the window that had our AC unit might not have been entirely shut so after that critter made himself welcome we made sure those windows were SHUT. We also had to squish two spiders during the bug eviction process but I digress. This has been story time with the awko taco Saco sisters.

                    We had a pretty good week with being able catch people which you think wouldn't be that difficult. Sometimes it is but not this week. We had appointments set with the mom I shared that I found by offering her son a sticker but they fell through either on her or our ends which was sad. We weren't able to meet with Dave but we are still in contact with him! And another investigator who had a baptismal date was supposed to come to church yesterday because we were having a linger longer after for Ward Conference but he didn't come. Oh well, there is always next week. We did have a really solid lesson with him where we asked what he expected to get out of the rest of the lessons and he testified that everything we have taught him has just felt right and that God hasn't told him it is wrong. So he will be baptized, we just need to get his family to join him!

                    One cool way we caught someone was we went by a less active's to see if she was home and she wasn't... but she pulled up when we turned around to leave and we were able to help her bring in groceries. Those little moments when you realize you are being truly led by the spirit always makes me happy. Besides that things have been a little more slow with the work this week but that is ok because the people we are working with are really great. I am just always in awe to have found so many people just in the last two transfers here in actual Saco and It’s all thanks to my awesome companion who has taught me so much about talking to everyone about the restored gospel. Ten points to Sister Mann!

                    Yesterday was Ward Conference for the Saco ward and Sister Mann had the cool opportunity to see some members from the Farmingdale ward. We also said our final goodbyes to Buffles (107-year old member) and her daughter before they head down to Florida for the winter. And had scripture hero time in primary again! Since the month's theme for primary was prayer we acted out some favorite scenes of prayer. The junior primary made some pretty valiant guesses at all the heroes being Nephi. Not a bad guess in all honesty but they really excited when I finally did act out Nephi. Sister Mann got to be her hero, Captian Moroni. When we got to hang out with the adults we focused a lot on the Sabbath day and why it's important. I really liked the discussion of the importance of the Sabbath but, again, we got to hang out with the primary.

                    Besides that I truly have no idea what this next week will bring with transfers. I really don't want it to be my last transfer in Saco or with Sister Mann but we will see. I hope you all have a good week and stay safe!

Love,

Sister Wright 

"Introducing Carlotta and Bradley. Carlotta is obviously special"

"Cool tree courtesy Sister Mann"

Blitz and Splits - October 10, 2016

                  She didn't send a picture of herself AGAIN, but I grabbed this screenshot of the video she sent

                   Hello and Happy Monday again friends and family! Weren't we just here talking about my adventures last week at the beginning of October? I feel like we were because honestly the weeks are going by too dang fast. And nothing too exciting has been happening this week so I really feel like anything I write won't be that exciting to hear about. But as always I will do my best at storytelling the lives of the Saco Sisters:

                    Remember last week when a mom asked if we just handed out free copies of the Book of Mormon? Well 1. We are teaching her and she is super great and 2. We ran into someone else (actually, the British guy who plays pickleball) and HE asked how much a copy of the Book of Mormon would be. Needless to say we were excited he asked one of those questions every missionary loves to hear and gave him his very own copy of the Book of Mormon. As a necessary missionary side note, upon reflecting on this last general conference so many speakers spoke on the importance of the Book of Mormon in our conversion to Christ. I love having the opportunity to share the Book of Mormon as another testimony of Jesus Christ to bless peoples' lives as I know its blessed mine. Also just being able to correct any misunderstandings of the Book is another cool opportunity as well.

                    Besides that the rest of this week was a lot of finding out who in our teaching pool is still interested. The "pool cleaning" has been rough in some ways because we lost a lot of people but we figured out who is still willing to come closer to Christ. Dave apparently had a really strong spiritual feeling one morning that he really needed to consider baptism so we were able to discuss a lot of his concerns with that. No baptismal date yet but he is asking all the right questions! Our other investigator with a baptismal date had to drop it though because he hasn't been to church yet. In his defense, we haven't had normal church in a while due to conferences so he will get there.

                    Saturday we had a zone blitz in Portland. It was an experiment the Zone Leaders put on where we were out for two hours in a particular part of Portland (I covered South Portland near the Portland

Headlight) with a temporary companion (so I was with Sister Lescarbou) and basically find as many people as we could. Some companionships had cool experiences like inviting people to baptism (by which the person expected to be baptized next week. Not how it works but still cool) and men decorating their houses for Halloween. I was able to go find a bit by a beach and learn some Maine and WWII history as I looked at the Atlantic directly at Peaks Island, between Portland Headlight and Bug Light from a couple. Neither were particularly interested in learning more but were really fun to talk to. We also met a couple in their backyard by the fireplace who invited us to sit and talk with them. They apparently had seen missionaries in the past and we were the first ones they ever asked how we even became missionaries. So overall the blitz was a cool experience. Sister Mann got to go on a social media split with the Portland members and she seemingly had a lot of fun.

                    Yesterday, I'm assuming due to Hurricane Matthew, we had a lot of rain. I remember my trainer saying that when you’re out in the rain people take pity on you but not ever feeling like that was actually real. Well yesterday I did and people were all really nice, even if they weren't interested in a lesson right then. And we had a lot of visitors for the weekend, some even from Hawaii, doing their genealogy work out here. So cool!

                    Besides that, I've been reviewing general conference (yes, already) and I feel like I neglected last week to write about my favorite (and yes, biased) talks: Elder Oaks and Elder Anderson. Both were focused on missionary work and I feel like it was a continued theme throughout the conference as we discussed the blessings of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that the truth is restored on the earth and the best way to pay it forward is to share it with someone else. Something I know we forget is that there is "no correlation between the depth of a relationship and the probability that a person will be interested in learning about the gospel." We send missionaries out to talk to strangers and that those strangers will want to hear from them. Why doesn't the same apply to us as normal people? It’s an awesome concept that I'm glad Elder Oaks discussed. I would highly recommend reviewing his and all other talks given! I love you all and hope you have an awesome week!

Love,

Sister Wright

 "These are brown and orange"

"In the car"

"As Sister Mann says, in the cah"

"By the church"

Literally Maytember - October 3, 2016

"This is the best we could do. Because of the drought, the leaves are taking forever to change this year."

                    Hello and Happy Monday friends and family! I don't know if I had said this already but I realized a while back I will have been in Saco from May to September PLUS so in Studio C terms, I've been in Saco for Maytember. Not very clever, I know, but that is ok. I say these things mostly to avoid the fact that I hit my 15 month mark Saturday and had my last General Conference as a missionary. How did that happen?? I swear, the first six months took a seemingly long time, the middle six zoomed by, and I don't even know how it became October 3rd already! But we press on like a lot of the general authorities talked about this weekend. Sister Mann and I had a great time this week (AND WEEKEND) so I better get to telling you about it.

                    Last Monday we honestly didn't do anything really exciting. But we had dinner with members which to me is always a blessing. Today we are going to go through all our winter and summer stuff. Because it has been so cold this week (going down to the 50s and 60s which after surviving last winter I assumed I had become acclimated to) we decided we needed to break out the winter wardrobe and for your friendly neighborhood Sister Wright that means she can starting sending home her summer clothes. I literally have no idea how I got here BUT I DIGRESS.

                    Tuesday we had the really cool opportunity to find a new investigator. We were looking for someone in a neighborhood and the current resident had told us the person we were looking for had moved. Luckily that guy was pretty nice and took a Book of Mormon. As we were walking back though I bravely asked a mom we were passing by if her son wanted a sticker. She enthusiastically said sure and noticed I was giving him a "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam" sticker and commented on how that is a lot of Jesus love. From there we explained who we were and she asked "Is it true Mormons give copies of the Book of Mormon for free?" So for Sister Mann and I we really feel like we hit the jackpot with her because she is so open and she even said "You know, I always see missionaries but I've never talked to them before. I'm glad you came and talked to me." Something I've been working on my entire mission is talking with everyone and I gained a testimony of its importance with her. It's not like most of my mission I haven't WANTED to talk to everyone, I just have been struggling to overcome that initial boundary of just TALKING to them because people are strangers and we are taught as children NOT to talk to them. But because for once I spoke up, even about a sticker, we have invited someone to learn about the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ and seen her twice to help her come closer to Him. So thanks missionary motivation.

                    This week we also met a man from England who spends his mornings playing pickleball. #ThanksFinding

                    As I'm sure some of you are wondering we saw Dave again once this week. He wasn't able to watch the broadcast of General Conference but he texted us this morning saying he wanted to see us again this week so we assume the break he was taking is over. Thanks for your continued prayers for him!

                    The only other thing (besides the fact I have had sushi and Japanese dumplings or gyoza TWICE this week. Go food!) I would like to focus on this week was General Conference. I know I'm not alone when I say all the sessions of General Conference were fantastic and I really wish we could have it more often. But then it wouldn't be as much of a treat. Since I've started my mission I made a notebook with the questions I would want answered by the general authorities and of course I did that again this conference. What was awesome was within the first few talks a lot of my questions were answered and they continued to be answered as the conference went on. It was a huge testimony builder to me because I felt and later knew that God does hear and answer our prayers and by that extent He does answer our questions because He loves us! Why wouldn't He answer our questions? That's where the Restoration started, is with a question, and I am grateful to live in a time of modern prophets.

                    Well, I just want to say thanks to everyone for their love and support and I hope we all take what we learned from General Conference and apply it to our lives! I love and miss you all!

Love, 

Sister Wright 

 "Fantasy Conference! I didn't do too bad"