Ashley's P-day 9-11-2012

Last week for Ashley's P-Day we got to talk back and forth through the email for about an hour.  It was great to talk to her.  She is doing good and loves the MTC  She is anxious to get started in her first area.  I got a short letter in the email this week.  I also got lots more pictures.  I have to say I have been spoiled with all the pictures.  It made the distance between us seem much less.  I met a wonderful member in the mission area that Ashley will be serving in.  That has been such a blessing!  Her name is Julie.  Julie made cookies for Ashley and wrapped the box up real pretty and "sparkly".  Julie had the cookies delivered to Ashley at the MTC.  I can't seem to find the 1st email she sent about the suprise cookies (we sent several letters back and forth and they were mostly short.  The cookie story was in 2 different emails).  She said that someone told her that she had a "pretty sparkly package" at the office.  She said she was really shocked and couldn't believe there was something for HER!  She was told just as they were sitting down for supper and was so excited that she drug her companion to the office without letting her companion finish her bite of food.  Ashley said it was a wonderful suprise!  Here is the 2nd email finishing the story.
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...so i ran to go get my sparkly box, and came sauntering back into the dining hall.  So many cookies! And then sis. Forbes has the brilliant idea to start singing. Happy birthday. yup. and everyone joins in. i turned lots of pretty shades of red, and was laughing so hard.  Everyone congratulated me on my birthday and when it was etc.  lol. had to apologize for that one.  good thing there were so many cookies in there... i'm sure the elders enjoyed them... i still have left overs.  ( i think the cookies were the soft ones, and the 'biscuits' are the harder cookies....)

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Here are more of the emails we were sending back and forth...
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oh! Guess what...! So we're having a missionary fireside this sunday for the 3 wards here in Chorley.  They've been waiting to have a group that has this many missionaries from all over the world.  And we're nearly from ALL over. only 7 are from the states.  like 5-6 from the UK.  France. Sweden. Germany. Uganda. Venesuela. Spain. Russia. Georgia. Armenia. So many!  I had to hold back tears when we were practicing. 

And I have been pegged as the Sister with musical talent.  There are 2 elders with this title as well (well not the sister part) one is Elder Grice... he's a great singer and pianist! He's sang for us and played piano quite a bit. And another elder whose name i never get...  But in my info sheet at the beginning i put that i wouldn't want to sing solos. only duets or larger... so i'm singing a duet. With sister Fairbanks. she's a good strong soprano. we're singing \i'm trying to be like Jesus... which doesn't have an alto part unfortunately. i'm thinking about making one.  I'm very excited for this fireside... plus sunday are relaxing days.... SUPER Busy, but we're being spiritually fed instead of us doing the feeding. it's nice for the break. prolly won't happen in the field.  And i think sis. Walker is looking for a flute for me to play too... :)  it feels good to be able to share my talents.  People tell me regularly that they like my singing voice, and it makes me feel good to make music beautiful.  Especially in our district.  6 boys, and me and sis. FB.  She holds soprano solid, i harmonize and the boys try to follow.  They're powerful teachers I can definitely tell that they are representatives of the Lord - that must be why they always seemed so much older to me.

i can't believe we only have on more week.  we only have 5 or so more lessons... and then we're teaching REAL ones! woo.

  

oh. and it IS cold here. i knew it would be cold... but not this kind of cold.  WET! It hasn't rained much compared to what is supposedly normal, but when it does it feels like the temp drops 20 degrees (what would that be in celsius....? :S) and they keep it cold inside cuz the elders are required to wear their suit jackets almost all the time so they get hot. we freeze and run for our sweaters.  the pics of tights... or whatever you called them were cute...  if they're super thick they'd be hard to wear with some shoes... well i don't have a lot of shoe options really.  the black ones are not working. ow. i've been keeping it wrapped but the black shoes just make everything achy... and my loving companion... realising my problem. GAVE me HER shoes.  they're a good brand. pliable leather. very used, but comfy.  she just kept telling me it would be easy for her to find more shoes, but it's going to be hard for me.  She is super nice. Crazy, a bit. spunky too (but we cant use that word in England... they'll laugh.  gonna have to work on that. i liked that word.)

Any other questions for me?

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When you look at the pictures in Ashley's album, you will see the "National Anthem" night.  I can only imagine the how strong the spirit was.  I could feel the spirit through the pictures!

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skimmed through you're big letter... scripture study for 8 hours....

so it's not all scriptre study.  we have an hour of personal study.  we find questions that relate to what we're teaching, or something we want to be able expand on. write it in question form.  list bullet points of doctrines that may be able to answer the question, then study the doctrines.  we listed to a really awesom devotional by Elder Bednar.  he talked about Doctrines, principles and applications.  so often we're focused on the applications, when they're not what is important. doctrines answer the question 'why?'. principles = 'what?'. and applicaton = 'how?' ... we need to know the doctrines before focusing on the applications.  sit down sometime and write a list of things that we do in our church.  then try to answer them with the doctrine of the Gospel.  we are finding these doctrines, and finding scripture references to help prove it.  i feel like i learn a lot each day.

after the hour of personal study we often have companion study; where we discuss what we learned and apply it to our lives.  then we plan for our lessons that day or in the coming days (we generally have at least one a day. so we keep busy)  each person is so different.  we move quick with some, super slow with others. some get caught up on simple doctrines.  we really have to get to know the people as individuals and not sit down and prepare a generic lesson that would work for all.  each time i come out of a lesson i feel like i've learned something new, and that my testimony has strengthened.  it's great.

try to study like that sometime. it's effective... but it takes more time than usual. and you really have to search our the question and answers

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the price made me cringe at the shopping center here cuz the dollar isn't work as much as the £. so if it says £6 (which it did) it means about 11 dollars. one pound is about $1.70. so i didn't buy any today.

and of course i knew Sis. walker was Pres. Hinkley's daughter.... aren't i the one who told you that just now? :P

It is soooo obeautiful here. the little towns we visited sunday were even more so... you saw the pics.... we laughed when pres. Williams (counselor) told us 'Americans think 400 years is really old. Britts think that 400 miles is REALLY far.' lol. 

used my rain coat yesterday. stayed dry :)

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