Transfer week!

Hello,

Mom thanks for sharing my story in Young Women's on Sunday about the lady last week that invited us in and yelled at us and our reaction. It is so funny how moments like those just are forgotten and the really good stuff are remembered. Heavenly Father is cool like that. Can you believe next week I hit my 14 month mark. Crazy how fast time is flying!

Oh, by the way I a STAYING in the Woodbridge Ward! I am so happy to stay here for another six weeks! I will be here until Ty leaves on his Mission. Do you realize that is really only a transfer away for him!? All four of us are staying and we are happy about that. I love the Sisters in our house, so it will be fun and crazy to have us all stay! :)

This week has not been all that exciting. We are just working on keeping the people that we are working with excited about the gospel. The R family are doing so great! We had a lesson with them on faith and they loved that. Their 17 year old went to mutual this week where they had a whip cream fight and she had a lot of fun. We got to be there and introduce her to lots of people. I think she really likes the youth programs of the church. We had a lesson with them on Wednesday.  Then they went to the Ward Swimming Party! That was really fun! We went for a little bit because I mean it is kind of awkward for us to go to a swimming party. To top off a great week with them two of the kids went to church on Sunday! They read the Book of Mormon this week too! They are progressing and August 30th is getting closer and closer! I really, really pray that I get to be apart of their Baptism! It is so cool when you have investigators, they like become a part of you. I mean I just love them so much that when they are alone at an activity or something it makes me soooo sad. They are almost like my children…..weird as that sound, but I just love them so much and I know that this gospel will bless them and their family. :)

One sad thing happened this week J said he doesn't want to meet with us anymore:( I think the talk last week kind of freaked him out. I literally wanted to cry when I heard that, but we just know he will come around. Maybe it was something he needed to hear? Who knows, but God. There is a plan and a purpose we met him and maybe soon he will come around. We don't really have any other really solid investigators in the works right now….we are in the process of finding them.

We have an appointment tonight with a cute young family. We met them a couple of weeks ago. We invited them to the ward swimming party and the were like "yeah, we were invited already!" So come to find out they are friends with someone in our ward! They came to the party! They also live across the street from a less active family we are working with currently. So crazy huh? We are so excited to meet with them. They also have triplets girls. They are so cute. We are praying that it goes well and the spirit is there. Also the less active across the street from them that came to church on Sunday! They even stayed all 3 hours! Their kids hate us because we talk about God and stuff and act like they aren't interested at all. They however are going though lots of hard stuff. Their parents are divorced and their mom is currently not living the gospel standards at all. They get a lot of mixed messages, but their step mom really wants them to have the gospel in their lives. That way they can choose what they believe in. She is also talking about going to the Temple, so I hope she does and I hope she invites us so we can go through with her. :) We only get to go when people we are working with go through for the first time since it is out of our mission. We will see what happens there.

 Miracles are happening all over the place. We are trying our best to be obedient and to do the Lords work the way He wants it to be done and it is working out here. People are popping up and we are teaching more with the spirit. I have learned so much from Sister Bennett. She is a bomb missionary! She just works until she can't work anymore. She is helping to push me beyond what I thought was possible. We are doing so good together and I m trying my best to make it fun along the way! I make the fun and she makes us go-go-go, haha. I feel so blessed that we are staying together another transfer! I will learn soooo much more!

Love you so much! Thanks for all the prayers I can really feel them and I really have needed them! :)

-Sister Siepert

Well I think I am going to cut off my long hair this week. I wasn't going to cut it while I was on my Mission, but the heat and humidity is killing me! I may have a new look next week! We will see! :)

 Nothing like a BBQ in the summer!

 Pineapple party at night!

 Sister Bennett walking a bunny! Haha

My District!

Sometimes things get CRAZY!!!!!

This week was much better. It is kind of funny Sister Bennet and I tag team having hard days. We laugh we really should schedule our hard days on the same day. We are working on that! We just get along so well. I really love her! We seem to teach really well together too which is so nice. I have learned so much from her and I hope she has learned something from me. We try to laugh a lot and enjoy the ride!

This week has been quite hilarious. We ran into this crazy lady who so kindly let us in and then proceeded to tell us "everything that we be believe because she knows about our religion." She had so many things wrong and when we said that it was wrong she wouldn't believe us. It was crazy, we just sat there and took it because we were trying really hard to be Christ-like. It was quite hilarious. I don't understand people who say that they are Christian and they follow the Bible and invite us in to YELL at us. I just don't understand those people, how is that Christ-like at all: Whatever, haha.

We found a really awesome guy before her who had met with missionaries in the past but was going through really rough divorce and had to move out and lost all contact with the missionaries. It was really cool to talk to him about God and how much he loves us and he wants us to come back, so we are excited about him. We also taught the R Family this week and it was great as always! We taught the Plan of Salvation and they really seemed to enjoy it. We also sang, "Families can be together forever" and the mom started to cry. It was cool she said her husband asked, "why do they keep coming over?" and she told us that she just feels good when we come over and that she really enjoys the time we spend together. That was sweet time, we got to testify of the spirit and how it bears witness in our hearts what is true and what is good. She liked that! The kids came to church yesterday too!!! The mom had to work:(, but the 4 kids came to church. I even gave one of the daughters a skirt of mine to wear and to have. So, we get to church and we are excited to have them there and their fellowshipper is being awesome and introducing them to everyone. We are really exited, right? Come to find out it is Ward Conference and we are like okay, well that is fine. The Stake President gets up and what is his topic?……of course it was a super bold talk on chastity…..Sister Bennet and I were sweating and so nervous the whole time. In the end the kids were fine. The kids in the ward were great and just took them under their wings. It was a good day!

We also had a really funny experience this week while we were in a trailer park seeing someone. This hispanic man was yelling at us and was asking us if we had a lawn mower. We talked to him and said no we didn't have a lawn mower. He asked us where we were from. I told him I was from Oregon and he got really excited and was like, "LET'S CELEBRATE!" Then he proceeds to jump out of his car and hugs me. We ended up getting his information for the spanish missionaries. Whenever we would say something he liked he would always say "LET'S CELEBRATE" and proceed to hug us.  He was hilarious! I love the Hispanic people.

We helped a less active with a garage sale, it made me never want to have one ever again…..so much work! I was exhausted from that, but I did get a free guitar for helping. Cool, huh? It has been a good week, with hilarious things mixed in because Heavenly Father loves me! I loved the Otter Pops from home. Who knew amazon delivers otter pops! Thank you for all the mail this week!! It really helped after the hard week I had last week!

I love you all lots! Thanks for believing in me!!!

-Sister Siepert

My free guitar

P-day's are fun!

The sisters that live with me! Minus Sister Bennet:(

Helped make this at Pappy and Sue's woodshop! I love it!

Some weeks are harder than others:) 7/14/14

This has been a good week. To be honest it has felt like it was a year long! I don't know why but this has been an emotional week.  I don't even remember everything that happened. Even through it all I know some good stuff happened.

The family we met with last week are doing so good. We showed the restoration movie this week to the mother and her oldest son. They were the only ones home. She said she loved the faith that Joseph Smith had. They are excited to get toward their baptism date, yes I said BATISMAL DATE and it is August 30th right now. That is just the mom and son, but we plan on putting the rest on date by the end of this week! Yay! It was a really cool experience. I just love the family! They want to come to church too, but the mom works every Sunday, so that might be hard, but we are praying really hard that she will be able to get off work and come! I also am so very blessed that we have other sisters living with us because Sister Bennett didn't feel good, but we just went on splits and one of the other sisters came with me. We also met with our other investigator K and we taught the Plan of Salvation. She loved it and that me me really happy because you never know what yoga re going to get with that one. People either love it or they hate it…but she loved it! She thought it brought her so much hope in knowing that God loves her and would want the best for her! So that was cool, but last night we over and she didn't seem as excited, so hopefully she will make her baptismal date August 9th….we are praying really hard for her to quit smoking and stuff, so that would be nice if you could pray with us. August looks to be an exciting month! YAY!

Hopefully next week will be easier…I am sure it will. I guess everyone those kind of weeks from time to time!

I love you all,

-Sister Siepert

Happy 4th of July and Hitting my 13th Month! 7/7/14

This week, This week, THIS WEEK! This week has probably been the best week in Bristow in a long time! So many miracles happened this week!!! I don't know if I mentioned in my last letter that I was focusing on "perfect love castieth out fear" this week? I am and it has really helped. I also think that you and the families prayers on us finding new people really helped too! Monday night after we had dinner with a member we went to see a less active/part member family. What we didn't know is that it would take us all the way to the other side of our area. We knocked on their door and they weren't home. So we decide that we would look throughout he potentials in our area book and go see some of them. Well, this first one wasn't interested, so we went on to the next one. The next one was a family, the R family. They were a big family! We talked to the dad for a bit then talked to their mom for a bit and she said that we could come back and tech their family about Jesus Christ. We were pumped! so, on Wednesday one of the Sister Training leaders and I went to go see them (we were on exchanges). I was sooo nervous for some reason and I don't know why…but we went and had probably the most powerful lesson I have ever had on my mission. It was really good. They accepted to be baptized if they prayed and it was true and then as we left the daughter prayed that "we are excited to learn more and thank you for sending these girls to us." What a miracle! We plan on seeing them this Wednesday too! :) Then we also had another miracle on Saturday night. So, like 8:30 is always an awkward time to be out because like it is late-ish and some people get really mad when you knock on the door, but thank goodness it is summer. Well, we went to see a less active. His son (a former investigator) and his friend K were there. He let us right in and we talked for a bit. K then just broke down about how her day had been really bad and she felt that we were sent to her from God. It was awesome! We taught the restoration and promised her blessings. We are teaching her this Saturday. Look at both of those huge miracles!!! PERFECT LOVE CASTIETH OUT FEAR1 :) It has been really good week and things are really starting to happen in our area. On the 4th of July we were in a parade and that was a huge success. Our whole district came and members came too! They were handing out cards like crazy!!!! We handed out all of our cards before we were even at the end of the parade route! It was awesome to see all of the members being brave and handing out cards. It was really fun also and that day was a really good day to see people. I did get really sun burned…..Mom, I put sunscreen on but forgot my neck and the back of my neck, but don't worry. It's going away.

Well I love you a lot and I love all your prayers in my behalf. Things have really started to happen! I am scared though that I will get transferred right when things get really good….but we will see! Transfers are coming up….crazy, huh?

-Sister Siepert

The Parade Banner!

Another Banner Shot!

The Parade!

Look at those missionaries go in the 4th of July Parade!

Can you find me?

Ok this is a really awkward picture of me! You know me Awkkkkwardddd!

Sister Bennet! 

The Sister on the left is Sister Bunnell my old companion!

My house mates!

This is how Sister Missionaries celebrate the 4th!

We didn't see fireworks but we did have glow sticks!

Evidence of the sunburn! Oops!

Transfers 6/23/14

So this week has been really great!

Monday: My companion literally packed all day…haha, she has so much stuff. I am not sure how she fit it all., but she did. I think the Lord blesses missionaries with hat because that happened to me too!! haha, she was sad, but mostly excited to start somewhere fresh.

Tuesday: Sister Taylor and I dropped off Sister Webber and Sister Christensen in the morning at the church and then they went down to transfer meeting in Richmond together. We don't all go, just the people who are being transferred and if you live close  then you can go. But, it was a really fun day because Sister Taylor and I got to be companions for the day! It was wayyyyy fun because I just love her a lot! I just put something interesting together the other day: Sister Taylor and my sister Megan are the same age……hahaha, how crazy is that? I love her so much, she is hilarious. So that day we did a ton, A TON, of cleaning because our house really needed it! We didn't want our new companions to come into a dirty house. Then at 5 that night we went and picked up our new companions. My new companion is Sister Bennet and she us from…..guess…..Utah! Surprise! She is so sweet and actually came out with me, but is a transfer behind me because I was in the MTC learning Portuguese for 6 weeks. So that's kind of cool!

Wednesday: We just went around and met people and stuff. Nothing to exciting:)

Thursday: We did a ton of cleaning out our area book because it was a mess…but we got it all cleaned out Hallelujah!!! We also contacted a lot of referrals from our blitz that we had a week ago. Nothing really came from it….but we did meet an older woman named Mary that is sweet!  She can't meet for 2 weeks because she has family coming to town.

Friday: We didn't have to much going on this day other  than we met with a lady named Christina who had been really hard to connect with. She is super busy. We had a great conversation with her. She asked us why we believed in our church and stuff and said she would read the Book of Mormon! I tell you Sister Bennet is a miracle! Christina loved her and loved everything she had to say! It was really cool!

Saturday: we went and helped Pappy and Sue in their wood shop and that was really fun as always. They asked what they would have to be members. They are former investigators. We then had a member go with us to meet with another investigator. We got there and there was a sign on her door. it wait "sorry I can't meet with you anymore, but you are both so sweet." Then she left us a bag of presents. She put some cool Virginia souvenirs and wrote both of us a little note. Then she enclosed $50 dollars. $50 Dollars! Who does that? That was the nicest drop we have ever had:) We tried and tried to meet up with her to return the money. Come to find out she moved, so we could give it back. The member that went with us felt really bad. She took us to Chpolte for lunch. Then that night we had Stake Conference and guess who spoke? Sister Bunnell the missionary I trained. She did great:)

Sunday: It was Stake Conference, it was great and crazy! I love this Stake because it is so diverse! There are Africans, Hispanics and basically every ethnicity. It is so cool! I love this Stake! We had a Young Woman come out with us that night and it was a really good day!

This week was good and the new Sister have brought a fresh, new spirit into the house. We are really starting to work hard, which is so great! I am so happy with transfers and I am so happy with the area! I love you guys  a lot! Have a great week!

-Sister Siepert

Sister Bennet and Sister Siepert

Happy Fathers Day! 6/16/14

This is Katie's mom. Sorry I am about a month behind. I will try to catch up…….

I have had quite a week to tell you about. Full of funny stories and MIRACLES! Yay! It has been really good week! :)

Monday: We came and emailed and did all the things we have to do and then a person we are working with took us to this sweet SWEET grocery store. It is the biggest store I have ever seen! I literally could live there and be happy forever. It is called Wegmans and has like a food court in it and stuff. On fridays they play movies upstairs so that parents can shop and the kids can watch a movie….yeah, that is how awesome it is. Then we had dinner with the C family and that is always fun. We didn't do much that night, I think we mowed the lawn and almost died because of the humidity. It his horrible:)

Tuesday: We had district meeting and it was pretty good as always. Then we went out to eat at he best pizza place with the other Bristow sisters. Then we went and helped a lady clean her house because there was going to be a reception at her house that weekend. We then went over to Sister B house. She recently went to the temple because. She recently has been having some heart pain and we wanted to make sure she was ok. I love her so much! Every time we ask who she wants to say the prayer she says, "who is the smartest?" haha, but she is feeling better and hopefully will be at church next week! :)

Wednesday: SISTER MEETING! It was the Best! Some members from our stake took their huge van and all the sisters in our district down to Richmond. We had it at the church that I used to attend!!! It felt so good to be back and I got to see all of my old companions and such! It was a good meeting too! It was all about spiritual gifts and I learned a lot! It was so great to see President and Sister Wilson. :) It was an all around good day! I didn't realize how far I am from Richmond. It was like a 2 hour drive from here. It was pretty much our whole day. It was just a fun and good day!

Thursday: The grossest and funniest thing happened to me. Well, we went out after lunch to see a returning member. She lives in this trailer park and we like to call it "little Mexico" because she is like the only American in there. The Hermanas and Spanish Elders call it golden, holy land. Haha, but she lives in this trailer that has some steepish steps to get to her door and there is really only room for one person on the porch. Sister Christensen was up there and I was standing a few steps below. Well, the door opens and her 6 month old Rotweiler comes out to greet us. He is a really nice dog and not mean, but he is a puppy and gets really excited….really excited. You know what excited dogs do, right?!?! They Pee! So he peed right next to Sister Christensen's foot and then his lovely tail gets in the pee and soaks it up and when he turns to leave the tail went straight across my face. ACROSS MY FACE! So, I was freaking out in my head because I have dog pee on my face. It is literally dripping down my face, but I try not to make a big deal about it because I am a Missionary. But the minute we left I started freaking out and we had to go home so we could shower and wash out clothes. It was sooo gross and hilarious. That is basically how the whole day went….

Friday: It was kind of a rough day….I wasn't feeling very well. It is great having other sisters to be around on days like these.

Saturday: We did a big blitz in our area because we needed help finding new people to teach! HUGE SUCCESS! We have a ton of potentials to visit this week! :) We also got to teach a lesson! This sister that the Elders found told us to come back and so we did. She fed us lunch and let us teach her. It was so good and she was so nice!:) It was a miracle! :) Oh, and then we got transfer calls and I am staying but Sister Christensen is leaving:( Sad!

Sunday: We had our regular meetings and such. We spent the rest of the day visiting people so Sister Christensen could say goodbye.

It was a good week! :) We really needed that week! This work is really hard here. Sad to see my companion leave but excited to have a new companion. Thanks for all the prayers and such! I love you all so much and I feel so blessed to have so many people cheering me on! :)

Have a good week! LOVE YOU! :)
-Sister Siepert

Goodbye Sister Christensen:(

Sister Weber who is in the middle also got transferred. She lives in our house! I will miss her too!

Sister Christensen saying goodbye to everyone!