June 23, 2014

Sister Wagner is officially home! We had a great last week together and she help up impeccably well for someone going home. So proud.

Sister Hurst is an all star. I basically have to have something to write down next to me at all times because who knows when another brilliant idea comes out of her mouth....which tends to be every other second. We've gotten way too exciting counseling about new ideas. We drafted out our church tour ideas. They wont start rolling until the end of the transfer - I hope I stay on the PVC long enough to be able to be apart of the tour experience as well.

We got to help in the mission home this week for transfers which is always fun and exhausting. The other exciting news is that my article is posted on reallifeanswers.org - check it out probably in a day or two. woo!

Event map of the weekend:

Weston, MA to Amherst, CT to Nashua, NH, to Plymouth, MA. The elders took it to Narragansett RI.  Grand total 4 states. 3 days. Thank goodness we have body sensors that tell us to eat and go to the bathroom...otherwise it may not make the cut. Don't even ask me what I did 30 minutes ago. Bless Sister Hurst's heart - we went to bed around midnight saturday and woke up 5:30 am sunday. She's like "Uhh...maybe the mission should invest in an RV. We can be nomad missionaries."

"Thats a great idea Sister Hurst. Ill go write that down too."
Sister Hurst is the best travel buddy and absolutely hilarious - combined with the fact that we've had the same past companions it makes for quite the conversation.

I think my favorite was Plymouth. There was such a strong spirit there. They advertised to the community for a special sunday talking about mormons and family history and the why. Even just sitting in sacrament meeting the spirit was so peaceful. For the gospel essentials class they used the Jesus Christ board as the lesson and had a discussion about the videos. We put Because of Him on there of course and talked about it afterwards. It was interesting to compare the spirit that I felt during the video (excited, driven, wanting to jump out of my chair) with the spirit I had felt in sacrament moments earlier (peace, calmness, happiness). It is interesting to think about how the spirit is manifested in different ways but knowing it is all the same source. Perhaps the most important time in recognizing the spirit is when it leads us to act. When it leads us with a peace or desire to change or go do, we feel the blessing of having the spirit work through us. We literally feel like instruments in the Lord's hands - you can't ask for a better feeling than that.

Love you all - thank you for your prayers!

Sister Bell

June 16, 2014

Its been a bittersweet week. Just about to get more bittersweet as we celebrate S. Wagner's final days. So so so weird. It'll be hard to let her go. She has taught me so much and we've developed a fun friendship. I told her she can have 'office hours' when she goes home and she'll just be on skype hangin in the corner so it'll be like shes in the office still.

So - the grand question - who is the lucky new PVC sister????

SISTER HURST! Sister Hurst is incredible - we came out at the same time. Shes my current Sister Training Leader and one of her last companions was Sister Crane. She was also trained by my famous old compy Sister Kendall so this will be fun - we've learned from the same people. Shes had amazing experience - she's about 23, one of the oldest sisters in the mission. She's done tons of focus group testing, she's done testing in Uganda - this girl's got it goin on. Shes also obsessed with the PVC. She's been wanting to help so so bad and has given us a ton of ideas but we haven't been ready for them because we were too busy actually just building the thing. But now we're ready :) Shell be absolutely PERFECT and im so excited to glean from all her knowledge.

We took a Family History and Relief Society photoshoot this week for the last of our display boards. The pictures turned out incredible! We had such a stressful time making a million phone calls and praying we'd be lead to the right people. Who just gets to go do photoshoots and spending all p-day afternoon the Packards doing some more voice recordings? 

This weekend we took the PVC OUTSIDE for the FIRST time!!!! If you want it - we can do it. We just used a generator and it actually worked out great. We spent sunday along the Charles River at a city chinese festival. I spent the day saying ni hao. Thank goodness i'm an english misisonary. I also got burned - this office missionary hasn't seen sun in quite a while. The missionaries got 12-15 solid contacts and return numbers which is REALLY good. Plus we handed out over 800 flyers and pass along cards. Also PVC went to RI and had major church tour success there! AMAZING things are going on in the mission right now, its incredible.

In the car today on the way to voice overs I asked President Packard what his vision was for this next transfer and get on the same page of what we want to accomplish. The goal is to set up the script for the church tour and start setting up times for the PVC to go to areas in the middle of the week to do church tours. We have a lot of work to do on planning the script, and then helping the missionaries advertise to the community and members. He said that when we start doing that we will probably be teaching more lessons than any other missionary in the mission. My stomach dropped. Man, Heavenly Father does answer prayers. Not only have I always been weak in my teaching skills but i've also been out of practice for 4+ months. I'm a little nervous - it'll be a different style doing lots of first lessons and then passing them off. Im also nervous as it will take a lot of careful prayer and revelation for planning this interactive script. I will need lots and lots of prayers.

Love you - i will send a picture of my new companion next week. Enjoy the flood of pictures this week! 

1. Last District meeting of the transfer

2. Charles River :)

3. PVC OUTSIDE!

1. photoshoot! woo!

2. THE CONTAINER STORE - for OCD individuals only

June 9, 2014

Happy Birthday Doug! 1 day late!

This weekend we had 5 events. Someone check my pulse please. I don't think the PVC needs me, but I sure need the PVC. I feel like we're recruited as the minion project people and it's impossible to say no to anything of course. I've turned into the little addicted adobe worker, its quite fun. We also got a call requesting us to come up with some new drafts of pass-along cards/logo for the reallifeanswers.org website that the mission's created. If you haven't seen the website yet - GO. The missionaries are developing some amazing things there. We called in our top dogs (the PVC elders)  for some brainstorming design sessions because E. Bushnell is graphic designer. Hopefully with their help/probably them just taking it over, it'll love sweet. Man, have I mentioned we have the most talented, best mission in the entire planet yet?!?! Because we do.

PVC update - mom you asked what 'for now' meant on having the last 3 boards done. We want to expand to doing 6-8 programs/auxiliaries but we are going to stop at 3 and let it run for a bit to do some evaluating. Plans in the turnpike to give our precious information to Salt Lake. They have their eyes out over here. Speaking of, got to see Elder Nielson of the 70 on Sunday for Stake Conference in Nashua, NH. It was so neat to meet him and his wife. He shook our hands and asked about the displays and called us angels. His wife was like, "these displays need to be in every church building around the country!" Make it happen Sister Nielson. He's come to the mission before but he was here to reorganize a stake presidency and Elder Holland's son is the new stake president. Needless to say, it was an amazing stake conference. It is such a treat to be able to hop around to the most powerful church meetings every week. 

Another fun event we had was we presented to all the ward mission leaders and several bishops at the large WML meeting and then we did a presentation to all the Bishops in another Stake. THEN we got to go to Ali's baptism (YAY!!!) and THEN a ward portuguese event (this weeks accomplishment - made portuguese subtitles for our videos!! wow!) 

My life is as ADD as my writing is right now. If you promise not to tell mom, I had a cinnamon roll for breakfast, a cookie for lunch, and a piece of cake for dinner one of those days - it was that crazy. I swear I eat nothing but rabbit food the rest of the time mom!!! 

On a calm note, we had a recap Zone Conference this week to recap Elder Holland's conference. President Packard is the most powerful example on how to pray. We just sat for 3 hours and discussed how to receive personal revelation and correct patterns of prayer. He gave several examples of sources of religion that believe taking questions to God is blasphemous. Questioning God? - Yes. But seeking specific guidance and having a relationship with God that is so specific and individual? - How could that ever be disrespectful? God loves us. He wants us to succeed - of course he wants us to seek knowledge and ask questions to learn how to become more like Him.

 

President Packard talked about how this exercise is more exhausting than taking the BAR exam. "When you start playing chess and not checkers, you have to be prepared to know what you're not going to hit a home run every time." I've been out of practice on setting this type of pattern and so it was good to be reminded of this importance and how worth it it is to learn how to play chess.

Choose to play chess.

Love,

Sister Bell

June 2, 2014

This week Sister Wagner had her last District Meeting. This week we have a mission conference (a Holland recap and focus) and the next week is zone meeting...and then shes gone forever! It's weird working in the room with the missionary board and wondering who my next victim is. Poor Sister Wagner...can't even imagine the thought of all the lasts...ah more like a nightmare.

Don received the priesthood yesterday! Happy day! And then I found out that Ali from Belmont is getting baptized this Saturday!! Why does all the fun happen after I start teaching people, dang it! :( Good news is I get to go...I think!

Today we had the coolest experience. We went to the Apple Store to ask them about a potential programming feature for the PVC and the person that got assigned to help us completely by random was the same guy who helped us a while back when we went in. We started talking to him more about the church and our project. We ended up talking for a long time, partly because in the mean time we had to fill out a couple things. We first just gave him a card and i thought "no we should set up a time for a first lesson....but he is on the job..nope just do it." Embarrassingly enough it's been a good while since i've had the opportunity to set up a first lesson apt. Life of living in closed doors all day. It felt really good to ask, and he agreed! He is dating a pastor's daughter and with a million other reasons...one being that we're not assigned to teach people... it just felt better having elders teach him. Conveniently we had the zone leaders (aka PVC elders/PVC babysitters) hangin with us. We had them set up an apt on the spot. It makes me really miss teaching. Really miss it. We are really excited to hear how Elder Bushnell and Elder Rogers lesson goes this week though! It made me almost relieved that I wasn't the one teaching because i'm so out of practice. I hate that feeling - i've never been the best full time missionary teacher to begin with anyway which does help with the out of practice part. But hey, i'm pretty good at being a good member missionary who just refers refers refers..especially these days...someones gotta be good at that part too.

John asked an important (and my favorite!) question: what made you decide to join your church? This can be almost tricky because how can you describe in words something that has completely changed and blessed your life literally for eternity...FOREVER?? I also love the question because each time it gives me a reason to think about why. Sometimes we get so caught up in doing that we miss spirit of whats driving us. "Its blessed my life and brought peace" is pretty lame - lets be specific folks.

Im a member because it not only answers questions but it encourages me have questions - questions like why i'm here, what happens after this life, how do i even get through this life feeling successful? I mean successful. Questions like why does God really matter anyway? Can Jesus Christ's life and sacrifice that people mention sometimes as casually as apple pie really provide true personal meaning for me?  Can it really provide relief from regret? Relief from lack of faith?

See what I mean? Maybe a better question is what keeps you from being a member of the church?

The PVC's 3 "for now" final boards are in process of completion..we just have one more photoshoot! The goal is to get it done before S. Wagner leaves! It was in Hartford this Sunday for an open house - got to see a couple people from Ellington which was fun! They had some other PR boards up and their own church tour....not like the gospel is a competition or anything...but if it was...PVC wins hands down. But...its not :) Its cool, we're still humble.

Keep John and Ali in your prayers this week!

Country Club life is the rough life - but someone's gotta live it. Heres my lemon in a bag so that the seeds dont get on my fresh salmon.
In the background is Danny Ainge's son that we just casually bumped into while we were there. yeah yeah what else is new? 

year mark!
climbing bunker hill!

a little family jog in cambridge!