July 28, 2014

My article is on reallifeanswers.org - you should check it out! Same with our most recent video Sister Hurst and I made a few weeks back. If its not on the main page, you can search Lorianne. The video you can search 'restored church'.

This week we had Zone Conference - we have the most amazing leaders to learn from. We get to soak in all this knowledge from men like President Haight and President Christensen. People pay for that kind of time. We learn how to help people engulf in their own spiritual experiences, personally, in our lessons, and while they're at church. It's amazing what impact you can have outside of lessons to help people have a spiritual experience. Sometimes it's hard to step back and apply the same principle to ourselves.
My favorite PVC event of the weekend: a family baptism in Boston. The elders knocked on their door and asked if they could share a message about Jesus Christ. The mom said no. A few minutes later she ran outside the house, apologized and felt guilty for saying no. She invited them in - the dad was at first hesitant and as they progressed the little boy would ask 'Dad are you going to come to church this week?'. They've had an amazing journey and it was neat to get to see them get baptized. We set up one of the displays in the chapel and played videos during the between time while they were changing. The spirit was incredibly strong. It's amazing to see what impact God has on our lives through small ways that we can barely recognize sometimes. 

Its amazing to think the trust God places in us to make our own decisions - that we dont need him to bat us on the head every day or come down in person to help us make the right decisions. We've been given everything we need.

This week is also transfer week.....I GET TO STAY ON THE PVC!!! WOO!!! Sister Packard pulled me aside at Zone Conference and asked how I was doing and if I was still surviving. She apologized for them keeping me this long - I was like, "Are you kidding?! This is a PRIVILEGE!" We talked about what would be best with this critical timing of sending things in to Salt Lake..and evidently you can see what was determined. This will be my last transfer on it though so i'm trying to make the most of every millisecond! Happy days in the MBM. 

Sister Crane leaves for home this week!! That's kind of weird...Sister Hurst and I are already going through withdrawals without her.....weird weird weird.....

Love,
Sister Bell

July 21, 2014

We just got home from a long, successful week in New Haven, CT! Literally - just lived there for the week. Im quite the master packer..and youd be surprised about how little you can live off of too!

We are just testing the PVC in all kinds of lights - wednesday night we did a combined mutual activity using the Visitors' Center in Trumbull. It was invite a friend night. We made a fun scavenger hunt worksheet where they had to look of answers in videos, look for a specific BOM on the BOM table, etc. The first team completed with the  most correct answers wins. We were a little nervous about it...missionary cool and other people cool are two very different types of cool....but the youth loved it! Or so it looked like! They brought about 5 friends who weren't members sooo yay!

Thursday we kept it set up in the building and did chapel tours. We did an investigator lesson that night that was my favorite - our last stop (Temples) was the most touching. We talked about her deceased grandmother and the blessings that temples provide - the opportunity to be with our family members forever. In addition to that, how temples can allow her to get baptized in place of her grandmother so she can choose to accept those blessings. We watched videos of inside the temple and she started bawling. Not that we measure our success by tear drops...

Thursday night we took down and drove to New Haven to stay with Sister Barney! We did church tours all that next day. We put the Jesus Christ display outside and put Because of Him on repeat. That chapel is in the heart of Yale campus (pretty sweet) and gets tons of foot traffic, plus conveniently at a stop light. When cars were lined up at the stop light everyone's head was turned over watching Because of Him. Sister Barney was a champ knocking on people's windows giving them pass along cards car after car. At one point, one person rolled down their window and asked for one. Yeah, I didn't teach her that. So proud.
We did 9 tours (which ended up being about 30 people total). A third were non members. A third recent converts. It's pretty exhausting. You have to be that stimulated happy face on the hour, every hour...oh and by the way remember to teach people, not lessons. The great news is, Sister Barney and I got to take Susan Duclose (a friend of ours from our time in Ellington) through the tour and teach together - she loved it. We didnt realize till after but that day was Sister Barney and I's one year mark of when we were first day companions! Special special day!

Saturday we went to New Haven Stake family day where we didn't do tours, it was just self play. Had a great experience there - almost thought I was going to make headline news. Apparently the expression "gun wavin' New Haven" isn't a joke. On the way home we got to stop at the Hartford temple site! Oh how i'm in love with that place. It's walls aren't even up yet and it is so beautiful! There was such a spirit there.

Oh how lucky we are that God loves us enough to let us enter His house even when we are still imperfect mortals. We get to feel needed in building up his work by getting to unite our families and other's families forever. We get to experience a peace that literally is offered no where else on the earth. And the best part? Anyone can go! Sure you have to do a little preparation - but you wouldn't want to put muddy shoes on white carpet either would you? What a special place.

Set up. Take down. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.

Love,
Sister Bell

Keepin it a realzy breezy

1. Sister Barney's classy mac n cheese - celebrating with Susan

2. Visiting Hartford Temple Site!

July 14, 2014

What a happy week! This has been such a happy week!

Fun fact, press release announces we get iPads in the fall! Whatever 'fall' means. We get a call from President Packard on Friday about how we are ready to now send an iPad with our app and content on it to 'the bretheren'. How quickly can we send it? 

Uhhhh.....it still needs a little cosmetic and logistical TLC..plus we'd have to make slight video changes...if we got our act together we could have it done by monday night? My head is slowly calculating the hours of sleep that will be diminished as monday night spills out of my mouth. We get things collected to race over to the mission home to show him what we have so far and we get the most relieving phone call saying basically salt lake is on vacation the month of July. We have more than till monday night. What a relief! We will be way more prepared for an august shipment than a TODAY shipment. But we need to have it all ready to go so when 'we do get ipads' - we will have it downloaded on each missionaries iPad so use in their in home lessons. Excitin stuff!

The GREAT news is we did our first official church tours using the script on Saturday! We went to Providence, RI. The tour is completely preach my gospel style and we were able to walk the missionaries helping through it before hand so they could help do tours. We did 15-20 lessons total that night! It was crazy! We had a tour running at all times. One set of missionaries even set a baptism date with someone! We got return contact information from 85% of the people. One had a lesson with the missionaries again yesterday and wants to come to church next week. The person who agreed to the baptismal invitation attended church yesterday and is so excited to get baptized in August! What the heak is right. Words cant convey what happended...what IS happening. 

Sunday S. Hurst and I did a split - she did an awesome missionary sunday in Greenfield and I did a little presentation shout out in a meeting at the church. Elder and Sister Vail were my companions for the day :)  The meeting was Elder Bennet (the area 70), Pres. Packard, Pres. Bowen (the Temple President), and about 9 stake presidents. I laugh as I type it out because - GET THIS: 

First off, you have to understand that we drove back from amazing providence Saturday night, had to drop off my half of the goods for Sunday at the Weston building, and between that and helping some lady that was lost (now wants to meet with the missionaries though! woo!) - we dont get in bed till 1 am. The alarm goes off at 5 am to go pick up S. Hurst's companion for the day. In all of this, its understandable that we forgot to unload the TV stands at the Weston building for my half of the Visitors' Center. We didnt realize this until S. hurst is 2 hours away in Greenfield. Time to put on the creative hat. The Vails looked at me like I was psycho as they said, you can just put the TV to the side and tell them the stands in greenfield. they'll understand and i said "leave a hole in the middle of the restoration banner?? Think again!!" Bless Elder Vails heart-after trial and error spending about 2 hours and digging through the junk in the church library, holding up a tv in my hands for at least a half hour, and wasting 50 zip ties......you bet we found a way for that tv to hold up magically in the air. used the back of a tv stand using a screw to rest it's back mounting on. Oh wait, the tv stand is too short? 2 large kitchen pots can handle that one. Surprisuingly, the sitution was very very calm. Elder Vail sweated just as much as Dad does when he lifts a flower pot and blessed sister vail was running all over the church building. I think the spirit gets out my stress through laughter or some way because the Vails were a little scared at how calm I was. I told them it was all that french toast they fed me that morning! 

Moral of the story? God loves me. A lot. 

Pics to come next week. 

Sister Bell

keepin it real....as real as kitchen pots. 

Here are some pictures of the sopping wet 4th of July experience. Drenched head to toe and crowded side to side. But we're still alive...so that's a plus. 

 

 

July 7, 2014

It's been a wild week! We had to take a nap this morning after our studies we were that beat. What a promsing way to start P-Day. I feel like i'm in college but fully consecrated style - which makes it way more rewarding than college. Sharing the gospel is too much of a party these days!

For the 3rd and 4th of July we had 2 events but a nasty hurricane blew through. Hurricane Arthur. It was super low key but it was enought talk to get our events pushed to Saturday and Sunday. Conveniently, Boston Pops Firework Show was moved to the 3rd .It was great news for us - our first reaction: "Heavenly Father loves us! It means we get to go to 'Boston Pops'!" The weather was looking fine and we have permission to stay out for firewords on the 4th so a bunch of us local missionaries went in to see the big Boston firework show. We met the CUTEST family on the T that we talked about the church with. 

The firework show was semi lame - mostly because half of my view was covered by trees. It is what it is. They didn't start until a little after 10 but they were pretty short. We were like "hmm, it was good, but kinda anti-climatic." Then a super happy voice comes on the loud speaker and says 'Thank you for attending Boston Pops. Unfortunetly, the Boston Police has ordered an immediate evacuation. Have a good night!" We just cross the river and walk down the street back to the T station and all the sudden we hear some screaming and 2 drops on my forehead. We turn around to see people running - it literally looked like a contained wall of water was moving down the street. We start sprinting down the street and within seconds it went from 2 drops to DRENCHED as if I just jumped out of a pool. Just picture it - thousands of people running down the streets of boston screaming and looking for cover. We're running and finally make it to our t entrance in Coppely square. Every train that goes by is JAMMED to the walls with people. Literally people almost fall out of the door when they automatically open at each stop. Being now almost midnight we were like "ok we dont care how full the next one is - we're gettin on." Somehow we managed to slam ourselves in there with other wet bodies. What a joyful experience. Good news is we made it home safe and sound. Back on the road at 5 am. 

The rest of the weekend was just as crazy - 6 events. Went to bed at 1:20. Up at 5. Bed at 11. Up at 6. Explains the needed nap today. We are learning so many communication skills and how to advertise more effectively. I'm nervous but excited to start teaching more . We are finishing up writing the church tour script and are trying it out this weekend in Providence. We have some sweet things planned. Other great random news is that me and sister hurst's dreams of being digi missionaries is finally achieved. We had a little meetin with the digital missionaries to help tie the two of us together more and we had a meeting with a young adult majoring in film who has offered to do some free filming for us! People out here have been incredible. Im tellin ya, every days a party

I meant to send more pictures but they will have to wait till next week. Stay tuned.

Love,

Sister Bell

1. Outdoor fair

2. Cute little girl testin it out

3. Happy 4th at a pancake breakfast!

4. Falafel in Cambridge. Delicioso.

 

 

June 30, 2014

Sister Hurst is quickly swingin in the groove of things! She came right at crunch time right before President Packard's big Restoration fireside(a weird word for a lecture) bless her heart. We got home on Friday night at around 11:30pm and then had to be in Belmont the next morning at 7:30am. S. Hurst has been holdin up like a champ. The good ideas never stop coming! Its a weirder adjustment than one would think from a normal proselyting area. I just have to laugh.
The lecture is called "What the World Knows Because of Joseph Smith". He will be doing it in several stakes and this was the first (located in Providence, RI stake). He did a voice over for the Restoration that we created a video for. It's too large to send over email I think but i'll send it home. It's not perfect buuut we did spend quuiiite a bit of time on it. 3 days straight. i mean straaiiiighhht.

The night before the fireside a sister missionary got hit by a car going 40 mi/hr. They were in the crosswalk trying to catch their bus and one lane stopped and waved them go forward and out of no where in the other lane a car flew by. She spun in the air and flew to the other side of the median. Her companion barely had the nerve to go over because she thought she was dead. She didnt even go unconscious. She was hit in the side and on that side you can hardly see a bruise. She has a black eye from the landing, a couple fractures in her sinus bones, a deep chin cut (15 ish stiches) and road rash on her arms and legs but other than that - NOTHING. no broken bones. The paramedics came over and started checking her, asking if anything hurt and they were shocked. They were like are you sure?? This is supposed to be broken!

Its a literal miracle. The joke is that her guardian angel is in spirit world ICU for weeks and she was in there a day. The mission feels so so grateful. Not to say that God wasn't watching out for her if something awful did happen, that statement will always be true regardless of our outcome, but we do feel the power of the miracles that God delivers.

The firesides turned out so well. It is amazing to think about what we really do know because of Joseph Smith. Some of the most fundamental core doctrine we believe in was restored through Joseph Smith, which is why we highly regard and respect him but do not worship him. Because of Joseph Smith, deep questions are answered like do we believe we are saved by grace, works, or both? questions like what happens after we die - what is heaven really like, because its more than just choirs of angels. questions like are prayers soliloquies or dialogues? questions like what does Christ's authority have to do with performing the same ordinances he set up when he was on the earth?

It's been such a blessing to learn from such powerful leaders. I feel extra blessed that I get to use the PVC to attend all of these amazing opportunities!

Love you all! Have a fun 4th of july! PVC is triple booked - its going to be one crazy weekend.

Sister Bell

Keepin it real!