August 25, 2014

Please forgive me for not writing last week! My letters are annoyingly lengthy enough that they make up for it, right?

In the past 2 weeks we've conquered the world. I'll try to keep it to just a few highlights - just know the highlights could go on for hours.

First off, we have the best trio. Enough said. I think we defy all the stereotype fears that come in trio life. Sister Hansen is a star and she reminds me of Caitlin Blickenstaff...so needless to say I adore her. It's been a blessing to have another friend that is very chill and easy to relate to. We picked her up halfway from her old area, New Haven, CT...which was so conveniently the exit that my favorite members from Ellington the Kravetz family lives! Of course we stopped. She gave us provisions for the road like a true Saint which turned out to be quite the miracle considering the weekend we had on the road. Thanks for answering our prayer Holly! 

That night we took sistah Hansen in for top gun PVC madness. We had been doing that temple filming and on our 'extras if time permits' list we figured we'd put Elder Calvert on the list because he's elder Taits companion (the missionary that helped with filming) so it'd be convenient. We'll time didnt permit, but we made it permit. We wanted to film him in the perspective of the word of wisdom and a 'how I live my faith' video with the neat perspective that he's on the BYU Basketball team. Yeah, I know. 

We were going to film him at a random outdoor basketball court buuuuuuut come on now. Outdoor basketball court?? Give me a break. Danny Ainge lives in our area and is literally the man. The rare spirit of non awkwardness veiled my identity enough to call him to see if we could use the IPF. It helps that he's seen the Vistors Center and loves it......but.....it's probably mostly just because he's the man. 

One of the summer practice league players was there shooting when they opened it for us. 

What'd up, sorry, want me to turn off the music? Oh no it's cool man, would hate to throw off your shots. But since you asked, yeah we'll need it off for filming in a half hour. Let me grab you a Gatorade. Why thank you, my favorite flavor is 'cool blue' but no why would I feel cool right now? This kind of stuff usually happens in a normal missionary life, right? Right. 

That weekend we had church tours in Providence again-land of the promise. SOOO MANY LESSONS....SOO MANY REFERRALS. It was madness. Let's just say Hermana Hansen got a good first few days. We were like "we want to say this is really rare and we never get this good of a life buuuuut we seem to say that every day so you can probably assume it's the norm". 

Don't think I just live at Disneyland all day, it's really hard but I think what makes it great is that I love the kind of hard that it is. I feel like my mental and physical capacities and exceedingly unnormal. I just feel more and more desire everytime I wake up - more of a desire to feel the spirit, to be kinder, to be more patient, to work even harder, to serve others, to be obedient, to trust God. As a result I like myself even more each day. Although I still struggle with deciphering the promptings of the spirit and the normal tests of patience like we all do, it's more of a happy process. I'm more patient with myself, more ok with screwing up, more willing to set aside the little things. 

The displays are getting printed in Spanish as I type. The letter was sent off to Salt Lake. They responded. Woa. Evaluations of what events more most effective are getting better. We are very busy. We are very happy. 

This week should be another rough week as I we attend the BYU football fireside where the players, coach, and new BYU pres will be there. Devastating, really. Absolutely devastating. 

Love,

Sister Bell

Keepin it real

 

PICS:

Celtics IPF

Boston Trio

Throwing tea in the Boston Harbor :) 

Old North Church

Kravetz House!!

 

 

 

August 11, 2014

The Boston Mission has happily gained in numbers - since the ebola outbreak in Africa, we've received 2. The experiences that these missionaries have gone through is amazing. One minute you're in a teaching appointment and get an emergency phone call saying go to your apartment immediately and don't leave. Throw all your food away. Oh you did, shoot well now you're going to be stuck there for 2 days. Ok go to Ghana...just kidding! turn around in the airport - consider yourselves permanently reassigned to Boston! Oh the faith of missionaries!

I also went to a funeral this week. It was kind of tragic - a mom and a daughter will killed on their way back from girls camp. They left a husband and 2 other kids. In a weird way it was kind of neat to go to a funeral the same week as Grandpa Bell's funeral. It was one of the best funerals i've attended - the husband/father's talk was amazing. He stood up and said "to stand up here and rant for an hour about all the wonderful things they've done and who they were would do them an injustice. So i wont. We all know what kind of people they were otherwise you wouldn't be here. So I have a more important message that they would want me to say." He went on and talked about God's Plan for us, that not only is this life not the end, but all the things that we get to be apart of in the next life. "All that they were and all that they did doesn't stop being apart of them. They are still serving and learning and becoming better. They are so so happy. So don't you dare be sad. We all go through forms of greiving, and in the quiet nights when I feel alone, I still miss them and weep for them, but we can't be sad for them. They deserve more than that. Go home and set aside time and ponder how you met my girls and how theyve impacted your life, and who you are because of it." It was really inspiring how bold he was. I hope we dont dare question our loved ones happiness or even existence once they've passed on. And I hope we don't dare be sad.

The other exciting news is that we had interviews today. President Packard called this morning and we have a lot to prepare for in preperation for his letter being sent off to Salt Lake about the visitors' center. He's like "Uh, I figured we'd write the draft in your interview time, so you may not get one....but i figure you're doing fine." In fact, it was the best 'interview' i've ever had. Sister Hurst and I were in it together - we spent half the time laughing and the other half very excited. Its like preparing for Christmas. Speaking of which, sister hurst and I may be able to stay 2 weeks longer than normal so we can help with all the PVC Christmas nativities...... :) We'll talk about that later.

THE FINAL NEWS!!!! WE GET A THIRD COMPANION THIS WEEK!!!!! We've known for a couple weeks but now its official. Sister Hansen - shes currently serving as a Spanish assigned missionary. She also looks like a perfect disney princess - its about time we have a beautiful face for the PVC. We are SOOO excited to have her and we will be able to triple the work and of course triple the fun!

Try to have as fun of a week as I will....but thats a pretty high standard to beat. Get to teach the coolest haitian man, drive someone to the airport at 5 in the morning, pick up a new companion in New Haven, CT, and have 4 events. Can you top that? I dare you. 

Lots of love,

Sister Bell

Keepin real....and keepin it with 3!

August 4, 2014

WHAT THE WHAT?!? The following includes excerpts from glorious Sister Hurst's letter home - she depicted our experience ten times better then i ever could. 

Who'da thunk when I turned in my mission papers that I would be directing film and editing movies and supervising translations and whatnot? Cah-razy. 

This weekend was super fun and a bit stressful and I don't think I can do it justice in words. But I will say this. I saw MIRACLES this weekend.

Here is the main one. We have been planning on going to the temple to film outside and interview people and we were planning in Cambridge with a member from Cambridge who is a harvard grad and she suggested that we at least give the temple president a heads up of what we were doing. We thought that would be the cordial thing to do so I called and the temple president was like 'you aren't allowed to do that.' I don't think it was so much that he didn't want us to do it, he just didn't feel that he had the authority to let us film on that property. We were kind of shocked. So we found out on Thursday that it was a no when we were in the mission home helping to serve dinner to the departing missionaries. We were like uhhhhh...... 

Through out the week I felt impressed that I should fast on Friday, so we fasted that we could submit our will to what heavenly father had instore and if it be right that we get permission and proper weather. 

We have been trying to capitalize on Ashley as much as possible since she is moving soon and leaving her work and so she a.) won't be here and b.) won't have access to borrow the equipment.So we were trying to get EVERYTHING done this weekend and really put all our eggs in one basket. On thursday night, president said he would try figuring things out for us but it didn't really end up happening so there we are on Friday night at like 9:30 with nothing. President said he would ask the area 70, Elder Bennet. He called. No answer. 

So it's like 11 on Friday and we haven't heard back from President about the area 70. Ashley told us how to write out the scripts and manage the day and, according to her instructions (and because we are both over-achievers) I had scheduled out the day in 10 minute increments.Literally you should see our excell sheet - almost embarrassing. We had pages of interview questions/shots we wanted. We had emailed questions out to participants and requested families to wear complimentary colors. We had permission forms for people to sign. We had another missionary (Elder Tait who is really good at filming) coming to help. Ashley had borrowed all the equipment from work. We had a food supply - apples, oreos, and cheez its. Brain food. And to top it all off there was about an 80% chance of rain from 8 am to 8 pm.

We started making back up ideas. We could go to the Rollins house where they have a pretty yard that we could pretend was the temple. We could film at the Belmont chapel right next door to the temple. In the back of my mind I almost thought that if it rained we would have an excuse to call off this non-sense altogether. We had correlated so many people's schedules to be there and I didn't want it to all come tumbling down because we didn't have permission in the first place. So we came up with some ideas but figured it would be what it would be (we had spent a lot of mental energy dreaming up shots for the temple...it seemed like our minds would be able to work quickly enough to think of new shots at new locations). So we left it up to the Lord and went to bed. 

We knew that the Lord could perform miracles-He could make it so we had permission, he could keep it from raining. But the real question was whether this whole thing was according to his will and in his timetable. So it's not like our testimonies would be shaken or that we would think that our fasts hadn't 'worked' if it didn't go as we had planned. We would have just been really disappointed. And confused--because as we had picked out the people, and planned the topics and the shots it had felt like we were doing a good thing.

Well. We wake up at like 5:45 the next day. Drive to Watertown to pick up Ashley about 7:40. Still no word from Elder Bennett, the area 70. We decided that if we didn't hear by 8am we would just call him ourselves. Sounds rash, but hey, when you have Christmas brunch at the man's house, you get a bit of a more appropriate excuse. Pays to know people man, pays to know.  So we pulled over on a side neighborhood connected to the highway just down the way from where the temple is.Literally we have the camera out, we are like little puppy dogs waiting for christmas morning. Ring ring - elder bennett answers! He tells me that he gives us his blessing and is willing to give us permission as long as we don't show it to people outside the editing process until we have more official permission from someone more official in the church. 

Let me repeat that. 

ELDER BENNETT (our area authority) GAVE US PERMISSION AT ALMOST THE LAST POSSIBLE MOMENT!!! One thing I learned from this is that we need to move forward in faith. We weren't going to film inside the temple gate if we didn't get permission. But we still had everything planned as if we did have the permission and it didn't rain (pretty much the most we had done was tell a family that we could let them know if we called it off due to rain and ignored their question about whether the temple president knew we were filming).

So yeah. We got to the temple and I felt so blessed that the Lord had heard our prayers and was willing to let us try to do this project to glorify Him.I just wanted to tell everyone about the miracle we had just experienced! 

Well, we got to the temple and low and behold it was raining. Not really RAIN raining but drizzling. Enough to make us nervous with the cameras. But we kept calm and carried on. At some points we covered the cameras with umbrellas. Everyone showed up who was supposed to. We interviewed a Haitian family, a family from Central Falls, a family from Framingham, Sister Kendall, Sister Belchior (a msisionary from Mozambique with an amazing story and amazing faith), and Elder Calvert. We filmed for the first part of the day at the temple and at the church next door. Then we went into Cambridge and filmed at the LP chapel (where my momma and papa met!) and in Longfellow Park and near the Charles River. It was so much fun! 

It was a really fun team to work with. It was great to see some people from earlier parts of my mission and Elder Tait and Elder Calvert were SOOO fun / hilarious to work with. They talk like they are 50s gangsters like all the time. It's ridiculous. And Sister Belchior is so lovely and we got to talk about international law stuff. And Ashley was such a gem. She volunteered so much time and talent to help us. 

MORAL OF THE STORY. Revelation is a process. 

I love the Lord and I have loved learning more about His holy house, the temple. I'm so thankful for the power of prayer and fasting and consecrated individuals who are willing to donate of themselves to help spread the gospel. 

Love,

Sister Bell & Sister Jenny Hurst