September 22, 2014

Winter is quickly approaching - it's quite scary. I hear rumors about California being 80 degrees and I want to scream. The leaves are changing really fast which is GORGEOUS, but they are turning a little bit earlier than they should. We live in the best spot for fall by far.

North Brookfield is quite the funny and quaint place. The members are all related to eachother. S. Layton has created this hilarious family relations chart - i swear, it practically dates back to Adam. As a result it provides quite the branch family drama sometimes and we love it.

Apparently I can't keep myself from investigating all these potential projects and getting everyone else around me sucked into them because per request we are now also digital missionary extenders which means finding people online to teach through pinterest, facebook, blogs, etc...yes it's true, I said pinterest. People engage on online conversations and begin skype teaching people and connecting them with local missionaries. It is the sweetest thing since boston cream pies. We have the opportunity to do it in the morning when it is a slower time. It's mostly S. Layton that's surfing the web while I work on another project. Apparently, the Book of Mormon has not been translated as an audio recording in Haitian Creole. There's a ton of haitian creole speaking people here and there's an elder here who translates live general conference in haitian creole. The combination of having an innovative mission president serving in a very innovative place seems to blow up too many creative projects. We have a goal for him to finish recording his voice reading the entire BOM in HC and I'm editing the audio and piecing it together as he goes just by following along reading a copy of a HC BOM. A joke right? Not this time. Maybe i'll get to be like the guy from the Other Side of Heaven and be fluent in Haitian Creole by the end. Probably not.

We've had so many miracles this week - we are trying to get a member with us at every single appointment to help build lessons and help build unity in the branch. One day we were picking up a member for an appt. and Sister Layton is outside the car backing me up. At one point I thought of telling her to get in the car because we were backing up on kind of a busy road, but then I thought, 'eh, its probably ok'. All the sudden I see her talking to someone crossing the sidewalk at the end of the driveway. She runs to the car, grabs her planner and goes back to the woman. Blessings of having a backer!!
She said the woman said, "You look so cute!"

S. Layton, "Thanks, do you live around here?"

Woman: "Yeah, about 5 minutes that way. Do you?"

S. Layton: "No, i'm from Utah."

Woman: "What are you doing all the way out here?"

S Layton: "Serving a mission for my church - want to hear more about it?"

Woman: "Mmm, i can't right now, but I can tomorrow!"

S. Layton: "4:00 ok?"

Woman!: "yeah!"

I'm tellin you - my companion is the ultimate champion. She is so natural at sharing the gospel. The studies of S. Layton and S. Bell statistically show that when you take members out with you, be yourself, be outgoing, and have a backer.....the combination creates unexpected miracles.

Love you all - thanks for your prayers!

Sister Bell

September 15, 2014

Well hello dearest family!

Quite the week we've had! I'm all settled in the adorable quaint land of North Brookfield. I tell ya, this ain't no Weston or Belmont. I though Ellington was in the boonies - boy was I wrong. What an unexpected...but happy change.
Sister Layton is my new companion and she's practically perfect in every way. She's only been there a transfer so it's been fun to still get to know a few things together for the first time. We are both really really excited about the area and the potential the branch has. They just built a building about 6-10 years ago and it is designed to have 2 wards in it. There is a very very special spirit here. I can't imagine what's in store for this land even just 5 years from now.

We cover a million towns...ok more like 15. But still. And it may or may not have taken us almost 2 hours to get to district meeting.

The people here are incredible though. President Dusty, the branch president, has all eyes on missionary work. The members are the best member missionaries i've seen my entire mission. Sharing the gospel isn't what they do - it's who they are. We've already seen so many miracles in the short time i've been here. The sisters last week asked the Branch mission leader to pray about his vision for the area and this week he said he did and that he got an answer. Sister Layton said this was very much an unexpected miracle coming from him. He said the branch needs to be more unified, that people are so incredibly friendly when they come to church but people feel disconnected when they go back to their homes. One of our main focuses will be to help with Home and Visiting teaching. The members love the missionaries and love to help in any way, so hopefully when they're out with us on more of a regular basis to both our teaching appts and those they ht/vt, even more miracles will unfold. Sister Layton and I are really excited.

This past week we saw our own miracle. President Dusty texted us and invited us to his home for lunch and correlation Saturday afternoon. Sister Layton said, "Hmm, we've never met with him at this time during the week, this is awesome!" We had most of our saturday empty, so it really was awesome in that regards. Then all the sudden she says, "Oh! I remember seeing a name on the potential investigators list that lives in that same city. We can stop by while we're over there." After an amazing correlation, we stop by this person's house. The dad was mowing the lawn outside. We go up to the house, sister layton reminds him of who they were from a couple weeks ago and he says, "actually, we're all set. sorry." We said, "well we love to be a resource to the community and help any way we can. Can we leave you a card with our number on it in case you change your  mind or need anything?" Very hesitantly he said, "mm, you can give it to my wife in the house." We ring the door bell - she answers with a very cute little girl at her side. We tell her that we had met her husband a couple weeks back. She said, "oh well what did he say? We're not very religious" We said, "He said we could come give you this card with our information on it." I thought No, no we're not letting this one go. She doesn't even know who we really are. The spirit was evidently there on the door step with us because we then said something to the effect that we share a message with people about Jesus Christ and how their families can become closer together, and that you probably think you're not interested but thats because you dont know what our message is. Is there a time this week that your family would be available that we could come share it with you? She looked at us and then said, "Well, the kids have a lot of activities after school during the week....but...we dont have anything on wednesday."

WE ARE SO EXCITED. PLEASE pray for this family. It was too much of a miracle for President Dusty's timing, S. Laytons remembrance, and te fact that they were home for it to be not meant to be.

It has been quite the adjustment. In a lot of aspects I feel like a brand new missionary again and surprisingly it hasn't been too frustrating...only a little frustrating :) Since this time they have a slightly adjusted reporting system. Last night for reporting I asked sister Layton how to do it. She laughed and said, "woa they changed that a long time ago." I said, "Yeah I know - I told you you're training a greenie!" She's been incredibly patient and fun about all the things i'm remembering. Im mostly just grateful because I know that the spirit has brought back loads to my remembrance. I may not have all the practice down of the missionary skill sets, but I think in this gap i've grown to have more trust in the Lord, more confidence in the Lord and the talents he's given us, and become even more excited about the work of the Lord - so in that way its probably a blessing I had a gap. Its also a blessing that I get to go to bed on time! :)

Love you all. I hope you are still doing and being the work of the Lord when you return home on Sundays. I hope you're reaching out before you reach in. I hope you listen before you talk. And most importantly, I hope you stay patient with God's timing and his unexpected plans...sometimes..very unexpected plans.

Love,
Sister Bell 

Keepin it real in the boonies

Pictures:
Red Sox game! My last gift of grace of being the spoiled missionary in grand weston before kicking it to the curb.

September 9, 2014

Last week as a PVC missionary - quite the internal mix of emotions.

The perks, or down side, of being in the office all the time is that you get to see the transfer board before the texts come out if the assistants update it soon enough..so I got to see it early! To be honest, the result was a bit surprising. But so has every other transfer on my mission so far so it shouldn't be that surprising. 

NORTH BROOKFIELD, MA. 

It is an adorable branch about 2 hours west of Boston. I'm getting banished to the boonies! I've actually stayed the night there once before because of a Fireside we brought the PVC to and my new companion, Sister Layton I hear is AMAZING so I'm very excited. We are called as the Sister Training Leaders for that zone/stake which is good - it'll give me a chance to hopefully redeem myself from the last time I had that assignment. I was probably the worst in the history of the worst so thank heavens God's letting me go up to bat again. It will be interesting to see what the Lord wants us to do there. 

It hasn't quite hit me yet that I'm leaving the PVC but I can imagine if it did sink in, it would be really really hard. So, thank goodness it hasn't sunk in. I feel like i'm giving up my first born child. I've had the most amazing opportunities that most people can't afford - literally the experience i've gained, people we've established relationships with, and professionals we've received indirect training by are very expensive in the real world. Most importantly, I feel like I've learned even deeper the language of the spirit - how to listen and how to follow. In the Book of Mormon, God chose Nephi, someone who didn't know how to build a boat I believe for partly because he knew he was humble and receptive to follow God's plan instead of relying on his own experience and intuition. The Lord was then able to supply him with instruction and he was able to use his experience of drive and desire to execute it. I feel like lucky Nephi who said, "You want a miracle, but I've never done it before. But I want to do it, so if you just give me a few stepping stones, I'm willing to jump to each one!" 

My last event we went out with a bang. We got to do church tours in New Haven. One of the members sent out a mass email to all of the Yale divinity students - and people came because of it! So many members brought friends and it was a touching experience knowing it was my last time doing church tours on the PVC. 

The PVC is flying in so many new miraculous directions of possibilities. It's beyond incredible. The teaching app that we are creating with the programmer is done! At least the one subject tester one! We are gearing up so when the missionaries get iPads we're ready to roll. 

Today was strangely mirculous. Things fell into place - things you just really can't plan for or expect when you are looking at your planner in the morning. For example, President Packard oddly decided to cancel his lunch appt and work in the office today which meant we could film him for a side project we were helping the stake RS with thats due..tomorrow. We had THE best lunch with the stake RS president who is my new idol - she taught me so so much in such a short amount of time of our interactions.Then a senior couple that we have been trying to get a hold of 'accidently' called the wrong number. We said, "did you get our message?" He said, "No I really accidently just hit your name in the phone. But yes we can meet today because im leaving out of town tomorrow". Oh in Cambridge? We just so happen to have to go there anyway!! While in Cambridge walking through the chapel doors out pops the next person we've been trying to meet - the institute director at LP that we're trying to correlate doing a weekly-biweekly PVC visit for the building because its such a high traffic area!! Then 15 other weird happenstances - including Brandon being 10 minutes away from me! I'm tellin you...God is in the details. You just gotta look up from your facebook every once in a while to notice them! 

We also had an amazing Sunday - the lessons were...incredible. The testimonies were all about the change of moving and the lessons were conveniently all about change. I thought about the changes in our lives - why we have them and how we can respond to them. The teacher pointed out beautiful scriptures and talked about change and perfection and what it means to become perfect in Christ. Did you know that in hebrew there is no translation for perfect...the closest thing that translates is merciful. Perfection in Greek is to make full, to complete, accomplish. We don't seek perfection as an end goal, we seek it as a current state. If it was an end goal for after we die, that would be mean there is no learning and we know from the sciptures that that is not the case. So what does perfection really mean? We practice becoming perfect in Christ - we let him fill us, complete us. We have a balanced partnership in our lives and just like any other relationship, we work on healing it, growing it, and seek to further understand the communication. Because of His atonement, we can become a new creature. 

I told God before transfers that He could give me a challenge - I said go ahead and lay it all out on the table buddy, it'll be fun. I am very excited to be transferred to North Brookfield but it definetly wasn't the change and challenge I was expecting by far which i suppose makes it the true challenge. 

I hope that we can each evaulate the change that is occuring in our lives and seek to become perfect in Christ as we develop in our new changes.

Eclesiastisies 3:11, 2 Corinsthians 5:17, Ezekiel 36:25-27

Love you all! Thank you for your prayers and support. 

Sister Bell

And as always, don't forget to keep it real. 

September 1, 2014

I wish there was one word to sum up this week, but since when does that ever happen? We went to a couple amazing baptisms and the missionaries are really starting to utilize the PVC effectively. We were invited to do a 3rd hour training on How to Use the PVC effectively in Central Falls, RI. Sister Hurst was so cutely excited as she served over 7 months there. It went INCREDIBLE. The spirit was really strong and there was a perfect balance of spiritual (so they'd get a feel of what we teach/how we teach) and tangible 'how to' helps. The members participated and guided the lesson as if we had put plants in the audience.

Afterwards we went to a member's home there who fed us. We are like ravenous travelers who don't have a home. Yet, I never have to worry about where my next meal is coming from - something always pops up! 

At the woman's home we shared Because of Him and our recently made Christ's Church video. If you haven't seen either one - ya need to go look at it..now.

http://easter.mormon.org/

http://www.reallifeanswers.org/everyday-faith/what-is-the-restored-church/

Because of Him is one of the standard videos in the tour that we show so lets just say I see it.....ehhh approximately 4-8 times a week. Each time it's good, but it starts to become a habit of sound in the background. This time since it was in the woman's home she held the iPad and so I couldn't see the imagery, just heard the music. The blessing of seeing it 15,00 times is that you don't need to see it to know what it looks like, I can imagine every single clip in my head at each point of the song. It transforms a bit differently in your mind when you imagine it yourself, in a very real way. We've been so busy and honestly I've been trying to push off thinking too closely about how the PVC has impacted my life because I just....i just don't have feelings. This time when watching Because of Him, I felt a washed over feeling that tingled to my toes. I thought about all of the times I've watched this video and the process of creating Christ's Church....the process of being apart of an amazing discovery. There's no real word to describe the experience with the Visitors' Center either. People always say 'oh wow what a great learning experience' ,'oh wow i'm sure that'll look good on a resume', 'oh wow, how unique', 'oh wow, what a special experience'. 

No. No, I don't think that accurately covers it. I think it actually does it an injustice. Unique it is. Learning, without a doubt. Special, yeah you can say that. But above all, it has been a SACRED experience. A HOLY experience. If you let your mind wander to a fraction of the experiences that have occurred, you would refer to it as Sacred. As we traveled home from Central Falls following the woman's house, shoot man, a couple tears came down my face! And I ain't a crier! I find out where I go this Friday. It will be very hard to leave the PVC - I feel ready - and I'm SO SO excited to sprint in proselyting again. I watch the shortest clips about missionaries or working in ward councils and I am soo missionary trunky. My poor next companion is going to have to train a greenie again with more fire than all the newbies coming out combined. 

This morning we were able to go to the temple. What a holy place. I learned new things, as always. And very exciting, I was able to do sealings for the first time. Families can be together after death - and what makes it possible is doing what's called 'sealings'. You go into a room and act in behalf of a family who has passed on. They say a specific and sacred prayer using the priesthood authority of God, this is the sealing power that allows families to be together after this life.  Hermana and I were able to act in behalf of daughters. 

To top it off we had a STELLAR primary activity with the PVC - a visit from angel Moroni, sugar cookies, coloring, oh yeah you name it! 

A holy week. Ponder, pray, watch those videos. 

Its all real guys, It's all real.

Love,
Sister Bell

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