My Gospel Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune

We created a Wheel of Fortune game this week and it is so fun! We played it with the Tony Hawk family and with Hermione's family. They all enjoyed it. The Tony Hawk boys asked if I would sing for them and I said I would sing WITH them, but not for them. The youngest boy sang a line of I am a Child of God with me and then stopped so I did too and we got back into our game. At the end though the youngest boy wouldn't say the prayer, so I told him I'd sing for him if he prayed.  He prayed and then, as per Sister Tony Hawk Mom's request, I sang "Families Can Be Together Forever". The oldest boy recorded part of it and sent a Snap Chat video to who knows who, and the six year old said, "You are like a remix of an angel, Sister Poppe!" I'm not sure what the even means. I just picture an angel collaborating with Calvin Harris to create a Rihana-esque rendition of "If You Could High to Kolob" for Mormon HD Radio, but I could be off.

My Gospel Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. I'm probably more proud of them than I should be.

 We had dinner with one of my favorite families in Thunder Mountain on Tuesday. The meal was delicious, but the highlight would have to have been when the 9 year old son told us what you get when you cross Peeta and Katniss' names. It wasn't Katta...

On Wednesday, Sister D2 wasn't feeling well, so we took it easy. We had planned to stop by a lot of stay at home moms' houses in the afternoon and were going to drop by the assisted living home as well, but we figured too many fragile young'uns and elderly folk could be infected. She took a needed nap and then we prepped for our story time on Thursday (more to come later on about that), did our normal online time, watched The Testaments, and highlighted Moroni 10:3-5 and the last two paragraphs of the introduction in all of our proselyting Books of Mormon and added pass along cards with the mission office's phone number written on them inside the front cover. It wasn't the most productive use of time, but given the circumstances it was the best I could come up with; at least we didn't just sit around our apartment.

Story time was not as successful as we had hoped. We aren't giving up though. We talked to people, gathered opinions, and decided that a different time and more advertising will probably yield more attendees. We set one up for mid-November. The actual stories and activities were really great. Sister D2 had the kids help her act out the Good Samaritan story, and I told the story of Jesus feeding the multitude. Every time I said Jesus, the kids had to say, "loves me!"  When I said bread, they had to rub their tummies and make a yummy noise, and when I said fish they had to make fish lips and wiggle their hands together like a fish swimming upstream. They were actually very captivated and didn't run around like they did during Sister D2's story. She gave them an inch and they definitely took a mile...or seven.

We had the Fall Festivals in both of our wards last weekend (I'm still not sure why they weren't called Trunk or Treat...no one was really sure why they changed the name stake wide this year). We had a great time.  We were told that we couldn't dress up on Halloween, but I figured we could accessorize!  So we bought stuff to make sashes and purchased a tiara and went as Miss America candidates.  Plus, I think the no costumes rule applies more for Halloween day when we're out working than for our ward activities, though I could be interpreting it a little too liberally. A group of girls came to the TM festival from another stake in Mesa and they said, "the sisters in our ward would never be cool enough to dress up; you're cool sisters!" #winning The validation of 13 year old girls matters more to me than it should...

Sister D2 told people that she won the pageant; I was okay with that.

We all know my answers aren't PC enough to win a pageant. 

I told everyone I won Miss Congeniality though.

 

We had a great lesson this week with Sirius Black, his wife, and Neville Longbottom.  I felt like we needed to read from the Book of Mormon with them, so we selected Ether chapter 12.  Before we started, I talked about the ways in which the Book of Mormon answers our questions through the Holy Ghost, not always through the literal words of the text.  Then I invited everyone to take a second to pray about something and promised that as we read the Book of Mormon they would receive an answer.  We ran out of time, but I felt like we needed to read a verse we didn't get to, so I said that we would just skip ahead and read that verse before we ended.  After we read that verse Sirius said that verse was exactly what he needed to hear!  We aren't sure what he was looking for exactly, but we know that we facilitated a positive experience with the Book of Mormon with him.

We helped some YW in TK with family history at the YW president's house and it was a ton of fun. She is having us come over the next 3 Sunday evenings to help different girls find names for the upcoming youth temple trip. I love love love love working with them. I can't wait to have daughters.

 

We went to the Phoenix Temple open house yesterday with Hermione and her husband and his parents. We got special permission to go with them on Monday and to change our P-Day to today, Tuesday because the only day during the entire open house they could go was yesterday. I thought it was pretty, but not nearly as beautiful as the Gilbert Temple. We had lunch at a Greek place after that, and stopped at Costco with them on the way home, where I ran into your cousin Camette!

 

I'm really learning a lot lately about listening to the guidance of the Spirit. It's pretty hard sometimes! I have learned a lot about trusting the Lord lately and just letting go and handing everything to Him to fix. Not that my desires change, but I let Him be in charge and try to stop stressing about things I don't have complete control over.  Why do people have their agency?

I finished the Book of Mormon for the fourth time on my mission today!   I'm still learning more each time I read it!  I'm not sure what I'll focus on the next time I read it yet though.

That's a wrap! Enjoy the many pictures this week.

Lots of Love,

Sister Poppe

 

I bought some curlers to try and give my hair more volume. 

This is a daily thing for me.

 

This panda was at the library and I REALLY wanted a picture with it.

I waited until there was no one around and went at it.

"I'M STICKING MY HEAD THROUGH A PANDA!"

 

Banana art at dinner

 

Nug Nug's family got some baby ducks!

 

 

 

Join the Young Liberty Lovers Club!

Hi peeps,

I had another exchange this week as my companion had her turn with our sister training leader.  It was a fun day.  I went to a different area and was with a sister named Sister White.  We taught the first lesson to a girl in their YSA ward and she cried!  I've never made anyone cry in a lesson, so that was kind of fun.  We had a fun dinner with this cute family.  Their youngest daughters are twins and they made us cards that thanked us for having dinner with them.  They were fun and enjoyed our company.  We also helped out with a YSA service project that involved sewing.  We all know that me at a sewing machine is a complete joke, so I stayed at the practice station all night and just talked to girls in the ward.  I practiced sewing figure eights with a sewing machine and sewing in a straight line. I am a disgrace to the women in my ancestry that can sew.

 

Aunt Tammy's sister is in one of my wards and they own some cows.  They had some meat to get rid of and they gave some to us!  Imagine how happy I was to get some free red meat!  We are sharing some with the elders this week for my birthday grill out.  We have grills in our apartment complex, so we are doing a district lunch on Wednesday.  It will be fun.  Some of the elders said they have never grilled and don't know how to. I thought every man was born with grilling abilities, but I guess I was wrong?  I guess its fine; I don't know how to sew after all.  I said I would grill though so it will not be disastrous.  Speaking of birthday meals, my companion took me to Smash Burger today for my birthday and bought my meal!  It was so nice of her. I told her I will get her some Pete's Fish and Chips with the gift cards you gave me next week (oh yeah, I did get your gift cards and the box you sent and the stuff you left at the mission office!  Thanks!).  A few ladies in one of our wards were saying that they wished they could have us over for dinner more often.  I like these ladies, one is the YW president and the other is the RS president.  Our meal coordinator hadn't scheduled our dinners for the week and the YW president was like, "I just always want to have you guys over for holidays but other people beat me to it!  I want Easter and Thanksgiving and Christmas!"  So I asked her what she was doing Wednesday and she said she was busy and asked why and I told her it's my birthday so it's basically a holiday.  The RS president jumped on that so she is feeding us on my birthday and the YW president is on Birthday Eve.  I'm glad that people love us in our wards and want to do nice things for us!  They will make birthday week a success I am sure!  Thanks for all the birthday cards!  As of Saturday I have received 45 cards!  A lady in the mission office asked what someone had to do to get people to love them as much as people love me.  I let her know that half of the cards were from you, mom and that I'm not sure people love me as much as they just fear you so they sent me cards because they were told to.  I also said it helps if you make a big deal about your birthday for two decades, eventually people catch on.

We stopped by this house the other day because we thought it was this guy named Tom's house that we were referred to.  It wasn't.  So we tried to talk to the lady anyway, but she wasn't having it. Later that week we drove by and I saw that her license plate says PAGAN.  #satansfriend No wonder she didn't want to talk to us.  She isn't even on the same team as we are!

Sister G and I worked the pageant Tuesday and Thursday and then went again on Friday night with Harry Potter and his soon to be step son.  After we walked through the visitor's center and looked around we still had an hour to kill.  We had our seats saved, so Harry was like, "Follow me." So we did and he started leading us away from the pageant...I knew immediately where we were going...and I was right!  A block later we were at DQ in line for Blizzard's.  We always ask Harry what he learns from things so he said to us, "What did you guys learn from this?  Oh I know, you guys learned to always follow Harry.  He knows what's up. And he goes towards ice cream."  He is a funny guy.

 

I took my mission driving test this week and passed so I am all ready to take over if Sister Gillespie gets transferred in a few weeks.  They see me rollin', they hatin'.  Seriously though, that Toyota we drive has no giddy up, so I will really just be rollin' and every one behind me will be hatin' and thinking I'm a snowbird that has over stayed her welcome.

 Hermione has taken to giving us life lessons during her lessons.  They're usually pretty funny.  We've created a hashtag #hermioneslifelessons.  Speaking of hashtags, in my attempt to be healthier I created my own motivational hashtag #totesfit815.  Because I want to be totally fit by August 2015 when I get home.  We'll see if it actually happens.  Also, that hashtag doesn't actually serve a purpose, it just makes me feel cool.  I put one on the fridge.  

I want to close with an excerpt from the letter I sent to the mission president this week:

"About a week before you gave us the atonement study guide to use leading up to Easter I decided I wanted to understand the atonement better because I didn't really know it that well.  I realized that I needed to find a way to understand the atonement better (because clearly sinning and then having to repent is not the best way to understand the atonement).  Lo and behold a week later we have this Easter study guide!  As I was reading the daily assignments I learned a lot, but it wasn't until Elder Bednar's talk about the enabling power of the atonement that my prayers were answered.  For the first time I understood how I personally relied on the atonement.  Sure I've been through some hard times where I asked for Christ to comfort me, but I wasn't sure how you were supposed to use the atonement regularly beyond repenting every day.  I'm proud at times and am overly confident in my abilities as well. I have stayed on the straight and narrow for the most part my entire life and attributed it to my personal strength.  It never dawned on me that the enabling power of the atonement is what made it possible for me to continually endure to the end.  It makes a lot of sense though.  I've often said that it is easy for me to make the right choices and always has been; peer pressure has never really been an issue for me.  Now I know why it has been easy!  Because the atonement makes it possible for us to be better and to continually improve!  The natural man will always prevail if we don't rely on the atonement.  I'm sure many people have said that the atonement packet was an answer to their prayers, but it was most definitely an answer to mine as well.  This Easter was the most meaningful one that I have ever had and I am grateful that I can continue to learn about the atonement and how it applies to my life."  In all seriousness, I have never felt closer to the savior than I do now and I understand things in an entirely new way now.  I don't know if you guys saw the Because of Him video that was all over Facebook, but it is beautiful.  I cried the first time I saw it.  We watch it multiple times a day because we love it.

Also, when you get a chance read through Alma 58-62.  They're the war chapters, but just pay attention to Moroni.  He is awesome.  I didn't realize how much he loves liberty.  He may have loved America first, but I love it most.  I think we'll hit it off in the Spirit World.  We'll start a young liberty lovers club or something.  He probably would have voted for Mitt Romney...but maybe not, since the church has no political leanings or whatever. #moroniisalibertarian #iknowit #ilovehim

Happy Birthday Week To Me!

Sister Poppe

                   10.3 pound pizza we had for dinner with Harry Potter.