Blessings and Miracles!

Last Monday after we emailed and purchased our groceries, we went to this little gold mine city tourist attraction thing in Apache Junction. It was really cool. Admission is free, but everything else has a cost, so we just roamed around and looked in all the little shops. It was an easy, breezy (beautiful Cover Girl?) type of day. We took a lot of pictures and I bought a little cactus!

As much as I love people and am generally very extroverted, I need like 12 minutes a day where I am alone. Typically that comes during my shower. The other night Sister Moreton came into the bathroom while I was showering to talk. Shortly thereafter Sister Rasheed followed, and then Sister Casey wasn't far behind. Our entire district was in our tiny bathroom chatting me up and I was like, "are you people serious?  I know we are close, but I just want 12 minutes!" They were all like, "Poppe, we just want to talk to you. We love you. We miss you. Blah, blah, blah." I felt like a mother. These children can't even entertain themselves for 12 minutes! The next night Sister Moreton started to come into the bathroom and I heard Sister Rasheed yell, "No! You no disturb my companion tonight." It was hilarious!

There is a couple in the Brimhall Ward that joined the church about a year and a half or two years ago. They're older and we stop by to visit them semi-regularly. They're funny and remind me so much of grandma and grandpa Poppe. That's probably why I love them so much.  She always gets us treat bags ready before we leave. And by treat bags I mean grocery sacks full of candy, cookies, and cans of pops.

We had a lesson with the grandparents of the missionary in Argentina this week (We'll call them Mr. and Mrs. Evita). We had left our phone number for them and the ink had smudged and so the lady wasn't dialing the correct number. This was a tender mercy, because she was calling us to cancel. Since we didn't know, we showed up and they let us in anyway and really enjoyed the visit. They are quickly growing to love us and now openly invite us back to visit. We will have to come up with clever ways to share gospel messages with them and to help them come closer to Christ. They invited us to their retirement community's choir concert in a month and I agreed to go. Hopefully if I have a new companion she is okay with that. I guess they're quite a good group.  The husband is even in quartet, so he has got to be talented.

The sister I replaced had been trying to convince the grandma and granddaughter that we are teaching to be baptized before she left. The grandma has a lot of interest but is acting like she is only taking the lessons for the granddaughter. The granddaughter is ready to be baptized and is a great girl. She is 11 and has been coming to church with a friend for a year and a half. The grandma would never agree to let her be baptized but she wouldn't disagree either. We planned a lesson on WHAT baptism is and HOW it is done and presented that and immediately the grandma finally told us her concern. The granddaughter could be sent back to live with her mom at any point if her mom gets her act together and the grandma is concerned that if she gets baptized and moves in with her mom that she won't go to church and then the granddaughter will be excommunicated. We reassured her that people aren't excommunicated that easily and continued to talk her through that concern. At the end she said, "Well, it is time to get baptized then! I didn't know all of that. Thank you!" They are going to pray about a date and tell us on Wednesday what they are thinking!  I really think the biggest thing that leads to success in missionary work is just listening and loving. I don't think they had ever actually been taught WHY we are baptized, HOW it happens, and WHAT someone feels when they are ready to be baptized (Mosiah 18:7-11...my favorite verses on baptism). The grandma has been coming to sacrament meeting now though and she is reading the Book of Mormon. We're friends because she's another Iowa transplant. Blessings and miracles!

I don't know why all of the meetings I have always end up bunched in one week. This week was a meeting heavy week. We had Zone Conference, MLC. high council leadership breakfast, and DLC. That also meant I ate HORRIBLY this week. Whenever we have meetings we are given a meal by members. And the members always want to fatten us up for some reason.  We talked a lot about faith and how to recognize statements of faith verses lies Satan tells us. I believe Satan more often than I should, so it was a good week of meetings for me.

We had a RS hike in Brimhall on Saturday that Cho Chang wanted to go to, so we went with her. It was the Wind Cave hike that we did last summer that I thought was awful. It was much better this time, partially because I am in better shape and partially because I wasn't trying to keep up with fit elders. It was actually really enjoyable!  It was steep at parts, but I wasn't the slowest person this time, so I could go at my own pace and stop and wait for others to catch up. We also had the opportunity to talk about the word of wisdom while we hiked and then had breakfast at the end.

Love,

Sister Poppe

 I'm not sure what these have to do with gold mining, but they were fabulous, 

so naturally I was drawn to them.

"Are you trapped in jail or are you go-go dancers?"-Man on the porch behind us

Oh hey. Just contemplating life with the Superstitions behind me.

District 1085

 Wind Caves Hike

I made my own freshly squeezed orange juice. People are giving us oranges by the ton and I finally decided to try juicing. It was so delicious! It takes about a thousand and seven oranges to fill a large Mason jar, but it was great.

Sister Rasheed tried her hand at juicing after I finished my Mason jar. 

She is the Amy Poehler to my Tina Fey

So I have mentioned my bosom sister, Sister Adams quite a few times in my letters home. Just as a reminder, she is the B to my FF, the Amy Poehler to my Tina Fey, the Reese's to my egg. Though I have only known her six short months, she is one of my very favorite people; I think we were probably besties in the PME or something. She ended up having to go home after our second transfer because she was having some serious medical problems. Though she had hopes of returning to the field, Missionary Medical deemed her unfit to return to missionary service. Through all of this, she kept her faith and a kind family from the area she served in offered her a place in their home and lined up a job for her here in Mesa. She moved back a little over a month ago and I finally got to see her last P-Day. It was the most joyous reunion; almost as moving as the Boy Meets World Cast Reunion earlier this year! She came bearing gifts in the form of homemade Kneader's sandwiches. We talked for about an hour and a half and hugged it out and took some pictures before we had to leave to proselyte for the evening. While this was the most touching moment of my week, it wasn't the only sweet reunion I had.

Elder Michaelis (the Uncle Si elder) went home last week because he honorably reached the end of his two year mission. He was the first real missionary friend I have had go home. Up until the end of last transfer, the people going home didn't mean much to me because I didn't know them well. He was in my district for three transfers, so we got pretty tight. He called me President Poppe instead of Sister Poppe at least 57% of the time. On Tuesday morning as we were walking up to the gym, he popped out of the door to greet us! All five of us sisters from my apartment stopped dead in our tracks. My hands leapt to my mouth and I covered my gaping expression as if the bus had just been moved from in front of my very own extreme home makeover. TLC should have been around to tape the moment; we were all so shocked and excited to see him! He brought his parents down from Utah to meet the families he served and taught. We all met his parents and talked with him. He worked out with us Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning.

After this week, I think I can fully relate to the story in which Ammon runs into the sons of Mosiah and Alma after they've been separated, preaching the gospel. He is so excited to see them that he loses his strength! I didn't do that, but I was more excited to see my missionary friends than I ever thought I would be. The people I've served with have come to occupy such a special place in my heart; even if the vast majority of my friends are twerpy elders who are 2-4.5 years younger than me.

One of the Thunder Mountain YW asked me to sing in church with her yesterday. We sang a beautiful medley of Called to Serve and Savior, Redeemer of My Soul. Her mom told me about a month ago that she heard me sing when they sat a row in front of me one Sunday and that I needed to sing in church. I thanked her for her compliments and didn't think much of it until her daughter asked me to sing a duet with her in Sacrament Meeting. The daughter said that she was thinking about what her mom told me and that she wondered if I would be more open to singing if it was a duet with her. She decided to be bold and ask the music coordinator if she could sing and the coordinator penciled her in. She then hunted me down and asked if I would join her and I agreed. The music coordinator told her later that she couldn't find anyone to sing a special musical number in the month of August and that she had prayed that somehow she would be able to find someone so she could fulfill her calling and then the YW approached her! The song was beautiful. I saw a few people in the congregation even tear up. It was an honor to sing with her; she is extremely talented. Her voice matched mine better than anyone else's I've ever sang with. "Sister Poppe! Why did you never tell us you can sing!?!" became the phrase of the day.

We have started teaching the families in Thunder Mountain and it is actually going very well. Between our two wards we already have 15 lessons scheduled for this week. With our community service, daily studies, and a zone training meeting this week, we literally have every hour Monday through Friday already booked solid. Our schedule is crazy; I am so pumped to be busy! We wrote out a four step plan for meeting with the families and our objective in teaching them. The ward mission leader loved it and instituted it as our ward mission plan.

We had a lot of lessons last week too and more already scheduled for next week. The lessons we have done so far have been really good. In every home someone has said that even though what we are teaching is something they know, they've learned something new from what we have taught. We leave every member lesson by praying with the family for missionary opportunities and then we encourage them to pray as a family again about specific people and for the faith to act on missionary opportunities. We also give them ideas for missionary opportunities; the last thing we want is for these people to just give their neighbors Books of Mormon. In the very least, the members seem to like having us in their homes so we feel loved and that is always nice. It really will be a challenge for me to leave this area; I love these people!

We had our first day volunteering at the library this week. It isn't that hard; it's just alphabetizing, but this girl who works at the library is super condescending and is always hovering "in case we do something wrong and need a little help." Puh-leaze. I have a college degree, I can handle the alphabet, and I don't need help.  #Kthanxbye. I'm very Christlike to her on the outside though. She probably just wants to feel important so I let her.

All in all we had a busy, but pretty uneventful week, so I think this about covers it!

Love,

Sister Poppe

                         We received treat bags for no reason 2 days in a row.
                        I kind of feel like an Oscar nominee with my swag bags.

              We invited one of our YM friends to go to a lesson with us and he
             invited another boy from our other ward to come as well. Their third
             friend invited himself when he found out what they were doing so we
              had three boys from three different wards in the stake at one lesson.

                                                  Sue was telling me jokes.

                                                      Perdizzle and Sista P

Talking in Your Sleep, When Does it End?

Happy Memorial Day!

We had a pretty slow week here in the Salt River Stake.  It was one of the worst ones since I've been out, but we found ways to make it enjoyable.

I came up with another object lesson for Neville that involved cakes.

I'm going to blog about it this week so I don't want to ruin it.  We made cakes though on Monday for this lesson and then Neville cancelled so we just had all this cake sitting around.  We were a little annoyed because we spent some of our own measly missionary funds on the ingredients!  We gave the cake away at our zone study for the week though so at least it didn't go to waste.

                  

We received a referral from the church on Tuesday and also had an appointment cancel so grabbed one of the young men that just graduated and got his mission call and had him follow us over to meet Kayla and Austin.  An older lady answered the door and informed us that there has never been a Kayla or Austin that has lived in that home and that no young kids do (which is interesting because we didn't know the ages of Kayla or Austin...we never said they were kids).  She then proceeded to talk to us for about 40 minutes about her religious beliefs, spirits, and her background.  We felt like the conversation went well so we took mental notes and were discussing them with the young man we took with us on the curb before we left to go home for the evening.  As we were talking two kids walked out of the house with a dog!  I asked them what their names were and they sheepishly said, "Sam" and "Matt".  WHATEVER.  OKAY FINE.  JUST WASTE FORTY OF MY MINUTES LADY.  Looking back her answers were too perfect and I think she gets a kick out of messing with missionaries. We were livid.

 

We had dinner with the most wonderful elderly couple on Wednesday.  They were funny and a good example of what a marriage should look like. They care so deeply for one another but they aren't overly mushy or anything. After dinner the husband said, "Tell your parents’ hello from us and that you are doing a wonderful job here. It was such a pleasure to host you sisters this evening. Keep working hard. You are doing so well." So, hey from the Moore's! Brother Moore is also a fan of RFD TV and tractor pulling. I learned all of this by asking about his Ernest Tub CD I saw on the counter and telling him about how dad likes Ernest Tub. He was impressed and thinks he would be just the best of friends with dad. He said he would watch tractor pulls and RFD TV with dad any day. Yes, I do believe I had dinner with the old man version of dad; that is probably why I loved him so much. The wife was super patriotic so I loved her too #godblesstheusa #andoldpeoplewhoarenotcrabby

We had a zone conference on Wednesday. It was really good. We talked about being consecrated missionaries and I was thoroughly humbled for an hour straight (almost to the point of tears, but I held it together). I've come to realize that feelings of inadequacy are never going to leave while on a mission, but that doesn't make experiencing them any easier! I left the first hour of that meeting feeling like the vilest of creatures. I will admit that I have the tendency to take things too personally and to the most negative extreme, but there still are things I need to work on and zone conference provided a good reflective time for me to recognize my plethora of faults. We also had a wonderful meeting on interacting with ward council members and how missionary work is actually supposed to work at the ward level. All ward councils were invited and we had people from both wards come. I have been working so hard to establish accountability in both wards I'm serving in and have tried to establish relationships of trust with some of the ward leaders so the work would pick up here and I think this meeting validated the things that Sister Dumas and I want to see instituted in our wards. Everything that was said came from a plan laid out by L. Tom Perry so it isn't just coming from our mouths now, it is from an apostle and that will help. I told one of our bishops that we want this to work and he agreed with us so I followed up by saying that Sister Dumas and I will keep the ward council accountable.

We will be blatantly honest when things aren't done right. He is looking forward to a positive change and a re-energized attitude about missionary work. I think everyone will just pray that we get transferred because they will be sick of us "motivating" them.

Sometimes I think I was called on a mission to act as a cheerleader/Dr. Phil hybrid (still better than being a Prius hybrid).  Not exactly what I had in mind when I decided to serve a mission, but I guess we can't all save souls. Some of us have to do the administrative work.

On Thursday we had a really fun dinner with a family in one of our wards that we didn't know very well.  They had all the same OCD issues as me (like taking eggs, ice cubes, and sacrament cups out in the right order and tv volume on a multiple of 5 (except they actually liked theirs on even numbers). At the end the kids played us their piano recital pieces and they had me play as well because my poker face is horrible and they saw through my lie and knew that I played piano.

Corn dogs were only 50 cents at Sonic on Thursday. We went twice. The drive through man remembered us. #embarrassing  (Who works shifts longer than 5 hours though anyway?)

                              

We had a member go with us to our lesson with Harry Potter on Friday and afterward she asked if we wanted to go to Sonic with her for half priced shakes. We agreed and went there for the third time in 36 hours. It just so happened, that four of the elders in our zone were biking home during our visit. They saw us and harassed us for being at Sonic again. They stopped their mocking phrases pretty quickly when the member offered to buy their shakes too.

Every week I think about telling you about random things that are not necessarily new, but that I've never told you before.  This week I am going to share with you the rivalry between Arizona Mesa full field sisters and Arizona Mesa Visitor Center Sisters. This is a serious rivalry.  It goes un-discussed and people act like it isn't there, but it is.  Whispers are shared in closets and other closed places between full field sisters about the injustices of being a real missionary.

The rivalry is up there with the Sharks and Jets, the Taliban and the US, the Bloods and the Crips, and the Team Edward and Team Jacob teens. I'm telling you this is real stuff here.  Someday I will go into more detail about the main points of the rivalry, until then you will just have to be content with this knowledge and know that in the case of a battle you have to side with the full field sisters (because we are better and because we are probably more dangerous because we have more street smarts because we don't serve most of our day in an air conditioned building with scripted monologues).

We hardly ever have service to do in our wards and we are supposed to do service once a week. I brought this up in ward council in one of our wards and said that we ask people all the time if we can serve them and they say no. The bishop said that every woman likes their windows washed so we could always do that. We took that seriously and bought a squeegee and some microfiber towels and spent a few hours on Saturday walking through one of our gated communities asking ward members if we could wash their windows. A lot of people weren't home, but we ended up washing the front windows of two members' homes. At one point in time I was on a step stool on a ledge of a house and I just knew I was going to die. It didn't end up happening, but I'm sure that mental picture about gave you a heart attack, mother given how clumsy I am. This service must have made an impression on me because that night in bed I guess my companion and I had the following conversation. I was asleep, she was not:

Me (in a disgusted voice): Why do we have this bucket. And the water?

Her: We are doing service, we are going to clean windows.

Me: (scoffs) Gross!

Sunday was a pretty good day.  We met a potential investigator in Thunder Mountain and I have a new fan club in Twin Knolls comprised of children.  When the Cheesecake Factory Family got to church they sat in the pew in front of us instead of on the side like normal and Noah came right on back and sat with me while his sister turned around in the pew to talk to me.  At the same time another family arrived and their toddler insisted on talking to the missionaries so she came over and was stroking the leg that Noah wasn't trying to climb on.  I talked to them until church was about to start and then Noah stayed in my pew until he was summoned to his row after the opening prayer.  He sulked on and off during sacrament meeting because he wasn't allowed to show me his toys or sit with me.  In relief society I played the piano; it went alright.  I'm still not half as good at the piano as I was at the clarinet, but we got through the hymns alright.

Today the Cheesecake Factory Family invited us over for breakfast and to "help" them put pavers in their side yard.  Really Brother Cheesecake Factory just wanted us to be there to talk to his neighbor who was going to help to.  He staged an entire fake breakfast visit so we would "just happen" to be there when his neighbor came over.  We had a really tasty breakfast and we did help for a little bit with the pavers.  It really was a two man job though and I'm not really good at things that take precision and need to look nice.  I ended up playing an elaborate game of shark attack with my bestie Noah and his sister Maya.  My companion played for a while but then went over and talked to the parents.  As we left Sister Dumas told me, "When we got there for breakfast Maya told me I had to be her best friend because you were Noah's, so she only wanted to be my friend by default.  After your shark attack game and her new nickname for you-Sister Poppe Seed-I would say that you've won her admiration and she would rather be your second best friend than my first best friend." Their mom is just sad that missionaries aren't allowed to babysit.

We also went to Deseret Book today, Backyard Taco (missionaries eat half off there and it is delicious!  Think Chipotle but more authentic and better), Winco, and we were invited to a member's home for Memorial Day Dinner (we normally fend for ourselves on P-Day's for dinner).

I'm still trucking through the Old Testament and am really cruising through the Book of Mormon.  I finished a few weeks ago and re-started and I'm already in Mosiah.  I really love Nephi though.  I didn't realize how wonderful of a missionary he was until I became a missionary.  He is Christlike and so patient and loving.  He always mentions his love for others and his distress at their sins.  Everyone always wants to emulate Alma or Ammon, but I'm really trying to be more like Nephi.

That about does it!

Love,

Sister Poppe

                                        

PS:  We met the first litter of puppies that Harry Potter's dog fathered.  They really were precious!  We can't wait until we get to meet the other puppies when puppy mama number two gives birth.