Obama is Gay and Michelle is Actually a Man?

Hello!

I forgot to tell you guys a funny Sue story!  Before she broke her hip we were there one day and I was playing the piano and looked over and saw Sue rummaging through my purse.  I saw her shaking my mints and I went over and took them from her and took my purse and put it up higher.  She started motioning at me and told the nurse to chase after me because I took her stuff!  It was hilarious! She was so worked up about it that she wouldn't let anyone talk to her.  She forgot about it pretty quickly though and we were friends again.

We had a ZTM this week and I was asked to give a training (again...I keep thinking they'll stop asking me because my presentations are always borderline inappropriate, but somehow I think that is the reason I am asked back again each month to train on some missionary topic).  I talked on what to do when there's nothing to do, and how to effectively online proselyte (because according to my zone leader I am the queen of online pros). I basically told the other missionaries that we have to be ourselves when we are online.  No one is going to join the church because we just put a scripture, quote, or nice message on our pages.  Our personalities have to shine through!  I shared a couple examples from my Facebook and told them how many likes I got.  This lead to a question and answer session where I gave advice (that was unplanned and also lead me to going over my time limit). It was so nice to see a few people from my zone post some really great stuff on Facebook after my training though.  I hope they continue to post uplifting thoughts with a little bit of themselves embedded in them.  The Lord didn't call robots to serve him, he called us, and I am going to continue to be Amanda Poppe the missionary.  Not Molly Mormon the sister with bad style and no personality who is good at smiling and quoting Nephi.  I also made a word find for them to do with ideas to kill time with in the afternoon when appointments are hard to come by.

Sky-River Zone after ZTM

The Women's Broadcast was really great!  Neill F. Marriott's talk really spoke to me; I can relate to her a lot.  I have a lot of pride as well that I am actively trying to remove from my life, but it is hard to be humble!  I am becoming better at it though and will continue to acknowledge The Lord's hand in my life and the talents that Heavenly Father has given me.  I enjoyed the whole conference because it was a little more hard core than normal.  There was less love and more accountability expected of the women of the church.  There are too many weak women in this religion and I am glad that they are finally starting to tell us what we need to do to be better.  I loved that they told us to go to the temple regularly.  Too many girls only go to the temple to get married and don't really understand the importance of what they are doing and then they still wear their immodest clothes and don't ever go back again after their wedding.  YOU GO GENERAL RELIEF SOCIETY BOARD.  TELL THOSE WOMEN TO KEEP THEIR COVENANTS! #bringdownthehammer

A member of the Twin Knolls Ward hosted a social after the Women's Broadcast on Saturday and Sister D2 and I made Oreo balls!  I made some with birthday cake Oreos and Sister D2 made some with mint Oreos.  People loved them. And us. But they always love us.

At one of our Visitor Center trainings, the sisters showed us a demo of a story they share with kids when they come in.  They said they did a test run of a story time and had a lot of success, but they don't want it to be too large so they're not advertising it. I was a little bitter that yet again, the VC sisters get to do fun things and I have to actually work so I decided that I was going to establish story time in our stake because it is far from the VC and because I want to tell kids cute Bible stories.  I brought it up to my ward mission leader and he loved the idea and he passed it along to Bishop as well and he approved and loved it too.  I talked to the other sisters in our stake and we are moving forward with a stake wide children's story hour hopefully to take place in the next few weeks!  The idea behind it is actually that stay at home mom's will invite their non-member mom friends to go and that we will be able to use this as a solid proselyting tool.

Updates on the investis:

Lavender Brown: We had a wonderful lesson with her last week.  She is really chatty so we always have a hard time getting a word in, so at the end of one of her long stories I asked if we could just take a few minutes to each bear testimony of our belief in Heavenly Father's love for us.  She agreed so my companion and I, as well as Nug Nug who we took with us to the lesson, all shared our feelings about Heavenly Father's love.  We all cried like a bunch of wimps and it was a powerful experience!  We asked Nug Nug's mom to offer Lavender a ride to the Women's Broadcast on Saturday and she did and Lavender came and really enjoyed it.  I know that we have a long way to go with her, as she is pretty non-commital, but we are really working hard to get her friends in the ward so that she will have an incentive to learn more.

Harry: He is doing well!  He told me that he has changed his prayers to include me not just staying another transfer, but for my entire 18 months mission. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if I never make it out of this area.

Hobbit Hole Family: The grandpa hasn't had alcohol in about a month!  He said that he knows that the blessing he had is the reason he doesn't have a desire to drink anymore.  We are still having a hard time meeting with them on a regular basis, but we had a good conversation with the grandpa and committed him to start reading the Book of Mormon again.  He said he has taken a step back from religion the last few weeks but feels that we are right and that it is time he starts to study again.  PROGRESS! While we were there, the grandpa shared with us all of his conspiracies and it was all I could do to hold back my laughter.  He is convinced that Obama is gay and that Michelle is actually a man and that there will be the first gay marriage at the white house soon that Obama is going to preside over.  He also believes that he is the anti-Christ.  I guess "In God We Trust" is being taken off of our money in accordance with Obama's orders as well (this one I'm actually sure could be true, someone will have to confirm or deny it for me).

 

Tony Hawk Boys: Those little bandits are still just lovin' life.  They're doing well and were all at church on Sunday for the first time in a long time.

Love,

Sister Poppe

 

Kool temple rock.

I have been in love with that lion ever since Jeff's wedding in

December and finally got a selfie with it!

 Temple Trip

                    
       One of our ward missionaries surprised us with Sonic Drinks when she
             showed up for Harry's lesson on Thursday. I love these people.

THIS IS WHAT THIRTY SIX REESE'S PUMPKINS LOOK LIKE! 

 Only one person has been kind enough to mail them to me, but I

 know that she will be blessed for her sacrifice.

Our ghetto apartment has a leaky window; this was my solution as we don't have maintenance's number and I was not about to run to the office in the torrential downpour and ruin my hair.

          We had a lesson with a family in the Thunder Mountain Ward last night
                                                         and they have an 
                                                      INDOOR PET PIG!
                                                      INDOOR, PEOPLE. 
          They said he is more house broken than the dogs and more well behaved
           as well.  Sure enough while we were there he had to go to the bathroom
              and he went to the door and snorted!  I loved it. His name is Cletus.

 

 

 

If You Hear Howling Around 4:00 PM Arizona Time…..

Happy Post America Birthday Week!

I will start with my 4th of July festivities being as that was the focal point of the week.  We were told that we couldn't go anywhere without a specific appointment or invitation, so it was like a half day off.  We had breakfast at our ward mission leader's home in the Twin Knolls ward and then we had a lesson with Hermoine.  We did our normal weekly planning that we do on Fridays as well.  My companion and I hosted a district luncheon at our apartment complex that was a lot of fun.  We provided the meat being as we still had a bunch of steak to eat from the members in Thunder Mountain that gave us some (Tammy's sister and her husband, actually). As we were getting the grill ready to go I turned the gas up a bit too high and as I was hitting the ignite button I asked my companion to open the lid for some stupid reason; I clearly wasn't thinking.  As she opened the lid the build-up of propane ignited and launched a ball of fire in our general direction.  We both screamed and jumped back.  The only casualty was a patch of my right arm hair.  We had a good laugh about it after the fact though.  In the evening we went to another ward's bishop's house and hung out there.  He invited all of the missionaries in the stake over because he knew we weren't allowed to be out in the evening if we weren't invited somewhere.  We ended up singing songs around the piano for the last hour we were there and it was a really spiritual experience.  All in all it was a pretty good 4th. We didn't see any fireworks because we had to be home by 9, so that was a little disappointing, but at least we got to spend the 4^th of July in America!  A lot of missionaries don't even get to do that.

We had our weekly visit with the Hobbit Family and as we were leaving the wife stopped us to tell us that she had written a letter to God earlier in the year and told him that she wanted her house to be centered on him by the end of 2014 and He needed to help her with that.  She said that she believes we were sent to her to help her get her family focused on God and that we are the answer to her letter prayer.  How cool!

I had another cool experience happen just today at Wal-Mart.  We were in the parking lot and at the same time my companion and I were like, "Hey!  We know that girl!"  My companion was like, "I served in her ward a few transfers ago, how in the world do you know her?" I knew her from my BYU ward 2nd semester junior year.  We parked fast and approached her and her mother in the parking lot and the girl remembered me and we chatted for a few minutes before we went inside to get our groceries.  She only stayed at BYU the one semester I knew her and then she moved back to Mesa so I figured I would never see her again.  Anyway, as we got online today she messaged me on Facebook and told me that she has been struggling, but wants to serve a mission and that she wants to talk to me about serving.  I'm so glad we ran into her at Wal-Mart, because I know she wouldn't have messaged me if we wouldn't have reconnected after almost two and a half years.

Our new ward mission leader in Thunder Mountain called our dinner appointment on Saturday night and told them to tell us that he needed to talk to us so we had to swing by his house on our way home from dinner.  We had an appointment right after dinner, so we went by an hour later and showed up to his house during his son's mission farewell party.  We found him and asked what he wanted to talk to us about, and he said, "Nothing.  I just wanted you guys to come to James' party and have a break and relax for a little bit.  I'm the ward mission leader; I'm allowed to do that.  I knew that if I told you I needed to talk to you, you would actually come and enjoy yourselves a take a break for a bit.  You guys deserve a break; here have some sweets!" It was so funny of him to stage this entire fake important meeting so we would come to his son's party!  We just love that family though!  If you saw the picture that was tagged of us on Facebook where we are laughing in a circle of recent high school graduates, it was from that party.  We have an oddly good relationship with a lot of the boys who are about to leave on missions; I'm slightly embarrassed at how well we can connect with 18 year old boys.

Speaking of getting along with teenage boys, Neville told me he deleted his Facebook so we needed another place to connect so that I don't forget about him after my mission.  I told him about my Twitter and Instagram and he followed me on there and then told me I should be honored because he is still famous in the social media world and he only follows 17 people on Instagram and Twitter and he has over 7000 followers on both.  Seriously, who is this kid? I told him about my idea to write a book after my mission and asked if he would endorse it if he is still famous.  He said he definitely would, especially if he is mentioned in it.  He also said he will give me a Twitter shout out sometime this week; I know I won't see it for a year, but I'm excited that a teen social media celebrity is giving me a Twitter shout out.  #fangirling Also people started hash tags with his name in it.  #nevillesnumberonefan

I've been studying gifts of the Spirit lately and then we had a lesson on them in Sunday school this week so that was convenient!  I loved it.  Today when I was reading in the Book of Mormon I read some really cool verses that pertained to gifts of the Spirit!  So we talked about how one gift of the Spirit is to receive a witness of Christ and another is to believe the words of those who have received a witness of Christ.  In 1st Nephi chapter 2, verse 16 Nephi receives a witness of Christ and then in verse 17 he tells Sam about his experience and it says that Sam believed his words, so Sam received the gift to believe Nephi's words!  I was so excited to find that little gem.  I am really getting better at picking out information from the scriptures; I hope this isn't just a mission talent that will leave me when I'm home, because I am getting more out of scripture study than I ever have and I love it.

I finished the Book of Mormon earlier this week and as I was in Ether I was struck by how wonderful chapter 12 is.  I think everyone should re-read it at least once every six months because it is a wonderful reminder of the power of faith and the way it can bless our lives.  You should all read it!

My companion and I are on another healthy kick. We gave a member some money to go to Costco and buy us these protein shakes we are going to start having instead of lunch.  When you can't control the fatty things people feed you for dinner you have to resort to skipping lunch. If you hear howling around 4pm Arizona time every day, it is just my companion threatening to eat her hand if we don't get food soon.  She is moodier than me when she doesn't get to eat. Things may get dicey as we attempt to cut back on the calories. #prayforus #andthoseweinteractwith

I think that about covers my week!

Love,

Sister Poppe

patriotic companions

A Worthy Goal

I had a moment last week when I realized I am not the woman that my Heavenly Father believes I can be.  I have talents and blessings that I am not utilizing.  I have been progressing academically since I began college, as well as professionally.  I do not doubt that I have paved a path that will lead to a successful career and future if I wish it to.  By the standards of the world I am doing life the right way.  That being said, I have spent the last school year being spiritually stagnant.  I haven’t pushed myself to grow further in the light of Christ and I became content with my humble testimony.  It’s time that changes.  While reading my patriarchal blessing last week I realized I need to start actively working toward becoming the valiant woman of Christ I am ordained to be.  I have been blessed with the ability to be a light to those who wander in darkness—something I don’t do often enough.  Boats are crashing on the shore because my lighthouse bulb hasn’t been shinning very brightly lately.  I set a goal to spend half an hour a day studying Preach My Gospel because I want to be prepared to be a missionary, whether that be for 18 months out in the field, or just in every day settings where people may ask me questions about my faith.  I also think there are things I can learn from this text that will help me grow as a person.  As I study Preach My Gospel and my scriptures I will be posting insights on this blog for surfers of the World Wide Web (or, let's be real...just my mom) to read.  I’m doing this for multiple reasons.  First, I’m trying to get more comfortable with the idea of sharing my faith.  I group faith in the broader category of emotions, and I am awful at sharing my emotions—I would rather pull my arm hairs out individually with tweezers than tell someone I love them, cry in front of another human, or admit openly that I care about someone and miss them.  It’s not that I don’t have faith or that I don’t love people (trust me, I love a lot of people—some who don’t even know that I do), I have just always struggled with communicating deeper emotions (and not because I was abused as a child—I come from a loving family, it really just stems from my larger fear of rejection and my fear of depending upon other people...wow, talk about a therapeutic tangent).  Second, I’m trying to keep myself accountable to my goal.  If I say I’ll blog about something then I’m more likely to actually do it.  Third, I hope that people who are struggling with their faith (of any religion, whether they be Mormon or not) stumble upon this and recognize that no one is perfect and we all have to take a step back sometimes and evaluate where we are spiritually.  I really enjoy blogging, but have been struggling with finding a meaningful topic to write about lately.  I will continue to rant when I want to about every topic under the sun on my personal blog and updating individuals on my life, but this blog will be dedicated to my deeper thoughts and spiritual insights and progression.