Sorry this has taken forever to get back to doing....Here is the latest news from Sister Irons

Yes, this week was rainy and that makes it feel like a Florida Summer (because really it's summer here until like January or February). Monday had a few random moments which were pretty entertaining. While we were shopping a guy came over to me and told me that I looked like his step-daughter and that's why he had done a double take..... Weird, yep just a tad. But then when we told him we were missionaries for the LDS church he started asking a lot of questions, which of course we tried to answer. He wanted to learn more but didn't want to set up an appointment with us so we gave him a Book Of Mormon and a few of the pamphlets that we carry around. Who knows he seemed like he was looking for a new church so you never know. As we were getting ready to leave we got the awkward side hug since we were going to shake hands and he wasn't... Haha, he then asked if he had offended us and we like noooo, just a mission rule. He felt really bad but then gave us a handshake. Oh the moments of being a Sister!

Tuesday was kinda crazy. We've been looking for ways to find people in both of our areas, our district overs Bristol/Blountstown and Hosford. We've come up with a few good ideas and we're thinking of maybe doing a Halloween festival later in October ( or as they call them here "Fall Festival" they supposedly have this thing about Halloween being too pagan.... But they end up doing everything they would at a Halloween party that they do at their Fall Festivals...). Then we met with a less active< Angela, at Sister Copeland's home. We've been trying to figure out what we can teach her and help her but she doesn't really say anything during the lessons and so they obviously aren't doing her much good. At the end I switched it up a bit at the last minute. Ended up talking about how as missionaries we could literally teach the gospel until our faces turned blue but it wasn't going to help her if she didn't take it seriously. Then we asked her if she wanted to really be here learning and she said yes. I pulled a Sister Smith, our President's wife. I pulled out a calender from my handy dandy binder and asked her where she wanted to start. Did she want to work on church, prayer, reading her scriptures or what? She picked attending church and we told her there's no better time to start than this Sunday if that's really what you want to do. She said okay and went out later that day to get something to wear. I think she was kind of shocked that we were being so blunt with her but hey you gotta do something to move forward and this worked really well (she was a church Sunday with her baby and younger brother and sister). Sister Copeland looked at us with that "That's what she needed, sweet." look. Haha, I love members. Sister Copeland is really awesome. She's been this girl's family visiting teacher since forever and has done so much for them.When Angela was in HS she would get rides from Sis. C to seminary every morning and church all the time. Sister C totally goes way, way, way above and beyond for this family. Afterwards we had an appointment with a less active, Sister Covington. We've started to read the Book of Mormon with her. So far so good. She likes when we come over and hopefully we'll get her to come to church again soon. Cross your fingers that this week works out!!! Then we had our awesome Tuesday night of Jordan Family time, haha. We played the gospel bingo with them and Skyler and Mason loved it. I think it really helped Amy out a lot too. Then we read Mosiah 18 with them since they weren't able to read it together this past week. And drum role................................................... Skyler really was set to get baptized this past Saturday! He was really excited about it. That family is awesome, all the Jordan clan are really. Gotta love 'em.

Wednesday was a "what's our life today?" kinda day.

We went to the nursing home to sing some to our great senior citizens. We had a party :) Then we had an appointment cancel on us so we went to Helping Hands to serve for a bit then saw one of our potential gators, Miss Diane. She became an actual Gator by the end of our visit! WHOO-HOO!! Then we had an appointment with Amy Nesmith. We ended up walking to her house from the church and OYM'd a lady on our way there and got a potential gator out of it too, Amanda and her kiddos. We have an appointment to follow up with them at the end of the week. Fun thing was when we got to our gator's house she wasn't there so we took the long way back to the church and found another potential on the way, her name's Pat and we've got a church tour with her this Thursday. Cross your fingers that this week works out!!! Then we went to mutual. Early in the week our YW president had been looking for ways she and the girls could do a service project and I suggested doing candy bouquets. Who doesn't want a vase of candy? So she asked if I'd come and teach everyone what to do since she didn't know. Why not? Haha, that was a preetty eventful mutual let me tell ya. I couldn't really remember how much gardening tape it really took to do them so we didn't have enough to make the sticks look like flower stems. Haha, it was totally the thought that counted :P But I'm sure that the people who received them loved them! Then we had an awesome dinner with Sister Hatcher  with her famous shaved ice :) Yummmm. And after, this is the funny part, we got stood up by our member who we were going to teach. We got there and knocked a few times then went to the car to call. She was at the YW's president's house. Well that was ironic so we rode by the hospital and heart attacked a member's car who was visiting someone. Great right?

Thursday we had a lot of people cancel on us, but there was one appointment that worked out real well, Miss Mathis. We taught her the Plan of Salvation. We went through everything to just show her what it was and then we're going through and dividing up the plan into 3 parts and talking more about it. She thought it was really cool ;) No "ah-ha" moments or anything. We can tell she's still struggling about whether to come to church with us or not. We're always hoping for the best with her :) We had heard that Sister Rynn was having a hard time via her husband so we decided to heart attack her too (it's a thing what can I say? It's easy, fun, and let's the member know ya love 'em). We parked our car at McDonald's down the rode and walked,  put the stuff on her porch, knocked and ran for it. Well there's a silly hedge in front of their door... I almost twisted my ankle while making my get away. Hedges, they are dangerous people! Anyway no one came to the door so we knocked/rang the door bell. Still nobody so we left and texted her husband. Come to find out we scared her half to death, and this girl doesn't get scared!!! Plus we had our lesson cancel a few hours before and then there was a miss-communication with another member and that night was all cray-cray!!! What's the mission life? haha.

Friday wasn't really eventful, did weekly planning and saw a less active, Sister Connie. I really have never read the Book of Mormon with someone like her, ha! She has her own way of looking at things so one paragraph from the intro and we spent like 15 minutes explaining it to her. It made for an interesting conversation for sure!

Saturday, ONE OF THE BEST DAYS EVER!!!! Filled up the font and got everything ready. So here's the connection with everyone, because I don't know if I've really explained it before. There's the grandparents who are really super active, Wil and Jane Jordan. Their son-in-law, Gene Matheney, lives right behind them with his two kids Lilly and Joseph. Lilly is the one we've been teaching and Joseph had been baptized when he was 8 but is really inactive. Gene's wife Jenny, Wil and Jane's daughter, lives in Panama City and get's the kids during the week so we've been teaching Lilly on Saturdays at her grandparents house. The other set of Jordan's that we've been working with is Joe, Wil and Jane's son, and his wife Amy plus their kids. Amy has been investigating since around this past April and so has Skyler (he's 9). Joe has been super less active since after his first marriage with Skylar and Mason's momma. At the beginning of the year he requested home teachers and since then has been coming back really well :) He's recently become able to baptize Skyler. Okay so I hope that was clear.. Sorry if it's not, I did try :)

Anyway. Joe was able to baptize Skyler and Lilly, which was so cool. I've grown to love that Jordan clan so much and to know where that family has been this was such a blessing for them. We got permission to have them confirmed afterwards so Wil did Lilly's and Joe did Skyler's. The Spirit was there when Lilly received the Holy Ghost but oh my goodness there was such an explosion of Spirit awesome-ness when Joe was confirming Skyler. That really one of the best parts of my mission. Joe came back and was able to do the awesome Dad stuff for his son's baptism. Not gonna lie, there were a few tears of gratitude for that moment. Amy thought it was really spiritual. Joe's got a brother that was excommunicated that attended and expressed some gratitude for Joe being a good example in the gospel. Joe looked at us and then at him and told him that he knew some missionaries and Amy said that it was worth taking the discussions and that he should do it. His response???? I don't know, we were being pushed away by the people rushing out of the room!!! Cliff hangers.... Sometimes they're way too suspenseful. Before the baptism, though, Amy told us that her grandma had passed away that morning. She was really close to her and put a good face on for the baptism. But Jane said that Amy was very positive about her g-ma being with her g-pa again. Score for the Plan of Salvation. But she wasn't having a good day and what do my companion and I do for people not having a good day? We heart attack them... We got her some snickers and cut some hearts then road to their place. And their place is far away in the middle of no where AND it started to rain like none other on our way there. We were like really?! But we made it and decorated her car. There were fun moments in between that's for sure :P Gotta love last minute, middle of nowhere heart attacks in the pouring rain :)

Sunday, well we kinda got stood up by all of our appointments so we went and started teaching a lot of members the lessons haha. Nothing too eventful. 

The gospel is true, there are good times ahead and awesome people to meet!

Com Muito Amor,

Sister Irons

P.S.

So this question was posed by a missionary I served with and wanted to know what y'all's answers would be.

"How do you be happy? Like genuinely happy?" 

Italiano, training for motherhood, leaves, worms, transfers, and alligators oh my!

Wow, this week was just jammed full of greatness, haha.

Monday -

 my companions and I went to Wakulla Springs, and I saw lots of amazing alligators, a momma and baby manatee, AND I got to ride on the boat, with permission from the Mission President of course :) It was great and now I have way too many pictures of alligators than I know what to do with haha. A non-member couple took us and I think we all had a hoot.

 

Tuesday-

  We went to help Nancy, a non-member, set up her printer... She lost her paper so we really couldn't do anything. And then spent the rest of the day trying to contact formers and potentials cause we're in an investigator drought right now! But things will come together.

 

Wednesday-

  Nothing too exciting, was another contact/tract day.

 

Thursday-

  We went to the Family History center with Miss Nancy for a bit. Had Sister Ladle take us down. It was pretty good for me. I was able to look at some things for my 4 generation chart, but not so much luck for Nancy. Her parents only exist on two censuses. We couldn't figure out anything else... I think that there's two options for this personally 1) They were spies! 2) They traveled with the Doctor and liked it in the 1900's. I think 2 is more realistic but that's just me :D

 

Friday-

  We were asked by Sister Mills to write a little paragraph about the work we do at the Shelter and send in a few pictures. Well this was the day to take them!!! There's a newer volunteer there whose name is Maurizio Bertoldi, yes he's an immigrant from Italy :) And one of the sweetest old guys ever. He's a Physics prof. at FSU. Anyway he pulls out the chair s for the women that come in and on Friday he brought roses :) Sweet huh? He gave us all one and then one for each of the women that came in. Then he randomly asked if he could get a tour of our church after we were done... YES! So we did and it went pretty good. We didn't have a key so we called the Elders and asked if they could set it up, we have amazing Elders because everything was great when we got there!! We owe them BIG time. We invited him to church, totally forgetting it was fast Sunday (so we could explain), and he said yes!

 

Saturday-

   We did the biggest clean up project I've ever seen in my life. Sister Sanchez is a less active and her yard probably hasn't been done in 3 years since her husband passed away. It took us three hours to get the front done and the backyard about 2/3 done. The pile of bags/dead trees/trash that was there was HUGE! Got a picture of all us missionaries on top of it :) We look awesome!

     Later that night we had dinner with a member and her cousin. It went well until her 7 yr old cousin up chucked. It was really funny (weird) to see everyone's reaction. My companions just looked away her cousin looked away after handing her a bowl and I was just like okay let's clean up. Her cousin just looked at me and said sorry. Haha, it wasn't that big of a deal because the whole thing wasn't bad. She told me I was being well trained for motherhood and told me I passed haha. Yay for me huh?

 

 Sunday-

    MAURIZIO came to church for sacrament evening :D YES, he had to leave for mass afterwards but he felt something he didn't intend to feel. Spirit? Yes! Then we went over to a member's home and had some pretty awesome steaks :) I was like yes, my family isn't the only one :)

  We had a few appointments cancel but our last one didn't and it was great. The Ramsey family is less active and divorced. Sista Ramsey wants to get back into activity she's just trying to get her kids along with her. We are going to try and have FHE over there some times. Plus? Her kids love service, and this ward is going to have a lot of service projects pop up! Score :)

  So we have a family that gave us some food, awesome right? I didn't want to buy cereal so my companion and I just used the stuff they had given us..... After we had gone through a bowl we saw that there were webs in the bag... Then.... my other companion saw a worm.... Needless to say we feel a little sick even today.

 

I always have the intent for these emails to be super short but they never are... I blame me not writing in my journal haha, sorry :) Anyway, I hope all is well!

 

Fique firme na fe!!

 

Com Amor,

Sister Irons

 

P.S.

DRUM ROLE........................Sista Irons has been transferred to Fort Walton :)

Well some fun news!

I have some fun news! I now have a mission daughter. That's right I'm a trainer, well co-trainer with Sister Mehew. It's been a week and it's interesting. But our Greenie's name is Sister Pickett and she's 25 from Layfette (?) Utah. She's pretty great and it's awesome to see another new missionary come out and see how they learn, it's great no matter the age. She's different in a good way. Haha. But I pray for love and patience everyday... Trios are definitely a BIG learning experiences, especially since my first area I was in a trio. It's kinda funny though with this transfer there are a lot of trios... I guess lots of people needed each other! BUt anyway.

Tuesday-

We had dinner with a member family who are great, and the husband was just giving us referrals like none other!!! We were asked to see their neighbor and then a lady that is like a grandmother to their kids...GREAT! We were like this is awesome, and I was like you trust us YES! And I think I told you about the referral that we got from Brother Massey in our ward. It's his step-daughter and her family. Well we tried to contact them but we couldn't find building Q...

Wednesday-

We picked up Sister Pickett and then went to the Shelter where we gave out 2 Books of Mormon to some other volunteers and one asked me about my conversion... I was like well let me tell you. It's was great how amazing and simple of a testimony that I was able to share about the Book of Mormon and prayer with her. She seemed a little interested but not a lot, her name is Sarah and we're hoping to run into her again while serving there. She's a freshman as FSU doing psychology. And then we came home and put our apartment together haha. We are in a two bedroom apartment but we all have to sleep in the same room so we got bunk beds from another area in the mission and the office elders 
came by and put them together... Bless their hearts. Let me put it this way we made them both climb to the top bunk and kinda jump on it to make sure it was put together properly haha. Anyway we lived haha. But that night we were able to get in with Mr. Jerry and Sister Hanchey and teach the beginning of the Plan of Salvation. And we got him to commit to baptism but no actual date yet! I extended but I think I did it too quickly. I just felt like someone needed to ask him if he would be baptized, it's a moment that needs some role play and more faith in the Spirit haha. But like I said Mr. Jerry said he would when he found out for himself what we were saying was true. And we invited him to church this week as well.....

Thursday:

Weekly Planning.... Oh my minah nossa... Well we got Weekly Planning done in record time which I 
thought I was going to die of shock... Like really, you have no idea... Anyway we were able to do that and then we saw a LA member Miss Molly. It was interesting. Then we got to see a DNC, do not 
contact. She was a referral and she was actually totally fine to see us and have us share a message with her. Great huh?! Well we found out that she has dementia but that she's got awesome daughters, who are both in our ward, that take really good care of her. Then we played some church basketball with a few none members. Goodness that was probably the most laughing I've done out of the MTC haha.

Friday:

We decided that we were going to contact the Clement's referrals! Go door approaches! Well we 

went to their neighbor's home first and we didn't get an answer but there was someone who had just gotten home so what do we do? We go on over to talk with her... Definitely wasn't interested BUTwe gave her a card so there was that! Then we went to go see the other referral, they call her Mom-Mom. They didn't want to tell her that they sent us because Sister C wasn't sure how well that would go over. It's was interesting seeing them... discuss... how they wanted to go see her haha. Anyway we were so ready to knock and tell her what we were doing and about our message... No answer! And there were people walking around in the house, that's not an awkward situation at all haha. But then I felt like we needed to knock on another door. We did, talked with her about eternal families for about 30 minutes and got a return appointment... Talk about awesome experiences!! This lady that we met is totally amazing. She's one of those women who is totally a mother to everyone. She helps college kids with their finances. Her name is Miss Debby and we're going to see her on Wednesday.

Then we went to try and ontact Brother Massey's referral again. Talked to the manager and they confirmed what we feared... No such thing as a building Q in their complex. Dang anyway we have 

her number so we're calling her today (Monday).

Later that night we also contacted a referral from another ward. She lives in our apartment complex. So we knocked and when she answered her answer right away was "My iron is on, sorry." and closed the door... Well at least we know right?

Silent Night. Grown Up Christmas List. Little Drummer Boy. Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem.

Just all the songs that I really have kinda stuck in my head... I can't remember all the lyrics to them so I get half-way through them and them I slowly kinda just start humming haha. Can't lie I even start singing Donkey's song from Shrek... I"m sure that'll be something I hum on the plane to Brazil once it get there. Speaking of Brazil the girl I came out with from my MTC districto got her Visa last Monday! She headed out last Wednesday during transfers! So EXCITING! And there's a family in my ward here that their daughter got her visa and left her temp reassignment for Brazil today. I don't know much about what is going on with my FBI stuff but I"ll get to Brazil when I need to get there. For now I need to kick some butt here. 

There's a lot of blessing for being here though. I get a package! Haha. I can renew my license in January easier too. And I got to go to Marvin Goldstein's piano concert last night ( no big deal or anything haha, like how I led into that... totally smooth). That's totally a bonus especially since he's in my ward :) And I"m not going to lie I wasn't sure who that was until I was assigned to this ward, but now that I know I"m totally a fan because the brotha is otimo!! Kid you not, that was most amazing thing ever. Made my night and you wanna know something even more amazing? There were so many non members there too! Oh my gosh it was great. The spirit was there so strongly and all I wanted to do was give Brother Goldstein a huge hug.... But I can't... cause I"m a missionary... a sister missionary. It was still amazing though, hug or no.

Friday night I was feeling better so we did some service for the lady that lets us email at her dance studio. She's great and was putting on her Christmas ballet at FSU so we went down and helped hand out programs. It was great because we handed out fliers for Sunday night in the programs too haha. 

Yesterday we were able to finish the missionary stocking/gift bags I was telling y'all about too! It was great. Got all the Elders and Sisters their own stockings and bag of gifts. I kinda want to see one of them open it. THey'll love it though. We have our Half Mission Conference this coming week and that's where Sister Smith will be handing them out to the missionaries. Exxxcccciting! 

I"ll get more info about Skyping next Monday. Love y'all.

Ficam firme na fe!

Com Amor,

Sister Irons

Blessings of the Spirit

This week is transfers and guess what? I"m not moving :) I get to stay in Tally 3 for a while longer! Which is great. But we did move apartments this past week. I made my companion do it in one day. There was no way that we would have gotten it done if we split things up so we got everything out. The Elders were a great help moved all the heavy stuff of course :) Bless their hearts. They were great though, made things move a lot faster too. We made them cinnamon rolls to thank them and I think we will always have willing help from them in the future lol! Getting kinda sick too blah (it's almost bad enough for me to get a really good laugh cough going...). So far just achy but that's why God created dayquil. Feeling a little bit better and was able to rest in between meetings yesterday.

Other than that this week has been totally busy! We got a media referral last Monday after I emailed, how freaking cool is that?!!! The referral came from a missionary serving in the Vegas area. His grandparents live in our boundaries and are guess..... Atheist! Challenge accepted! The grandma seems like a great woman. Totally not against the church, loves it in fact for the awesome support it's given her daughter and her daughter's family. Funnier story? We got the best feeling from these people. As we knocked on the door the grandma came up and was like welp come in! My companion and I thought that it was way too easy but hey we went in! Her grandson had sent a letter that he had put in for some missionaries to come by just to show her what he did as a missionary. She had just gotten to the part where he told her he had put in the referral as we knocked! Otimo? I think YES!!! She says she's not interested but that she wants to get some help with her family history work at the family history center. Of course my companion and I jumped on that so fast it's not even funny. 

Sunday was a super big day for us too. One of the less actives we are working with showed up again! YAY!!! Plus she brought her daughter who we are probably going to start working with for when she wants to get baptized next year  when she's 8. Plus we went to see a less active and her sister and grandson's girlfriend was there. Guess who is going to start taking lessons?! The spirit was so strong when we were talking with them it was fantastic. It'll be even better when we teach them since we'll be doing it at the less active's home and she'll sit in. This week was definitely awesome. 

This coming week we also get to fill in the missionary stockings with all the stuff that people from our stake bought to give to the missionaries not getting anything from home for the Holiday. 

This past week we also did a huge service project for one of our PI's. There were like 20 members that showed up to do yard work. It looked great after only 1 hour. We even had some people swinging in the trees... like literally. There's an older lady in our ward who was like, weellll that looks like it would hold me... Brother give me a push! Haha, she's hilarious even got it on camera. 

I also had to get and FBI clearance for my visa y'all. I'm a weapon... A weapon of the Lord! Teachin' the gospel! 

Fique firme na fe!

Com Amor,

Sister Irons

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving we had dinner with a non member, Pam. She loves the missionaries but won't take the lessons, we even asked her again while we were helping get things together. We were like okay... You'll say yes one day so we'll keep trying. We've got a few people going over to her home Saturday to help her fix up her yard and cut down some trees so at least she can meet some more members from the ward. There's a family that is fellowshipping her now, the Marshalls, but they might be moving so we really want to get her to know more people. We've got a lot of great people coming and helping so that will be great!!

 

Something that really hit me hard this week was agency. We can choose to be so many different things. We can choose to be thankful for the things we've received, to be happy, discouraged, sad, upset, annoyed haha. I looked at myself and what I have been doing and feeling like on my mission... For a while I honestly wasn't feeling happy. I couldn't figure out what was wrong I mean really I am on a mission for the Lord preaching the wonderful gospel what would be the problem?!! I looked at what I was doing here, I was getting discouraged about all the little things. There have been some pretty lame moments (duh!) and I was getting down on myself for not getting something right the first time... I could tell I wasn't giving it all the positive-ness as I could. I know that seems kind of silly but I forgot really why I'm here! It's definitely not to be perfect, but to do the best I can to bring others unto Christ. We keep telling people that you don't have to be perfect but you do have to try and here I was beating myself up for the being perfect... Ironic huh?
For the most part we can all choose to be happy. I wasn't really choosing that I was kinda stuck on the bad, BUT good thing I can choose to change that huh?!?!?!? Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say in a not so short of a way, haha, is that even if things don't work and you aren't perfect choose to look at it in a good way. There's good in every situation. Obviously you can't always see what it is at first but maybe days, months, years down the road you will.

CHALLANGE!!!!: When you have a crappy moment try and get 2 positive things in your in and hang on :) Discouragement stinks and it weakens faith. SO try and stay discouraged for as short as possible... Or you know don't get discouraged.... BOOM problem solved! Haha :)

 

Anyway so while I was on trade offs we got into a less active's home! YAY! We were able to share a message and she wanted to take our photos for Christmas presents! Cool thing is that there's a less active in my ward who we're trying to get to do the same thing! Funny how that works huh? Her daughter has a friend that knows the sister I was on trade-offs with so she decided to record our spiritual thought and send it to the other missionary's mom. All I gotta say is that I don't do well while being filmed haha. If it's on youtube it'll be a good laugh for someone. 

Last night we get to sing a song at the Stake Christmas Concert. All the missionaries that were able to make it, there was like 50 of us. We sang Little Town of Bethlehem, we sounded awesome!! had a few non members show up from the place that we volunteer at, it's called the Shelter is like Marion House in CS. SO COOL RIGHT?!

 

That's all I can remember for now... I'll leave and think of something else... I'll just write it down :) 

 

Com Amor!!!

Sister Irons

Hello from Florida!

Hello all! I'm now officially in Tally since this past Wednesday. It's been good and I loved meeting the ward yesterday. It's awesome to see their excitement to do missionary work. We had our new ward mission leader come into RS and teach about missionary work and what we could all really do to get more involved in it. I really liked how he talked about the simplicity of it. All we have to do is to invite and be the example of what we say we believe. We have a nice full meal calender here so we hinted that we wouldn't mind making those half meals and half teaching appointments :D We've been getting a lot of referels which is great, gives us a way to meet more people. In this part of the mission we can't really trak. The neighborhood are all gated communities that don't allow soliciting and they count missionary tracking as that so it's amazing to have such an involved ward. 

My new companheira is Sister Mehew. She's great. We both got along well with our other companions so we're working really hard on strengthening our comp. Doing good so far. She's got that sense of humor where it took me a second to adjust to it, but after it's smooth sailing.

Awesome news?! There is the biggest flipping group of people here who served their missions in Brazil! Wha-hoo! There's a sister in our ward who is a little rusty so we're gunna try and only speak Portugues to each other... Hand gestures are a great thing haha. Don't know a word? Try and act it out. It'll be fun haha. 

One of our investigators is a stuntman... Interesting I know. Tried to see him last week but he was sick so we're hoping we can see him this coming week once he's feelin' better. Hope that all is amazing. Love y'all!

Here's my new address: 

1833 Halstead Blvd. #102

Tallahassee, FL

32309

Com Amor,

Sister Irons