June 23

Hello ya'll! I hope all is going well on the home front.

This has been a good week..because CRISSY got baptized!

I am so happy for her :) Even though I am not in that area anymore, I have been

messaging her on FB and she told me all about it. She is such a

sweetheart and I am so grateful to my Heavenly Father for the

opportunity to find and teach her. She truly is an example of how

people really are prepared for the gospel, but know not where to find

it. She had been living with members in Idaho for 7 years, always

wanted to learn more about the church but never was invited to.

People, we need to talk to our friends and neighbors! Invite! You

never know who is ready, you never know what in their lives has

prepared them. I am so glad my companion stopped to talk to her on the

street that night, because I was going to walk right by her. It made

me so happy to hear about her happiness in finding the gospel and the

way that she felt at her baptism. And I am grateful that we have

Facebook so I can keep up with her. :)

This week in Salisbury has been good.  We had bikes, and it was really

hot. At the beginning of the week, we had to spend sometime updating

our map because it's way out of date. You kind of need a map to plan

where you need to go! We know even though that took some time, it will

bless us this week.

On Tuesday, we went to service and we have the best service project

set up!!! Ah I loved it. The neatest experience. We got to go to the

food bank and put together peoples orders and give them their food and

help them take it out to their car. It was so neat and we got to meet

a lot of great people. I am excited that we get to do that every week.

I thought a lot about how I want to do things like this for the rest

of my life, be service oriented and help other people. I think I have

learned on my mission that my life is really not my own and it's

supposed to be spent helping out other people. I don't remember who it

was, but a prophet said "My life is like my shoes, to be worn out in

The Lord's service."

We had a great district meeting on Wednesday. Sister Holman is in my

district, and it's funny because she was Steve's supervisor at the

creamery. I love finding connections and that the people in my mission

know people in my family.

We found a great new investigator tracting this week. She's so great.

She is a single mom, she's 26, we taught her a little bit and then

came back the next day with a member and had a really great lesson.

She seemed very receptive to what we were saying. She can't come to

church this week because of work but hopefully next week. There are

people prepared!

We had a girl in our Ward who is going on a mission soon and she loves

going out with us. She is super excited about everything. I love it.

She's just like " Wow, You are missionaries!" And she is just so

amazed by the littlest things and it's so cute. I hope she keeps that

her whole mission. I think we forget as missionaries how important and

special it is that we are missionaries and get to represent The Lord.

I am grateful for it.

We met with a less active who has some real word of wisdom problems.

It was so sad to see, she has so much potential and faith but has some

serious addictions! We helped her understand that through the

Atonement, she can overcome this. I have faith that she can do it, but

it won't be easy. She also has a 9 year old daughter she wants us to

teach, so we are going back to teach her tomorrow. I have taught a lot

of kids on my mission, I think The Lord is using my elementary

education background.

We taught the 9 year old daughter of another less active and she is so

cute. Her and her family came to church and it was so great to see

them. She read her Book of Mormon chapter we left her and she loves

learning. It's so sweet to see a child's faith and how they just are

so close to the spirit. Hopefully we will be able to talk to her

family about setting a date soon.

Yesterday after church we had an appointment to see a less active. But

when we looked on the roster, the note said incorrect address. So we

called and called and she didn't answer to tell us the correct

address, so we weren't planning on going. But then she called right at

the time we were going to be there and she was like "Oh aren't you

coming??" We were pretty far away and on our bikes. But we said we

would get there as fast as we could. Then the BEST members EVER came

to our rescue. They are an older couple who just moved here from Utah.

They came with their truck and picked us up and took us and our bikes

to the appointment, waited for us to finish, then took us back, and on

top of that, they had already fed us earlier in the week but theyh

asked if we had a dinner appointment and when we didn't answer because

we didn't want to be a burden, they fed us as well, they are so kind!

He said with tears in his eyes, " I have had 6 kids serve missions and

I know people rescued and fed them, so please let us help you out, I

want to

pay them back!" They are just great examples of Christian service and

Faith. Ya'll pay it forward to, if you see some missionaries or anyone

who needs help this week, go help them because I was helped!

"And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom, that ye

may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye

are only in the service of your God"

June 16, 2014

Hello ya'll from Salisbury, North Carolina! Yup! I am officially here now with Sister Carter. She's so great. Transfer meeting was on Tuesday. Sister P was really nervous about becoming a trainer, it is her first time. Before transfer meeting, she's like "I hate transfer meeting, it's like the reaping!" For those of you who have seen the Hunger Games, it's when they pick one person out of the crowd to go into the hunger games. I was like "Don't worry, when they call your name I will run up and say " I VOLUNTEER AS TRAINER!!" Ha ha. The meeting was really great though, President talked about our potential and what Heavenly Father sees in us. He is always such an inspiring speaker. All of the members here agree and love hearing from him.

I got a great welcome from Salisbury :) It's a great place. It's SO country! Everything is trailer parks and forest and run down houses from the 1800's as far as the eye can see. SO much different than the wealthy Waxhaw.

There are a lot of things that I love about Salisbury...

-Everyone here is actually Southern and has thick Southern accents. Maybe I'll catch one before my time is up :)

-Everyone is so nice! The ward is wonderful. There is a family, the Artensen family who used to live in South Jordan. I went to High School with their son and daughter, and Steve knows their younger daughter and I'm pretty sure Mike knows their older daughter.

- The Ward Mission Leader brought us donuts during our studies one morning. He also is kind of goofy and reminds me a lot of John.

- We have a set of Elders in our ward! It's fun to be serving with another set of missionaries.

- At church yesterday, a less active member who hasn't been to church in years came and asked us if we could teach his 9 year old daughter and wife and help him come back to church. Sweet. We're going to see them tonight!

- Okay so here one of the members is an expert on Bikes. Turns out my bike has been braking non stop while I have been riding, and the tires have been flatter than they should be. SO all of the times I was biking and thought I was a whimp and out of shape are NOT true. YAY! I can't believe I have been riding on it for that long and just thought I was a wimp. At least I haven't had to ride it too much. I have been in full car areas my whole mission, and just ride it on Saturdays. BUT good thing I got my bike fixed now, because we are in a car share area, so we only have it every other week.

- Sister Carter, my new companion took an INSTITUTE CLASS FROM DAD. Weird, right? She's from Sandy, and she's hilarious.

- There are lots of less actives in this area, and lots of people to visit and see and hopefully we'll turn them into teaching opportunities!

I listened to a wonderful talk the other day from Elder Holland from when he was a President at BYU called "The Will of the Father". It's great and I think ya'll should read it. He talks about how the very first thing that Christ tells the people in the Americas is that he has done the Father's will and been submissive in all things. And one of the very first stories in the Book of Mormon is Nephi being asked to kill Laban. He says it isn't a coincidence that story is placed so early in the Book of Mormon, but it is there to teach us the importance of obedience to the Fathers will.  And in turn, the first thing that Christ will want to know about each of us is how obedient we each have been to what Heavenly Father has asked of us. It's a great talk, and it really makes you think about where you can follow the Savior more closely. Go read it!

June 9, 2014

We got TRANSFER calls this week. President said "Sister Forsyth, we always know you love adventure, are you up for one last change?" AH. I am getting TRANSFERRED to a new area for my last 6 weeks. I am excited, but it will be strange trying to build relationships with members and people when I know I won't be there for long>>> But I will try!

This week was great. We went on exchanges with the Sister Training Leaders and two of them came here with me. They actually have a missionary from Ukraine who got relocated to Charlotte, and it was interesting to hear from her all of the things that are going on there and what the work was like there. We had a great day of teaching and finding, we had fun and learned a lot from each other. 

Crissy is doing so great! She has so much faith and has such a strong desire to be baptized. We taught her twice this week and it's so neat to teach her, she is just so excited about the gospel and she does her reading, prays, comes to church, and she just loves everything that we teach her. She reminds me of the scripture that says there are people who are kept from the truth, only because they know not where to find it. She's one of those and now that she has found it she loves it! I am so sad that I won't be here for her baptism which is set for the 21, but I will be able to talk to her on Facebook and keep up with her. 

We also had dinner with part member family. She has been a member for 17 years, and he has never come to church, but I mentioned a while ago that recently he has been reading and praying every day with his wife, and coming to church alot of the time. It's amazing to see the change that this can make in people. He'll take a while, but I know that he'll join the church one day! It's amazing to see the progress in him even since I have been here. 

We had Zone Meeting we learned a lot about teaching people not lessons, and we had a training on how to ask inspired questions. We read from the Book of Mormon together on how the missionaries asked inspired questions to the people they were teaching and learned a lot. 

In downtown Waxhaw, there was a little party on Friday night. Actually there were bands playing until like 11:00 and we are right next to it so it was hard to sleep. But, we went out contacting people and talked to a lot of people. Also they had nitrogen frozen ice cream, and it was so good! I don't know how but it is the best ice cream ever. Ya'll should try it the next time you see some. 

I took pictures with some of the great families in Waxhaw and said goodbye yesterday! There are so many wonderful people I have learned so much from. A lot of what I have learned on my mission is what kind of family and marriage that I want someday. I have had so many great examples to learn from.

Off to my next and last adventure! I'll let you know where I'm going!

June 2, 2014

This is our District. And the second is Thelma. Notice how she is in the shade eating a sandwich while we work...
Hello everyone! Can you believe it's June already! Crazy!

Let's see. This week we had a great district meeting. I really learn alot from our district leader (even though he is 18 and 4 years younger than me.. don't' want to talk about how old that makes me feel) he is successful and good at motivating and training us on how to do better. And we all went to Sams Club for district lunch after, yum :)

We had dinner with this lady in the ward who just had a baby last week! She's so great and she's so giving and it was kind of her to feed us even with her new baby. She served a mission so she is always ready and willing to help us out and feed us. I think I said this before but our ward has a lot of sisters who have served missions, which is wonderful! And this member's neighbors came to church for the baby blessing! Yay for member missionary work! 

We helped our neighbor, Thelma this week with more ​yard-work. She is a hilarious old lady. We talked about what happens at her church, and what happens at ours. She's great. 

Crissy is doing great! ( the one I talked about last week who moved here from living with a member in Idaho). We had a lesson in a members house with her about the plan of salvation and she loved it. She really just soaks everything up, does her reading, and I love the opportunity to teach her! She says everything in her life is starting to make more sense now. She is still working towards her date on June 21! 

Blechhhhhhhh for the past 3 days though I have been in bed with the flu. Fever, sore throat, headache, stomach ache. The works. I haven't even been sick my whole mission for more than a couple hours until now! This flu was bad, but I'm feeling much better and almost back to normal. I was well enough to go to church yesterday. I love fast and testimony meeting, and some of the recent converts bore their testimonies and they are so sweet and a lot of them are struggling with a lot of issues but it's amazing how when they are planted in the Gospel, they can get through it. We also had dinner with the Bishop and his family, and talked about what we can do to work together. Also they made us homemade ice cream, yum!!!!! 

Fun fact. I accidentally stepped in an ant hill this week, and got bitten all over my foot. Yuck. 

Well I hope we can pick up the work now that I am feeling better! I want to work hard with every day that I have left to find more people. I am grateful for this time that I don't have a care in the world except helping people accept the gospel! It's pretty amazing when you think about it. I am not worrying about work, school, bills, dating, gas, nothing. Just helping people receive the gospel! BUT soon.. I will have to deal with those things, so I am going to enjoy it while I can. 

As a mission we have all been asked to study the 12 week training again. It's been so good to get back to the basics, and to practice things, even if I have practiced them a million times before, you can never be perfect at it!  I am really grateful for the Doctrine of Christ and how we can change and get better every day! No matter what mistakes we make, which we all do, we can always repent and try again! I was grateful for the sacrament this week, almost not feeling well enough to go made me appreciate it that much more. 

This Saturday will be transfer calls! President likes to move people for their last transfer, so we'll see! I will let you know next week. And we are going on exchanges tomorrow with the STL's! That will be fun. And Zone Meeting this Friday. Good week. :) 

May 27, 2014

Monday we went and played games at the church with other missionaries and then the family that was feeding us was cleaning the church that night, so they brought pizza to the church and we helped them clean! It was fun. After that we went to the home of an active member family whose less active niece is living with them for the summer and taught her. She was baptized at 8, but has never really been to church except for now while she's living with them so she's basically like an investigator. But she really liked learning about the plan of salvation! 

We have had a lot of opportunities to do service this week! We found out about a service project that a bunch of churches in our community are doing in a few weeks, and we went to talk to the head lady about it. She's such a nice old lady and she is involved in like 10 different charities. We asked her if there was anything we could do to help her, and she didn't think we were serious when we said we were really good at vacuuming and would love to help her clean her house. She is one of just like maybe 2-3 people who take us seriously when we say that. But she was like well, if you offer, I'll take you up on it! YAY SERVICE!!! So we helped her vacuum and dust and clean her house. She was so happy. And while we were serving, she asked what the difference is between our church and other churches and we were able to tell her about the restoration and give her a Book of Mormon!!! And then we also went to a less actives house and helped her with some yardwork. She actually wasn't there, so her husband just told us what she wanted us to do, which was pick clovers. They have a bunch of clovers in their yard and they are trying to get rid of them or something? I don't know if we actually did much. But it was just me and sister p sitting in the grass for like 2 hours just talking about life and what we are going to do with our lives. And we laughed a lot. Good times. And we helped our neighbor, Thelma again. She doesn't have a pressure washer, so we just took some brushes and soap and helped scrub her house and her deck. Mostly she just watched us sitting in a chair in the shade and eating her lunch with lemonade and watched us work in the sun. She's really funny though and we were cracking jokes and she was telling us funny stories from her life. 

We had interviews with President this week. He asked me if I wanted a new area for my last transfer, and gave me good advise about how to finish strong. He told me that I now need to "kick when I don't feel like kicking" (there is an Olympic champion that when people asked him how he was successful he said he kicked when he didn't feel like it) and that much of what I remember about my mission will be how I finish. He said he wants me to work hard, and to "dissapear." aka, don't make a big deal about it. Also, I got my sprint papers this week! Whew! It's basically a paper you sign and hang somewhere that is a promise to yourself that you are going to work hard and forget yourself. 

MIRACLE!!!! READ THIS!!!! Okay so on Thursday we were walking home at the very end of the night, and my companion sees someone across the street. She said "CROSS" I was like ok.. so we crossed the street and talked to her. She was so nice. Turns out she just moved here from Idaho. She knew a lot of members, she had been living with a member roommate for 7 years and never was invited to go to church. She always wanted to though, and has already read the Book of Mormon. What a miracle that we met her! There are so many things that have prepared her in her life. She has had a lot of hardships, and when she came here she viewed it as her new start, her fresh slate. So she is super open to the gospel! I am so glad that my companion followed the spirit to talk to her. We saw her on Saturday Morning. We talked to her about the restoration, which she already knew about, and believed that it made sense God would call prophets today. She committed to pray about June 21, and she came to church yesterday and had a great time! She is such a wonderful person and we are so grateful to be able to teach her. Yesterday we taught her in a members home and it went well. I definitely have a testimony of the scripture "many are kept from the truth, because they know not where to find it." It's motivating to make me talk to everyone I see because now I see them all as her. 

Okay so we went from having the best lesson ever on Saturday to having a not so great lesson Saturday night. We were teaching this young man who went to bible school and he is very smart. He doesn't believe that the Book of Mormon could be true, and isn't really interested in progressing. He's so nice though! He came to church last week, and he wanted to meet again. So we met at a members house (the members are both RM's so we thought they would understand if anything crazy happened, they have been there before) and he brought his friend from Bible College. Oh my goodness. The bible college friend was totally trying to bash with the members, and with us, and wanted to get into it. The member was very gracious though, and was trying to find common ground and agree that we both believed that only through Christ we can return to live with God and we can respect each other. I was worried about what the members thought, but they both were fine with it and had the same things happen on their mission. It just happens a little more often in the South. :) 

We also had dinner with a less active this week. She's super nice, she went to BYU for 2 years, but then went to the military, married a non member and hasn't been active since. They were both really nice and we had a good time. Her husband totally reminds me of John. They weren't necessarily interested in taking lessons, or having us teach their kids, but we hope to see them again. 

And yesterday we had dinner with a member who is wonderful. She's a single lady in her 30's and she took us out for Chinese food, and she told us all about her dating life and she is hilarious she had us laughing so hard. 

I am grateful for the opportunity to serve the Lord and I am so grateful for the gospel in my life. I know that it is true! There is no way a man could have made up the Book of Mormon. I know that no good man ever would write it, and no wicked man ever could. 

Ya'll should go to the temple for me! Sister P and I have been talking about how much we miss going to the temple. We have made schemes to sneak to Columbia and nobody would know. Ha can you get sent home for going to the temple, really? But not even our President gets to go, which makes me feel better. But still. I wish we could go at least a few times!! 

This is our Zone. Can you spot Elder Burrup? ( And Steve, Sister Zarbock is in there too :) )