Wednesday, February 8, 2012

February 6

Good morning my lovlies! This week has been amazing. We have seen SO many blessings in Bracknell. Thursday we were contact walking in town and this man literally ran after us, stopped us, and asked if he could come to church. He had met missionaries a while ago and has been thinking about coming to church and then saw us and wanted to come! Then Friday we got a phone call from a man called Aigars who is from Latvia (I told him my cousin served as a missionary in Latvian and while we were teaching him we told him we could call a Russian speaking missionary to make sure he understood everything and he was like where is your cousin, let's just call her- I WISH! ha ha) and then after church yesterday we were walking out and these 2 Persian men were walking past the church and just wanted to come inside and see what it was like and asked if they could come back to church next week. OF COURSE YOU CAN! ha ha We are having so much fun teaching Norman, he is amazing. We are also teaching 2 men from Sri Lanka that are doing really well. Keep praying for our dear friends. :) In other news- IT SNOWED!!!! This is the first time Sister Ho has seen snow- EVER. She was so exctied. Until we had to walk around in it allday yesterday and now she has decided "Snow is pretty to look at with the eye but it is evil for the foot" ha ha I love it. Let me tell you a little something about England... they like to pretend that everytime it snows it is the first time it has EVER snowed. It's ridiculous. Everything closes down and people don't go outside. They don't know what to do with themselves. Thankfully church wasn't cancelled yesterday- we are counting out many blessings. We are glad the snow has stopped coming down also because today we are going to (drumroll please) WINDSOR CASTLE!!!!! yay!!! We are trying to get there for 11 to see the changing of the gaurds and we are meeting a bunch of other missionaries as well. Sister Ho's first zone(ish) pday :D well I love you guys!! Stay well! Love, Sister Mills!

January 30

Helloo! Yay i'm excited for you to go meet the gregson's, i can't wait to meet them. Oh and Sister Gregson's name is Chelsea, her older sisters name is Katie! And Macy Mattingly is engaged!? congrats! Ok that makes me so happy that Julia Rae got her mission cal! she wrote me before christmas saying she was thinking about going on a mission, yay!!!!! that's cool about your seminary class pen :) i love taht. well things are so good here in bracknell. i love teaching sister ho english. it is teaching me so much patience. :) ha ha but really it's so fun and we laugh a lot so we don't go crazy. that's the way to do it right? but she is so teachable, she is a wonderful example to me. she is a convert of only about 2 years so she loves learning the gospel as well as learning about how to teach the gospel! i think that makes for a better teacher anyways. ha ha but she is the only member in her family, seriously what an amazing example to me. i think it's hard to be here and yet i have so much support from everyone at home, i am definitely being humbled. :) well sister ho and i last week were out just talking to people and we started talking to this man called norman. Wwe talked to him about families and how his family can be together forever through Jesus Christ so he invited us to his home the next day. We taught him about the restoration of the gospel and afterwards with tears in his eyes he said thatwas not what he was expecting from us coming over to see him and that he felt so good. he then told us that he has had many people stop him on the streets or come to his home to takl about religin and he just never had time and never wanted to learn so we asked what as different about when he met us and he said "it felt different. i just felt like i wanted you guys to come over." :) and THAT is what it is all about. we saw norman again on saturday and we will see him tomorrow as we are preparing him for baptism at the end of february, yay!! please pray for norman :) that is definitely one of my favorite things :) I love you guys, I love the gospel, I love being a missionary, and I love England. 

These are a few of my favorite things:
*Teaching Sister Ho English
*Custard. 18p at Tesco! mmmm
*Hearing people say "jolly good" for reals :)
*Hearing peple pray for the first time
*Teaching peoples children who Jesus Christ is and teaching THEM how to pray :)
*Making people cry. I love it. ha ha 
*Did I mention we got to go through the temple last week when Sister Ho got here? And one of the missionaries got his endowment out (preston temple was closed when they were there!) so the temple president was with us and told us all about the London temple, oh it was so cool!


PICTURES: 
-we had a little England celebration when Sister Ho got here
-chinese food :)
-Sister Ho is a beautician in Hong Kong so last night after accounting she had these cool face masks things that we did ha ha it was fun






January 23

Hellooooo!!! I'm sorry about last week, we had to come Monday to email president but then we didn't get another chance to email throughout the week! But here is what has been going on for me the past 2 weeks here in Bracknell, England: 

*we went to Oxford!! and after a long fun week of missionary work we got a call on Sunday afternoon from the APs "Are you guys at your flat? No? You need to get there as soon as you can and sister p needs to pack ALL her stuff, she is leaving in 2 1/2 hours." WHAT?! We didn't even get a chance to "kill" her as planned! :( 

*Gregson and I got another companion- the sister she had been training in Exeter came and served with us in Bracknell for 3 days. Her name is Sister Kutsevych and she is from Ukraine!

*Sister Gregson's mum sent us matching socks ha ha we had to take a picture. Will you show this to her mum when she comes for dinner! :) and tell her THANK YOU!

*:) 

*For an early 9 month mark present I got SISTER HO!!!

*Sister Ho just came here from Hong Kong! We are having so much fun. I'm teaching her English and she is teaching me Cantonese! ha ha 

Welp 9 months to go... someone has to be mycountdown at this point so who's it going to be? Metta? Courtney? Shan? :) ha ha 

Oh and I'm sorry I missed some important birthday shoutouts!! TANNER happy birthday old man! Evie I cannot believe you are 1 birthday girl! and Natalie Murray happy birthday! I think Mars is this week too? I know I missed aunt Annie's birthday in December, I'm terrible at birthdays. If it was your birthday- happy birthday! ha ha I love you guys!!













January 9

Hello!!! Well I am alive and well. :) REALLY well. ha ha and I'm sorry but I won't be saying much today because we have to go catch a train because for p day (Sister P's LAST pday!!!) we are going to OXFORD! We are going to see the university, C.S. Lewis' home, a castle... man I love serving in England. ha ha but it feels like I don't have much to tell you because I just emailed on Thursday BUT the last few days we have spent a lot of time trying to find a lift to take Shipon to the visitors centre at the London Temple and we FINALLY found someone to drive us this coming Wednesday YAYYYYYYY we were so excited. BUT THEN ha ha man we got an announcement last night that district meeting will be changing from Tuesdays to Wednesdays... THIS WEEK. So after all that work to find Shipon a lift we may not even be able to go because of district meeting! ha ha Sister P was freaking out- she has tried to take him to the temple 3 times and every time the lift would cancel on us... man. Someday Shipon will get to the temple. Someday Shipon will be able to get baptised. Until that day we will just keep praying like crazy for him. Oh next week we won't be emailing on Monday because next week is MOVES! Again already. This is the first time I am "killing" someone. It's weird. It is so different from someone going home to the states and she is so scared... it has been hard. But she will stay at the temple for a week before she flies home so she will get to go to the temple all the time which will be so good because the closest temple to India is Hong Kong or the Phillipines.... oh Sister P. I love her. She is truly a pioneer for the church in her country. She has given up EVERYTHING to come on her mission. Literally everything. I have learned so much from her AND Sister Gregson. Tri's are the best!!! Well here are some pictures. I love you guys!


*Sometimes my eye gets red and swollen.. don't worry "I got bettuh"
*Sister Gregson and I waiting for Sister P in the loo. Oh Gregson and I got a new name "Gregills" ha ha ha 
*So Sandwich= so delicious. This is Sister P's favorite place so we have been going there a lot before she goes home :)






January 2

Hellooooo! Sorry we are just emailing today, Monday was a bank holiday (of course) and we didn't have time on Tuesday and Wednesdays the library is closed! So here we are- emailing on Thursday again. A few items of business:

1. HAPPY BIRTHDAY METTA!!! So how was it? The wonderful week of Metta- how was it celebrated?

2. I got the package from the ward, I don't remember if I said anything but it. was. incredible. Oh my gosh I have never received a package so big in my whole entire life! It was so  perfect. And it doesn't surprise me that for the past week there would be things I told Sister P I needed to go buy (such as deoderant, toothpaste, gum) that was in the package! They had the spirit as they filled that box up of treasures. Oh it was so great. There were things in there that I didn't even realize I missed like Captain Crunch! and Tootsie Rolls! and Apple cider!! (I asked for apple cider once here... ya cider in England is alcoholic ha) and can I tell you we have deoderant here like in America but it is so expensive it's ridiculous! So yes it was perfect. Everything in there has kept me nice and warm. :) 

Well happy new year everyone! We have been sharing this mormon message with people this last week and I think it is so funny- I love it. Take a look!

http://lds.org/pages/mormon-messages?lang=eng#new-years-look-not-behind-thee

And the message is so wonderful as well. Genesis 19:17 Look not behind thee. It's a new year, a fresh start! Now that Christmas is over don't forget the Savior, keep looking up with faith. (Like the talk from conference, it is better to look up!) Moving onwards and upwards.

We are still in our lovely little tri in Bracknell and we are having so much fun! Oh pen pen asked what we did for new years- we went to bed at 10:30.... ha ha but we had to come in early so we had an Indian night, we put on sarees and made curry and Sister P told us all about India! And we learned Hindi as well. ha ha it was fun! 

Well I'm going to send a few pictures! yay! I love you guys!

*Jean Hearne gave us a whole chicken that she had eaten a little bit of... and put it in a grocery bag for us to take home ha ha ha
*Sister Gregson aka the drug lord. ha ha this is all the medicine the doctors gave her while she was in the hospital with her kidney stones 
*More tacky American things.
*Us!












*We went to Nandos and I got a free meal with my Nandos card woop woop!!
*Sister P made curry for district meeting. Mmmm
*So I had given Sister Gregson's Christmas presents to our district leader to take to the office when they went for a leadership conference but she ended up coming here so we had to get it BACK from them... anyways 2 weeks later she finally opened her Christmas pressies :) ha ha 







Tuesday, February 7, 2012

December 29


Martyn got baptised!!!!!!! That is Mike Thomas on the left and Martyn on the right and the bottom picture is Martyn and Karina. I love them!!!!








*So they combined 2 zones a couple transfers ago - the Reading zone and the Staines zone and now we are the RedStaine zone!! :) ha ha this is us and the gifts we ended up with at the white elephant exchange
*Sunset Heights Stake represent! ha ha we are going to send this to President Stoddard
*Me with St. Nicholas at church aka James Thairs
*Us with Shipon and one of the Serewenga boys
*Us, SHipon, and the Serewenga's. This is who we spent Christmas morning with!









*A better picture of the socks Annikka and Nate gave us that I was trying to show you over skype ha ha
*2011 Family Christmas card :D haha I LOVE this picture. I printed it out and put it up on my wall.
*Annikka and Nate and Penelope (they call her Nelly) Phillips, this is who we spent Christmas eve and Christmas with :) 









Pictures from December 19









*So today we are having a zone pday and we are doing a white elephant gift exchange and this is what we got at a charity shop- so sweet!... of course we had to try them out
*Our flat! This is our little kitchen
*Living room (you can see on the wall on the left hand side those are the signs of the words we used for the Christmas conference ha ha
*Extra room
*Our room! I sleep on a queen sized bed... it's weird. ha ha I miss my bed in Exeter, it was like sleeping on a cloud
*My bathroom
*Sister P's bathroom
*The front door area
*Me right before we came here to email we regifted that ginormous bag of course and the boxing gloves are in there! I look ridiculous lugging this thing all around town. ha ha
Merry Christmas!