Group E-mail 5/5/14

This week was a really, really long week. It seemed to drag on forever. There's nothing wrong with that. It was just long...

We went on exchanges this week, and that was fun. Sis. Colton went up to Montgomery with Sis. Bonner and I stayed down here in Oak Ridge with Sis. Bowden. We did service with our district for most of the day. And then we visited a couple of people. We visited this one less-active family that we've visited a couple of times. We shared a message on prayer, and we asked them about their testimony of prayer and the husband started to cry while sharing his feelings. The Spirit was really strong. You can tell that they love Heavenly Father so much. And they have a strong testimony of the gospel and church. We just wish they would act on that testimony and come to church so they can be even more blessed and have an even stronger testimony.

Megan is doing awesome! We weren't able to meet with her this week, but she called us on Thursday and we talked for quite awhile. She told us that the week leading up to her baptism was a really terrible week and she was depressed and annoyed and nothing was going right with her family, with work. And then she got baptized and that was great. And then the day after her baptism, Saturday, she said if felt like her whole world was about to fall apart. And then on Sunday she received the Gift of the Holy Ghost. When she received the Holy Ghost, everything just melted away and all of her worries were gone. She felt so great! And then the whole rest of the week was great. She felt so happy and calm and peaceful. She had more patience. Things were going really well. Her husband told her that her whole demeanor had changed and that he could tell she was much happier. She just went on and on about how great she felt. And she said that she knew everything wouldn't always be so smooth, but that it was ok because with the Holy Ghost she could continue to feel that peace. She is almost done reading the Book of Mormon. She's been reading the Gospel Principles book and the Relief Society books that she got when she was baptized, and they make her feel great, too. She told us that on Thursday morning, she was having a rough morning, and she saw one of the Relief Society books on the table and thought she should read some of it. She read a chapter and said she felt so much better. And then at the end of our phone call, she said "And that's my testimony." It was the best phone call! I love the gift of the Holy Ghost so much! The Holy Ghost can bring us so much peace and comfort no matter what is happening in life and it is so amazing. Definitely one of the best gifts God has given to us.

Not much else to say, that I can think of. We got to hold some baby bunnies. Ate a lot of delicious food, including my favorite, Chicken Tetrazini.

I'm getting transferred to a new area tomorrow. I have mixed emotions. I'm really excited for a new adventure and I'm sure I will love it, but I am also really sad to be leaving Oak Ridge. I love this area so much. The ward is so amazing and I just love all of the members. And they are just starting to really catch the missionary spirit. We've been able to work hard and have a lot of fun. A lot of good things have happened here. I love it so much and I will definitely miss it a ton!

I hope you all have a great week. And HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!

Love,

Sister Sylvester

Group E-mail 4/29/14 (Her Birthday was 4/24)

Birthday and a baptism! It was a pretty great week!

My birthday was really great! Definitely a great start to my 20's. We ate a ton of food to celebrate. Sis. Colton filled the shower with balloons. And a member decorated our car with sticky notes and made me my favorite meal, chicken tetrazzini. It was so delicious! And the member loved it so much that she is making it for us again this weekend. I won' complain :) Please. Make all the chicken tetrazzini you want. Thank you so much to everybody who helped out with the video that was made for my birthday! You guys are all so great and I love all of you so much! It made me so happy to see all of your beautiful faces!

But the best part of this week was Megan's baptism! It was so great! Lots of people came and the Spirit was really strong. She received the gift of the Holy Ghost on Sunday and was confirmed and it was really great. Her son, Tim, said that she looked really peaceful during it, and Megan said that she felt really peaceful and that all of her stresses and worries melted away. She is so great! I've been meeting with Megan for almost 6 months now, and every time I talk to her, I get more impressed. It's ridiculous. For example, last week when we visited her a couple days before the baptism, we were going to talk about family history. She pretty much taught us the whole lesson. We've never talked about it at all before and she already knew everything. She's so great. And she's excited to do family history. She even went to the class on Sunday.

Anyway, I love all of you so much! You are amazing!! And I hope you have a great week!

Love,

Sister Sylvester

Group E-mail 4/21/14

On Tuesday mornings, our district does service at a Nature Center. This week we went, and after being there for awhile we decided to go walk the trails and pick up trash because we hadn't done that in a long time. As we were walking I found this really long trail of fire ants carrying leaves. I was following and watching this trail, and all of a sudden I looked over and there was a snake a couple inches from my foot. I bright, black, red, and yellow striped one. It was scary looking. Anyway, I jumped really high and ran a few feet. Sis. Colton said that I made a noise that sounded like Scooby-Doo. It was pretty funny. That has been our story for this week. 

Megan is getting baptized on Friday! We are very excited about that! Tim isn't getting baptized this week. He isn't quite ready yet. He still has some lessons left and stuff, but he will get baptized in a month or so. Megan is excited about her baptism and its going to be great.

This weekend we started teaching a girl named Sarah. She is the sister of a lady who was baptized last year. She said that she just found God, and wants to learn more. So we met with her and answered some of her questions and gave her a Book of Mormon, and then the next day taught her the Restoration. Her sister is very excited about all of this. Sarah came to church yesterday and told Sis. Colton that she was really glad she came and she really liked it. We're glad she came, too.

We did more service this week for members, nonmembers, and inactive members. It was great. On Wednesday, we helped a potential investigator with her yard. She is an elderly, single lady (never been married) and is the neighbor of one of our members. We met her at dinner at their house about a month ago. Her name is Mary Ellen. She is hilarious and really nice. She loves it when we come over. She really appreciated our help with her yard. We ended up stopping by again on Friday night, and she ended up telling us about how she feels like God hates her and He is punishing her and has just left her all together. He doesn't have any hand in her life anymore. It was so sad. PLEASE never forget that God loves you perfectly and that He will never leave your side! He will always be guiding your life with His hand. Anyway, it broke our hearts and Sis. Colton started crying a little bit. She says that she likes her church and isn't going to get baptized into ours, but goodness, she needs the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. She has so many questions and is confused. We assured her that God loves her very much and that He will never leave her alone. And talked about the Atonement and taught a brief restoration lesson. She was really touched by what we had to say.

I hope everyone had a great Easter! It was so great to be able to focus so much on the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I'm so grateful for His sacrifice. He loves us so much. He suffered all that He did because He knew that we were all worth it. He knows how great of a potential we have as sons and daughters of God.

Love,

Sister Sylvester

Group E-mail 4/14/14

We did lots of service for people this week. On Tuesday we did our usual service activity with our district, at a Nature Center. That is always fun. On Wednesday we ended up helping a member with yard work in the morning. Her family's relationship with the missionaries kind of got ruined last year, so it was good to build that back up. We ended up having dinner with them on Thursday and we are having dinner with them again next week, so I guess they like us, which is good. Sis. Colton weeded and I raked up the yard. In Texas there are a bunch of brown, spikey balls that are all over people's yards. So I picked up all of those. And then on Thursday we ended up helping a potential investigator, Caleche, with her yard. She is friends with the Relief Society president, and we have been trying to set up another time to get together, but she has been really busy. Anyway, Caleche is pregnant with twins and hasn't been able to do her yard. We called her to offer our services, and she said we could help, but her lawn mowers weren't working. So we borrowed the Relief Society's president's lawn mower and did her lawn. Sis. Colton weeded again, and I mowed the lawn. It was quite the adventure. Her backyard consists of a ton of really tall weeds, and so. much. dirt. And I got covered in the dirt. You know when you are on trek, and you get covered in a thick layer of dirt all over? Yeah, that is what I looked like when I finished.

After being in Houston for almost 11 months, I officially feel like I have experience Texas because this weekend I ate crawfish. Our stake had a huge crawfish boil on Saturday night. I think around 2000 people were registered to come, and I'm pretty about that number of people came.So many people. And lots of nonmembers. It was really great. We got to try crawfish. I like it. It was really good. The only problem is that I'm not very skilled at getting the shell off of the crawfish, so it took awhile for me to eat it. I was really hungry, and it was taking a long time, so I didn't eat very much before I went and got a hamburger to fill me up. They had activities for the kids going on inside of the church, and so we had missionaries roaming the halls the whole time. Lots of people asked for church tours and a lot of copies of the Book of Mormon and other materials were given away.

We met with Megan this week and taught her a little bit more. Tim wasn't there because he went to Mutual. Apparently, at Mutual they decided to ask Tim to give the spiritual thought, and he did a really good job. He shared what he learned from General Conference. Anyway, Megan is great. We went over the baptismal interview questions with her. We have never officially taught her about the Word of Wisdom, but we found out she had already been cutting back on coffee and tea, and so we invited her to stop drinking it all together, and so far she has. And we had never talked about keeping the Sabbath day holy, yet, but a member in our lesson last week had talked about how they had made an effort to not work or do school work on Sunday, and so Megan decided that she should do that, too, and she has been working on that. She is so great. She had her baptismal interview yesterday and passed, so she is getting baptized on April 25th. We are really excited. Tim will have his interview next week.

I hope everybody has a great Easter this weekend. I'm so grateful for the chance that we have to focus on Christ and His Atonement this weekend. I am so grateful that Christ loves each of us so much that He was willing to suffer not only for all of our sins so that we can repent and be cleansed, but also for all of our temptations, afflications, infirmities, etc. so that He can help us and strengthen us. Jesus is the Christ and He is our Savior and Redeemer. Only through Him and by living His gospel can we be cleansed of our sins, and live with God again.

Love,

Sister Sylvester

Group E-mail 4/7/14

Sister Colton and I had a pretty great week this week filled with laughs, adventures, living prophets, and miracles.

So April Fool's day was really funny, but kind of a fail. I shall explain. I will just skip to the afternoon. So we went to service at the nature center in the morning and afterwards we went to Sis. Farnsworth's house. Sis. Farnsworth is a member in the ward who is Carrie's age (a lot of people in our ward are Carrie's age and it really throws me off) and she is hilarious! She is one of my favorite people. We were going to her house to role play with her so she could practice answering questions about the gospel that her friends have because she has a hard time with that, and asked for our help. When we got there, she said that she had to go and take dinner to somebody, but that we should just stay and wait there because she would only be a few minutes. So she left. Sister Colton and I were really in sync that day and didn't even have to talk. We just looked at each other and ran out the door. We parked our car on another street, ran back to the house, hid all of our stuff, and shut the blinds and turned off the lights, so that it looked like we had left. Then Sister Colton hid on the stairs and I hid in the pantry. And we were going to scare Sis. Farnsworth when she walked into the kitchen. When she got home, she took the one path we didn't plan on her taking, and went up the stairs. Sister Colton scared her and Sis. Farnsworth got a really big kick out of it. She really likes to get scared.

Then we went to our original plan that we had come up with. Cockroaches are a problem in Houston. We have had a few conversations with Sis. Farnsworth about how she really doesn't want cockroaches in her bathroom. So what did we do, on Monday at Walmart, we bought fake bugs and then painted them all black so that they looked like cockroaches. We had just come straight from service, so we needed to change into our proselyting clothes. Sis. Colton went into the bathroom to change first and hid all of the bugs in the bathroom. We've also had conversations with Sis. Farnsworth about how she is embarrassed when we use her bathroom and there is no handtowel. We don't care, but she does. So, Sis. Colton took the handtowel, so that when I went into the bathroom, there wasn't one for me to us. So I had to ask Sis. Farnsworth for one, thinking she would come into the bathroom and see the bugs. She just threw the towel at me and didn't come into the bathroom. I changed and when I came out Sister Colton made another attempt to get her into the bathroom. That didn't work either. So we gave up, thinking that she would find the bugs in a couple of days. We started role playing, and then Sis. Argyle, another lady in the ward, came over to drop something off. She told Sis. Farnsworth she needed to use her bathroom and went in. Sis. Colton and I just started cracking up laughing. When Sis. Argyle came out of the bathroom, she told Sis. Farnsworth that those bugs got her for a minute before she realized they were fake. They both got a kick out of it.

Then we went to dinner at the White's house. Our plan there was to tape one bug to the inside of their toilet bowl. So after dinner and a message, Sis. Colton went to use the bathroom. She was in there FOREVER! It was so awkward. And to make it even more awkward, you could hear her getting the duct tape. It was hilarious. We left and Sis. White texted us a little while later and told us thanks for the present. We asked if she had gotten at least a little freaked out. She replied, "No. Sis. Farnsworth posted a picture of what you did in her bathroom on Instagram, so I went to go check my bathroom." We tried. Sis. Farnsworth did text us later that night and told us that her son went into the bathroom and said "Mom! Come here. There are big bugs in the bathroom that will get us."

Anyway, it was a pretty humorous April Fool's despite us not be very successful.

General Conference was awesome! I loved it! My favorite talk was probably Elder Holland's. I also really liked Elder Rasband's, Elder Andersen's, Elder Scott's, President Uchtdorf's, Elder Ballard's, and Elder Bednar's. What I personally got out of General Conference was the importance of being obedient and living the gospel. I also thought a lot about how we should treasure up the words of the living prophets, as well as the scriptures. There was a quote that I noticed was used in last October's conference and this conference. It is from President  Harold B. Lee: "The only safety we have as members of this church is to … give heed to the words and commandments that the Lord shall give through His prophet. There will be some things that take patience and faith. You may not like what comes from the authority of the Church. It may contradict your [personal] views. It may contradict your social views. It may interfere with some of your social life. But if you listen to these things, as if from the mouth of the Lord Himself, with patience and faith, the promise is that ‘the gates of hell shall not prevail against you; … and the Lord God will disperse the powers of darkness from before you, and cause the heavens to shake for your good, and his name’s glory’ (D&C 21:6).”

When we follow the words of living prophets, we will not be led astray.

Elder Hales in the last conference said, "The greatest blessings of general conference come to us after the conference is over. Remember the pattern recorded frequently in scripture: we gather to hear the words of the Lord, and we return to our homes to live them." And 1 Nephi 19:24 says "Hear ye the words of the prophet [...] and liken them unto yourselves." Now that General Conference is over, make sure that you take what you heard in conference, then notes you took, and the feelings you felt, and make a game plan for how you can become better. Listening to their words doesn't mean much if we don't become better because of what we heard.

And to wrap up this long email, an update on the Guidry's. We haven't been able to officially meet with them in a long time because they have been so busy. Megan told us two weeks ago that she shouldn't be too busy this week so that we could meet with her then. I texted her on Tuesday, but she again said she was busy. On Thursday morning I texted her and told her "It would seriously only take 20 minutes and the Lord will bless you." And then told her that if she didn't want to meet with us anymore, that she just needed to tell us. She responded and said, "Tonight's good. We can meet tonight. How about 6?" So we met with her that night and it went really well. They've still been reading the Book of Mormon. We talked about how the gospel can bless our lives and invited them to watch General Conference. Sis. Noorda was their with us and invited them to watch it with them. And we set another baptismal date with them for the end of the month. So yesterday they went to the Noorda's and watched the Sunday morning session of conference. Megan texted us last night and told us that she really loved conference. And Sis. Noorda called us and told us all about it. She just kept saying "It was so awesome. It went so well." Megan and Tim both really loved it and they played Conference bingo, which they also enjoyed. And Megan went up to Brother Noorda and started telling him about how she was getting baptized this month and asked what she needed to bring and what it would be like. She texted Sis. Noorda later that night and asked if there was a way she could watch the whole conference. So the Guidry's are doing great! And General Conference is amazing! You can always count on the power of a living prophet and apostles.

I am so grateful for a living prophet and for the chance that I have to be a member of the restored church of Jesus Christ. It is a remarkable blessing.

I  hope you all have a great week!

Love,

Sister Sylvester

Group E-mail March 17, 2014

It was another great week! Things are picking up in the Oak Ridge area.

This week we visited lots of different people -- members, potential investigators, and less-active members.

So first of all, Tuesday night was quite the adventure. We were supposed to meet with the Bishop on Tuesday night at 7:45 (key word being "supposed"). It was about 7:35 pm and we decided that we should go tracting for a few minutes before going to the church. So I open the back door to get my bag, and decided that if we were just tracting for a few minutes, I didn't need my whole bag, and my shoulder could use a break every now and then. So I grabbed a Book of Mormon, some pass along cards, my planner, and a pen, and shut the door. And then I realized that I just locked the keys and the phone in the car! Smooth move, I know.

Me: Uh oh

Sis. Colton: What?!

Me: Uh... I just locked the keys in the car. And the phone.

Sis. Colton: Seriously?! Well let's just call Brother Widdison (our ward mission leader).

Me: We can't. The phone is in the car.

Then we decided that we should say a pray. Obvious. So I said the prayer and we asked Heavenly Father for a big miracle. Then I felt like we should still go tracting.

Me: Let's go tracting.

Sis. Colton: Tracting? To ask somebody for help?

Me: No. To invited people to learn about the gospel, like we always do.

Sis. Colton: Are you sure?... Okay...

So we went tracting. We knocked on 3 houses. The first guy wasn't interested. The second house, nobody answered. The third house, a guy named Brent answered. We asked if we could share a scripture with him, and he agreed, then started quizzing us on our Bible knowledge. Sis. Colton was trying to look stuff up in her scriptures. My Bible was locked in the car. I apologized to Brent and told him that it was locked in the car. Brent said "You locked your keys in the car? Do you need me to call one of my detective friends to come unlock your car?" I love Heavenly Father. So he called one of his detective friends, who sent a police man and a tow truck and they unlocked our car for us. And while we waited we had a long conversation with Brent. He is a really  nice guy, but lets just say, I think it is hilarious when people try to convert missionaries. We gave him our number and told him to call us if he needs any service because we owe him one, and he gave us his number in case we ever need his help again. I'm sure we will be seeing him again. Heavenly Father sent us an angel, and we were very grateful. Anyway, we did not meet with our Bishop that night, but we did meet with him on Wednesday night, instead. He is so nice and was very understanding. He was excited that he had gotten extra scripture study time.

This week, Sister Colton and I really focused on praying more often through out the day, especially at those times when we aren't exactly sure what to do. The results have been amazing. The quality of our days have been much better. We have been able to become better at recognizing and listening to the Spirit, and it has been much easier for the Lord to guide us to where He needs and wants us to be, and to the people who need a message of His love. I love prayer. It is one of the best tools that Heavenly Father has given us. And when you add the gift of the Holy Ghost to it, you are able to do all that the Lord needs you to do.

James is doing well. We talked to him about the fruits of the Spirit this week, to help him recognize what is good and bad in his life.

And I also got to milk a goat this week, which was absolutely fantastic!

Love,

Sister Sylvester

Happy New Year 2014

This week was a great week! Especially compared to the really slow weeks that we have had the last few weeks. The beginning of the week was a little slow as we had to work through a few things and we did a lot of talking. But the last half of the week was really great and we got lots of work done. We also had a lot of fun this week and did lots of fun activities.

First of all, I learned how to play the harp.... Kind of. Sister Parker is this super cute lady in our ward who plays the harp beautifully and teaches harp lessons. We had dinner at her house one night and she taught us how to play a little bit. We felt pretty cool.

We also got to play ultimate frisbee twice this week, which was great. We played on Saturday, like we normally do, and we also got to play new year's morning because everyone was off of work. It was a lot of fun. There were lots of people on Wednesday, so the teams were huge, but it was still lots of fun. And I'm getting pretty dang good at it. I'm good at catching and I'm getting pretty good at throwing the frisbee, too. And seeing as we just run up and down the field the whole time, we get a really good work out, and so I'm getting in pretty good shape. It is my running for the week.  I have forgotten how much I love sports and I wish we could play frisbee every day.

 New Years Eve we spent a lot of time doing service. Every Tuesday, our district does service at a nature center. We pick up trash and weed and do a bunch stuff. It is fun. And that day was also transfers, so we got to know all of the new missionaries in our district while we were doing it. We ended up going on a trail that we didn't really recognize. Our district leader said he knew where he was going, but he didn't, so we got lost and walked a really long way in the wrong direction. Then after that we helped a family move out of our ward. We were at dinner that night, at the Knight's house, and a less-active that we have been visiting recently texted us. She is 21 and just had a baby girl about a month or so ago. She is having a rough time. She hasn't been active in a long time and doesn't seem very into anything religious. But she texted us on New Years Eve and asked if we could find somebody to give her baby a blessing because she has been sick and hasn't been sleeping at all. That was really cool. We turned to Brother Knight and asked if he knew who her home teachers were and it just so happened, that Brother Knight was her home teacher and he had been trying to get into their house for months. So he went that night and gave her baby a blessing. It was really cool how it all worked out so perfectly. The Lord knows what He is doing.

New Years day was fun. Not much missionary work happened. Like I said, the beginning of the week was slow because we were working through some things. My companion was having a really rough day and so we were trying to do things that would lift her spirits so that we could work hard the rest of the week. So we ended up spending most of New Years day at the Mann's house. The Mann's are a family in our ward who are awesome and we love them so much. They are Sister Liljenquist's favorite family, so spending time with them definitely lifted her spirits. Their son had just gotten married in Las Vegas and they were having an open house for him and his new wife on Saturday. So while we were over there we asked if they needed any help getting ready for it. So we ended up helping for awhile. Sister Liljenquist helped their daughter, Allison, make oreo balls. The two of them are best friends. And I ended up polishing leaves -- which by the way is a ridiculous job, on the ficus tree in their living room. Their 14 year old daughter, Sarah, came over and we did it together. We had a lot of fun and were cracking up laughing the whole time. It takes a lot of energy to polish leaves. We were completely exhausted by the end. We kept losing track of what branch we were on and what ones we had already done. And I kept hitting my head on the corner of their mantle. It was good bonding time. It was a lot of fun. We also had dinner with them. In the South they have a tradition that if you eat black-eyed peas on New Year's you will have a prosperous year. So we had black-eyed peas for dinner, as well as chili, macaroni and cheese, and corn bread. It was a really random dinner. But really good. It was a good day.

The end of the week we got lots of misisonary work done. We were able to visit recent converts, less-actives, and investigators that we haven't been able to see in a long time. We visited a recent convert, Amy, on Friday. She was having a really rough day and was very stressed and worried about a lot of things going on. She really appreciated our visit and said that we helped her morning be less miserable. A member told us that she even posted about it one facebook because it just made her whole day. It always feels good to know that people appreciate your visits and that we helped people feel the Spirit more. We also started teaching a less-active that we found a few weeks ago. We taught her the Restoration yesterday. She is really excited to read the Book of Mormon since she didn't read it at all when she was baptized in the 90's.

Things are going well. We are really excited about this week. Its going to be a great and succesfull week.

I hope everyone has a great week!

Love,

Sister Sylvester