Week 38: I'm going to be a Grandma....

Well we got transfer letters this week! Sister Mandin will be
training, and I will be up in the Mountain View Ward in Vancouver. My
new companion will be Sister Jacobs.

Yep I am super boring, and do not know what to write. Please refer to
 Sister Mandin's email about all the things this week.

 Love to all,
Sister Slattery



Hello everyone....a side note from me, THE MOM!  The rest of this blog post, minus the pictures, is Sister Mandin's letter home this week.  A huge thank you to Sister Tess Mandin for graciously sharing her daughters' letter with me, and all of you readers.  What I am going to do with my Sister Slattery!  Now that she has been transferred I sure hope she "remembers" a few things to write home about. 


I'm having a baby!


That's missionary speak for IM TRAINING!!!!! I'm kind of freaking out
not gonna lie. Sister Slattery is being transferred up to the land of
no return (Washington) and were bummed and pumped. Bumped.

This week was pretty rough AAALLL THE DOORS WERE SLAMMED. But that's
okay rough weeks are actually the best. The other day we were tracting
and nobody was home. #classic. The last door we knocked on answered
though! Her name is Erika and she's golden! We had our first lesson
with her the next day and it went great! She's so sweet I lover man!
The day after her and her husband wanted a church tour. We got
everything all ready then her youngest got really sick. #classic. She
sent us about fifty text messages telling us how sorry she was so we
think she's pretty sincere.

Yesterday was Christmas! I bought the closest thing I could find to
hockey socks for everyone and Santa got us pumpkins to carve. Twas a
blast.

I also had my first crazy yelling lady of the transfer. We were
tracting in this little neighborhood and when we got there this lady
busted out of her house screaming and swearing into her neighbors
window. By the time we got to her house she was still screaming and
swearing but into the phone this time. We decided it was best not to
bother her and to come back later. When we were going back to the car
she busted out of her house AGAIN but this time she was screaming at
us.

"HEEEEEEEEYY!!" She yelled

"YOU FORGOT ME!! THE ONE WHO NEEDS YOU THE MOST!!!"

*facepalm. We turned around to go and talk to her but she yelled at us
to go away. MAKE UP YOUR MIND!!! It was a lose lose situation. It made
me laugh though people are hilarious.

I can't remember what else happened this week probably because of
transfer brain. I'm excited for my new trainee I can't wait to tell
you all about her!!

BYEEEEEE
 Sister Mandin

Sister Mandin, Sister Stromness, Sister Kroener, Sister Slattery

Christmas morning, in Gresham..in October.

Sister Mandin getting some use out of her umbrella.

We carved pumpkins.

Week 37: Last Second Sunday

Yep good thing we are good at winging it.

We walk into gospel principles class, and our Ward Mission Leader asks if we have the lesson today. Very short notice, but the lesson was on the atonement. That is easy to ramble on about. I tried looking at the chapter in the manual, but I didn't just want us to read from it, so we kinda did our own thing. Shared some scriptures, and a Canadian Mormon message that Sister Mandin loves. I love teaching with her! We just have a good flow of picking up where the other left off. Before my mission I would have been so nervous to let alone teach, but on the spot; now not so much. I like teaching last second actually. #giftofthespirit The people in the class were very participant, so that helped. Afterwords we got a few comments about how well we did. I have found that when we teach a lesson by the spirit I do not remember what the heck we said.
After church we were asked to come to a meeting. I didn't really know what to say, and I look at Sister  Mandin to see if she had anything to say. Nope she didn't. Everyone was waiting for us to speak. Haha we finally figured it out.

After that the sister training leaders asked us if we would take a sister from a trio for the day that way they could go on exchanges with the other two. Why not? The sister had served in Columbia Ward before, so we took her to see a person she taught, and taught a lesson about prayer. Then we took her to dinner. That was fun. It was my first time eating over there, so we got lost trying to get there. Our evening continues and then it is time to go to Bishop's for our meeting. We forgot he has having a fireside last night, so we were standing outside his window all stalker like wondering if we go in or not. He sees us, and waves us in. There was a bunch of kids and chit chatter, so we made conversation, and talked to Bishop about our week. At this point in time everyone has left except for one of Bishop's counselors. The sister we have for the night is telling a story, and everyone is listening. As clear as day you hear Mandin toot right in the middle of this story. Nothing was said. Bishop just walked away, and the story continues. Sister Mandin was in tears she was laughing so hard. Then I look at her and I start laughing! No words can can describe how funny it was.

A lot of crazy stories this week, however I can not share them all. One story I will share with you from the perspective of my companion because I am to lazy to write it out. 

My first story requires a back story. Awhile ago my comp and I were tracting and we came across a lost cat poster. It was worded really weirdly and made us laugh so I took a picture of it. We then on referred to it as cat Benjamin. A couple weeks later I air dropped cat Benjamin to my district so we could share laughter.  And as always cat Benjamin delivered the lols. Fast forward to this week... I was washing my hands in the washroom and I heard a knock on the door. 

"Hwaaaaaaat??" I asked

"Elder hewhoshallnotbenamed is on the phone for you." Sister Slattery said through the door. 

"Hwaaat?" 

"HE SAYS THEY FOUND CAT BENJAMIN!!"

"HWAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!"

I swung the door open and yanked the phone from her hands. 

"You found cat Benjamin?!" I asked calmly.  Actually that's a joke I was screaming. 

"Nooo nononononooo that's not what I said at all!" Elder hewhoshallnotbenamed replied. 

"You guys are tracting in our area!"

"Ummmm what do you mean?" I asked. 

"We were tracting in OUR area and we came across a cat Benjamin poster. We compared it to the one you air dropped us and the picture was the exact same as where we were. YOURE TRACTING IN OUR AREA!!"

At this point I was pretty confused. I am a new missionary I thought to myself there is very high chance that I would get confused as to where our area borders were in this strange land of 'merica. But it didn't make sense! My comp was a pro missionary how could we get our areas confused? I marched over to a map to double check. Nope. They were tracting in OUR area!

"I think you guys miiiiiight be mistaken." I said. 

"No. We are not." These elders were standing firm. 

We debated back and forth for a bit then I heard his companion in the background say,

"Give the phone to me."

It was about to go down! You see, we love these elders to death but they can be very intense sometimes. I shook my head at the determination they had. I had a map right in front of me and they still thought I was wrong! #newmissionaryprobs

"Sister Mandin." He said trying to sound all authoritative. 

"Yes?" I replied all sweetly and not at all passive aggressively trying to communicate through my tone of voice that these elders were horrendously wrong and that they should just stop trying because the hole they were digging themselves into was almost deep enough to reach China.

"You're tracting in our area!" He declared. 

"Nope." I responded. 

This continued for longer than I admit to say. Eventually I handed the phone over to my comp and they came to the conclusion that they would check their area map and get back to us. 

A few minutes later they called us back. 

"Hi sisters." They said. Their voices thick with humility. 

"We were tracting in your area. We have seven referrals and two new investigators for you."

We of course responded kindly and thanked them. I felt pretty bad for them but we all knew that the whole situation was also kind of hilarious. 

That same day we had a few hours in the evening to go finding. Now there are areas that I do not feel comfortable going at night. We try and stay in the more nice areas with street lights. We say our prayer in the car and we go knock on the first house. No answer. My companion tells me that she feels like we need to be somewhere else. Okay, so we get back in the car and pray to know where we need to be. I got the impression that we needed to go to the area that I do not like to go to at night, so I didn't say anything, and probably looked disgruntled while I sat there waiting for Sister Mandin to say something. She knows how much I do not like going there at night. She said that she felt like we needed to go there as well. Then she gave me a cop out option to tract this other area. What do we do? We go where the Lord wanted us to go. First door we knocked on was a new investigator. He is this dad of three kids, and super awesome! He told us the day before he and his wife were talking about how they needed to go back to church. HERE IS YOUR SIGN. Haha we actually said that to him.

Well I think that is all this week. Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a great week!

Sister Slattery

 

 

 

District lunch

This sweetheart reminds me of Renae.

Week 36: Random Stuff That Happened This Week.

This week we rescued a dog. We were driving by, and we see this dog,
and it was all gimpy. We pulled over, and we thought that it would be
a good excuse to knock on people's doors. It kinda worked.. The first
door we knocked on was the dog's home. We learned that the dog was
born gimp, so he was okay.

After that we went to a potential's house. He was not interested, but
he had a friend from out of town that wanted to talk with us. He was
more knowledgeable than we were, and was bashing. He was polite about
it. That is the worst. I would rather they be mean, and yell at me
than being nice about it. We bore testimony, and we got out of there.
I knew something was wrong with Sister Mandin. She got real quiet, and
I could tell that she was holding in her tears. We got to the car, and
we had a good talk. All is well now.

I bought some rain boots finally! My calf muscles are just so buff
that normal rain boots do not fit. During lunch hour we went to Wal
mart, and they had ankle rain boots! Sister Mandin had to get a pair
too. Haha we matched, and got a lot of comments about it. It is
definitely fall here now. We went preaching in the rain! I love using
my umbrella.

There was also stake conference this weekend. We met Beau and Teresa
Larsen. He is Sister Mandin's dad's old mission companion, and Teresa is
Lisa Ellsworth's twin. What a small world! It was great meeting them.

We also got to teach a lesson to a messianic Jew couple. They were so
nice! We did a lot of finding this week, so hopefully it will pay off
in the weeks to come.

I am sure there is plenty more that happened this week. Having fun
playing games with my zone today. Also went to the Halloween store
today just to look around.

Love and miss you all!
Sister Slattery

Gimpy the Dog.

Rain boots!

Oh Sister Mandin!

Halloween store fun.

 

Week 35: What Happened This Week?

So much has happened this week!

Linda our investigator who was on date for baptism for the 10th will
not be getting baptized then.  She is still planning on it though! She
was totally cool about having to set the date back, and that just
means she will be more prepared for when she does get baptized.

Sister Koener (STL who lives with us) is dying at the end of this
transfer, and wanted to celebrate one more Christmas on her mission
before she went home. She has decided to combine Halloween and
Christmas! Our apartment has paper snow flakes for a Christmas count
down, we even have a little Christmas tree with some presents
underneath. Merry Halloween everybody!

For p day plans today we went with Sister Bangerter to the Twilight
prom house. It burned down a couple years ago. It was creepy looking,
but I can now check that off the bucket list. We then went to Multnomah
 Falls where we ran into Sister and President Taylor! They took some
 Sisters there for p day. It was great! It was kinda odd seeing
 President in something other than a suit.

We got to watch General conference! How exciting! The Tongans had this
big lunch spread for all the missionaries at the stake center both
days. It was good food. I really enjoyed Larry Lawrence's talk. It was
by far my favorite.

The STL's go on exchanges a lot, so we get to know the sisters really
well. This past week Sister LeDoux (my greenie buster) came to my
house! I was so excited! Remember how back in St. Helens, Sister LeDoux and I
had a star confetti war? The war has continued! I open the door to our
apartment, and there is this trail of confetti leading from the door
all the way to my bed which is covered completely with confetti. It
was everywhere! From the bed to the bathroom even to the refrigerator.
Our vacuum decided to stop working, so we had to get a new one. Plus
on top of this we were having house inspections a few days later.
Luckily we got it cleaned up best we can. I will forever continue to
find confetti forever.

Well I think that is all the highlights of my week. Hope all is well at home.
Miss you all!

Sister Slattery

Sister Mandin, finding her balance.

President and Sister Taylor at Multnomah Falls

Sister Taylor sneaking into our picture!

Checking another landmark off the list.

Kind of sad looking now.