June 18, 2012

Hello everyone!!! We had a great week! We are getting the last details of chad's baptism worked out. His baptism date was originally for august, but after a lot of prayer and talking with him we decided to move it up to this sunday! So things have been a little hectic. He's being interviewed tomorrow, which in itself is a hassel. Our district leader has to drive 3 hours to get here to interview him. Its weird being out here so far away from the rest of the mission. Anyway... I'm really excited for Chad. He's such a great kid. He cant wait to pass the sacrament in a few weeks. We have had some really great miracles finding some less active members this week. No one has addresses out here, so its impossible to find people. Friday we decided to go look for this guy named david hendrix. We knew what road he lives on but had no house number. The problem was the road is atleast 10 miles long. So... we decided we were going to knock on doors until we found him! The third door we knocked on was him. I couldnt believe it! We were definitely suppossed to find him that day. And even crazier, the next day we were wandering down a road and we found his brother! I dont know whats going on with this family, but we're going to visit them again soon. Lots of other miracles this week... too many to talk about. Missionary work is the best, thats all I have to say. This area of the country is so strange. I learned this week that most of our proselyting area is in national forest... Im not sure exctly who were suppossed to find to teach in the woods. We did go hiking this morning though. We ventured out into the dolly sods. Ill send some pictures. I really do love it out here. Its beautiful and the people are wonderful! Its going to take me a while to get used to the fact that no one has teeth though.... Have a great week! Love Sister Walker

June 11, 2012

Hello Everyone! Sorry my email last week was so short. Petersburg is great. Not somewhere I'd ever want to live otherwise, but its nice to get to see this part of the country for a few months. Its pretty much impossible to do any proselyting here because all of the towns in this area are so spread out. Everyone lives half a mile away from the next. Hmm... I really have no idea what else to write about the area.... if anyone has any questions ill try my best to answer. Right now we're teaching a 13 year old boy named chad. He's been coming to church with a family in the ward for the last couple of months. He comes from a pretty disfunctional home. 7 kids piled into a dumpy little trailer. HIs family has absolutely no interest in the fact that he wants to come to church and be baptized. Its odd, really. We could be teaching chad about satan worshipping and his mom couldnt care less. She has no interest in knowing what hes learning about when we teach him. He's such a good kid though. He loves coming to church. He doesnt understand much, but he says he feels the happiest when he's at church. Thats the beauty of the gospel. Its not about how much we understand or comprehend, but about what we feel. And we can all feel the spirit, so in that sense were all equal. We had our last zone conference with President and Sister Belliston this week. I actually dont think ive mentioned that yet, our mission president is finished with his 3 years at the end of this month. It was super depressing. Ha. President just looked really sad the whole meeting. I cant imagine what it would be like to go back to normal life after being a mission president. I'll miss him. President Richards will be taking his place. Theyre a pretty young couple. Mid 50's I think. They have two teenage kids theyre bringing with them. Well im loving the mission still. I feel more and more fortunate every day for the extremely blessed life ive been given. These people out here have nothing. But the gospel is a way out. Im so excited for chad. Hes realizing that theres better things in life than what hes grown up with. I hope he serves a mission some day, goes to byu, and gets out of west virginia! Have a great week everyone! Sister Walker

June 4, 2012 West Virginia

hello everyone!! I dont have much time to write today because we spent all of our time driving today. why? because im in petersburg, west virginia. Im out in the most western part in our mission. in the middle of nowhere. It takes atleast an hour to get anywhere. There arent even cows out here let alone people. I think theres about 3000 people in the town of petersburg itself. Or thats what my new companion says atleast. Her name is sister gritis by the way. Anyway... people dont even have street names or house numbers out here!!! There just have HC boxes, which is just a mail route, so most people are impossible to find. Its really different. I have to say, ive had quite a diverse group of areas. The city, an island, and now the middle of nowhere. Im getting used to it. Its really beautiful out here. Lots of mountains. The people are super nice, just really poor and uneducated. There are a lot of drug problems as well. I suppose I should have expected this. When i guessed where id go on my mission I guessed west virginia. This is pretty much exactly what I expected when i made that guess. I love it already :) Everything is going well so far here... No complaints. Ill tell you all a little bit more about the area next week! Love Sister Walker

May 28, 2012

Hello Everyone!!!! I hope you all had a great memorial day! Transfer calls came yesterday and I AM getting transferred! Obviously I dont know where yet, you'll find out next week. I actually knew I was getting transferred as of friday night. I'll just say we had a situation that ended in a late night phone call to president belliston, and he told us someone would be getting transferred. I suspected it was going to be me since i'v been here the longest. And it's time for me to go. I'm grateful i had the chance to serve here in kent islnd. It's been a really rough 3 months, but I know that I needed it. I needed to learn a few hard lessons and learn to be a little more humble! It's made me a better missionary. I'm excited to get to my next area and get to work. So we're stil teaching the pakistani family. We found out that augustine, the dad, has an uncle who's family is a member of the church! They live in another ward in our stake. So we're trying to work something out where they can come with us next time we have a lesson. Definitely not a coincidence that we found this family. They are so amazing. Augustine told us a little bit more about all the persecution he faced in pakistan. I still cant get over how much they've given up to be christian. Augustine was kind of an important person in pakistan from what im gathering. And now he's working at a seven eleven making $8 an hour. I guess his education and degrees in pakistan arent good for much here. He can barely support his family. His kids were both planning on going to medical school, but that hasnt worked out now with their financial situation. It's so sad. God will bless them though, im sure of it. They've been faithful, so good things are bound to happen. I've met the greatest people and families here. As a missionary you get to know a lot of people, and you get to know them really well really fast. People seem to pour out everything to us. I love being on this end of things. I love seeing how Gods hand is in everyone's life, moving things along. I think we get to see things about people that they dont even see about themselves. The more I learn about them, the more I realize that we were sent to them for a reason, even though they might not realize it. Being a missionary is the best. Have a great week everyone!! I'll tell you all about my new area next week! Love you all! Sister Walker Oh. And I said I was done with maryland seafood for a while, but that didnt work out so well this week. I tried hard and soft crabs this week. They are a lot of work! I'll send before and after pictures of the crab feast we had last night... It's a mess.

May 21, 2012

Hello Everyone! Not much to say. Its been a pretty rough week. I'm having the hardest time keeping myself motivated lately. I think im having a mid-mission slump. Transfers are next week and I'm kind of hoping I get moved. Its not very likely, but I have wishful thinking. Im realizing that I wasnt set here to learn a few hard lessons and not so much to do missionary work. We started teaching a pakistani family this week. They're christian and moved to america five years ago because of religious persecution. Really bad persecution actually, the dad had to have body guards for a while. The mom doesnt speak english so thats going to be a challenge, We have a book of mormon and the joeseph smith history in Urdu so it should all work out. What else... Um I ate raw tuna this week. A less active family went on a tuna fishing trip last weekend. Brother pruitt sells it to local restraunts, I guess fresh tuna is expensive? Anyway.... they had us over for dinner. Apparently its suppossed to be eaten raw, but i thought it was pretty gross. I think i've had my fill of maryland seafood for a while... Well I dont have much else to say about this week. I hope you're all well! Sister Walker

May 14, 2012

Hello Everyone! Thans for the birthday wishes. It's been a good day so far. We had a barbeque with the zone this morning. It was kind of depressing actually. Theres a big group of missionaries is going home in a couple weeks so that was the last time we'd see them. But it was good. I didnt take any pictures! sorry! I've been horrible about taking pictures lately! I can't believe i'm 22. It feels like im still 16. And whats even more crazy is that this week is my halfway mark!! I cant believe it! My mission is flying by. It makes me a little trunky if I think about it too much, so i'm going to quit... We had a good week. We've made some good progress with some part member families in our ward. Theres a woman named janene schenider who'd been an investigator for 12 years on and off. Shes mentioned a few times over the years that she wants to be baptized, but it never seemed to happen. She's had a pretty rough life.. shes dealt with a lot of addiction problems. But she seems to be overcoming them finally and sincerely wanting to make changes in her life. She's quit drinking. She's in the process of quiting smoking, and she said next is coffee. We didnt even ask her to do any of these things, she just came to us and told us this was her plan. She wants to be free of any addictive substances. Her greatest desire is just to be clean. So she mentioned baptism, we didnt even bring it up. She's amazing! Hopefully she can keep this momentum going. Were also working with the father of another family, the Elburns. The only word I can use to describe that family is disfuntional. They've got their fair share of issues. The mom and 3 kids joined the church last year, and since then the kids have made a lot of progress socially and in school. Joe, the dad, has been adamantly against the church up until recently. But we had a lesson with him the other night and he was so sincere! he said he's so many good changes in his family since they've joined the church and hes impressed with how kind and helpful the members have been to him. So now he's curious. He wants to know about the book of mormon and joseph smith and everything. He's really prepared. I'm excited to see the whole family at church some day soon. Well i think thats about everything for this week! Take care Sister Walker

May 7, 2012

Hello Everyone!! Wow! This has been a monumental week in my misson! We had incredible training tuesday and wednesday. definitely the best we've ever had. We learned a lot about what we can do to build the faith of our investigators. And even better was our meeting with Elder Bednar on saturday. My way of thinking as a missionary has been totally changed. The meeting was a big Q&A, he didnt have a talk or any material prepared. In the way the discussion went, he taught us the importance of being agents, not objects, in learning. We learn best as we take an active role in learning, not as someone stands at the front of a room and spouts of information. That makes us objects. This applies to us and to our investigators. Anyway... it was an awesome conference. Elder Bednar is an apostle of the Lord, I know it without a doubt. We had a pretty good week despite the fact that we were away from our area for three days. Our investigator anna is so cool! She has been through so much in her life, I can't get over how far she's come. And she's gaining a testimony and doesnt even realize it! She thinks it makes complete sense that the church has prophets and apostles now. It did when jesus christ was on the earth, why wouldnt it now? And she thinks the bom makes sense as well. She gets the idea that more than one civilization would have writings. We've seen a lot of miracles with less active families this week as well. yesterday we decided to go check on this guy named mark willard. He lives at the very bottom of kent islnad. I mean the VERY bottom, his street is practically on top of the bay. So as we come up to the door this girl comes out and asks us " Did someone tell you to come here?". At first I thought she said it in a "what are you doing here?" type of way, but I later learned that wasnt the case at all. Jack comes out and invites us in. As we start talking we learn that this girl, Liz, is jack's fiance. Jack has been less active for years, but all of his children are active, all of them served missions. Liz is completely active as well, has been through the temple an everything. They met through a freind and are getting married in june. So liz has been working with jack for a while now. She told him she would marry him if he prayed with her every night, read the scriptures with her, came to church, and took the missionary lessons. He's been doing the first three of those, but hasnt taken any lessons from the misionaries because he doesnt want to take them from Elders. And so... thats when we showed up! No one has EVER been down to see jack. Not a single missionary in the history of kent island. So somehow, when everything seems to be coming together in his life, we just happen to wander down the island to visit him. Coincidence? No way. Liz couldnt believe we showed up. She said it was a huge answer to her prayers. Jack is a bit stubborn but he's softening up. I want to see these two sealed in the temple :) God's hand is in everything, right down to the tiniest details of our lives. I know it! I see it day after day after day. I love my mission. I love you all! Talk to you on Sunday! Sister Walker