Week 71 5/23/2011

Subject:	HELLO LENOX!!!
To:

HELLO HELLOOO!!!! hows it goin!?! I just wanna let everyone know that you're all awesome!!! and I love you so much! Thank you for all your letters and everything! Thank you for the plate and the cookies mom!!!

Im in Lenox Iowa! Yeah baby! It is the tiniest little town, smaller than maquoketa. Its so cute! They've got sirens that go off everyday at 8am (its time to go to work) 12 ( its time for to go to lunch), 1(time to go back to work) and 5 (time to go home). Pretty much everything closes during the day for lunch, theres 1200 people in lenox everyone knows eachother. My new companion is sister freitag and shes awesome!!! she's from vegas and she goes home just the transfer after me. So we're totally hangin out when she gets home. We've got our own cute little house with our own yard and backporch and everything. Its so cute! We've got a neighbor that everyone calls crazy nancy! She doesnt like it when we leave our front porch light on at night so she comes and unscrews it so we think its burnt out but then we just screw it back in and she goes and collects/steals rocks from all the neighbors yard and lines them down her driveway. Its really entertaining to watch. Lol. I might get to see a tornado after all before I go home! There was a tornado in town that touched down in our neighbors yard the week before I got here and they've said that there might be one coming. Yay!!! its an awesome little town. We cover 24 other towns in our area and a few of them are about the same size but most of them are smaller than lenox. We dont actually have a church building so on sundays we have church in an old house that the church bought to use. We have a really small branch. Theres like one kid in primary. We have have sacrament in what would normally be the family room, the basement bedrooms are the young men/young womens rooms and the primary (for when there are kids there) and the nursery, we have sunday school and priesthood in the garage which is so funny to me and then Relief society in one of the bedrooms. Haha.

Well my first day here we had an awesome lesson with this new guy named juston. Everything he says makes him sound like he's already a member. Haha. He's totally looking for the truth and he so badly just wants to follow god and jesus christ and live a good life. He went on and on about how he wants to be a better disciple of christ. We're gonna be meeting with him again this week. It should be another awesome lesson. We've actually got a good amount of people we're going to be meeting with this week. Awesome things are gonna happen here this transfer! Im soo excited!!! its gonna be awesome in every way!!!!

well, I love you ALL!! I want everyone to have a fan-freakin-tastic week!!! stay awesome!! be good! CTR!!! i'll talk to you next week!!

till next time,

Sister C

ps. if you look on youtube you can watch the tornado from last week. (lenox iowa tornado)

Week 70! 05/18/2011 Next Transfer......... HOME!!

Sorry it's taken me so long to post but my computers been acting up and I cant figure how to do it from Marks ipad. So heres the newest adventures of  Courtney:


Subject: iowa!!!!



HELLO starshine…the earth (iowa) says hello!!!! Haha. Hows it goin everyone!? I hope everyones having an awesome week so far! Sounds like everyones startin to get pretty busy. Congrats to shani and justin. Sounds like fun! Everyones getting hitched…whens it gonna stop!? Jk.


Its been a pretty awesome week! Yesterday we had an awesome lesson with this guy named andrew. The girl that came out and served with sister shields and I, mackenzie and her sister chantel came to the lesson with us. It was an awesome lesson!! We comitted him to be baptized and he said he really wanted to once he knew that the stuff we were sharing with him is true.
Well im getting transferred tomorrow and im super excited to see where im gonna end my mission!! Its gonna be good. I’ve gotta go pack so I hope you guys have an awesome week and I will email on Monday! I love you all!!!!! Be good!! The Church Is true! Always remember that!


Till next time,






Sister C

Week 68 05/09/2011

It was so great to talk to her yesterday! She SO LOVES IOWA!  AND really LOVES her companion Sister Whitaker. They get along so well. Heres her letter.

IOWA

HELLO everyone!!! It was sooo freakin awesome to talk to you guys last night! Fun times! I cant believe we had to talk about stuff for when I get home. Weird! I hope everyone else that has missionaries out had an awesome time talkin to them. And I hope everyone had an awesome mothers day!


Well nothing to exciting happened here this week. We did a lot of walkin around and tracting. Last Wednesday sister Whitaker and I decided to go and just walk along the Mississippi river and talk to people. Theres always a lot of people jogging or walking their dogs along the river. So we were down there and met this guy named mike that was walking his dog and he just moved here awhile ago from Brooklyn new York and totally has the accent. We ended up talkin to him for about 45 minutes and he’s soo cool. We gave him a book of mormon and all our information for church and he said that he’s going to come to church so hopefully we’ll be able to meet with him sometime. Thursday morning we went to an army breakfast that one of our members brother bullard invited us to. They have this breakfast that they put on for the national day of prayer and brother bullard wanted us to meet some of the people that he works with in the army. It was pretty sweet! On Friday sister Whitaker and I got to teach a painting class and the retirement/assisted living home here in Bettendorf. It was more like sister Whitaker taught and I sat there and messed around with the paint like a 5 year old. 90 year old women with dementia are better artists than me. Hand me a giant coloring book and some crayons that’s where I excel. Lol. Ah man, on Saturday we went to the family museum for service just like every week and we got to help the kids build rockets and launch them. It was so fun! And we demonstrated how stars are formed which was pretty cool. Then we just spent the rest of the day tracting and trying to meet some more of the less actives that we have here which is a ridiculous amount.

Well tomorrow I get to go to Nauvoo with the rest of the groups that will be going home with me. Its gonna be awesome!! I love Nauvoo so much!! Icant wait. And I will make sure to look for sister gates and get that hug don’t worry. Holy cow that is so weird that im going on my going home temple trip tomorrow. I remember when I went with sister shields when she was getting ready to leave. Weird. Well anyway, that’s about it for this week. Sorry it wasn’t very eventful but that’s just what its like here for me at least the last couple of months. Lol. But I love you all! Have an awesome week! The church is true! And awesome! Love you!!!!!

Till next time,

Sister C

Week 67 05/02/2011

happy may!!!



Happy May everybody!!! Its gonna be a good month! First off: happy birthday to my Audrey yesterday! I hope it was awesome! And today is aunt chrissy’s birthday and tomorrow is uncle nates and ross’s on thursday! Happy happy birthday you guys!! I love you all!! And how could I forget my mamas birthday on saturday!! I love love love you!! Sounds like theres gonna be a lot of birthday cake this week! And happy mothers day on Sunday! I cant wait to talk to you guys! Oh my gosh, I cant even explain to you how happy I am for the Beausoleis!!! That’s so awesome! Im so excited for you guys!


We had a pretty good week here. It was kinda hectic but it was good. We had a lot of appoinments set up for this week with investigators but then they all canceled except for candy. We met with her on Wednesday night and we were going to read from the book of Mormon with her and read alittle bit more about baptism but when we got there and sat down she said, so how does this whole baptism thing work? What do I need to do to be prepared for it? And she said that she had been praying to know when she should be baptized and said she was looking at her calendar and kept looking at may but thought that was to soon. So then we told her that we were praying about it and were looking at may 21st and promised her that if she made that decision that heavenly father would make sure that she is ready by that day as long as she does her part. She was all for it and was like, okay what do we need to do now? And we taught her the word of wisdom right then.It was awesome! That’s the only lesson we had with an investigator this week but that’s okay cuz it was awesome! We had some really good lessons with some of the families in our ward and getting them to invite friends to church this month. Theres a really cool video that we’ve been showing them that just gets you super pumped to invite your friends to church and I’ll send it to you. Its awesome!! Other than that we spent a lot of time still trying to meet people and we did a lot of service last week. We helped one of the families in our ward clean their house because they were moving out on Tuesday and then we helped them move into their new house on Thursday so that’s what we spent a good amount of our day doing both thouse days and then on Friday and Saturday we were on exchanges and we helped another one of our members take all the wall paper down in her kitchen and dining room and then Saturday our bishop asked us to come and helped a less active lady that has a lot of problems move into her new apartment. The ward is doing A LOT to help this lady because shes got some kids that are the ones that need to be taken care of and we thought it was only going to be for about 2 hours but then we ended up being there from about 11 am to 4:30 pm and had to go straight to our dinner appointment which was at the folkmans. They are awesome!! I don’t think I told you that one of the girls that came to iowa city last summer for the mini mission (called to serve program) and was with sister shields and I is in our ward here in Bettendorf. I was so excited to see her! Shes amazing!


That was about it for our week though. Sister jergensen is going to be with us tomorrow which will be awesome as always! I hope everyone has an awesome mothers day! And any one that’s having a birthday make it a great one! i love you all soo much and thank you for everything! Bethany, I’ll be right there with ya in 2 months! We can be awkward together! Lol. Ames, good luck at your meet this week! You’re gonna kick butt! I love you all! Have an awesome week!! I’ll talk to you on Sunday!!!! Whoo hoo!!




Till next time,

Sister C

Inviting all to come unto Christ: Sharing the gospel