Week 74 06/13/2011 18 DAYS TO GO!!!!

Hello family!!! sounds like it was an exciting weekend. I cant believe haley and zach are in high school now. Thats weird. i hear the weathers been starting to get alittle better out there now. its pouring right now out here and the allergies have been horrible! but thats alright.

Well as for us here in the great state of IOWA it wasnt a very eventful week actually. Sister freitag and I were both super sick most of the week so we spent a lot of time inside. But towards the end of the week we started feelin a little better. We actually got to go out to a member in the branch, sister leonards ranch and help her with her horses and chores around the ranch that day. We met with one of our investigators, kim this week and her twin daughters mattea and mariah this week and did some service with them at their house. We're just trying to get them to come to church but kim is really paranoid to be around people in public. Other than that we had a couple other lessons that our investigators didnt show up for. Aban skipped out on our appointment with him but he called us and wanted to set something up for this week. On saturday we got to go to des moines for the multi-stake relief society conference that sister allred from the general relief society presidency spoke at. Oh my gosh, I got to see grandma mathusek and sister fagersten from cedar falls and leslie lee, sister gelder, sister jeppsen and a couple other people from iowa city. I was so excited! I love them! It was a really good conference. Sunday was an awesome day at church. One of our members, renae gave a talk and she brought her son kyle and a couple of his frends to church with her. Kyle just got out of jail this last week and told his mom he wanted to go to church with her and when we were talking to him after church he told he wanted us to come and teach him and he wants to get baptized! Sweet!!!!! he's a really good guy, just wrong places at the wrong times but maybe it was just the wrong place at the right time for him to realize whats important and the changes he needs to make in his life. We're gonna be meeting with him on wednesday!!its gonna be awesome!! it's gonna be a good week!!!!

I love you all!! have an awesome week!!! thank you for everything!!! happy fathers day to all the daddies!!!! you're awesome!!
till next time,
Sister C

Week 73 06/06/2011 25 days to go!!!

Hello hello family!! I hope you guys had a fabulous weekend! I cant believe haley and zac are both gonna be goin to high school...wierd! Is the weather getting any better at home? Its getting pretty hot and humid here. I definitely wont miss the humidity when I leave.

We had a pretty good week here in lenox! We worked with a lot of our members this week and had some really good lessons with them. Earleir last week we had this guy call us that said that he wanted to meet with us. So we were super excited about that. His name's Aban and he's from honduras but he's lived here since he was about 15 or 16 and turns out that he's really good friends with one of the less active members in our branch, freddie. Aban said that freddie had been talking to him about the church alittle bit and aban said that he has really been wanting to change things in his life and wanting to come closer to god. So we went over and met with him on thursday and took brother and sister wangberg with us (ps. Brother wangberg reminds me so much of dad). So we were teaching him about the restoration and the spirit was super strong and you could just tell how much aban wants to follow Christ and we were gonna ask him if he would be baptized once he knew that the things we were sharing with him were true and then he started talkin about how when he was 10 he went to our church over in honduras all the time by himself and he got baptized. Well alright then..deed already done. And he came to church yesterday which was awesome to have someone there for the members to work with. Other than that we had the rest of appointments with investigators fall through this last week but this we'll hopefully be able to have some appointments that actually happen.

Update on Crazy nancy: she stole our front porch light and some more rocks from our yard. Haha. Shes getting a nice little collection there and apparently she went out in the middle of the night and painted the back of our neighbors car and she likes to spray paint her face. Haha.

Well thats about it for now, the lbrary's closing for lunch along with the rest of the town. Gotta go. I love you all!!!!! have an awesome week!!!!

till next time,

Sister C

Week 72 05/31/2011 FOUR MORE WEEKS!!

Subject:	tis the season...allergy season!!!
To:

Happy Tuesday everyone!!! How was your guys’ memorial day weekend? Do anything fun? Summer times here and schools gettin out…whoo hoo!! I cant believe amys gonna be starting drivers ed..weird! I think she should just be cool like me and wait till shes 18. lol. I totally spaced it when I was emailing last week but happy day of birth last week brit! And uncle pauls getttin hitched this week!! One word….awesome!!! im so excited for him! Tell him I love him and give him a big hug for me and tennyson too!! Tell him im so excited for him to go to brazil!! My goodness everyones goin there, im feelin kinda left out. Not really actually, iowa’s so much better. We’ve got cows, corn, pigs and soybeans..what more could you want. Lol. I cant believe its still snowin up in the mountains. That’s crazy.

We had a pretty good week. We had most our appointments with investigators fall through but we found stuff to keep us busy. We spent almost an entire day helping one of the less active ladies in our branch, sister cheney around her house. She’s older and lives by herself and she needed help re-gluing all of her wall paper in her family room so sister Freitag and I were up on ladders all day. It was really nice though, we got to know sister cheney and help her and she came to church on Sunday which was really nice to see her there. She’s such a funny cooky old lady that likes to sneak things into you car when your not looking, like a cactus. We spent some time at a less active members house, the zimmermans. Oh my gosh, I love them!! They’re soo awesome! They’re in their late 60’s and sister Zimmerman (first name’s Ginny) says she was baptized a long time ago but no one has her records and no one knows where they are so we’re not sure if she really was baptized or not. But she and her husband are amazing. Saturday was awesome. One of the towns that we cover is called Bedford and on Saturday they had their annual “Bedford in Bloom” festival. One of the members of our branch was the head chairman of it and had sister Freitag and I really involved in it. There are a lot of towns in our area that don’t accept “outsiders” very well especially when you knock on their door so we’ve been trying to do service in those towns so that we can be seen and get to know the people that live there that way and Bedford is one of those towns. So on Saturday we got to help out at the festival with the talent show which is a big thing here, some of the kids games and then with their “blazin bbq bash” contest. Let me tell you Iowans take their grill outs VERY seriously. They had different categories like: chicken, ribs, briskets, pork butt you name it they grill it. So they had like 6 different judges for each category but the jusdges couldn’t know who made what and the grillers couldn’t know who the judges were so it was double blind. so sister Freitag and I were the runners who went around and collected the meat and couldn’t let the grillers see the judges and took the meat for them. It was really fun and we got to talk to a lot of people and gave a couple book of mormons away. The elders that are in our district also came out for the day and helped out with the karaoke so the town was kinda stuck with us, they couldn’t get away even if they wanted to we were everywhere. Haha. It was a really good day. We had a really good day at church on Sunday. We had a couple less active members come which was awesome. Yesterday for memorial day Ginny (sis. Zimmerman) and her sister myrtle (we like to call her old myrty) took us to a memorial day service at the cemetery in their home town called diagonal that has a whopin 250 people and most of the towns that we cover are about that size. The service at the cemetery was really good and everyone that was there went and had lunch at the community center afterwards and Ginny was introducing us to all her old friends that shes known her entire life. It was really good to meet pretty much the entire town at the same time and having someone that they all love be the one to introduce us to them all.

Well we’ve got some appointment set up this week that should be really good and hopefully we’ll be finding some new people to teach and get this place up and goin.

I think that’s about it for us here in good ole lenox iowa!! I love you all so much! Have an awesome week!!!!

Till next time,

Sister C

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