5 Octubre 2015

It's P-Day again??

How does this happen? Seriously, this last week just FLEW by!

Speaking of "flew", we're getting WIND in Naples now! I didn't think that was possible (the Gulf of Mexico is weird. But the hurricane in the Bahamas is giving us some DELIGHTFUL weather!). Also, my "son", Elder Higginbotham got his visa to go to Lisbon. He leaves a week from today. I'm a little bummed about that, but happy at the same time. He's excited to get to his assigned mission. :)

     Anyways, besides the fact that we have lovely weather now (seriously, the clouds left and the wind came in and suddenly it just FEELS like summer), the elders in our ward had a baptism last week! Really cool kid named Gerardo! :) We hope that the rest of his family follows his example and are baptized!

     Before weekly planning on Thursday; the Vanderbilt sisters, Bahia South elders, Sister Rammell and I went and got $1 tacos at this place called "7"  (I think?). They have one-dollar-tacos on Tuesdays and Thursdays. SUPER YUMMY!

     We've also been working with a less-active that has an adorable nephew with Down Syndrome. He is the cutest!! When Sister Rammell was saying the prayer, she had her head bowed down and he kissed the top of it! Cutest kid ever :)

     I also caught a lizard the other day while knocking. It wiggled out of my fingers just slightly and jumped onto Sister Rammell. She freaked out a little. We had a good laugh about it aftwerwards. :)

     Other than that we are just working with a lot of people, knocking and biking. Life of a missionary!  Good stuff. :) And we just had ana AMAZING General Conference! I know that I LOVED it! So many good talks! The Spirit was SO strong and I know that I personally got a ton of answers that I needed. :)

     We also have a soccer zone activity today! YAY! I love our zone! And soccer is pretty awesome, too. :) Anyways, love y'all! Talk to you next week!

   ~Hermana Curnow

P.S. Don't overlook the importance of Elder Larry R. Lawrence's talk. That was POWERFUL.

28 September 2015

I can't remember what happened this week, mostly.

OH! Sister Rammell's family friends, the Walker family (with about 20 kids) will be shown in a documentary that will air between sessions of general conference this weekend.

     I'M SO EXCITED FOR GENERAL CONFERENCE OH MY GOODNESS!!! I love conference!

    Our ward had a Noche de la Hispanidad. SO COOL! So much amazing food and dances and cultural stuff and wonderful people! <3

    I hit my halfway mark on the 23rd. YIKES!!!! Freaking out over here!

Women's conference was AMAZING! I especially loved listening to Sister McConkie and President Uchtdorf.

   Sister Rammell and I are trying to learn a little bit of Portugese and Haitian Creole... it's not really working lol.

    And we got a new bishopric in our ward! They're amazing people! :) I'm so excited to work with them!

       PEACE AND BLESSINGS!

~Hermana Curnow

21 Septiembre 2015

Short blog post! Had tons of people to email today, I just love talking to people and keeping in touch! :) 

A little bit of a slow week. Lots of tracting, and not many people to touch. But that is OKAY. We work as hard as we can, we strive to have the Spirit with us, and the Lord does the rest.

    We had Zone Training this week, which was awesome! Trainings and conferences are the best. I learn so much and enjoy every moment of it! It is also great to see other misisonaries. Missions are just the best thing ever, okay!!! :D

     The 17th marked 9 months since my first day in the MTC. My first day as a missionary. And the 23rd (two days from now) is my halfway mark. I have no idea how this is happening! Scary, it is going by too fast!

     Also tons of biking! Bikes are AMAZING for doing missionary work!

Lots of good member meals, Stake conference, and earlier today, we went to the Naples Zoo! SO FUN! Anyway, that is all for now! Love y'all! Bye!

8 Septiembre

Not much to blog about this week, so it'll be short!

We've been working really well with the members so far this transfer, so that is super good!

We found an AWESOME family to teach, and they even came to church. They LOVED it! :) We met a LA member that we hadn't met before; she is coming to church this Sunday and her friend is interested in the gospel! We gave a Book of Mormon to another member's friend, and she PROMISED to read 3 Nephi 11. We're excited to follow-up with her about that!

    Our new DL is Elder Mota, and he gives AWESOME trainings! Revelation is so real! We're learning tons!

   We had some awesome dinner appointments and member moments. Good laughs. And we're biking again! YAY!!!!

    Some people that we prayed with gave us EIGHT huge avocados from the tree in their yard! YUMMY! And a 7 year old boy that had seen us before came up and gave us marshmallows while we were knocking! SO SWEET!

     Anyway, I gotta go now! LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!     La iglesia es verdadera y el Evangelio verdadero de Jesucristo ha sido restaurado!

     ~Hermana Curnow

24 Agosto & 1 Septiembre

I have combined 2 weeks worth of blog posts yet again because email time is SO SHORT. :)
     I started off my mass email from last week by saying this: Congratulations to Sister Bond (a teacher from the MTC). She's getting married tomorrow! :)  <<Now it has been a week lol

SHORT BLOG POST!

Tons of lightning storms! This has GOT to be a Gulf of Mexico thing, because the storms were never this constant or crazy in Miami Lakes or Sebastian! Heck, lighting almost struck our apartment last P-day! And for these last couple of nights, there have been these BEAUTIFUL, QUIET lightning storms happening way far away in the clouds! It looks like a delayed strobe light, and sometimes you can see the rays streaking across the sky. Very gorgeous especially at sunset! :)

   We met a nice Cuban couple and prayed with them. They had one of those little saucer, vacuum robots. How cool is that?!

  We also had ZONE CONFERENCE! That was so fun and we learned so much! Then we had a wonderful full-day exchange with the STLs.

  The Elders in our ward have had a couple of baptisms these last couple of weeks, so we're super excited about that!

   Oh, and we also found English chocolate biscuits and Birds Custard in the "foreign food" section at Publix, so that was fun for me! It felt like food from my childhood! :)

  I've been having some exciting dreams. All of them either have to do with missionaries & missionary work, or zombies. Sometimes both. It's pretty entertaining, actually! One night I had a dream that Elder Jeffrey R. Holland came out with us for an MPL, and he was just the coolest, most humble man! Also super sweet. We took a selfie with him in the dream, haha!

  As for this week, we've been having TONS of lightning storms and heavy rain (even though Tropical Storm Erica missed us, the weather has still been crazy). Heck, Sister Pankratz and I almost got struck by lightning when we were on splits!

   We're still on the watch for hurricanes, though. Hurricane season is still in full swing and anything could happen.

   Oh, also our car battery died one night and a nice Haitian man gave us a jump start. :) He was a cool guy!

    That is all I have to say for now. Talk to you next week!

17 Agosto 2015

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. I've become a little less-efficient with email time. :P

Before I get right into everything, I have some fun facts to share:

    August 3rd was my birthday.

   August 4th was my six-month mark in Florida.

   Today (August 17th) marks 8 months since I entered the Provo MTC. Isn't that INSANE?! I seriously have no idea where time is going!!

   So these last two weeks, we have an awesome Zone Training by Elder Allen and Elder Jensen, so much good stuff! We also learned that poor Sister Samuels has bronchitis, so she has been mostly confined to our apartment for a few weeks, poor thing. :( So we've been taking turns doing exchanges with Sister Pankratz so that we can get work done in both of our areas. It's been good, we're hoping that she recovers soon.

    Lupita made me horchata when we had a late-birthday-dinner with her. SO GOOD. I'm hooked!

We've been dealing with a ton of lightning and thunderstorms lately, with CLOSE lightning! It's cool to watch when you are safe and indoors. :)

    And I've come to gain a testimony of knocking in INSPIRED areas! Seriously, praying beforehand and going where the Lord wants you to go is so important, and miracles come from it! Also, faith is ESSENTIAL while finding!

     We're currently working with some awesome Cubans (shocker) and some Haitians that speak Spanish! That's all that I remember at the moment! I promise I'm journaling the cool details!

     Love you all! See you next week! I'm alive!

~Hermana Curnow

P-Day and Birthday :)

      Not the most original of titles, I know. But hey, it sums it up! :) Today is my birthday, and it is also a P-Day. Not a bad combo, in my mind. And it has been going super well, so far! :) Sister Rammell and I have been joking around, saying that it is both of our birthdays (since we've been having such a good day so far, it is just on giant birthday for all of us). And Sister Pankratz is a doll and even made me a little birthday banner decoration! <3 The STLs gave me a card, and so did Sister Samuels! And the zone sang "Happy Birthday" on our P-Day conference call. I feel loved! <3

      OH! And send some birthday love to Elder Mitchell, serving in the Costa Rica San Jose West mission! We happened to be born on the same day, just hours apart. So send him some mail or something! :)

           Elder Benjamin Mitchell

        Mision Costa Rica San Jose Oeste

            Apartado 859-1000

                 San Jose, Costa Rica

So, yeah. That is the exciting news of the day! Oh, we've also discovered that our apartment complex has a vacuum center that we didn't know about, and that whole grain toast with nutella and Mexican crumbling cheese tastes AMAZING!!!!

    But anyway, on Tuesday we had an awesome DT; Sister Rammell and I did the section on extending commitments (what I noted in last week's post regarding First and Second Kings in the Old Testament), and that went really well! We applied it to our proselyting and we've noticed it helps SO much! It helps us find those that are truly ready for the gospel in their lives.

   After that, the Vanderbilt sisters and us did a SHADOW EXCHANGE with our wonderful STLs, Sister Burdett and Sister McGrath! :) Basically what happened is the STLs split up, and we were working in trios for that day. It was a BLAST and I learned a ton!!

    We switched back on Wednesday, Thursday was mostly Weekly Planning and knocking. Then on Friday, more knocking and we helped the De Acosta family move and learned a little bit about their conversion story. It ALL started with an 11 year old member inviting her friend to come to church. And an entire family was baptized because of it. NEVER underestimate the power of member missionary work!

   We had some good member moments on Saturday (I learned that Chocolate Trinity Publix ice cream with lime jello is actually amazing! Thank you, Hermana and Hermano Aquino for showing me the light!). We had dinner with the CUTEST family ever, the Dirienzo family! The had 2 ADORABLE little girls, a snuggly Great Dane and empanadas. :) Afterwards we visited the Fernandez family. They were talking about how their 9 year old daughter doesn't really even look Hispanic, because of her blue eyes and light brown hair. Both of the parents have brown eyes and the mom told us, "Everyone always asks, 'Who does she get the eyes from??'." And then her husband whispered "El lechero", which translated means "the milkman". I DIED LAUGHING. It was soooooo funny!!

      Actually, just this whole week has been full of laughter. Sister Rammell and I are becoming close and we are constantly chatting, getting to know each other, and making jokes. :) Tons of fun! In fact, after we visited one of her recent converts yesterday, we were knocking doors. I decided to ask her about her favorite scary movie. We were in dimly lit apartment buildings, and she decided to make that freaky sound that that chick from "the grudge(?)" makes, and so that freaked me out. Then we round the corner to knock some more doors, and there is this CREEPY flower pot doll thing sitting outside someone's door (why ANYONE would use that as a decoration, I have no clue!) and it literally made me gasp and jump backwards! Then we rounded the corner again, and this lady was sitting on the staircase smoking and had her face lit up with her phone (she was staring right at me and her face was a little sunken) and that startled me again! Basically I was terrified for my life during that whole knocking session, but afterwards it was hilarious! :)

        Church was also really good (that took place hours before the creepy knocking). In Relief Society we had a wonderful class about temples. I miss the temple SO much! </3 And we watched an amazing video, following a girl going to the temple. It is on LDS.org and it is called "Standing in Holy Places". GO WATCH IT!

          Also, I found something super neat in studies today. It's one of those really neat, must-ponder messages in the Book of Mormon. Go read Alma 5:19, then Jacob 4:1-3 and ponder the significance of the word "ENGRAVEN". Neat stuff, huh? :) I love the scriptures!

         And Happy Birthday to my favorite little brother, Gus, whose birthday is the 9th of August! :) Wish I was there to celebrate it with you, but happy birthday nonetheless, bud!

         That is about all for today. Love you all! The church is true!

           Lots of love,

         ~Hermana Curnow