July 22, 2013

Here is the latest! Enjoy! (:


We are both feeling much better! Thankfully it was just a 24 hour thing, but we stayed in because it was so contagious! 
This week was amazing! So cool to see so many miracles! We found a new investigator almost every day, which is really rare. We usually try to find about 3 per week, but this week we doubled that!  This week we were able to get to see a lot of investigators that we haven't been able to see for a long time and we saw so many less actives and more members that ever. It was like our whole transfer, all the really difficult days, were leading up to the past week! It was amazing to see a miracle every single day, and all we did was just follow the promptings of the Spirit and the Lord did the rest! We have transfers this week, which is a little nerve wracking. We transfer on Friday, but we find out on Thursday what is going on. Just the thought that you could go anywhere in the mission and be with anyone or you could stay right where you are with the same companion [is nerve-racking].  We were able to go to an area that we don't usually get to go to because it's about 20 miles away (Louisville). That is where the pic is from. We also had a trainer/trainee meeting with the President and all the other missionaries I came out with. And we took pictures and the other one is me and sister Harris. The last one is just the classic Nebraska picture right after a huge thunderstorm we had!
Sister Huss

July 15, 2013

Here is this week's email! 

I am glad that all your classes are going well and that you are loving Pearl of Great Price. Hearing you talk about it makes me want to take it when I get back. Sounds like Hayden did really well too! Summer seems like it is dragging, but August gets even worse [heat wise], but I have been told that after August it gets way better! We haven't been able to get ahold of some of our investigators after they go out of town, so that's the hard part about summer.

Other than that, not a lot has happened this week.Sister Harris and I both got the flu this weeks so we were down for a couple days and didn't get a ton done just because we didn't have a ton of time in our area. Total tender mercy that we got the same thing on the same day, but it had been going around our ward so it was only a matter of time before we got it too. But we are both doing much better now. We also were able to go to the temple and do a session, which was really cool! Some members of our ward (that we ate with the night before ironically) were the ordinance workers, so that was really neat too. It was just all of our zone that went and President Weston and his wife. There were only like 3 other people that were walk-ins and one of them was our ward mission leader's wife; their whole family is so great! She drove us to the temple so we wouldn't have to use our miles on our car since we are only allotted so many a month. Then she bought us dinner on the way home. Hopefully we will have more success this week since we will be out in the area more!

Thanks you guys are awesome and thanks for doing Facebook and the blog. That has been a huge help! Love you guys.

Sister Sydnie Huss

July 11, 2013

Here is another email from Sydnie! Be sure to email and write her, I know she really appreciates it! (:

Hey,

The gospel does make so much sense! We have talked to some of our investigators about that, especially with their ideas of the trinity. They will try to explain something and we get so confused. The gospel really is simple and simply makes sense.

Sounds like your 4th was fun! We actually went to a ward members activity on the 4th. It is way more of a community thing. She makes root beer floats and everyone brings desert and all the ward members pitch in to have a huge firework show and they don't restrict fireworks here like they do in Utah. So it is like a city firework show. We only were able to go from 8 to 9 pm since missionaries were actually supposed to be in by 6 pm. We had interviews with the mission president on the 4th and we told him about it, that there were going to be lots of non-members and less active members, and we had hoped and investigator would come. He gave us special permission to go. We were able to meet a lot of people  and they even set off a couple fireworks just for us. We also had a BBQ with our Bishop and his wife.

Our Investigator from Africa isn't back yet I think she gets back this week.

The holiday made it tough to contact because so many people are out of town or they have family in town and don't want to talk to us. And it has been in the hundreds pretty much every day, not counting the humidity. However we had some great experiences that were us just being at the right place at the right time and saying the right things. We had 3 of the less active families come to church which was amazing and 2 of them stayed the whole 3 hours and one of the families had to leave, but said they would stay all of it next week.

Our ward really has been good to us. For a while we weren't sure what they thought of us. The ward has seen a lot of problems and are still recovering from them but each week we can see progress. We send a calendar around for our meals. When we eat dinner with a ward member and their family, it just gives us a chance to get to know them and for us to share a message with them so its a win-win. But the whole time we have been here we would send it around on Sundays and maybe one person would sign up. We taught Relief Society yesterday and we spoke in Sacrament meeting 2 weeks ago and after those I think that they can see us as real people and not pushy missionaries and when we got our meal calendar back at the end of Relief Society, there were 7 families signed up and some of those were the Less Actives we have been working on. We were so so excited.

I don't remember what 70 is coming but I think it is an area 70. I didn't get to see any apostles at the MTC. I think a lot of it was because of the Broadcast that was like a week after I got out here. Right now we have mostly investigators that are just starting out. Our biggest problem is that none of them will actually make appointments with us. They all just tell us to drop by, and they don't really want to commit to a certain day to meet. Thanks so much for your guys' love and support.

Sister Sydnie Huss

July 3, 2013

Here is the latest from Sister Sydnie Huss! Enjoy!

Hey! 

Sister Harris did go to the same Columbine as the shootings. She is actually from Littleton, CO, and she wasn't there when the shootings happened. She was in Elementary but they evacuated the High School to her Elementary school, and she knows a lot of people that were there at the time of the shootings.

I hope you had fun in Ogden and with Dawn! My investigator from Africa actually went out of town a couple days after we talked to her, but we will see her when she gets back. 

 I am not sure yet what all the new technology will mean for me. We have a member of the 70 coming for a meeting with us in August so I think he will let us know how much this will change things at that meeting. But so far nothing yet. I am a little nervous for it as well, mostly because it will be hard to have to be on Facebook but not my own account, so I wouldn't be able to see what my friends are doing and stuff like that. If they do use Facebook I think it will make it really difficult for everyone but my mission President is pretty strict (which is good don't get me wrong) so I am not sure how much he will implement the new technology. 

One funny experience for the week. So as a back-story, there are so many churches around but the local Baptist and Jehovah's Witnesses proselyte pretty heavily around town and one of the new investigators we got this week had just been tracted by the Jehovah's Witnesses. He came out to talk to us and he  was complaining that  we had just been by the day before but we reassured him that was not us, we are the only missionaries in the area, and we are completely different from Jehovah's Witnesses. He was one of the few in the area that would listen to us. So we are now letting that area sit for a little while. 

We were able to take one of our investigators to the trail center on Thursday, to see the Witnesses of Christ exhibit. I think it went well. Her little boy was pretty distracting but I think that they had a good time. The Witnesses of Christ was really cool just because you can feel the spirit so strong and you literally just look at Christ's life chronologically. Her paintings are absolutely beautiful, so that makes it even better. I don't think she had ever heard much about Mormon History, so it was really eye opening for her to see all that they struggled with and how hard it really was. We went to the Cemetery as well and you can't go there without feeling a special Spirit there. It's so crazy to see the graves and the statue of the parents burying a child with the babies graves all around it. It's amazing! She had a lot of questions about the temple too!

Well I need to go but I love you!

Sister Sydnie Huss