March 18th 2013

Hello Everyone.

This week was good, I had Corn Beef for dinner last night, never had that before, I guess it’s an Irish thing… it was not my favorite, but I choked some down anyways! Something that made me laugh this week was while we were out tracting we came up to this house that REAKED of Marijuana, and we thought for sure some punk teenager would answer the door so we waited and when the door opened, it was this old lady that had her name tag and employee of the month badge from JOANNS!! Hahaha she was not interested and my companion and I held our laughter until we got off her property, but it cracked me up!!! Haha but I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised, lots and lots of people smoke here, it’s kind of ridiculous! This week we also helped two people move, Friday and Saturday this wouldn’t be a big deal except for the fact that they both had cats and there was cat hair everywhere!!!! I am still sneezing because of it. Oh well, it was good to help them, I just got super itchy and red. No biggie!

One frustrating thing that happened this week was when we were in a lesson with Riley, he has been going to church for 5 months but hasn’t been baptized because he hasn’t felt ready yet, so we met with him Sunday and it was awesome, the spirit was there and he looked us in the eye and told us that he was ready to be baptized so we put him on date for this weekend AND THEN… his fellowship butt in and said that he doesn’t think Riley is ready, he thinks Riley needs to hear the lessons again. (Riley has been taught each lesson 3 times) Because he was in an accident that caused a major head injury, his fellowship seems to think that he needs to learn everything multiple times, we tried to explain that Riley will continue learning for the rest of his life and that he is ready for baptism, but it wasn’t happening, we will meet with him again tomorrow and hopefully everything will go a little better than last time.

A really great thing that happened this week was at our Zone Meeting, President Basden (the stake president) came and spoke with us about how this mission is not ours, We are on the Lords time and this mission is His, it is His work and when we return home and are done, then we can call it our mission, but if we serve a honorable mission, we can call it Our Legacy!!! It was really cool, and very inspiring! It helped me a lot throughout the week! That’s about all for this week! Have a great week! I love you all!

Love, Sister Falkner

The Picture is a Happy St. Patricks Day picture from Sister Richman and I :]

 

March 11th, 2013

This week was SO GREAT!!!! Three things happened this week.

1. We got 5 new investigators, so that’s just always really good! :]

2. We had the awesome opportunity to go to the Port Angeles High School and teach all six class periods of World Religion, so we taught a 15 minute restoration lesson and then opened up for questions. We taught like 200 hundred 17-18 yr. olds in six hours!!! It was soooo cool!!! They asked a lot of funny questions like about polygamy and our “magic underwear” and heaven and hell and what we believe our purpose of life is, so that was pretty fun stuff, it was just a great opportunity! I don’t know how many times I can say that! I loved it!! One thing I pondered a lot after that experience was, how would I have felt if when I was in high school the missionaries came to teach all my peers about my beliefs? I would be so nervous! Some missionaries are weirdos and I would have been pretty nervous as to how they would make our religion sound, but being the missionary, it was awesome and I did my best to make us look like normal people, we told them a little bit about ourselves and did everything we could to make those students that were LDS feel comfortable and confident with us being there, I think it went really well because a lot of them came and talked to us and thanked us after for clearing up a lot of questions that they would get asked and not know how to answer! So yay for that! :]

3. We had a woman’s conference with Sheri Dew, I had no idea who she was until Saturday so I will tell you who she is. She was the General Relief Society President 12 years ago and when she got released she was made CEO of Deseret Book. She also wrote a few biographies on some of the prophets, so she is just really intelligent and successful. She spoke to us for about 2 hours, we took a lunch break and then she spoke with us again for another hour or so. All of our sister missionaries were there and she came and shook our hands and then when she was talking she had all of us go up on the stand (over 50 of us) and talked about how it takes the elect to gather the elect and that we need to be fearless woman in building Zion! It was so incredible! She talked a lot about the role of woman in the church and how much we can benefit from the priesthood without having it and how it is still a huge gift and blessing for us. She said so much that was awesome I wish I could tell you all of it, but I don’t have time. I took good notes though, so don’t worry! :] hahah

That was my week, it was so great! God is real, He loves all of us!

I love you!!

Love, Sister Falkner! 

La Push Beach, WA-TAC in the sand!

 

"Killing" (sending home) Sister Holman

 

My new Companion Sister Richman!  

March 4th 2013

This week has been good. Transfer calls were on Saturday, my companion goes home this transfer so I will be getting a new companion. Her name is Sister Richman, I will meet her tomorrow and I am staying in Port Angeles! So that’s the big news I guess! We had stake conference this week, it was really good. They had it at the high school auditorium so that everyone could fit in there, people travel for hours just for stake conference it’s very different from ours back home. But it was a really good meeting! We had an investigator there and he liked it, so that was good! He came to both the general session and the adult session! His name is Riley and he should be getting baptized soon, so that’s great!

Something strange that I ate this week that I normally wouldn’t was Thai food, we had pod Thai and green curry for dinner last night. As you can imagine I was scared out of my mind!!!!!! But I tried them both and the pod Thai was definitely not my kind of food but the green curry was pretty good. So I at least filled up on a little of that and some rice!!

This week my God is real moment was as we were tracting Friday night, we had a dinner that was on the other side of town and we were in a dark sketchy area so we were hurrying back to the car to go to dinner that we were already going to be late for but I felt impressed that we should knock one more door, and I was staring right at it, I asked my companion if she was up for one more door and she said yeah, so we went to this house and that is where I met Jeremiah, he has a family and invited us to go back on Saturday! I know it’s no crazy miracle, but I do know that God is preparing him and his family to receive the blessings that this gospel has to bring and I can’t wait to see how it unfolds! :]

Today I am in Forks, so that’s why my email is a little shorter than usual, we are heading out to Neah bay and La push soon! So that will be good, I’ve heard they are both super beautiful, I’m really excited! Washington is such a beautiful state!!! I love it here!!!

I love you, thank you for the letters and support! You guys are the best!!!

Love, Sister Falkner!! :]

Taught herself to french braid her own hair

 

In front of the Forks sign

Sister Chronister, Sister Falkner, Sister Crosby, and Sister Holman

 

Pictures from the mission field

February 25th 2013

OH HEY!!!

First of all… NATALI JENSEN!!!!!!!!! I mean Sister Natali Jensen, HOLY COW!!!!! Congratulations!!!!!! Australia will be so beautiful and speaking mandarin??? Wowzers!! Good luck cuz!! You will have to keep me posted on how the prep work is going, I am so proud of you!! You’re mission will change your life so much and it will help you realize everything in life that is truly important!! Ahhh, I’m so excited for you!!!!

Anyway, to get some of the not so important things out of the way first… Some of the weird foods I have eaten this week that I would have normally never eaten are; Cooked carrots, still not my favorite but I can tolerate them now. And FISH!!! I know it’s not that crazy, but for me it is. I really just pray a lot that my taste buds will change, at least temporarily… and they do, so that is really helpful and awesome. Very kind of God to help me out a little, he’s a good guy!!

Funny story, last night for dinner we went to the Roods (she is in the relief society presidency) so before we went to dinner we were out tracting and I told my companion I was mentally preparing myself for pot roast, with cooked carrots and potatoes because that’s what relief society presidencies make for Sunday dinner. She kind of just laughed and said yeah maybe and I said, no really… my mom is relief society president and that is her favorite thing to make on Sundays!! Haha so, long story short we got there and I was right. Pot roast, potatoes, and carrots. I ate it, didn’t love it, but I ate it. Sister Rood is a talker, we were there for two and a half hours and my companion and I probably said like five words other than the two minutes of talk time I was allowed when I shared a scripture. It was crazy, and we hinted so many times that we needed to leave but she just kept going!!!! Ahh, we finally got to the porch and she talked for another twenty minutes so I started shivering in hopes that she would get the point and eventually she did and all was well, but it was a long night.

My Big God is real moment for this week was Thursday. We had interviews with the President and Sister Weaver (which went well) and we had about 20 minutes of free time before but we have no miles left and we were already by the church so we could drive around to see anyone. We decided we would just knock the trailer park next the church while we waited and the third trailer we knocked on, we met Karen. Karen is friends with a recent convert that lives in the same trailer park and she said she was going to start giving her friend a ride to church and would probably attend with her. She has read parts of the Book of Mormon already and feels good about it, we are going back this week to begin teaching her, she is an awesome lady, she retired from working at a tire shop for 25 years, and loves NASCAR!! Hahah so we talked a little bit about Danica Patrick and I told her that I admire the way she advertizes herself because she never sells herself as a sex object, she advertizes herself for exactly what she is, a professional female driver. It was really cool! Overall this week was really good, I learn more and more everyday of how much my Heavenly Father loves me and it just makes me want to work that much harder so that I can please Him!! I love this work, I love the Book of Mormon, and I love my Savior and my Father in Heaven!!!

Thank you all for the support you have shown me! I love you all!

Love always, Sister Falkner :]

February 19th 2013

Dearest Familia and Amigos!!

This week had been a good one, the mission life is good!! For Valentine’s Day I helped this sweet sweet member out. She called us the night before and asked if we could come provide some service in the morning so we gladly accepted and when we got there she fed us lunch and was talking to us for a bit and then she explained that her husband “went to the doctor” somewhere in the east coast two weeks ago and said he is not coming back, she had just finished filing for a divorce when she called us the night before. She asked us if we could help her by getting all of his stuff out of the house, it was a very bitter sweet moment, I could tell she was hurt, they had been married for 20 years for goodness sake, but she was so strong and she handled it so well, she has a full trust in God that everything will work out for the better. Her husband had a motor home in the driveway and she wanted all of his stuff in there so that if he came back she wouldn't have to help him and he wouldn't have to come into her home, he could just take his motor home and leave, so that’s exactly what we did. We moved it all out! Kind of a crazy way to spend Valentine’s Day, but it was good!

I went on an exchange and served in Silverdale because my companion got to go to the temple one last time before she goes home, so that was a crazy experience. The area I went to was really wealthy compared to the one I am in now and we had a hard time finding people to teach for the day and anyone that we could have taught was sick, that’s basically how my whole week has been. Lots of people are sick… But it was good, I served with Sister Thomas, she was in my district in the MTC and she is awesome! We went out and did what we could and when we came back and had no more people we could visit we thought the others sisters would be back from the temple trip so we headed back to meet up with them only to find they were still an hour or so out, on the way there we saw Northridge 4X4 and because we had a little time to kill before my companion got back I asked Sister Thomas if we could make a pit stop. I walked in and talked to the guys in there for a bit and they asked why the heck I was in Washington, so I explained to them that I teach people about Jesus and they asked if I was one of those people that go around knocking doors all the time. Hahah I explained that we do that and we talked for a bit about it. I then told them I worked at Teraflex and he looked at my name tag and said “Falkner? You didn’t JUST work at Teraflex…” haha his face was pretty funny so they gave me a little tour and then we quickly left. It was a weird experience being back into that environment, but it was really nice at the same time.

Sunday we had a baptism, it was a 9 year old boy that we found and began to teach but because he went to church with his grandma rather than his mom, he had to be baptized in his grandmother's ward which is in the elder's area, so it kind counts? We went to the baptism and it was awesome, I can’t wait to help more people experience the atonement first hand and draw closer to God.

This P-day we went to Crescent Lake, it is a GORGEOUS lake, it is completely surrounded by mountains, it’s the deepest lake in the western United States, and they actually don’t know how deep it is because it’s so deep. We went on a hike around the lake and found some old railroad tunnels that we hiked through, those were really cool!! Then we headed back down the trail but still had some time left so we drove to the other side of the lake and hiked up to the Sol Duc Falls, they were so beautiful. I will attach some pictures! My companion and I have this thing that every time we experience a miracle or anything that is just indescribably awesome happens we just say “God Is Real” while we were hiking and seeing all these beautiful places I just kept thinking to myself… God is real… there is no way he is not real! I encourage all of you to look for moments in your everyday life that prove to you that God is real, because I know without a doubt that he is and that he is there for me and loves me and cares for me, sometimes we don’t have these massive miracles happening in our lives and we think that he has abandon us, but I promise you that he hasn't. You won’t find what you are not looking for. Look for "God is real" moments and feel free to write me about them because I would love to hear them! Just like a testimony grows when it is shared, it helps others to grow, so share those experiences with others and help them know of the reality of God! That’s all for today folks, I love you all so much! :]

Much Love, Sister Falkner :]

 

Happy Valentine's Day from Sister Falkner

The bookstore from Twilight

 

Hike near Crescent Lake

 

MTC and the First Pictures in the Field

Sister Falkner and Sister Esplin

"Scarf Saturday" with Sister Stucki, Sister Casey, Sister Esplin, Sister Falkner, Sister Hall, and Sister Thomas

Sister Hall's drawing of Alie

 

Sister Falkner's drawing of "Russell", her jeep back home

 

 

Studying in the classroom

 



 

Sister Casey, Sister Stucki, Sister Thomas, Sister Hall, Sister Esplin, Sister Falkner, and her teacher running in the background

 

Alie with Elder Kaufusi, he joined the district when he had to stay longer after knee surgery

 

In field orientation 

 

 

Alie with Sister Casey, she is from Hawaii



The district and branch presidency.  Pinigers, Ozwalds, and Ellis's

Elders Mosbrucker, Rose, and Tibbitts

Elder Rose and Sister Falkner

 

Alie, Elder Lopez, and Sister Stucki



 

Sister Falkner's self portraits

 

Working on laundry in the MTC

 

 



Elder Stewart and Sister Falkner

 

Sister Falkner and Elder Mosbrucker

 

Elder Johnston and Sister Falkner

 



 

Elder Johnston and Sister Falkner, with a photo bomb by Sister Stucki and Elder Stewart 

 

Sister Stucki and Sister Falkner

 

Companions

 

Sisters in district

 

Alie and Elder Kaufusi

 

District and Brother Hanks (a teacher)





 

Alie and Brother Hanks

Our district

Bus ride to the airport

 

Street with a familiar name in Silverdale, WA

 

Port Angeles, the land in the background is Canada