September 16th 2013

Hey everyone! This week was incredible! I love being a missionary! So yesterday at church we had a family that came with the Johnson's, they stayed for all three hours of church and they want to learn more, so we are really excited about that and beginning to teach them! It will be great! We also had another girl there for her first time, she came with her friend Madi, her name is Taylor and she is 16 and loved church, she is going to the young woman's activity this week and just really likes all the girls in the ward and the organization of the church, so we will probably start teaching her soon too! The Johnson's fed us dinner on Thursday and we had a family with 2 unbaptized daughters come, we were able to teach them and they invited the families home teachers over so that they could get to know one another better, it went really well, then we made a cake for a recent converts birthday and while we were decorating it we found out that sister Johnson is the visiting teacher for the family we were making the cake for, so she was able to deliver it with is and meet the family. She said she was having a really hard time meeting them and we were able to help her with that, so it was great! Then on Saturday there was a baptism in a different ward and we took Cindy to it so she would feel more comfortable for her own baptism, Cindy cant drive so we had a member drive us all there and then she also drove us to our dinner appointment after where we had the Chamberlin's (recent converts) and their Home teachers and us and Cindy and the Powell's, the ones feeding us. It was a big group but it was really great to have that much fellowship for Cindy and the Chamberlin's! We also were able to teach the commandments to Cindy to help her prepare for her baptism! The lesson went so well and we had lots of good imput from the members there! I loved it! I hope that all makes sense! Haha the ward is getting really involved in the work and helps us out so much! I love it! I love this ward! Transfers are at the end of the month and I am kind of hoping to stay another transfer, but who knows! STL's only stay in the position for a few transfers and I have already had 3 so I am pretty sure I will get pulled out soon enough. We also went to Zions camp this week which is a church run camp with a ropes course and what not so we went with all the zone leaders and other STL's and we tested the course and yada yada, I did it all with my foot, so I'm pretty sure everyone can do it, the whole mission is going back later this week and we will be running it and making sure everyone is safe! Its really fun! We had a blast! We have Cindy's baptism this Sunday and she is so awesome! I love her so much! We asked her what led her to asking for a ride to church from a member in the ward, she said she doesn't really know and that God just kind of put the words into her mouth! Haha then we talked for a bit and she explained that she told God she wanted to go back to church but that she would need some guidance and help and she said, he just guided me right to where I'm at and its all been relatively easy since then. It was so fun to talk with her about it and to know that God really did answer her prayers! I love Cindy so much! We may have another baptism this week too, it will be Jacob Pickard, we have been working with him for a little over a week now but he wants it and is ready, so if we can finish the lessons, he will join Cindy on Sunday, if not then we will continue to teach him and plan for next Saturday! I am doing well, my foot is feeling better and I am happy as can be! :] I love you all! Love, Sister Falkner!

September 9th 2013

Hello everyone! This week was a good one! We had stake conference, and zone conference! Zone conference was really good, Sister Young and I did a training on how to plan effectively and use time wisely, it went really well! At stake conference in the Adult session it was really interesting, they had a non member speak! Haha he talked about his experiences with going to girls camp and cooking for all of the girls! It was pretty cool, then for the Sunday part of it we had a broadcast from SLC. It was really cool and they talked about a lot of good stuff! One of my favorite was L.Tom Perry said something about how we need to let our spirits control our bodies, I really liked the image of that and how we sometimes just let our bodies take over and our spirits have no choice but to follow, but if we are really doing the will of the Father of our spirits, we can and will let our spirit guide us because our spirit has to be much more in tune with the Holy Spirit than our body is. Such a simple concept, yet it is so often ignored. I know I am very guilty of it! So that's my thought for you today, I hope it makes sense. This week we had some awesome things happen! Last Sunday Cindy (a former investigator) came to church with her friend Sherry. She really enjoyed it and we set up a time to meet up again, we met and taught the first lesson and she is on date to be baptized on September 21st :] we have met with her again since and she is still preparing for that day and is really excited! So its awesome! We also had another miracle, our ward mission leader Brother Laing was at Home Depot with his son Mason and they ran into someone in our ward that has been working on coming back to church, she has a son that is the same age as Mason (9) and Mason mentioned something about being baptized and found that his friend Jacob was not baptized, so he exclaimed that Jacob needed that and now Jacob wants to be baptized so we will begin teaching him tomorrow! It will be awesome! We are being so blessed, especially since we cant go out knocking on doors. I hope you all are doing well this week and loving life! Much love, Sister Falkner

September 3rd 2013

Hey Everyone! So this week was really good! i went to the foot doctor in Tacoma and found out that I have a stress fracture in my ankle so I have to wear a boot and use crutches (I don't really use them though, I'm just supposed to) my foot should heal in 3-5 weeks and if it does not then there is a risk of me having to go home to recover but that wont happen. Please keep me in your prayers :] the doctors in Salt Lake want me to go home right now but President and Sister Weaver said that we don't need to do that, so I am considering myself lucky to be here! :] So with my foot, I cant go tracting and we are having to rely completely on the members for finding new people to teach, it will be interesting but I am excited and this is a great ward to be in for this! I know they can help us out a lot! :] We got to go on an exchange to Port Angeles on Friday and it was so fun to be back up there with the people I was working with. It is about an hour and a half to get there so we just doubled the area and both stayed up there for the day! I got to see Liz, she is awesome! She was baptized the week after I left PA and she is doing great! She is fully active and much happier and healthier since her baptism! Its awesome!!! :] I also got to see the Vaitkus family, Lindsey is a member and her husband Joey is not. Joey works a lot and was never available while I was there but he did agree to take the lessons when his boat was docked in June/July. But I found out that Lindsey had some issues with her pregnancy and while he was docked they had to spend a lot of time in Seattle at the doctors, so he was unable to get the lessons. BUT while I was there I was really pushing getting them to church and when I went to check up on them Lindsey said that they went to church the week after I left and joey was looking for me! Haha her mom was there helping her with the baby and she said that they had just been talking about me and wondering how I was doing, so that was cool! Joey was asleep but she went and woke him up and we talked about him taking the lessons again and he said he wanted to still but he will be off to sea for a while, but the sisters up there will work with him and I told him I want to be there when he gets baptized and he said that he would make sure I was! So I am excited for him! It was fun to see them again! I have recently acquired a liking for the taste of almonds, something I hated before, so that's cool! That's all the news I got for today! Love you all! Love Sister Falkner.

August 26th 2013

Hello! This week was really good. We had a baptism yesterday, his name is David, he is a really cute young boy! We have been teaching him for about two months now and he is a hoot! Their family is black, which I wouldn't mention unless I had a reason. Soooo, the reason I mention this is because this was the most “different” baptism I have had yet. They are a fun family and have been less active for a while but they are going back to church now so that's good, but they just don't totally understand the formality of church ordinances so they were clapping after the talks and responding and talking to the people and taking pictures and just lots of funny things, I feel like it's part of the culture or something! But it was fun! This week on Friday and Saturday we had a big fair in town and we went and passed out over 600 ice cold water bottles with mormon.org cards taped to them and our phone number. It was really cool! We got a really good response from most of the people so that was neat! Everyone loves water, right? We had a few people ask if we had any beer in there and I just laughed at them and told them our bud light was so light it had 0% alcohol :] they would laugh and move on. Haha Sister Young is my new companion, she is really great and a very hard worker so we do well together, I am excited for this transfer. I know we will be able to accomplish a lot. She is a hair stylist and is from Cedar Hills Utah, near alpine. :] That's about all for this week folks! Love you tons! Have a super great week! Alma 26:8 look it up! Love, Sister Falkner

August 19th 2013

Hey Everyone!!! Transfers are tomorrow! I am staying in my current area and both of my companions are leaving me! I am only getting one in return, which is kind of a good thing. Trio's are difficult! My companion as of tomorrow will be Sister Young. I know her a little bit and she is cool! She is a cosmetologist and I can just tell that God is wondering how serious I was when I said I wouldn't dye my hair my whole mission, he is testing me by giving me two cosmetologist companions in a row! Ahhh. It might be difficult, but I can do it! This week we got a new Ward Mission Leader in our ward! He is soooo awesome! He is taking such good care of us and is just on fire about missionary work! This will be his 8th time being a ward mission leader, its almost intimidating because he actually knows what he is doing. All the other ones I have had just go with the flow but he is very pumped and ready to help us in EVERY way he can! Its really awesome and takes a lot of stress off our shoulders! We had Ashley's baptism this week! She is so incredible! She has been posting pictures of facebook, so you have probably seen her! This has been a long time coming for her and I am so happy she got to take this step and she is so happy that she has too! Her baptism was so awesome! She has been attending our ward and seminary since December now! The ward loves her and has always said she was already a part of the ward so her baptism was so big that we actually had to move it to the chapel! She had so much support! She was introduced to the church on a cruise by a return missionary! He is currently working in Portland and was able to drive up to support her in this choice! It was really awesome! I love her so much! That's pretty much it for this week! I love you all! :] feel free to write! Love, Sister Falkner!

August 12th 2013

Hello my fellow email readers! This week was one for the journal, too bad I never have time to write in my journal. So I will write it here. Our baptism this week fell through. He had some probation issues and is going to be baptized when those are cleared up which will be in January. So that's good! We have 2 baptisms scheduled for this week. Ashley and David. They are both way great! We love Ashley so much! She is 18yrs old and is moving to Reno soon and has already found the church building she would go to there and is excited to be around more Mormons! She is awesome! David is 11yrs old and was the only one not old enough to be baptized when his family joined the church a few years back, so he is excited and the family is coming back to church again so its just great! In our zone here we are really trying to push finding people to teach through family history, so we have a banner and business cards with the info for the family history center and we have a booth at the mall every Friday that we get to set up and offer to help people get involved with there family history. This week was my first week participating in it and I talked to 3 people that were somewhat interested, and was there for about an hour. So I hope it picks up and people realize how cool it is! I also went on an exchange this week with sister Stucki, she was in my MTC district and is just really great! I love her and it was fun to be back together for a bit! We had a lot of fun and got a lot accomplished. My goal on my mission is to teach someone that does not have a belief in God, and while we were knocking doors we found someone and he wanted to learn more, so it was really great! It was not in my area though, so I don't get to teach him, but I hope they can! :] This Saturday we went to this far out neighborhood in our ward that gets neglected a bit and we were trying to check up on some families to invite them to church. They lived on the same street so we just parked and walked to their homes, neither of them were home so we were standing by our car trying to see if there were any more members out that way that we could talk to so that it wouldn't be a complete waste of time and miles. While we were trying to find someone to go visit this old lady walking her dog came up to us and told us she wanted us out of her neighborhood and that we are being creepy and that she had our plates written down and was going to call the police on us. We tried to explain to her that we were only trying to visit members of our faith and invite them to church. She didn't believe us and told us that she would tell her neighbor, (the family we were trying to visit) that we were sneaking around their house trying to look inside. She started giving us all these threats and telling us how much she didn't like us. It was really fun. We tried to respectfully end the conversation and she just kept yelling and then she said “I'm an old lady that lives alone and if you wanna die, set foot on my property, I'll shoot ya” she's a real gem... that's about it for this week. Nothing else super exciting! Transfer calls are on Saturday and if I am being transferred it will be next Tuesday. But I hope I am staying in Silverdale! Who knows though. Love you all! Love, Sister Falkner

August 5th 2013

Hey hey hey!! Can you believe it's August already??? Ahhh!!! So today we had a mission wide BBQ for our preparation day, we have been in Tacoma for the day and we just got back! It was really fun just getting to spend time with all my missionary friends!! I love these missionaries!!! and since this whole mission is really young we will all get home relatively close to each other! It will be great! :] This week we had a pretty good week, we went on an exchange, sister Olson came to Silverdale with sister Ryser and I! We began teaching the McDaniels family this week. They are so awesome! They are a less active family but one of the sons and the father are not members of the church! So we are working with them and the son that is not a member also brings his friend every time we teach, so we are teaching his friend as well, it's really awesome! I'm so excited! David, the son is on date to be baptized on August 17th! :] We have Ashley as well, she is on date for August 16th, she has been learning about the church for around 6 months now and finally got a little room for growth from her parents, they are anti-Mormon but they told her she can do what she wants. So she is really excited about it and we just love her, she is 18 and loved going to seminary, she already goes to the singles ward activities and ward functions, it's great! :] Mike is being baptized this week on Wednesday! I am so excited for Mike, I just love him!!! He is a former semi pro football player and now he has a family and works for himself in the landscaping business, he has been SUPER busy the last few weeks with work and we thought he was blowing us off because we could never get appointments with him set up, but we met yesterday and he apologized for being so busy and said he is all caught up with work and can meet with us everyday now, so we are doing just that! He is growing so quickly! I love it! Bryan introduced himself yesterday in our Gospel Principles class and we asked everyone to say their name and something cool about themselves and his “cool thing” was that he has been a member for almost a month now!!! It made me so happy that he realized how cool that is!! He is doing so great, he meets with us all the time and hasn't missed a week of church in two months, it is really great!! This land is the promised land!! I love it here in Silverdale!! :] I have requested that I stay, and hopefully I will because there is good work to be done here! I am happy as can be, so don't worry about me! There is no greater call than doing the work of the Lord. I want you all to know how much I love what I do, and how strongly I believe and know what I teach. I love teaching people and bringing this happiness to them that they have been looking for their whole lives. It's so great that I get to guide them to that, I get to guide them to God. It's awesome!! anywho!! love you all! Love, Sister Falkner Oh yeah, and I got my first dog bite this week. It's nothing big, just dumb! That dang dog had a stinkin pony tail, who does their dog's hair? Anyways, I felt like that was a memorable moment worth sharing. :]