30 July 2013

Hi Ya'll!

Wow!  What a crazy, hectic, life changing week this past week has been!

First things first, I definitely know I'm not in Utah anymore and today we only have an hour and a quarter to email, so sorry if I don't write as detailed as I normally would like to!

Monday we had an awesome transfer conference activity where we had T.C. Christensen visit and talk to us.  He played some clips from some of the films he has helped produce/direct.  It was awesome and bittersweet - awesome because we were all together and bittersweet because I knew it would be the last time I would be with the whole mission.  Tuesday was good as I received my travel itinerary so spent some of my P-Day packing and then Sister Bowden and I had fun doing "last" things together on Temple Square.  Just a bit about my itinerary to South Carolina, the Travel Department were trying to book our flights after the pioneer parade but the office was a little congested because there were so many missionaries to book travel for, so they ended up just booking us on the earliest flights possible.  So, we said our goodbyes and Wednesday morning my sweet little Sister Pipe drove us to the airport.  Sister Nilsson and I were both going to South Carolina and it was great to have a flying buddy and I was so grateful we were sitting together the whole way.  We flew to Detroit Michigan first and that was almost a four hour flight and I managed to catch up on some sleep because I didn't sleep too well the night before.  The Detroit airport is awesome!  I loved it!  They have this cool tunnel thingy that you walk through to get to the other terminal and it had all these lights and music was playing -reminded me of an ice skating rink - so funny.  Anyway, we hopped on our next flight and flew to South Carolina Columbia airport.  Their were two sisters waiting for us when we arrived - Sister Lundberg and Sister Gale - who are the co-ordinating Sisters and so sweet.  They drove us to the Mission home and told us that the departing missionaries were at the Temple and when they finished we would all have dinner together.  Sister Ibarra was a T2 missionary serving here and we were so excited to see her.  It was a bit intimidating meeting up with seventeen Elders (remember, we don't have Elder's on Temple Square) and having them each introduce themselves to us, along with meeting the Mission President and his wife and the Senior couples.   Our mission President is President Holm and he and his wife are so kind.  I found out that my new companion was Sister Ibarra's trainee and my new title with my new companion is that we are now, "Sister Training leaders" (I had no idea what that meant) and our area is Pelion.  You have to google Pelion!

So, when everyone arrived back from the Temple,  we ate a yummy meal and for us newbies we were invited to share our testimonies, (I don't ever remember being so nervous to share my testimony) and then we went to the house of one of the Senior couples with Sister Ibarra and stayed the night.   We spent a lot of time talking about what our mission would be like.   We learnt that Sister Nilsson has been assigned to the Charleston area so we probably won't see each other until we go back to T2 which is sad.  Our mission boundaries are pretty much the whole State of South Carolina, so we are two hours away from each other.  It was so hard for me to wake up the next morning because of the two hour time difference but I got up and we went for a run around the pond and it was such a nice feeling to be in a different environment to Salt Lake City.  South Carolina reminds me a lot of NZ - the greenery - and a bit of Samoa - its really humid and there are a lot of bugs - but it's really beautiful.

My new companion's name is Sister Hopper from California and you wouldn't believe it but she knows my good friend Julie Cunha.  They met at a girls camp that they both attended!  Small world!!!  We have a lot of fun together so its awesome.  Sister Hopper is 20 years of age, very hilarious, plays the flute (and did I mention hilarious).  She did a little concert for me the other night and it was so fun. Our area is called Pelion but we call it, "The Boonies"  because its pretty much in the outbacks of South Carolina.  I remember the first time we went tracting I was so scared because while we live in a mobile home (they call them trailers here) almost everyone else lives in trailers too (believe me, it's nothing like the North Shore at home) and I found this so weird.  But, the people in the South are very Christian and very religious and even if they are not interested in hearing our message, they thank us for dropping by, express their appreciation for what we are doing and wish us well.  It's the weirdest thing to be in a community where there is so much hospitality, "Southern hospitality" which I thought was a lost art.  Apparently not!  We have had so many people offer us a ride when we are out tracting because they think we need help, but we have a car.  Thank goodness for that because I think I really would die out here if we didn't have one.  Our area is huge and it is very HOT here and I've darkened up even more and my tan is golden.  I bought some sandals when I got here because we are allowed to wear them.  My goal is to get rid of my white toes!  Haha!  So, mum I won't need anymore shoes as I only have five more months left and I'll just wear out what I have.

The work is very different and I'm learning to love knocking on people's doors and working with members.  The members are great and there are two sets of missionaries assigned to our Ward.  The Elders have to bike everywhere and because they are in contact with more members they have more dinner appointments but a lot of the members give us food so we always have enough for our needs.  We've already had a meal at one of the members home whose names are the Buntings!  Mum, you'll have to tell Sister Bunting in Pleasant Grove that I have found another family here who are also Buntings!  I missed seeing them before I left.  Sister Bunting is the best cook!  We have one investigator on date (scheduled) to be baptized but she wants her fiancee to baptize her and he doesn't have the priesthood yet so thats a goal for them both.  They will be married next week and following that we will work on having him receive the priesthood.

I love the work here even though it's different from being on the Square and I don't remember ever being this tired before, but I love it!  The Lord is helping us in the work and I know all your prayers are helping us too and we appreciate them so much.  Pray that we will be safe because we are out in the boonies.

Have a great week.

Love Sister Chadderton

Picture:  The three Temple Square sisters in South Carolina Columbia Mission - Sister Nilsson, Sister Ibarra & Sister Chadderton (me!)

24 July 2013

Hi Family,

I have a quick minute to email!  I just wanted to let you all know how excited I am (but a little nervous too), to leave my mission for my outbound experience.  South Carolina Columbia sounds like a great new adventure.  I'm glad I will be with another sister from Temple Square so we will travel together. 

My new P-Day will be next Monday.  I love you all and thanks for those who wrote a quick note.  I'll write more next week!!!

Ether 12:12 - keep praying.

Love Sister Chadderton xoxo

17 July 2013

Hi there family!

Guess what? "I'm going outbound!"  Apparently, the General Authorities have a little holiday in July and they are back today and we've learnt that we will be assigned our outbound areas today!  Exciting!  It was announced this morning in Relief Society who will be going outbound and I and the rest of my class are all going - Sister's Magaoay, Vaivai, Walsh and a few others.  We will all be going out around the same time. YAY!   This means that I get to call home for five minutes on Friday afternoon because our transfer conference is Friday morning.  I'll try calling around my 6:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. which will be your Saturday 12:00 noon - 12:30 p.m. We will return to the Square in October, just after General Conference and I will have two more transfers and then it's homeward bound for me!  For security reasons around the Square, when someone asks us how long we've been out, we say, "Less than a year" or "Just over a year!"  I know it has almost been a year for me but it doesn't really feel like it.  But  there are times when my body is feeling a little run down and then it does feel like I've been out a year.  But whose counting!  I really love our early morning sports and almost everyday at 5:50 a.m. a bunch of us try to play basketball.  Before I forget,  you probably won't hear from me again until July 29th- just under two weeks. Because of Pioneer Day celebrations happening next Wednesday, our transfer day has been moved forward to Tuesday which means I won't have a P-Day.  It also means I will be sleeping  on the couch for one night because by next Tuesday we will have 177 sister missionaries in our mission but we don't have enough beds so those that are going home or outbound are sleeping on the couches. It'll be fun and we love slumber-parties!

Anywho, this week has been, "BUSY!"  Yup!  Our sweet Sister Wall's had to make one of the hardest decisions regarding her health.  She made the decision to go home this week and it was really sad to say goodbye to her but I know she will get better help and rest at home so we look forward to her return.  We helped her to pack and also helped her companion to move her things in with her new companion.  They are all settled now.

We had our zone activity at the, "WairHOUSE" last week.  It is the trampoline place and it was so much fun!  After ten minutes of jumping I was so tired and I forgot how much energy you expend when you jump constantly. I love the Sisters in our zone.  They really do know how to work hard and have fun too.  A bit of a fail though because we were meant to go out for ice-cream after but the orientation safety videos at the trampoline place took so long that we didn't have time to do ice-cream after.  Another zone needed the cars for their zone activity so we shot back so they could have the cars and went to our little apartment where we had cake for Sister Gannon and Sister Hancock's birthdays which were in two weeks of each other.  Family, you would be so proud of me because since being on my mission  I have never baked so much in my life and it's fun. We asked our roomies at the beginning of the transfer to buy us some chocolate chips so they went to Costco and bought us a 2 kilo packet and our goal has been to use them all up before we leave. So, this week I made some banana chocolate chip muffins for District meeting.  Sister Wall would normally bake for us but because she has gone home, Sister Bowden and I made them.  So good!

On Sunday we were invited to speak in the Palmer Court Branch which is a branch for those people who live in Palmer Court which is housing for the chronically homeless.  To qualify for the housing you have to have spent up to 700 days living on the streets.  I spoke at this branch during my last transfer and I was so happy to speak again. The people are so humble and really nice  and they make such a huge effort to be in attendance.  I spoke about prayer and shared some pioneer stories about prayer as well as my own personal experiences.  After Sacrament, we attended Relief Society and the two ladies that sat next to me had trouble finding the scriptures mentioned in the lesson so I would find it for one of them, then trade books and then find it for the other and trade books.  It was nice to be of help in a small way and they were so cute.  I really admire the Branch President and his wife for their great examples of being Christlike in everyway. Great experience again.

Well, I continue to recognize miracles during my mission.  One that I will share with you happened just this week where I had made a list of the people that I needed to call because I hadn't been able to get a hold of them earlier.   Almost everyone that I called on my list picked up the phone and one particular lady that I had been calling and hadn't talked to for quite some time, picked up the conversation where we had left off.  It was as if we had only spoken yesterday.  She told me she had met with her local missionaries a couple of times and really enjoyed it.  However, because she's a volunteer at a children's half-way house she doesn't get much time to attend church but she still wants to learn more about it.  She's incredible  and she has a lot of friends who are LDS and she's so keen to learn more.  I believe she'll get baptized before the end of my mission.  Another of my investigators that I've been teaching since the beginning of my mission was back in the States this week and my companion and I were able to talk to him and it was awesome. He still wants to learn more about the church and we re-invited him to be baptized and he said he wants to be baptized but he has to be in his home State for more than 2 weeks to do that.  He is planning on visiting his friends in Utah but I won't be here. But, who knows, maybe I'll get sent to California for my outbound so I can teach him in person - that is what I'm praying for!  We have our final zone meeting this Thursday night and then transfer conference Friday.  As I look ahead to the new week, on Monday night we have T. C. Christensen - the Director for the movies, "17 miracles" and "Ephraim's Rescue" coming to talk to us and then Tuesday is transfers, Wednesday morning is Pioneer Day Parade and then we are all departing right after that.   Sooooo excited!

Anyway's, thanks for all your prayers and support!  My sweet companion has a few days left and she will be homeward bound!  She is a trooper missionary because she works so hard and you wouldn't even know she only has days left in the field!

Have a fantastic two weeks and thanks for the postcards Mum and Dad and thanks for the card Jeena.

Love Sister Chadderton

Pictures: 

1: Mattie that was Sister Pipe's investigator while in the MTC.  I then got to help teach her and she was baptized!

2: WairHOUSE Trampoline.  Jump time!

3: I know you've missed this face!

4: Sister Siegle - this photo tells how we all felt after an hour (me after 10 minutes)

5: East 1 Zone!!!!! Best Zone EVER

10 July 2013

Hi Family,

It was a, "Red, white and blue week" and it has been a lot of fun!!!  Yay for Independence Day Celebrations!

The pictures below are from the mission party we had. If you look more closely at one of the photo's where I am standing with Sister Vaivai holding an umbrella, you can see the crazy tan line on my feet.  There is also a picture of four of us dressed in black - all Kiwi's -  that now represent New Zealand in the mission.  I'm glad that we have two more kiwi sisters because after Sister Vaivai and I leave for outbound, there will still be two Kiwi sisters on the Square -Sister McQueen and Sister Luki.  They are awesome and very hardworking missionaries. Yay for New Zealand!

Well, the activities and celebrations of Independence day was filled with so much fun and at one point we were walking down the road towards the church and a beautiful, red car drove past us beeping their horn and squirting water guns and screaming at us. Haha!  Turns out that it was one of our Senior missionaries driving with a few sister missionaries.  They were enjoying the spirit of the day and taking a ride around the block.  So, by the time we arrived at the church the sisters were getting out of the car, so we jumped in!  It was awesome and I think I know which car mum and dad should buy next!  At the church we had hotdogs, watermelon and carrots with dip for dinner.  The whole building was decorated and after dinner we had the talent show and the Polynesian sisters were first up and we had a lot of fun.  We did the stick game and you know for only two days of practicing, I think we did awesome.  I know Aunty La would be so proud of us. The talent show was so hilarious and there is so much talent amongst the sisters in this mission.  It is incredible!  One of the sisters used to be a gymnist/dancer so she had put together a medley of songs and did loads of different dances supported with flips and cartwheels!  Amazing!  There are more photos that I will send next time. 

We danced, we ate and we laughed and on our way home we saw all the fireworks display to cap off the Independence Day celebrations and it was so cool.  I felt a little sad for my companion as she is from England and throughout the day, people were like, "So, where are you from?" "England" was her reply and then the people would say, "Oh, we are celebrating becoming independent from your country!"   She is such a nice person and just laughed off the comments, but sometimes people can be so insensitive.  We had a great day!

Our zone is going great and we have our fun trampolining activity today with the sisters in our zone.  Sister Bowden had to stay home as one of our sisters is sick and she is making cookies for the sisters in our zone who have been successful in taking, "20 minute" tours in the Beehive House (something that is really hard to do).  I also made a cake last night because we have two sisters who have birthdays this week so we are going to celebrate together as a zone. Yay for birthdays!

Well family, I've started packing my things and going through my stuff in preparation for outbound in a few weeks because I have accumulated a lot of STUFF that has got to go. We can only take one bag outbound and a carry on so that doesn't give me a lot of stuff to take so I've put all my winter stuff in the bag I get to leave behind. Okay, outbound aside, the Square is still heating up and miracles continue to occur. I called a member referral the other day to follow up and see if he had gone to church and he said he would go next week so I called him yesterday to follow up and he'd been to church!  He said it was a little different but he's going to go again next week. We taught him the first lesson and invited him to be baptized and he said, "Well, I'm gonna go to church and tell the people that I want to get baptized." Miracle! Love it.

The work is great and I am definitely feeling tired, but that is exactly what is meant to happen. Make every moment count in your lives because you never know how quickly the time passes and when you look back (like I have) and realize that it has been almost six years since you finished High School it can be quite scary!   Wait and see me train a nineteen year old once I go outbound!  Not long out of High School too!  Haha!

Have a great week! Tell all the important people I say hi!

Love you lots,

Sister Chadderton

3 July 2013

Hi Family!

Hope you've all had a fantastic week!  I'm at a loss as to where to begin my email as we don't have a lot of time and their's lots to tell.  I'll let the spirit guide.  We've had a full on week and a few of the sisters in our Zone have been sick so we've had a lot of exchanges take place to cover companionships which is always fun.

This week in my personal studies I was reminded that the word, "Gospel" translated means, "Good news!"  Isn't that cool? I do have some good news to share.  You may remember me sharing with you earlier that Sister Pipe and I were teaching a lady that Sister Pipe had met while she was in the MTC.  Her name is Mattie and the good news is that she got baptized on Saturday!!!!  We were so, so, happy.  She is an amazing person and I love her so much.  She even told Sister Pipe that she wondered if one day her boys would have the opportunity to serve a mission.  Her boys are both under the age of five so there is a huge chance that they will serve a mission.  Great blessings ahead for Mattie.

Sunday was a fun day because Sister Vaivai and I had the opportunity to sing together in Sacrament.  The song we sang was entitled, "I'll find you my Friend."  One of the Sister missionaries that serve with us, her aunty wrote that song and it is based on a true story that the aunty had read.  She sent all the missionaries in her nieces district a copy of the story and it was so beautiful to read.  It was such a cool experience to sing a song and know the history behind it.  Another cool experience was meeting Sister Pipe's family who were visiting the Square after having checked out BYU-Idaho for the younger sister.  They all look so much alike.   The photo below is of us with her family and her mission step-mum whose name is Sister Hillam and she's awesome.

The temperature has typically been about 40 degrees celsius every day which is really hot, so I'm, "FINALLY!" getting my tan on!  I'll have to send you a photo some time soon of my feet because they look pretty funny at the moment.  My toes never see the sunlight so they look really white and the rest of my feet are really tanned. Hilarious!

This Thursday - Independence Day - we are having a mission activity which will be along the lines of a talent show.  Woot! Woot!  The Polynesian sisters are trying to pull together and item for that day but today President Gillette asked me if I could teach the sisters the Hukilau dance while he plays the Ukulele.  It's gonna be a crack up because I have to learn that dance first as it's not one I learnt at the PCC.

This morning we went to the Temple and it was so beautiful to be in the House of the Lord.  There were six young men on our session - eighteen years of age but looked younger - who are leaving on their missions soon.  It was a little surprising to me because I'm not used to seeing so many young adults in the Temple at 7:00 a.m.   It's awesome to witness how much the church is growing stronger and how the call to serve has definitely been accepted so willingly by the young adults.

Well, our awesome Zone is doing really well.  Everyone is working hard and finding the time to teach their investigators and we are having a steady flow of baptisms each week.  These sisters are amazing!

My health has been a little topsy turvy this past week and I'm not sure what is causing it but I know my companion is recovering from a virus so maybe it's finally catching up with me.  My ears have been hurting a little along with my throat and I've been getting a few headaches of late.  I know it's not heat stroke because I drink about six bottles of water a day to stay hydrated.  We have about three weeks left on Temple Square then my companion heads home.  We are combining our foods so we can eat it all before next transfer.  I really love my companion and whenever we go on exchanges I miss teaching with her.  It's nice having such a good companion and friend who works so hard to the bitter end even when her body may be shutting down due to a virus.  After almost eighteen months in the field her desire to work hard is still very strong. What a great example she is to me.

I forgot to tell you about the other highlight of my week.  I had the opportunity to help out with a Youth Conference.  After showing the youth around the Square they attended a fireside where the guest speaker was, "John Bytheway!" Yup!  It was so awesome but weird, to see a man whose books and DVD's I was raised on watching or reading and to now see him in real life.  I loved seeing him and as expected,  he gave a great talk and something in his talk that really stood out to me was when he said, "The Spirit should be your best friend so that you can feel it's presence at all times. He is there for you, so whenever you go into a place and your best friend leaves, you better go and find your best friend."  I got from what he was saying that if you are ever in a place where the Spirit leaves, then you need to leave too.  I know that it's not worth being in a place when you can't have your best friend with you.

Well, that certainly was a highlight for me on Temple Square that day.   Love you all heaps and have a great week.

Sister Chadderton xoxo