What... I'm home....

Well, I'm home.....
My last couple days as a full time missionary were great!!! Monday night after p-day was over, we went to the baptism of Sis. Izzo... The assistants were teaching her. We taught the restoration after she was baptized. WOW... what an amazing lady!!! Her husband was able to baptize her, which was a REALLY special experience. The spirit was so strong. I cried through all the songs... a mixture of the words in the songs, the spirit, and the fact that I would be home in about 48 hours.


Tuesday morning I woke up at 1:30 am and couldn't fall back asleep... I still hadn't finished packing, I was nervous about having to recite "Our commission" (pg 1-2 of PMG) at transfer meeting, and the fact I was going to be going home....
When we got to the church, I had my departing interview with President Wilkey.... What a great experience. After the interview I felt really calm and peaceful!! GOOD THING!  When transfer meeting started, I was a mess. We sang "Called to serve" with our third verse added... "Called to serve the people of New England, with the gospel of a loving God. Teaching, Preaching unto true repentance, holding to the Iron Rod...." then we stated our Purpose.... then it was my turn to recite our commission. Wow, the spirit was so strong. Those words really became real to me at that moment. I had a hard time controlling my emotion.... but so did a lot of the missionaries in the audience. The time to serve the Lord as a full time missionary is so short.... But it is some of the most important work that can be done. What a privilege it was to serve the people of New England. I didn't want to recite our commission, but I am SO grateful that President had me do it.  All the testimonies of the departing missionaries were VERY powerful! Probably one of the best transfer meetings I have ever been at.

At 2:15 we headed to the Boston Temple!!!! It was such a beautiful day. We had some time to take pictures, and then we went and did a temple session. It was so nice to be in the temple again. After the session, we had dinner there, then drove back to the mission home. On the way home, we sang hymns the whole way. It was really neat!!!

When we got back to the mission home, we had ice cream, and then had some talks. We were given a temple recommend holder for our mission, an oil vial made out of wood from the JSM, and talked. It was really nice.

Wednesday morning we woke up, exercised, ate breakfast, had a big companionship study with all of us departing missionaries and the Wilkey's, then we headed to the airport. Boy, was that hard to say good bye to the Wilkey's.... We had about an hour and a half long flight to Detroit, then we had a 2 1/2 hour layover there... then it was our final flight to Utah... 4hrs. We were all so jittery on the flight... not used to sitting for that long... and we were about to see our families.

When we landed we were all so nervous... we walked as slow as we could to our families.

Last picture before seeing our families... E. Crump, E. Ashby, E. Roper, E. Manwaring, S. Hatch, S. Stradley, Me.


Then we tried to peek around the corner, but they saw us, so we went....

(I am trying to add more pictures, but it won't put them on.... so you will just have to check out facebook to see some pictures...)

It was super weird to be back in Utah.... It's so brown, there are no trees, but the mountains are huge....  I got released at 9pm... came home got ready for bed, and went to sleep.

Final Week......

Hello everyone---
So this was a very interesting week. Lot's of miracles though!!!
Monday we went candle stick bowling as a district. That was fun!!!

That night we went and saw Kelly.... We had a lesson on God's love. Then we went and stopped by a family that we had met last transfer I think. They keep telling us to come back the next week. Well she was trying to get rid of us, but we just talked to her a little more, and then she let us in. We were able to have a really good contact with her. Sadly, they didn't want to set up a return appointment, but we did leave them with a Book of Mormon, and the spirit in their home. The wife is VERY interested, but the husband not as much. :( But as we were driving home, we got a VERY exciting message. It was from a member son, of a part member family that we had been teaching from Feb-May off and on, but hadn't been able to see them since the 2nd of June. He told us that he was down visiting his mom, brother, and sister, and they wanted us to come over for dinner and a lesson. We were SO excited. So we called back. We said we could come over on Saturday, and the mom was like... "Not till Sat...." We were like, well we could come over tomorrow night! She said, "Perfect. my kids want to take the lessons and get baptized. I have been sober for 18 days, and we are ready to come back to church!!!!" I was driving, so I wasn't talking on the phone, but when I heard that, tears came running down my face. THIS IS A HUGE CHANGE OF HEART!!!! We both got silent, and the mom was like, "Are you still there?" Wow, we were just SO excited for them!!!!

So Tuesday we did some tracting in the morning, then after lunch we went to stop by Ajok, and give her her Arabic Book of Mormon. This was going to be the last time that we tried stopping by. Well she answered the door this time! We came in, taught her about the Bible and the Book of Mormon, answered her questions... after about an hour, her real concern came out... darn polygamy... she saw a show about the FLDS, and thought it was us... so we cleared that up. She said everything in the Book of Mormon that she was reading made sense. GOOD. Then we went and played scrabble, Taught Jackie, and then went to teach the part member family.....

It was a good lesson. They were all involved, and excited about learning. What a miracle. Shows the importance of not giving up on people... especially if you feel like you SHOULDN'T!!!! The spirit was letting me drop them earlier... GOOD THING!

Wednesday we had another good lesson with Theresa, then tracted some. We were supposed to teach this one lady again, but when we got to the members house, she wasn't there again. So instead we played "Quiddler" with 3 of the elderly ladies in our ward for a little bit. That was another fun word game.

Wednesday night we got a temple square sister... Sister Andersen from Las Vages!!! She is super cool!!!!

Thursday was district meeting. Oh boy, we went and ate lunch at this sketchy restaurant... They charged $1 for water, and the food was NOT good... never going there again.... but it did give us some good laughs! Later that night we were able to teach Jackie! She is so cool. We had to push back her baptism date till Oct. 15th, but she is still super excited.

Friday we taught the Shimmels after planning. Sarah finished the Book of Mormon, and knows it's true!!!!!!!! Then we had an exchange with Derry. We taught a few more lessons that day! It was a FULL day of teaching! Love those days!!!

Saturday we had a ward activity. We got to play Badminton with some of the girls in the ward. That was fun. Then we went to Derry's baptism to switch back from our exchange.

Sunday..... The Vincent's came to church!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SO EXCITING!!! We were so happy!!!!! It was kind of hard at church... being my last one as a full time missionary. It was a great day. We were able to do some tracting, we got caught in a random New England summer down pore, see Kelly and Lauren, and the Meyers!!!!

Well that is all... I will see you all soon!!!

love, Sister Rankin

Final-- week 5.....

Hello everyone-

This week we had some beautiful weather.

Monday we had a great lesson with Kelly and Lauren. We finished teaching the plan of salvation. What a wonderful plan that is. Heavenly Father really does love and care about us. Laurens drawing for the 3 kingdoms was even better than she knows. It was sweet!!! I'm gonna miss that girl! :)

 

Tuesday we had zone conference... another 4:30am wake up call. It was good... It was weird too... my last zone conference. It's always fun to be around other missionaries, and fun to see those whom I came out with... and see their progression! :)

Wednesday we taught a lot of lessons. We taught Teressa that I talked about last week... She did a lot of studying and stuff before our lesson, so we were able to answer a lot of her great questions. I learned one thing during her lesson... How important it is to have/use a Bible that is translated correctly. So much stuff is lost in the new translations. A lot of the confused she had, was because the Bible she was reading had changed everything that the verses were supposed to say. I'm grateful for modern day prophets and the restoration, in bringing back truths that had been lost during the apostasy!

Us with Ines, her mom and Sister

We were also able to teach Ines, Kelly, and Ella that day! It was a teaching filled day! Those days are FUN!!!!!!!!!!!! :)Thursday was a really SLOW day. We tracted most of the day... with no one interested in even talking to us, let alone listening to the wonderful message of the Restoration. But Scrabble was fun, and we also learned a new game called "Bananagrams". It's similar to scrabble, but you don't have a board, and you work on words individually, not as a group. It fun!

Friday we had some rough times... we are so blessed to be serving where we are though, we were able to go over to the Wilkey's and talk to Sister Wilkey for a while.. and she helped boost our spirits. We were also able to go out to dinner with a funny old lady in our ward. She wanted to take me out to Pizza before I left. So we went to dinner with her. We laughed a lot! :)

Saturday Heavenly Father blessed us a lot in our finding. We were able to ask a lot of inspired questions, and use some other contact tools that we have been taught. We were able to have a lot of really great contacts, and we even found a really solid potential named Dawn....! I will have to tell you all that story later, because e-mail time is about out. We also had a GREAT lesson with Jackie! She is so excited and doing so well!!!

Sunday the Roundtrees came to church!!!!!! I was SO excited. I have been working with Sis. Roundtree for 6 months. She FINALLY came to church. It was her kids first time at church too. We heard her talking to a member, and she said, "It feels so good to be back at church!!!" YAY!!!

love you all!

love, Sister Rankin

It's AUGUST??? HOW??!!!!?????!!

Hello Everyone out there!


 So this was kind of a weird week again. On Tuesday we had a training that was from 9am-5:30pm... We were gone from 7am-7pm... so we didn't really get to do anything that day. So it kind of threw us all off the whole day!

Monday night we had a great lesson with Jackie... She asked us about her baptism date. We talked about it, and set a date for September 3rd!! She is super excited about it. Her mom isn't really into learning anymore at this point, but is VERY supportive of Jackie. She is a typical 13 year old girl, so it makes the lessons interesting, and entertaining!! She is a hoot!!!

Wednesday we had a WONDERFUL lesson with Kelly and Lauren. We were teaching the first half of the plan of salvation. We were drawing out each step as we went. After we finished the first half we have Lauren explain her picture. Oh my goodness, it was so precious... She really was understanding it, and I feel like she still has the innocence of a young child, so the things she drew were awesome. When she drew the pre-earth life, she drew Heavenly Father and Jesus giving us all a priesthood blessing before we left and came to earth! :) It was cool!!! Definitely the most unique, and probably heart felt picture I've seen of the plan of salvation. (and it was her first time learning about it.) Then we invited her to be baptized. She said she want's too. Kelly asked her again if she knew what baptism means. She said, "It means that you believe in God and Jesus, and that you are going to obey them, and follow them forever!" Then Kelly basically taught her the restoration, and how it has to be done by someone who has the priesthood, and Lauren said something to the effect that of course it has to be done by someone who has the priesthood... not just by a priest. Because the priesthood isn't a person, it's something that men get. It was really cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!



this sign is at a Presbyterian church, as you are leaving the parking lot...



Friday we saw Sis. Roundtree again, after not seeing her for 7 weeks. It was exciting, because she had still be reading her scriptures, and she has read the whole gospel principles book! She loves the stuff about the temple, and told us that she has a long term goal of being able to do family history and go to the temple. She also wasn't Sophia to get baptized when she turns 8 in Oct. They have even made a plan of how they are going to get back to church, and eventually be fully active in church! It was so cool!!! Especially since she came up with it all on her own.... Here we were thinking that we were going to have to back track a bunch because he hadn't seen her in over a transfer, but she showed us wrong!!!! She also expressed all the blessings she has seen come since she started meeting with us again, and reading the scriptures. It was so awesome!!!!!!!!!

Saturday we meet this family that just moved here from S. Walter's sisters ward in California. They moved just one street away from us. The dad was baptized in June, and the mom has just reactivated 7 months ago. They are a super cool family!! At church on Sunday they told us to come over whenever, they are ready for more lessons. They have 4 CUTE kids, 8 and under. So that was cool!!

Well that's the exciting news for the week!!!!

love, Sister Rankin