Week 20: Oct 17, 2016

Good Morning!

This email will include LOTS of pictures because we pretty much only did one thing worth mentioning this week (well, since Tuesday).

We went to a member's home on a giant ranch about 30 minutes West of the city of Andrews!!  Sister Smith is so amazing and she is the relief society president in our branch.  Her husband, Lane,  is not a member of the church, but he is so amazing!  He doesn't own the ranch, but he is the one who takes care of it - it's a cattle ranch, so he gets to go out and take care of the cows all day long!  He is the most Texan cowboy I have ever met in my life - he's really awesome.  For fun, he goes out on random spots on his ranch and goes arrowhead hunting!  He has also found several painted pot shards on the ranch along with rattle snake rattles!!  He showed us the whole collection and it was AWESOME.

We went to the ranch because Sister Smith noticed a teeny little cemetery on the ranch that contains headstones from the people who first owned the ranch.  The cemetery had become completely overgrown with these big nasty plants called allthorns - they are adequately named because they are seriously covered with nasty big inch long thorns that will go through just about everything.  Luckily, my Mommy sent me some pig skin gloves to work with and they definitely came in handy that day!  So, we went to the cemetery and cleared out the weeds and the nastiness and cleared away the gunk around the headstones and took pictures of them to put on Find-A-Grave!!!  It was so much fun over there!!!  Because we were 30 minutes away from town, we had lunch over at their house and Lane made us some AWESOME burgers!  Unfortunately, the meat was from the store and not from his cows. . . :(  It was still a very, very good burger! ;)

We saw everything from scorpions and rattle snakes to roadrunners and turtles!  It was seriously the most fun I have had on my mission and I wish we could go back and just spend a p-day there with that awesome couple and go arrowhead hunting and ride horses into the sunset!  (You can actually do that in Texas because there's no mountains in the way to block the sunset)

Another amazing thing we did was exchanges with the Sister Training Leaders in Midland and I got to spend a whole day and a half with Sister Slater again!  I also got to see Adrian and Dakota, the recent coverts from Midland who changed my life, and I got to see their not-so-little-anymore baby Luna!  She is so big now and she smiles so so much!!  It made me so happy that they were so excited to see me and before we left, they told me, "Pray for a transfer to Midland!" Aww!  They are so so sweet.

I learned a lot of really amazing things on exchanges and Sister Slater is helping me become a better person and a better missionary.  I am still struggling (I think I've reached a quarter mission crisis right now), but because of Sister Slater's help and comfort, I have an idea of how to become better and I have a newfound hope for the future!

I just want to bare my testimony of how much I know I am supposed to be a missionary in Andrews with Sister Kynaston and Sister Snell right now.  I am learning so much about myself and about the gospel!  I know God wanted me here and that even though it can be very hard sometimes, I am enough for the Lord to work with and qualify to do this important work.  We have found so many new investigators recently and have so many people to teach!  I am so grateful for this opportunity to serve my Father in Heaven and to serve those around me!  I love the gospel!  The church is true!

I love you all and I'm so grateful for everyone who is supporting me, whether it be a vocal prayer, a prayer in your heart, or in other ways - thank you so much!

Love,
Sister Heather Overson

Week 19: Oct 11, 2016

Howdy y'all!

Some pretty amazing stuff happened this past week, but especially yesterday!  Originally, we were supposed to have this on Thursday of last week, but it got moved because of Elder Keetch's schedule.  Yesterday we had something called a Mission Tour.  It's when a General Authority and his wife comes and speaks to the mission and they feed us wonderful food and we get to see a bunch of people from all over the mission - it was super fun!  President and Sister Heap had a bit of time to speak to us and even though it was super short, it was so powerful!  Sister Heap shared a powerful personal testimony of the Book of Mormon and how it was all the proof she needed to know that Joseph Smith was a prophet and that the true church has been restored on the Earth today.

To be honest, before I left of my mission, I didn't know that the Book of Mormon was true.  I didn't have a personal testimony of the gospel.  I believed it could be true, but until I started teaching the gospel to other people and telling them to take that beautiful, pure book and read it and pray about it, only then did I realize that I needed to do that myself!  I can now say that I have no read the entire Book of Mormon from cover to cover, even though I have read most of it.  But I don't need to to know that it is a true book.  At the beginning of my mission I came across Doctrine and Covenants 11:21 which says, "Seek not to declare my word, but first seek to obtain my word, and then shall your tongue be loosed; then, if you desire, you shall have my Spirit and my word, yea, the power of God unto the convincing of men."  It's still been pretty slow for me, reading the Book of Mormon, but the more I do, the more I have a love for the words it contains and a hunger to know more!  I DO know that the Book of Mormon is true!  I have prayed to God about it and have received a witness of it's truthfulness from the Holy Ghost, just as is promised in Moroni 10:3-5!  I challenge all of you who read this email to read and pray about the Book of Mormon, even if you have already done so.  We are promised to receive the witness from the Holy Ghost whenever we ask in faith with real intent and a sincere desire!  I can testify that you don't need to read a lot in that book to be able to pray about it and know it is true - Nike!  Just do it! :)

President Heap talked about the Missionary Handbook and the ultimate promise it contains, "This handbook contains the basic standards if missionary service and conduct approved by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.  Follow these standards.  They will help you magnify your calling and protect you physically and spiritually.  Use this handbook regularly, Strive to understand and live the principles and standards taught in it.  Learn and live the higher law as taught by Jesus Christ (see Matthew 5: 3 Nephi 12).  Strive to enjoy the companionship of the Holy Ghost, and follow His direction in living these principles and standards."  He focused on the promise of protection both physically and spiritually.  He then challenged us to live these same standards, with some adjustment, when we are off our missions, because we will still have the same promise!  I definitely want to strive to do that when I get home!

Sister Keetch talked about the 10 gifts to bring home from your mission, by President Hinkley.  They mostly contained a greater love and understanding for different points of the gospel and of life.  The one that stood out to me is a greater love for my parents - which has already happened!  I am quickly beginning to understand and me so SO grateful for everything my Mom and Dad did for me and still do for me today!  I love you so much!

Elder Keetch talked about priorities and the analogy of the big rocks in a jar.  Then put in smaller rocks, then pea gravel, then sand, then water and the jar is finally full, but we would not be able to fit everything inside the jar if we didn't start with the big rocks.  We talked about the "big rocks" of missionary work and then had a great discussion about different points in the gospel, like prayer, repentance, finding people to teach, etc.  We then had a Q&A session with Elder Keetch and President Heap - it was awesome!  I learned a lot about the organization of the church and how to live the "higher law" that Jesus Christ taught.  President Heap is amazing.  He will never tell us what to do.  He will always help us to figure out what to do on our own and if we do the wrong thing, then he'll step in and correct us ;)

I'm so grateful for the mission tour and everything I learned!  I love you all so so much and I hope y'all have an amazing week!

Love,
Sister Heather Overson

PS - I got a HUGE poster from the Primary yesterday!  It was so so so cute!  I love it so much 0 thank you so much to everyone who wrote on it and drew me pictures!  Totally made my day!

1.  We went to Five Guys last P-Day for lunch and it was right next to a weight watchers - LOL!!
2.  Abbisnail tried on her Mom's new SUPER heavy coat!
3.  Sis K with a kitten!  A less active member we visit has an outside kitty who had kittens!
4-5.  Me with said kitten :3
6-7.  We ate a Mcallister's and I had the most delicious autumn squash soup!
8.  Sis K making a super awesome face :)
9.  This last one is going to need some explaining. . .  I tried to make some no-bake cookies to give to people with thank you notes, but I accidentally doubled the salt, so I made a quadruple batch of no bakes, but they ended up being SUPER mushy for some reason, so instead of making little clumps of cookies, we put the mixture in a bad with some powdered sugar and shook it around and created something we call "Snowman Poop".  It's basically oatmeal muddy buddies :)  So, we went to work creating this fun little yummy treat and I went to shake the bag and it wasn't closed all the way, so it spilled all over the kitchen and Sis K got down to clean it up, but then she started EATING it off the floor and looked like gollum, so I took a picture :)

Week 18: October 3rd

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAN THE MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU"RE 8 NOW!!!!!  HOLY COW!!!!!

And happy after-general-conference week to everyone else :)

So, first of all.  Our mission president's wife recently asked us not to include the names of the people we see in weekly emails, so from now on, I am going to refer to people by the first letter of their name :)

Monday was pretty amazing - we went to Odessa with Sis. M, the branch president's wife, and bought stuff to make WON TONS!  Then, we got back and spent most of the day with her making won tons and getting them ready for the next day when we'd fry them up with some fried rice and eat them! (We eat with them every Tuesday)

So, the next day, we went to Operation Blessing and helped out some more over there.  It is actually getting more manageable now!  I don't know if I described it before, but Operation Blessing is a place we recently found to do service at and it is currently in an unused schooling part of a REALLY old church.  There are MOUNTAINS of donated stuff to go through and sort and it can be really overwhelming at times.  Like, REALLY overwhelming, but it's been fun to go over there and straighten things up and slowly start to see parts of the floor again - it's been nice :)  After Operation Blessing, we had dinner with Pres. and Sis. M and it was AWESOME!  The fried rice was a little too greasy for my taste, but I was still so overwhelmed with gratitude for them for being willing to make me a meal from home!  It was amazing and I love that family so so so much :)

And then, of course, the highlight of this week was GENERAL CONFERENCE!!  It was so amazing!  It was really interesting for me to watch it with the perspective of a missionary rather than just another member of the church.  Also, for the first time in my LIFE, all the talks seemed way too short!  I mean, there were a couple that were long, but for the most part, General Conference just seemed to slip past me!  I have to say, my favorite talk this time was Elder Yamashta, in the Sunday Morning session, he talked about "being ambitious in Christ" and he also talked about that Elder who had to be reassigned because of his leg and the faith he must have had to go through that.  That talk answered so many questions for me and it just felt like it was written for me!  I loved it so much.

So, coming up this week is something called the Mission Tour!  It is a HUGE deal where a general authority comes to speak to the mission, but because our mission is so giant, they're doing two separate meetings for the north and south half - I'm in the south half right now :)  I'm so excited!!  That's happening on Thursday for us!  This year it's going to be Elder Keech of the seventy.  He spoke in General Conference a while ago, but I'm so looking forward to hearing him speak!  We also get fed, and of course, I'm looking forward to that as well :)

I love you all and I hope you have a fantastic week!

Love,

Sister Heather Overson

1-3.  We found a bunch of cacti growing in a toilet in a back ally and took pictures :)

4.  Me in front of some weird flowers I've never seen before - the lady who owns them totally came out of the house while we were taking pictures - lol!

5.  We got TEXAS HATS!

6.  Dinner with the McArthur fam :)

7.  A sign at the Midland chapel parking lot - lol!

8.  the Andrews water tower :)

9.  It was Patsy's birthday on Sunday, so we heart attacked her door and Sis K drew pictures of all of us in our Patsy dresses!

10.  General Conference with Abby and Carnel!

Week 17 - Cold, Cool, and way Cool!

Hello Everybody!

Not a ton has happened this week except that I got super sick with some sort of nasty cold thing that put me down for 4 HOURS on Tuesday.  I slept for that long!  I'm slowly getting over it, but it's been pretty rough this week going out to work.  

 Sister Snell and I in the car
 on the way to Odessa :)

On Thursday, after I took another nap, we went and saw Sarah, Abby's older sister.  Abby was grounded to her room because of some missing assignments, so we got to teach Sarah without her, which ended up being very good.  Abby just sits there the whole time saying, "I know the answer!!" and being annoying, so it was a blessing we got to teach Sarah without her there.  Well, the coolest thing that happened that night was that Sister Snell got to invite Sarah to be baptized AND SHE SAID YES!  We then set a date for the 15th of October!!!  It was a miracle and a huge sign to Sister Snell that she is supposed to be here on a mission and that she is doing good things here!  We're now working with Sarah to get her baptized and helping her to not be scared of being baptized.  She has expressed the desire to wait a few YEARS to get baptized and also the fear of what her friends will think about her baptism.  We were able to go talk to her last night about all that and she definitely feels better about it :)  We just love that family so much and we're so happy that Sister Snell is here performing miracles right alongside us!  We love her a lot, too!

Then, on Friday, we had a little mini exchange with the Sister Training Leaders from Midland.  They're basically Zone Leaders for Sister Missionaries and their main job is to make sure the sisters in their area are okay emotionally and spiritually.  We were having a really rocky start to this tripanionship, so they came over for a few hours just to talk to each one of us separately and help us with our individual problems and with our companionship problems.  We all sat on the floor and cried together and we have made some serious progress since then!  We have all set goals to accomplish within our companionship and for just ourselves and we are really working at it!  It was so good that they came to Andrews (an hour away for them) and that they were willing to help us!  We love them a lot.

 It was President McArthur's
birthday on Tuesday!

Also on Friday, we were trying some former investigators and they didn't end up being home, but their grandchildren were (16 and 17 years old) and we were able to teach them the restoration!  It was such an incredible experience and the spirit was so strong!

Then on Saturday night, we went to Odessa with a member and our recent convert, Winnie (she was baptized in January) and we saw the Women's General Broadcast!  It was so so so so good!  I loved Elder Uchtdorf's talk - it really spoke to me.

In preparation for General Conference this week, I would invite anyone who reads this email to find a question you want answered in General Conference.  It can be about life, about the gospel, about a big decision you're making soon, anything.  I PROMISE it will be answered if you listen close enough with an open heart and an open mind, with a "sincere heart and real intent" as Moroni suggests in Moroni 10:3-5.  Miracles can happen and questions can be answered during General Conference! 

We found a HUGE GINORMOUS
BEETLE THE SIZE OF MY PALM!!

Anyway, we're all doing just great here in Andrews and I love you all!  Have a great week and an amazing General Conference weekend!

So of course I had to pick it up!

Love,
Sister Heather Overson

PS - It's actually starting to get cold today - it's like 60 degrees outside instead of the normal 100!  It feels nice :)