Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year! Wow. I can't believe 2013 is almost over. It went by so fast. I can't believe all that has happened this year. It has been a crazy year.
Well. This week was a nice week. It was so great getting to talk to you guys. I am so grateful for the time that I got spend. It was perfect for me. I am sure that you guys would have loved to talk longer but I think I would have gotten trunky. It is a good thing that I am not.
Well. it was a bit of a slow week but it was still good. We didn't find any new investigators and the one investigator we got to church dropped us. But I know we are going to have a lot of miracles to come.
I am sorry this is so short. Nothing is really going on. Bryce is now going to the YSA branch and he loves it. He might even go to the temple on Friday. I really hope so. That would be so awesome. We are working with other less active families to try and get them to make a new years resolution to come to church at least once a month. That is a start haha.
Well. I hope you all have a great week. I love you! I didn't have a white Christmas but it starting to snow this morning :( The snow and I are still not friends.
Have a great week. I love you
Sister Shaw

Miracles happen.....1st Baptism! !!

Wow. This has been a CRAZY week! I can't believe how fast it went by. Thank you mom and Abby for all the updates. I was very surprised! But about Christmas. I got your packages and I am so excited. I am just assuming I open them on Christmas and none on Christmas eve haha. I am glad Michael is home. I miss him so much. I am expecting a printed picture of all you guys in your Christmas pjs. And time to tell you about the phone call! Yes. it is just a phone call and it will be for a max of 35 minutes. I know. short. But that is what President Porter said and I love you but I am going to be exactly obedient so I can have miracles happen in the field. Sorry. but I will be calling you at about 730-8. Closer to 8 my time. So about 5 your time. I can't wait to talk with you. I love you all.
I have to tell you about this week though!
So. This has been a miracle week. On Tuesday I got to spend the day with one of my Sister Training Leaders. Her name is Sister Crosby. I love her. She is so sweet and encouraging. I have been struggling with feeling inadequate and feeling like I am a bad trainer but she has been encouraging me and telling me all the awesome things that I have been doing. So I loved Tuesday.
Wednesday was just normal. Trying o talk to people and mostly everyone ignoring us haha. It is funny. :)
Thursday was the best day ever! We had our Christmas Conference in Muncie, Indiana. A 2 hour drive. Sister Smith in the Centerville ward (right below us) drove with Sister Soefle (Her companion and one of the sisters I was in the MTC with) and Sister Hall and I. We had to be ready to go at 6 am. But it was so much fun. We got to have fun with other missionaries, learn what we can do to become better and lastly feel the spirit. The spirit was SO STRONG! It was so incredible. I am so blessed. I was sitting in the chapel and in the middle of this spiritual high I'll call it, I just had the thought that THIS IS TRUE! there is no way anyone can convince me otherwise. No one can make this up. No one can make me feel this way. this is the Holy Ghost. It was super cool. I get more and more converted everyday!
Friday we had 2 miracles. We were in weekly planning first when we got like 4-6 blank texts from a former investigator Zoey. She hadn't talked to missionaries in about year and she kept trying to send us texts. So I decided that I should call her. She asked if we had any activities going on and we told her about our baptism and she said that she would come. then later that day we were trying to contact a referral that the Elders gave us and they weren't home. So we decided to pray to see if we still needed to be the area and decided that we needed to stay. then we decided to go down a side street and knock around. I picked a house and no one answered. Sister Hall picked a house and a high school senior named Mike answered. We talked to him for about 15 minutes and he agreed to meet with us tonight at the church :) He also texted us last night and asked if he could bring a friend. We are so excited.
Saturday BRYCE GOT BATPIZED! It was so amazing. The spirit was so strong. He is so awesome. I am so happy. We helped someone. We changed his life forever. It is pretty cool because during his baptismal interview he told our district leader that Sister Hall and I inspired him and he is thinking about serving a mission in a year. so amazing! Miracles! Well zoey didn't come to the baptism so we called her and invited her to church.
Sunday BRYCE GOT CONFIRMED. it was insane. I thought it was never going to happen. He 5 MINUTES LATE TO SACRAMENT MEETING! I thought I was going to have a heart attack. But he did it. It was so cool. Zoey also came to church and we are meeting with her this week. then, that night, we got a call from a member and told us to go take a Book of Mormon to someone. Her name is Becky. She is so cute. She is in her 40s and she said that she is pretty much ready to convert. She is so golden. It is awesome.
As you can tell. I have had an AMAZING week! I am so lucky. miracles happen everyone! I love you all! Have merry Christmas!
Love,
Sister Shaw

Week 17!

Wow! 10 more days and I get to hear from you guys! that is crazy! :) Things are still going great here. yes I found my charger and Ill be sending lots of pictures this week :) haha. Well. It is still really really cold. everyone is saying that this is a bad winter but Rexburg was worse. It is funny because Sister Hall is from Idaho Falls and she wears more layers than I do and she is more cold. it is probably because she is skinnier than I am. but anyway. I did get the Christmas card. I laughed. It was really cute :)

We haven't gotten to use the nativity cut outs yet but I think we are going to use them on Christmas. Go to the families in the ward and see if they will let us read Luke 2 with them and have the kids play with them. Oh and a request from me... make sure that the missionaries have somewhere to be on Christmas. I really hope we don't have to tract because that would be hard so don't make them. Invite them over for something. They need to have lots of lessons on Christmas because we can only be somewhere for an hour at a time so yeah. Help your missionaries out. And if you see an Elder Guerrero take good care of him. His family is in my ward and they treat me sooooo awesome. They show me so much love and ask me many questions about Carlsbad haha. :)

Ok. Now onto my week:)

This week was AWESOME! hole cow I loved it. We are meeting the ward and making a lot of family mission plans which is awesome but the best part of all was zone conference and stake conference.

So zone conference was on Saturday morning. We went and Elder Perkins from the 70 talked to us and really helped us all figure out what we needed to do to become better missionaries. Holy cow I have ALOT to work on haha. but yeah. I had a really cool experience at zone conference. So Elder Perkins started it off and he said before I get started, I want all of you to write down a question that you want answered here today. So I wrote down how can I become a better trainer to Sister Hall? So he was talking and at the end he was like ok I really feel the need to say something and then he went on and talked about when he was training that he built his companion's faith. That hit me like a ton of bricks. That was my answer. I am with Sister Hall to help her build her faith. He went on to day that that story was for someone (ME!) and then President Porter talked to us right after and before he got started he said that what elder perkins talked about was for someone (ME!) I was trying so hard not to cry! then at the end of the conference, like it wasn't spiritual enough, Sister Perkins took all of the Sister's into the relief society room and had us write a Psalm. Wow. I couldn't believe how spiritual it was. I felt like I got hit by the spiritual train. My psalm is all over everything now. It is my person testimony of Jesus Christ, something that I will always hold dear.

Well to think that Saturday couldn't get any better... it did! :) I shook ELDER D. TODD CHRISTOFFERSON'S HAND! How cool is that?! We went to stake conference and were standing by the door and he walked in the door we happened to be sitting by :) It was so awesome. I didn't want to let go of his hand because the spirit hit me when I shook it. so awesome. I love being here on a mission. I am so blessed.

Well. Bryce's baptism is this weekend so please pray everyone that it will happen. Satan is really working on him but we are getting the YSA branch involved so in other words... he doesn't have a chance. :) But prayers would be nice. I can't believe he is getting baptized already. It is happening so fast! I wish you could all see his transformation over this last week. He is changing so much and it is so cool. I thank God everyday for letting me be apart of it.

Sorry this email is so long. I just had an AMAZING weekend. A weekend that I am never going to forget.

I love you

I hope you have a fantastic week.

I don't miss you!

Love

sister shaw

 Me and my old investigator Sherry in West Chester. :)

 Me and Mckell Belnap. She is so cute. She would come out with us all the time and her dad is in the stake presidency and her brother is on a mission in south America. Love their family!

 Transfers day! Us with our new companions

 This is Sister Hall, me, sister Webb, Sister Yokum, and Sister Floyd. sister Floyd was sister webbs trainer and this is sister webb and I with our trainees :) heritage line :) haha.

me SIster Webb and sister green, my old Sister training leader. :)

 Sister Jacobsen, Sister Soefle, Me, Sister Ollerton, and Sister chapa. MTC buddies. All but sister chapa are in my zone now! :) so happy! I love these sisters

 Elder Smith and I (Old camping buddies)

New Area...New ADDRESS!!!!!

Well. This has been a very interesting week. It has been really hard to get use to not being with Sister Webb. (A lot of crying on Sister Webb and I's part) I am adjusting though. I am in Kettering Ohio. My new address is

8020 valley forge dr #Q

Kettering, oh 45440

My new companion is Sister Hall. She is Idaho Falls. She turned 19 in October and graduated from high school this last year. She is the oldest of 4. 3 younger sisters. She has been adjusting well which is nice. She is a good missionary though. I am so impressed. I don't think I am going to teach her anything. (Other than the rules) she is totally pre-trained. She is pretty quiet so that is different for me because I am use to Sister Webb who talked a lot.

Kettering is an interesting little place. We got doubled in, so we took some Elders place. We are living in their old apartment which is ok. They aren't the cleanest but I was expecting worse. They left us a lot of investigators and we are trying to get a hold of all of them. But it is not easy. We have only met 1 of our 9 investigators and we commited him to be baptized on December 21. Which is soooo awesome! He really wants to do it too. I just don't even know what to do with myself. But other than Bryce we don't really know the rest of our investigators. We are going to try and meet them all this week. Hopefully we can.

But yeah. Transfers were super fun because I got to see everyone from my MTC zone. I was so happy. I miss them all! Two of the sisters in my MTC zone are now in my zone which is super cool :) But yeah. I'll writing letters this week.

Oh! Thanksgiving! Duh! haha. Thanksgiving was good. It was nice because we had a dinner lined up for us already so we just called and asked people if we could come over for an hour and introduced ourselves and stuff. The ward is so nice. Everyone loves us because we are the first set of sister missionaries that they have had for like 15 years. so they are so excited to have us.

Well. That was my week. It was good and things will hopefully improve. I don't miss you at all though. I love you! I hope you are excited for Christmas! I love the Christmas season. Oh in my package for Christmas do you want to add some stamps? :) That would be awesome! :) I am running low on US and Out of the country ones.

I hope you all have a fantastic week! Keep being awesome and moving towards the Lord. He knows what we can do. He will work with what we give him. I can see that even more now, being a trainer. President Porter was saying that being a trainer is the most important calling you can have as a missionary and it means that the Lord trusts. I can definitely see how that is true and I am so blessed to have this opportunity.

Love

Sister Shaw