Walked and walked and walked.......

Well. I was happy to hear that you all had a good week :)

My week has been pretty fun :) So This week I hit my 5 month mark! I can't believe I have been on a mission for 5 months. It has gone by so fast! I have learned so much and changed so much these last 5 months that it makes me excited to see what the next 13 months have in store!

Along with the 5 month mark, I had zone conference this week. I love zone conference so much. We learn so much. It so awesome. I like to think of it as a revelation party because I just receive so much revelation that I don't know what to do with it all. I wrote about 10 pages of notes and I still didn't get it all written down. haha.

On Wednesday our car went into the shop to get fixed. It didn't have a bumper so we had to take it in. So we have been walking this week. It has been a fun adventure. We walked about 5 miles everday I think. It is fun because it has been really cold haha. Every day I am like Sister Hall we are making some awesome memories. I don't think she likes it too much ahah.

Well, that is all that has happened this week. We have been doing a lot of walking. A lot a lot a lot haha. Hopefully my boots survive. And pray that we find rides and places to go tomorrow. It is suppose to be in the negatives and the wind chill is suppose to feel like -30 :) It is going to be a LONG day tomorrow. Hopefully I don't get sick again and Sister Hall doesn't get more sick.

Well I hope you all have a fantastic week. Read 1 Peter 2:9. We are peculiar people :) We are all chosen. We all need to figure out our own paths and put Heavenly Father first. We are promised true happiness when we do that. :) Have a happy week. I love you!

Love

Sister Shaw

This was a great week and a hard week haha. :) It was a great week for missionary work. Sister Hall and I reached almost every single goal and we were super successful. We found 2 new investigators this week who are really great investigators. When I saw great I mean that they are actually going to be at our return appointments  :) We have a lesson with one of them tonight. We are excited. She is an older lady and she is just so sweet and loves God. The only problem is that she is SUPER DUPER strong in her church. She does not want to "be converted". People have this weird thing that they think that all missionaries do is force other people into the baptismal font. They think we don't believe in agency or something haha.

But yeah. The reason this week was hard was because I got a SUPER bad cold. I didn't sleep very well for like 2 days because I was sick all night long. Luckily the ward has been praying a lot for me and I am starting to feel better. Being sick on your mission just isn't fun. I wanted to curl up and sleep all day on Saturday and Sunday but I couldn't. A tip for everyone... Eat vitamin C on your mission.

Well. I feel bad because this week wasn't very exciting. I hope you can find the pictures of me on Facebook. That was the first day I was sick so hopefully I don't look too tired and sickly haha.

Well. I hope you all have a great week. I know I will :)

Love,

Sister Shaw

I (abby) received this picture from a friend who has friends in leslie ward. They love her and are so happy to have her in ohio!!

Work work work

Hello again :)
I hope you had a fantastic week. I love to hear from you guys. I want to let you know that I was not transferred. Sister Hall was not either. It weird that since I am a trainer the fact that we weren't at transfers made me soooo happy. that means that the Lord still has work for me to do for her and that he is pleased with what I am doing. I am still really working on trying to help her grow but man. If you all could see her progression. Man. She has grown so much in these last 6 weeks. It is crazy.
But yeah. this was a good week, even though the beginning of the week was SUPER cold. We still found a new investigator. Well... kinda. He was just interested in Sister Hall and I... not really the gospel so we weren't allowed to go back... but hey. Stuff like that happens I guess haha.
Things in Kettering are going great though. We are really trying to get everyone in this ward excited about missionary work and trying to help everyone be fully active. I read a talk the other day called, To the Rescue by President Thomas S Monson. It was such a good talk. I definitely think you all should read it. I am not going to tell you about it so you will have to read it hahaha :)
Well. Zoye is still on date for February 15. She is doing well. It is exhausting to teacher her though haha. My brain hurts afterwards. We had to explain to her who Satan was, that is how little of a background she has. It is difficult but kinda fun at the same time. It is definitely work though.
But I learned something this week. From this week I really learned that work is soooo important. Nothing happens if we don't work. We talked about work at church yesterday and it really made me realize how much work being a missionary can be. It can be hard but the reward is sooo great. I am just so grateful for the blessings for all of the hard work we put in. I have really noticed that I have a lot of work to be doing. I don't have time to not focus on that work. The more I want to work, the more fun being a missionary becomes.
I hope you all have a great week and that you all keep working hard. I love you. I don't miss you at all.
Love
Sister Shaw
sorry no pictures this week

cold cold!

Holy cow! Just to start off, This week was really cold! haha. It is -4F out today with a  wind chill of -10F. I don't think I have ever been so cold in my entire life. I want to die. I can't believe how just after 1 minute I can't feel anything. When I first walked out of my apartment today I lost my breathe. It was so weird. We just had a huge storm pass us. Indiana got it worse. Thank goodness I am not over there! I would cry. But yeah. Tonight will be very interesting. Pray for the Elders. They have to walk for 3 hours tonight. We are afraid for them.
This was a great mission week though :) We finally found a new investigator again! :) Her name is Joan. She is so sweet and we are going to meet with her this Friday. We also have our one other investigator Zoye on date to be baptized on February 15. She is from China and is studying business management at the University of Dayton. I am excited :) It has been a good week.
Well... I know that that isn't much writing but those are great things that happened this week and they are all I can remember. Sorry this email is so short! I wish I had more to tell you. I love you all so much and I hope you are all excited for the new year. I made some goals and I am really excited. This is going to be a great year. Ohio isn't gonna know what hit them. I am so excited. :) I hope you all have a fantastic week.  

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)