Week 65 | am I not turtley enough for the turtle club?

Hey guys!

This week was pretty sweet! We had a lot of fun. 

So first off, our zone is working on doing more district blitzs. That just means that the district gets together in one of the areas and goes out and tracts and finds new people to teach. It is pretty great! I love it because it always gets me super pumped even though tracting is not my favorite thing to do. So this week we had a blitz in our area which was much needed. In an hour we collectively handed out 8 copies of the Book of Mormon and found 6 people who are interested in learning more. It was such a miracle for sister Wilcox and I, it gave us the energy and motivation to work harder because we were able to see that there are so many people who are ready to accept the restored gospel. 

The highlight of this week was definitely our wards trunk or treat!! I LOVE Halloween! I think it is so much fun!! And I was kinda sad that last year I didn't really do anything. But this year has been awesome! We have gone all out lol! I love sister Wilcox, she puts up with all my crazy quirks. So this year, because we share the ward with the elders I was even more motivated to do something cool, so I got everyone on board and I made us all ninja turtle costumes! They were super simple, but I was just happy that we did something! We even participated and decorated our trunk and handed out candy. But because we are missionaries and we are such cheesers, we also handed out copies of the Book of Mormon and pictures of Christ. But it was such a hit! There were a lot of non member friends that came and we were able to find so many people, it was the best! And of course everyone loved our little costumes! I put Wilson in charge of getting the candy, lol he must have been hungry when he got it! We have so much candy hahaha! And i am super sad because I accidentally gave him all the chocolate when we split it all up! That's the only thing I wanted. hahaha we will see if he is in a good mood this week and maybe he will give me some. 

I hope you guys have a happy Halloween! Watch plenty of scary movies, and make sure to eat enough candy so that your stomach hurts, not to the point where you are totally sick, just enough to be uncomfortable 😉 Love you all 

👻👽💀 Sister Grant 

Week 64 | pessimistic and friendly

This week on epic fails of sister Grant... 

I'm just kidding, if you want those stories it'll cost you an email 😉

This week was pretty chill. Transfers happened this week, like I said before, I am still in Pima!! They can't get rid of me. But going back to last Monday. We had a district bbq! It was pretty fun! Dennis provided all the food and I grilled the burgers and we had a good time! I don't think we got a single good picture, but it's okay, that was never going to happen anyways. 

A little highlight from this week was Dennis taking the elders and us to Pinnacle Peak. I know that I have been there so many times, but having the elders there too made it a lot more fun! I was so excited to beat elder Wilson at the little shooting game they have, which I totally did!! But then his companion elder Remus walks up and was like, here I think I would like to try... He gets a perfect score!! Way to just pee all over my little victory there! hahaha it's not like I'm bitter or anything.

We had the most amazing lesson this week!! We have started teaching this guy who lives at our apartment complex and he is known to be a bit pessimistic, and not always the friendliest of friends.. BUT! We had such a great lesson! He was so focused in and receptive to everything we talked about! He loves history and we were able to help him connect all the dots as well which was a huge breakthrough for him! He told us that he wants to start taking our lessons more seriously and to get more involved! He has even become more lighthearted and has had more patience! I just love this gospel and I love being able to watch first hand the lives that are changed by its message and power. 

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

 Sister Grant ✌

Week 63 | Transfers.....clown from IT?

What's up party people? 

So tomorrow is transfers and guess what... I am staying in PIMA! Yeah, I can't believe it. It'll be my 5th transfer here, making my time here a total of 7 1/2 months! That's a long time for a missionary. But I am actually so excited! I am even staying with my dear companion Sister Wilcox!! This is what really blew my face off, because I have not stayed with a companion longer than 1 transfer other than when I was being trained by sister Gadd, and then when I was training sister Zamora. So this will be so nice to actually stay with a companion. And it's Halloween!!!! oooooo my favorite! It is going to be a fun transfer, there isn't much change in the zone which is always nice.

At the beginning of this week I had an appointment in the Oro Valley, so of course we had to stop at the temple. We didn't go inside, but it felt amazing outside and we were able to walk around and take some pictures. *Cool miracle* As we were about to go back to our car we decided to take one last picture by the front doors of the temple. And when we did, out of the temple walks some of my favorite people from my first area!! I was so excited to see them. And I was actually really shocked that they recognized who I was so fast. It has been almost a full year since I have been in that area, and lets be honest, who actually remembers the missionaries. But they were so excited to see me. So we got to catch up for a little bit and take some pictures together. It was such a tender mercy to see them. Man! The blessings of going to the temple, am I right?

Nothing fun to report on this week. I was a sick little missionary this week! It was the worst. I had bronchitis all week. So I was stuck in bed for like 3 days. I couldn't stand for longer than like 5 minutes. Oh and yes, I sound like a man. We share the ward with some elders and I am afraid that when people call they are going to think they called the elders by accident. The first day I was sick and my voice was all messed up the elders called and they actually thought I was pulling a prank on them. I don't even know why they would think that... (I have done that before) Elder Wilson actually thought that I was a guy. And it was sad how much convincing it took until he believed that it really was me.

I don't remember much of this week to be honest. I think the last time I was this sick was when I got the flu really bad back when I was with Cooper. So this week was spent in my jammies. Mostly napping, ate some food, and played a couple games of skip-bo with Wilcox. My poor companion. I was probably a real jerk. I get a little grumpy when I am sick... And there is nothing worse than being sick as a missionary, there is NOTHING to do. And you can only watch church movies so many times... It was not pretty. 

Hope you all had a splendid week. Tell me all about it! 

Yours truly,

Sister Grant

Week 62 | I'm a dude, he's a dude and we're all dudes.........

What's up fam!

How did everyone enjoy conference? Who is excited for 2 hour church?!!! I love church don't get me wrong, but I love that they are focusing more on learning in the home. Personal study is my absolute favorite! I have learned that being taught is nice, but it is the personal study and prayer that actually makes a lasting difference. 

This week was good. Lots of tender mercies, lots of prayers answered. Life is great here in AZ! Fall is starting and it is amazing! We are getting out of the 90s and 100s!! It feels so good! When I go outside, I don't start immediately sweating. What more could I ask for? 

I finally got a picture with the good burger car! It is right by the stake center and I have been wanting to take a picture by it for so long! For anyone who has not seen the movie good burger, good for you, don't worry about it. But for the rest of us, hahahaha!!! Yes. it is THE good burger car! 

Dennis, what a sweetheart! He took us and  the elders to breakfast the other day! We went to this place call Bobo's. You guys. I cannot even begin to describe to you how wonderful these pancakes are! And also how FREAKING MASSIVE they are! It took me 3 days to finish 1 pancake. 3 DAYS. 1 SINGLE PANCAKE! So that was pretty great.

Conference was so good! I got to watch it with some of my favorite peoples! I was a happy girl. 

Today was pretty great! We met this guy and he took us out to lunch!!! and then we met this little girl who LOOOOVVEEEESS sister missionaries!! She was so cute! So I gave her some candy and got some pictures with her. I felt like a celebrity. That NEVER happens. So that was a pretty sweet tender mercy.

Hope you all have a great week. Don't do anything too stupid. And more importantly, don't do anything I would do.. hahaha 

Love 

Sister Grant

Week 61 | Elder Robbins

What an intense week! 

But first I want to say, I think mentioned going to Sarah's wedding in November. Yeah totally forgot to mention that it is November of 2019!! Sorry, yeah I don't actually come home till February 

Anyways. This week was super exciting and spirit filled. You guys. PAT GOT BAPTIZED!!!! I could cry. I honestly didn't think it would happen. As soon as we set a date with him it felt like everything hit the fan. I mean, it normally does. But it was nuts! I kept thinking that there was no way I could be more stressed and then the next day would hit, and what do ya know, I would be even more stressed! hahaha But I survived with most of my hair still on my head 😉 He was so nervous to get in the water. He had this fear of the actualbaptismall font... He is pretty tall and so he was worried about not being able to bend back into the water. But good news!! Everything went really smoothly! We pretty much pulled it together the night before! And that is totally not like me...🤔😅 lol! But it was literally up in the air until the afternoon before and so as soon as President Browning gave us the okay we spent the rest of the day getting things together. I ended up giving the talk on the Holy Ghost, but other than that I was so relieved that we were able to find members to come and to help! GO PIMA WARD!!! 

Also, Elder Robbins of the 70 came and spoke to us this week for zone conference!! It was so cool! He is an amazing speaker, he just was filled with so much love and excitement! It was awesome. I feel like I was just scrambling to get down all my notes the whole time!! I am so sorry I don't have the pics from zone conference yet. BUT guess who is the luckiest person in AZ? Yeah, that's right, me! I am totally kidding, I actually have the absolute WORST luck it's not even funny! But, this week I was super fortunate to be able to go to the mission leadership conference with elder Robbins. And guess what.. I am not even leadership!!! hahaha! I got to go because the sister who was supposed to go was super sick and so President asked me if I could be there. So I said HECK YES!!! jk, I would not say that to President... but I did give him a very enthusiastic yes! It was really really special! He was able to really talk with us and help us to be better missionaries and really make a difference in our mission. I learned so much. Although I felt super out of place, because that never happens that someone who is not leadership goes to MLC. But it was really fun and I was able to go and talk to him for a little after the conference and I even got to sneak a pic with him and his wife!! 

Anyways, don't have much time, but I think I covered the most important stuff! Oh yeah, I also met batman yesterday!! hehehe what a cutie, Cecil had been waiting all week to show me his batman costume! 

Love you all!

Sister Grant

Week 60 | RAIN

What's up party people!!

This week has been the longest week of my life!!! This week has been a roller coaster for sure. One of those roller coasters with really uncomfortable seats so every time you take a turn it just hurts, and when you get off you just feel nauseous, not enough to puke, but just enough to ruin the rest of the day! 

Yeah, but I will just stick to the good highlights of the week. So this email shouldn't be too long lol! 

Lets see...

This week Dennis took us to Pinnacle Peak again! This time was actually way more fun because it was a Wednesday which means that all the other shops in the little cowboy town were actually open! And the best part was that it was RAINING!!! Yeah, I was a happy girl. We had a good dinner and took some pretty great pics. We played this little shooting game and I am proud to say that I was undefeated! No one else there could come close to my score hahaha! I was actually really surprised because normally my aim is awful! We also spent quite a bit of time in the magic shop. The magician was so funny and he was actually pretty good.

This week at Trot we got to see sister Cooper!! She was on exchanges and got to go with another sister that normally comes. It was really fun to see her. 

Sadly, I think one of the biggest highlights of this week was playing the licence plate game. We like to write down all of the different licence plates we see and we start over every week and we are determined that we will see all 50 in one week. This week we did pretty good and we saw 33. We were so excited! And then it just made me sad that that is what kept us going this week haha.

With some of the things that happened this week I was led to learn a very important lesson that has really helped me. Christ taught us to love our enemies, not to mess with us or crack a joke, but it is when we love the people around us even, and especially when it is hard that we find love in our own lives. It is when we truly serve others that we feel blessed. And it is when we do our best to be like our Savior that we begin to be enveloped in His light and love and see the joy in life. We have more control over the outcomes in our lives than we sometimes might think. I wish that making the world a better place was as easy as telling people to be good Christians. Yes, we all know that it doesn't work that way, but as YOU become a good christian and try to be like the Savior, YOUR world becomes a better place. We just have to keep going. Keep trying a little harder to be a little better, one day at a time. That is all any of us can do. We can trust in the Lord and call on Him, because He always comes through. We have to going, keep failing, but most importantly keep getting back up again. The Lord can't guide our footsteps if we are standing still. 

Love you all, have a great week!

Sister Grant

Week 59 | Diet Coke and good tunes

Hello outside world!

This has been a pretty great week!! Nothing out of the ordinary, but nothing too bad either. We pretty much spent all our time with Dennis, Pat, or Sarah. 

With Dennis, we went out to eat at Texas Roadhouse which was soooo good! He spoils us rotten OMG! But we also got to have a lesson with him. And even better, Sister Johnson and Sister Holbrook came to stay a night with us this week and we got to go over and see Dennis. He was so excited, I thought he was gonna cry! It was so much fun!

Oh Pat, we spent a lot of time with Pat. We had a lesson almost everyday with him this week. We are just trying to help him get ready for baptism. He is so ready, but as soon as anyone gets close to baptism the adversary hits hard. So we are trying to keep a close eye on him and support him anyway we can. 

We finally finished Sarah's Plan of Salvation poster! We have been doing personal progress with her for a while and we have been helping her with this Plan of Salvation poster. She absolutely loved doing it! It was really special to see her get so excited when it was time to work on the poster. Like, this is the most excited I have ever seen her! It was also really funny because we spent a lot of time talking about the wedding. I don't know how much or if I have talked about Sarah's wedding at all. But her and Colby are getting married in November, and I will be home by then! So she asked me if I would be a bridesmaid! HECK YEAH!!!! So we were talking about dresses, mine is going to be grey, perfect 😍

Like I said, nothing too out of the ordinary this week, wish I had more funny stories. But I am sure this week will be a good one! 

Love you all,

Sister Grant 

Week 58 | Mini me

Hi friends,

This week was so much fun!!! I am so happy that transfers went smoothly! I got to see all my pals at the transfer site! I got to see sister Zamora!!! So naturally I made her and sister Holbrook take a family picture with me! Sent them off to the boonies together, it was a tender moment lol! But then I had fun for the rest of the day because my new companion sister Wilcox didn't get here until like 4ish. So the other sisters that were waiting for their comps came over to my apartment for the day because I don't live to far from where the transfer site is. It was great, I got to chill with Dennis, I set up his Facebook. Oh my goodness, what did I do! He has been having way to much with that this week hahaha, he is so cute!

This week was pretty chill. I don't remember if I mentioned this before but I got to serve with sister Wilcox back when I was with sister Cooper, but she is back now in the other half of Pima ward with me! So it was fun to go and get to see everyone and confuse them having Sister Wilcox back. 

We got to have a really fun lesson with Dennis this week, we brought some of my favorite people from the ward. This  little girl, I call her mini me. She reminds me so much of myself of when I was younger. And not only was I so excited that we got to bring them over to Dennis's, but it was mini me's birthday!! She turned 4! We got some little glittery crowns to wear during the lesson. Hahaha the girls didn't even wear them, but you better believe Dennis kept his on the whole time. We had a grand ol time. Dennis LOVES to have people over and feed everyone snacks. So he was ecstatic to host a little birthday party/ lesson. We had this Balloon game that we attempted to play. And we tied a balloons to our ankles, and the idea was that you had to pop everyone else's balloons. Well the balloons would NOT pop! So it turned into the girls just trying to pop their own balloons and doing somersaults over them. It was really funny. Not the most spiritual of lessons, but definitely an entertaining one.

No complaints from me, Billy treated us to a fine lunch at Raising Cane's. My deepest apologies for anyone who has not yet had the sacred experience of tasting of the divine Cane's chicken finger. If you are one of those lost souls that has not had this opportunity yet, I urge you to please do so. I can promise you a truly unforgettable and life changing experience.

This week we also got to have a fun picnic with Pat and Patti! I know, weird right! Patti refused to be in the picture, but she lives in our apartment complex and we go and see her all the time. And on Friday night some members dropped dinner off to us, so we invited Pat and Patti over for a little picnic outside our apartment. It was a lot of fun, and we got to to have kind of a little lesson.

This was a crazy week at church! The high council speaker who was supposed to speak in our ward didn't show up.. So after a 2 minute heads up, I got to fill in for him 😅 It's a good thing I don't have a problem with public speaking because that talk was PURELY led by the spirit! And I think it may have been one of the best talks I have ever given. Maybe I should always do it like that.. 🤔 LOL JK

At church we also had a cool little miracle. We met this lady from China, she is here for a week and a half with her husband while he is at this dentist seminar. She wanted to go to church, so she typed in Christian church on Google maps and we were the closest one! She stayed all 3 hours and we stayed and talked with her after and she wants to learn more! So we are going to meet with her on Tuesday and answer her questions. It will be interesting to try and teach her because she will go back to China, she is not allowed to have Facebook there, so she gave us her email so we can keep teaching her that way. How cool is that! 

Well, that's all I got for this week! I love you all and hope you have a great week. 

Love, 

Sister Grant