Feb 25

Hello!!

Wow! This place surprises me more and more everyday!!! 

The work here is out of control! You probably wont understand but in case you do let me do some comparisons.. 

In my last area we went over 2 months without a new investigator.. In the 2 weeks I have been here we have gotten 7 new investigators. In my last area by the end of the week we were lucky to have 15 lessons. The week hasn't even begun yet and we have 16 lessons scheduled. 

Let me just say.. It is so nice to not have to stress about finding things to do during the day! 

I am finally really loving Garner and the people here. It was so hard to leave Wake Forest, especially the people, but I am coming to love this place just as much!

One of our new investigators we got this week is M. She was a media referral. Which means she went on to Mormon.org and requested a visit by missionaries. We were pretty excited to go and meet her. We scheduled an appointment and met with her. She is so wonderful! She is going through a really hard time right now. She has 3 kids (the youngest being 4 months old) with her boyfriend of 14 years. Her landlord just told her that they are selling her house so she has to move out. Well she is currently without a job and is going to leave her boyfriend because he has recently spiraled downhill. She is ready to make a change in her life and is looking for a church to start over. She wanted a church that was a big community and second family that would be a great place to raise kids. She told us that she was talking with her Jewish mother and her mom told her that she needed to learn about the mormon church. They have a lot of family who is mormon and they see the good example that they are and M has decided she wants that for herself and her kids. Needless to say she is awesome and is so ready to progress. She has her head and straight and is going in the right direction! We love her so much already!

Nothing else too exciting here happened this week. The weather has been nice, Sister Langarica is so sweet, The Book of Mormon is true, and the work is hastening!

I love the scripture Moroni 10:23
And Christ truly said unto our fathers: If ye have faith ye can do all things which are expedient unto me.

We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us!! I am grateful for the times I have had to rely on Christ to get me through a day or two. I am grateful for trials and for the growth that comes to each of us because of them. I know that we are here for a reason. We go through the things we do for a reason. 

I love the Hymn "Come, Come Ye Saints" A line that stuck out to me is "Though hard to you this journey may appear, Grace shall be as your day." Rely on Christ. Let the wonderful power of the atonement carry you through your journey.

I love you all. Thank you for all your love and support.

Sister Judd

Pics: 

Sorry this is the only picture thus far of Sister Langarica and I. 

More pics from transfer day. This is Sister Fullmer, Sister Wilde(sister Fullmers companion before me), the W family(minus D the dad) and myself. One of my favorite groups of people!

Feb 17

Hello!

Well, I am not in Wake Forest anymore!! That is for sure. 

Garner North Carolina is... 45% country folk. 45% ghetto. 10% people from the west who didnt realize where they were moving.

This place is so different but so great.

Lets back up to the beginning of the week. Saying bye to everyone was awful. Monday was a preparation day spent packing. That night we went and said goodbye to M and kids. They surprised me with a valentines day party. They made me cards and we had cupcakes. Then M and S(J's daughter) put on a show for me. Lots of dancing and signing. We took pictures and they just had to shove cupcake in my face. Good times. They are missed dearly! 

Then Tuesday was the big transfer day. I was grateful I knew where I was going but you never really know what to expect. It was fun to have lots of missionary friends there. I finally got to see Sister Fullmer again after 6 long weeks of not seeing each other. haha. 

After the meeting we drove home to Garner which is only about 30 minutes away from Raleigh. 

My new apartment... lets just say it is an adjustment. It is a little smelly, and old, and gross, and in the total ghetto. but hey! I am grateful I am not on the 3rd floor anymore! 

My new companion is great. Her name is Sister Langarica and she is from California. She has been on her mission for 8 months. She has been serving in Garner for 1 transfer. So we are both learning together! We have got along great thus far. She is super sweet and I have lots to learn from her! 

The ward is fabulous. Everyone that I have met I have loved so much. Garner definitely has its fair share of crazy people but it is great. So much entertainment everyday! 

The work here is fabulous! The week before I got here they taught 40 lessons. In my last area we were lucky if we got 15. So this is a great change and I am excited to be kept busy!

We had a major snow storm this week. It happened on Wednesday while we were at district meeting in a town about 20 minutes away. After we had lunch we decided to make the trek home. We didnt realize what we were getting ourselves into. The 20 minute simple drive took us 3 hours to get home! There were cars sliding all over the road and accidents like nobody's business. They dont plow or do anything to the roads here so it is a disaster. We were driving on the Raleigh 401 and people said it made national news so look that up and you will see what we were in. It was a mess. Luckily we were with the elders and an elder from Utah was driving. We only slid a couple times but I know that the Lord kept us safe! What a blessing. We made it home and decided it would be best to stay inside. It wasnt too bad because it gave me time to unpack and clean our apartment the best I could. 

I now have to share a car (booooo) and it wasnt our week to have it. We didnt want to stay inside the next day so we went out to walk and try to contact people. The roads were all snowy and icy so we didnt ride the bikes on it. As we were walking I saw a house with a ramp that was still covered in snow so I figured an old person lived there. They had a shovel sitting on the porch. I told Sister Langarica we should go ask if we can shovel their driveway. An older lady opened the door and was in shock that we were offering to shovel her driveway but thanked us for our service and let us. As we were doing it the neighbor who was also an older lady started to shovel her driveway. A job that was clearly much too difficult for her. I then went and took over her driveway for her. They were both extremely thankful for our service. I am grateful for being in the right place at the right time. There is no way those two woman could have done that alone. Afterwards one lady offered us some water so we went inside and talked with her. She told us that a lot of her family was LDS. We thought it was neat but isnt unusual. The next day the Bishops wife in my old ward messaged me on facebook asking if I shoveled a ladies driveway in garner. She told me that that is her aunt and that she had posted on facebook that 2 LDS missionaries came and shoveled her driveway. What a small world! The Lord definitely put us there for a reason and we hope to go back and keep that door open.

This week has been a challenge but good things are in store. I love the Lord and I love this gospel!!

Have a fabulous week!!

Love,

Sister Judd 

Feb 10

Hello!!

Well I finished my last week here in Wake Forest.. It is so bittersweet.
Transfers are tomorrow and we are pretty anxious!

Luckily there are perks to serving in the same ward with the assistants to president. I found out where I am going..
I will be serving in Garner, North Carolina! It is a country town about an hour away. I dont know much about it. But the one and only Scotty McCreery (american idol country singer) is from Garner NC so I have high hopes I will be converting a celebrity. I am excited for the new adventure! Also another perk, I already know my new address.

The first week of transfers is always hard so opening up a mailbox to mail would really help me out.. (wink wink)

I had a missionary moment I will remember forever this week. We work with a less active named Sister R. She is the BEST! Well she is a very simple country woman who doesnt have much. She has her cats and thats all she needs. She doesn't like a lot of attention or have many friends. It was her birthday on Saturday and we knew we had to do something special for her. We were looking forward to it all week. We threw her a little birthday party. We had gone to the dollar store and picked up some birthday hats and party blowers. We got cupcakes and candles. We got her a present of a picture of Christ in a frame and some flowers. It all went as planned and it was the best birthday party ever! She was so appreciative as I am sure she hasnt celebrated her birthday in a long time. Luckily her mom had come over so the 4 of us had the best time. It is the simple things that make life so great! Included is a picture of me and Sister R. A woman I will remember forever.

I am sorry for the short email! I will hopefully have lots of exciting things to say next week!

I want to share with you all a scripture that really stuck out to em this week as I was reading the best book ever, The Book of Mormon.

Mosiah 4:9 Believe in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things, both in heaven and in earth; believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth; believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend.

God is our loving Heavenly Father! Trust in His will! Doubt not, fear not!

I love you all! 

Thank you for all the love and support! 

And thanks for all the letters in advance! ;)

Love, 

Sister Judd 

Feb 3

Happy Monday!!

I saw a funny meme this week that said "oh its monday night, I forgot to check my missionary's email.. said no missionary mom ever" ha.

I got the big news this week... I'm getting transferred!!! On February 11 I will be headed somewhere new.. I have no idea where or who my companion will be and wont know until the day of. The anticipation might kill me! But all is well. 

Its very bittersweet... I love this area and these wards SO MUCH! I can not even begin to put into words how grateful I am for everything I have experienced while serving here and will be eternally grateful for the knowledge I have gained. It breaks my heart to leave these people I have gave everything I have to for the past 6 months. But at the same time I am excited for new doors to knock on and new people to meet and more lessons to learn!

We have had a great week! It started off by teaching this girl named Y. She is Vietnamese. Her parent have lived here for about 10 years now. Their daughter, Y, who is 14 finally was permitted by the country to move here. There family is finally together again after being apart for 10 years! could you imagine? Anyways, her parents got baptized about a year ago and now they want Y to be baptized. The only problem is that she knows basically no english. So we are going to start teaching her english along with the gospel. It will be so much fun. They are some of the most loving Christ-like people I have ever met.

We also got to go support M's son E in his spelling bee this week. I am not the slightest bit exaggerating when I say E is the smartest 11 year old I know. Anyways he made it to the school wide spelling bee so we had to go. Talk about stressful!! It was so very sad to see the poor kids get out. All their hopes and dreams were crushed by the simplest misspelling of one word. E came in 3rd place so that was good for him. It was a fun event. I dont want to even talk about how hard it will be to say goodbye to M and E and M...

It snowed again this week!! And this time is really snowed. We got probably 4 inches. It was perfect! Not too much to be totally annoying but enough to make everything look beautiful. North Carolina doesnt have anything in ways of clearing snow.. No snow plows or anything. So when it snows the whole town shuts down. School was closed from tuesday-friday. There way of dealing with snow is to just close everything and let it melt.. Everyone from the ward warned us and told us to stay inside because the roads were going to be awful. Well that didnt stop us. Luckily Sister Spiel is from Idaho so I trusted her driving. We were able to work through it the whole time. And Sister Spiel couldn't resist doing a couple donuts in the church parking lot before district meeting on wednesday.. shh dont tell. It was lots of fun. We have experienced the best weather together!

On wednesday after district meeting we went with the other set of sister missionaries (who we love!) to target to get hot chocolate. While we were sitting and waiting two boys, J and J, walked in. Mind you the whole town is still in shut down so Target is pretty desolate. One of the Sisters, Sister Bowers, went up to talk to them while we were waiting. Their conversation lasted more than a couple seconds so we all went to join. Turns out these two 19 year old boys meet at target every week to work on their music. They are aspiring rappers who are trying to make rap music with good messages so kids can listen to music with meaning. Well we got to talking and they were very interested in what we had to say. One of the boys actually met and talked with the elders in our ward just a couple weeks ago. Well we ended up teaching them the whole restoration lesson. It was such a neat experience. It was fun to be the group of 4 of us teaching them and it was so fun to see their faith increase and questions they have wondered forever about be answered as we shared this life changing message with them. We shared contact information and hope to meet up with them again soon!

We had a rough day Thursday.. Whole town was still shut down and every single one of our appointments cancelled. We had absolutely nothing to do. What happens when all plans fail? You knock doors. Even though we really aren't supposed to in this area, for the first time on my mission we went into a neighborhood and went door to door. well it sucked and was not successful. But hey, seeds were planted. And I am grateful I survived Thursday. 

We had a wonderful experience at church on Sunday. When I first got to this area we went and visited a less active lady. She had been very deeply offended by some members in the ward and went through a rough divorce. The first time I saw her she shut the door in our faces and wanted nothing to do with us or with the church. Well we kept stopping by. Yesterday, this same woman who once shut the door on me, went up in front of the whole congregation including some of those who have hurt her and bore her testimony of the restored gospel and of Jesus Christ. Visit after visit we saw her faith increase. She has been able to find strength in the Atonement and in the love our Savior has for each of us. She now has become one of my closest friends and I love her so very much. She is on her way back to full activity and is working on getting back to the temple. Miracles happen, and God loves his children so very much!!

I love the work of the Lord. I love being a missionary. Rejection hurts, stress is overwhelming, and days can be long but the knowledge and experiences are worth every sacrifice.

I love my Savior Jesus Christ. I love the Book of Mormon! Read it, it will change your life. I promise!

Thank you for all the love and support!

love, 

Sister Judd