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 

Jan 27

Hello!

It is the end of January and winter finally hit.. it SNOWED this week!! We were pretty excited to see the white flurries falling from the sky. We celebrated the best way we could by blasting Christmas music as we drove home. 

Not much else exciting happened this week. With emailing on Tuesday I feel like I dont have much new to say.
We had a wonderful experience this week with our  investigator D. We have been teaching her for about a month now. She has been grasping a lot from the lessons we teach but she would not keep our commitments (read the Book of Mormon and come to church) to save her life. We started to worry about her real intentions and what we needed to do to help her progress outside of our visits. We prayed and felt that we needed to give her a church tour, even though she has been to church once before. We met at the church this week and it was truly what she needed. As we walked around the building talking about all the pictures and auxiliaries the spirit was so strong. We showed her the baptismal font and ended in the chapel. We then went into a room and read the Book of Mormon with her. We could feel the spirit so strong and really hoped she was able to feel it too. About an hour after the meeting she called us and left a message thanking us for the tour and telling us she got a lot out of it and that she loved seeing the baptismal font. She continued on saying finally felt like she understood the Book of Mormon and was so excited to go home and continue reading. D went from always making up excuses about not being able to come to church or read to reading all night and being early to church on sunday. The power of the Spirit is real! We are hoping to set a baptismal date with her the next time we see her!

We went on exchange with sisters serving in Zebulon this week. I went to Zebulon to be with Sister Hall. She is so great. She actually serves in Nauvoo, Illinois but is here for 6 months during the winter. We have been friends since she got here in September. She also graduated from hair school before we came out. We had a great time together. We call them "sister sleepovers". Well where she serves is superrr country. It was so fun to be there and I really hope the next place I serve is true southern country. Oh and while there we came across the most perfect street so I of course had to take a picture..

Did you know that North Carolina has its own type of BBQ? It is vinegar based.. Nothing like what you picture BBQ being. And in my personal opinion, it is NASTY! Along with brunswick stew and hush puppies. I have decided I am not a fan of the southern cooking. And here when you go to a restaurant you dont say "can I get a to-go box". To-go boxes here are called "doggie bags". I was in shock the first time I heard that. Sister Spiel says her parents in Idaho would say it sometimes but it was new knowledge to me. That's your North Carlina tip for the day.

Things are going well. I love sharing being able to share the gospel and bring happiness to other peoples lives!

Thanks for all your support!

Love, 

Sister Judd

Jan 21

Hello!!

Sorry now for the short letter. Not much has happened this week. We had lots of meetings and are still on the search to find! Sister Spiel is amazing. We are getting along great and she is teaching me so much!

I opened up my email to find an email from a girl I went to High School with. I wanted to share it with you all. She says....

Hi Emily!

This is Megan, we went to high school and i think jr high together too.. So for some reason today I felt like I should try to contact you to tell you something. I feel like it's a testimony builder when anyone joins the church, so I thought I'd share the news with you that I was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! The only people in high school that I knew were Mormons were you and Josh. I already told him and then I looked you up on Facebook and saw that you were on a mission! Congratulations! That's really awesome. I was baptized Dec. 1, 2012. So it's been a year and a month since I've been a member...and I love it more and more every day. It is honestly the best way to become closer to God. As a Catholic I kept praying to get closer to God but I never had any opportunity to progress and grow as a person and disciple of Christ...I felt stuck. Then I started dating a Mormon guy, and he wasn't that active but as we talked about what mormons believe, I kept having more and more questions and wanted to learn more. And reading the Book of Mormon brought the spirit back into my life and I couldn't get enough of church. He ended up going on a mission at the age of 21 even though he thought he would never serve a mission, he's in Berlin now. We broke up before he left so don't worry I'm not one of those girls waiting haha (not that there's anything wrong with that, I just don't think I'd marry him). Anyway, I just wanted to share that with you, I think it's kind of funny and shocking that I'm Mormon now...because I have had a mormon as a best friend all my life, and she never really talked about her faith too much, and i went to church with her a few times, but i did research on the religion and found a bunch of anti mormon stuff that made me really against the church when i was around 17. So being a mormon is the last thing i couldve ever imagined for myself. And i was so closed off to the church before...but when i became curious about the church in a more positive way (i saw that my boyfriends family was really close and really down to earth and actually really believed what they practiced...i started to take the religion more seriously and wanted to learn more)...so another convert that i was introduced to when i was investigating the church suggested that i should pray for an open heart...best advice because the Lord did soften my heart and i was open to learning. it took a while (6 months of missionary lessons), but I'm now converted to the gospel and know that no mater how seemingly closed hearted someone is, or how stubbornly they're against the gospel, people change. And this church is true, is resognates with peoples hearts and minds, it makes sense. 

Sorry for all the typos I'm in a hurry right now, but I just really wanted to share this with you. I know I look forward to the future when people I used to associate with tell me that they've found the truth too. I think that would be really neat to hear.

I removed last names for privacy. But wow! All my life I had heard of people knowing other people from high school get baptized but I never thought it would actually happen to me. I am so amazed at her faith and conversion. Her testimony is an inspiration to me! If I could change one thing about my teenage years it would 100% to be.. share the gospel more!! I have a strong testimony of change and I know that the true Gospel of Jesus Christ is on the earth and that any person can get closer to God by following its precepts.

This week I had a testimony building experience. We had planned to go on exchanges friday night to saturday. I was staying in our area and another sister was coming in to be with me. On Thursday Sister Spiel and I were planning what the other sister and I were going to do Friday night. We had 2 lessons scheduled that I thought for sure wouldnt cancel. Sister Spiel said we should have a back up just in case. I didnt think so but I wrote a name down of a less active woman in the ward just in case. Friday night rolled around and guess what.. both of the appointments canceled! I then decided we would go to the library and do our facebook time. We were right in the middle of 2 libraries. I started driving towards one and then immediately felt like we should go to the other one. I did a U-turn and started driving to the other library not thinking anything of it. We pulled up to the library and it was closed.. totally forgot they closed earlier on the weekend. We were then stuck in the parking lot, it was almost 8, both appointments canceled and library was closed. I then just wanted to go home and start planning for the next day. The other sister with me asked if there was any less actives near by we could visit. I didnt want to bother anyone on a friday night but then the woman we wrote down thursday night came into my head. She lived right by the library I ended up driving to. Our dinner appointment sent us home with cookies. So I then figured I will text her and see if we can drop by some cookies. She immediately texted back and said we could come. When we got there I could see something was wrong right away. After talking for about 5 minutes she just broke down. She began to tell us that she has had the worst week ever and that she feels like God isn't answering her prayers. She was on her knees crying and praying to God explaining that she didnt even know what to do anymore when she got our text.. She knew that God had sent us there to be with her that night.

God was preparing us Thursday night to go and visit this wonderful woman.. If Sister Spiel hadnt pushed writing one more name down I never would have thought to visit her.. If the other appointments didnt cancel we wouldnt have been able to see her.. If I had driven to the other library we would have been no where near her house and wouldnt have visited her.. If the other sister missionary didnt suggest visiting a less active nearby her name wouldnt have come back into my head.. If the family we had dinner with didnt send us home with cookies I probably wouldnt have bothered her for a visit on a friday night.. If we didnt go and visit her that night she would still be wondering if God hears our prayers. I can testify that God is in every single detail of our life!! He loves us more than we could ever know. He absolutely hears every single one of our prayers and is always with us. Trust in him, he will never let you down!!

This is the greatest work. 

Thank you for all your prayers and love and support!!

Love, 
Sister Judd

Jan 13

Hello all!!

You are all lucky I am alive, as this week we survived a tornado!! Yes, a tornado. 

On Saturday we were just going about our regular missionary business. We had planned to contact a lot of people that live in this one neighborhood. Luckily we had chosen to drive our car that day. All morning we kept talking about how beautiful the weather was. It was seriously the best weather. It was a cool 70 degrees with tons of humidity. It was the exact weather that I had when I was in Ecuador in the Amazon jungle. I loved it. We contemplated many times to park our car and just start walking but we for some reason didnt. Well no one decided to tell us that there was a massive tornado warning going out to the whole town. People were getting alerts on their phone, it was all over the news, and everyone was getting prepared. Well here are Sister Spiel and I just going about doing our business thinking the weather is so awesome having no clue that a tornado was anywhere in the forecast. As we were driving our car.. bam! a sheet of rain just hit. It hit so hard it made both of us jump. within seconds of that the wind just started blowing out of control. all of a sudden trees were falling over, branches were falling, peoples yard items started blowing all over. After driving a little bit more looked at each other and said we should probably pull over. We then saw a ladies mailbox fly off the stand and go into the road. Trees were continuing to fall over and at one point our car got picked up a little bit. At this time we still had no idea we were in a tornado we just thought it was a crazy storm and the only thing on our mind was running out in the storm to get the ladies mailbox and another houses chair cushions. Finally after about 3 minutes of out of control wind and rain it stopped. Then all that was heard was sirens. Immediately fire trucks were out trying to asses the damage. We safely got the ladies mailbox back to her and the chair cushions. We then drove around to see what was happening. We of course had to take some pictures. We then drove around to see if we could help people. Trampolines were over fences, trees were on top of cars and houses, and everyone was in the road trying to move trees out of the way. On one major road the trees had fallen on top of power line (pictures below) so everyone was without power for hours. All in all everyone is okay and safe. After talking to people at church I had only heard about one person who is in critical condition in the hospital because she was jogging on a local trail during the storm and a tree fell on her. No worries here though, 10 minutes after the tornado is over we get a text from our district leader "tornado warning. everyone keep safe".

Things with D are going well. We were able to teach her a few times this week. She recently moved into a house with one of her friends. Well we had never met this friend before but she had a baby on thursday. D asked us if we could come over and help clean the house before they came home from the hospital. Of course we agreed. The whole time we were making this house spotless I kept thinking.. Here I am, in North Carolina, scrubbing the toilet and making beds at a house of a lady I have never even met who is currently in the hospital having a baby. And I couldnt have been happier! It is such a good feeling to know that what you are doing is making a difference in someone else life. Are you looking for ways to be more happy? Lose yourself in service!! I can promise that service is a cure to any trouble in life. 

As Sister Spiel and I were having companionship study one morning we were thinking of better ways we could teach lessons to children. The idea came into our minds to teach the armor of God, and to make an actual armor of God! We then scurried around the house to see what we could do to make it. Luckily the night before our dinner appointment sent us home with the leftover pizza. We were able to make basically everything with pizza boxes and tin foil. We had a random stick for the sword and of course every missionary has a helmet!

We were able to make an armor of God! And dont forget the fiary darts of satan we made out of an old red shirt we didnt want. We asked M if we could come practice the lesson on her kids. We went over to teach and it was a success! They had so much fun and so did we! (Pictures included)

Last night we had a wonderful dinner with a family in our ward and also C and her dad. C had become close friends with the family after the first time she came to church.  After dinner as we were teaching our lesson their 8 year old daughter says "I used to not want to go on a mission because I would miss my family, but now that I see how happy the sister missionaries have helped C to be I want to go on a mission."

It was the cutest thing and brought a tear to my eye. This gospel can make anyone happier, this gospel changes lives! I am grateful to be apart of this wonderful work!

Thank you all for your love and support! Have a wonderful week! May God bless you!!

Love,
Sister Judd