oct 27

Hello All!!

I hope you have all had a great week. 

I apologize but there just isn't much to write about this week.

We spent most of the week tracting. We didn't have any doors slammed in our face so that was a plus, but we weren't able to find anyone too interested either. 

We were able to meet with some less actives and share messages of hope. 

We spent our usual time raking more leaves and doing crafts with the old people. 

We had some great meals with members and were able to enjoy their spirit. 

We were able to be entertained with a wonderful Primary presentation put on by the kids of the church on Sunday. 

And we were able to spend another week enjoying life as a representative of Jesus Christ! 

Doesn't get much better. 

We were able to go to Young Womens yesterday. One of my favorite places to be. We had such a good lesson on gratitude. This video was shared and I just couldn't help but pass it along to all of you. Watch here!

Thanks for all the love and support and prayers! 

Love, 

Sister Judd 

oct 20

Hello!! 

I have been in Durham now for a full transfer! I cant believe how fast time goes. Transfer meeting happens this week. Everything is staying the same for us. 

We had a miracle this week! One day our phone started ringing and we looked down and saw that M was calling. M is the lady we were teaching when I first got here. She was doing so well and then one day we showed up for our appointment and her son came to the door and told us that after studying and thinking his mom was no longer interested and wanted to give us the materials back. We told him to keep the Book of Mormon and other pamphlets we had given and to tell his mom to give us a call if she ever needed anything. We walked away very disappointed.. So now here we are about a month later and we see she is calling. She tells us that she has been praying and God keeps telling her she needs to call us. We set up an appointment for the next day and went to see her. She said she has been feeling this huge weight on her shoulders and knew that she needed to invite us back. The second she did call us the weight was lifted. She said she was tired of ignoring God and realized that we were really the answers to her prayers and she was tired if resisting it. She is now excited to continuing learning and we hope to see some great progression with her! 

We continued to do lots of service this week. Carver living center had their fall festival. We went to volunteer and we got to watch old people take 3 hours to eat lunch. I even was given the great privilege of feeding an old woman her pureed food while she coughed it up all over me. Reminded me of my sweet days feeding soupa to the kids in Ecuador. 

Fall has officially begun therefore so has raking leaves season! We raked leaves for our investigator S. She has a neat leaf bin that she puts all her leaves in to turn into mulch. Pictures included because who doesnt love playing in a pile of leaves? 

We had stake conference this weekend. We received a new Stake President here in Durham. It was wonderful to witness revelation flow to man from God. We had Elder Carlson of the 70 and Elder Parker our area 70 here. Elder Parker is amazing. If you watched meet the mormons he is in the movie. He is the guy who argues with the Mormon Bishop over whose BBQ is better. He is your typical southern Baptist converted to Mormonism. Every time he speaks you just cant help but love him. And his testimony is contagious. He is so devoted to missionary work it is amazing. He shared a great story.. When the announcement came out about members and missionaries working better together his wife decided she wanted to get involved. She didnt know what but she knew she needed to do something. The next week she came up with a plan. The HOA of their neighborhood had recently stated that all mailboxes needed to be freshly painted all black. Her mailbox needed to be painted and she knew everyone elses did to. She came up with a plan that she would go around and paint everyone's mailboxes for them. The catch was that while she was painting the mailbox the homeowner had to talk with the missionaries she brought along.. Now I had heard this story about a 8 months ago when it happened. I might have even qwortoe about it in a previous email. I thought it was such a great idea and was happy she had gone out to do that.. This weekend he extended the story. Out of 182 mailboxes in the neighborhood his wife painted 161. And from that the missionaries got 22 return appointments. And 1 baptism happened because of Sister Parkers efforts. Elder Parker is now the new home teacher to his next door neighbor because his wife wanted to get involved with the missionary work. How inspiring!! 

Happiness comes when we keep the commandments. Missionary work is a commandment. I can testify that when you share your beliefs and what matters most to you to others you will be filled with joy! 

I hope you all have a great week! 

Love

Sister Judd 

oct13

Hello!!

Hope you have all had a great week like we have here in Durham! 

Let me start by telling you about our investigator S. She is the woman we met while walking on my birthday. She is currently our only investigator so we love her a whole lot :)  We have been going to do service for her a couple times a week. She has a giant yard and lives alone so she is in need of help. When we serve her we talk a little bit about the church but we dont have full on discussions. It is amazing to see just how serving her has made such an impact. The second time we went to serve her she told us that ever since she met us she has felt closer to Jesus Christ. The next time we went she told us that she felt that she needed to start praying everyday and so she had started doing that, without us even inviting her to do so! The next time we went last week she told us she felt the need to go to church and she did. The only problem was that it wasnt our church, she actually went to the church that is directly next to our church! At the point she didnt know where are church was so we told her she just needed to go the next door down the street next time. Then we went this week and invited her to come to our church and she did!! We havent had anyone attend church with us since we got here and we didnt think she was really going to come, but she did! We were so excited. We are amazed by just how us serving her is bringing her closer to Jesus Christ. Which is what we are here to do! I love how the Lord works. Hoping for great things to happen with S! 

We got to see Meet the Mormons this week!! Did you? It was sooo good! After our zone conference meeting they set up the movie on a projector and we all got to sit and watch it. I think we were all pretty excited to be able to sit and watch something entertaining, other than the district. And I also think that all of us missionaries and our missionary humor made it even better but nonetheless it was such a great movie! It brought out every emotion you could think of and left me so inspired and with a desire to be better! If you havent had the chance to watch it yet I highly encourage it! 

Here is the semi-funny story of the week. As we planned Saturday night we realized that we were pretty  much going to be at the church building all day. We had church, then choir practice until 3 and then we had to be back at the church at 5 for a mission prep class. Because we dont have the car the easiest thing for us to do was just stay at the church and eat lunch there and then do our facebook for an hour. So Sunday morning we packed our lunch to bring the the church to put in the fridge while we were in our church services. As I was making my lunch the thought came to me to make 2 sandwiches. I had no idea why, I never eat 2 sandwiches. I debated back and forth and then just made 2 thinking I might be really hungry after the long day. After all of our meetings we go to the fridge to grab our lunch which is in a plastic bag with our names written on it and it's tied. We go to grab our stuff and realize that Sister Turley's sandwich is gone and one of mine is gone. Someone had gone into the fridge and taken them. We were a little upset, we are starving poor missionaries with nothing else to eat and our substance is gone. Sister Turley then tells me she had a feeling while we were sitting in one of our classes that our food was going to be gone. She prayed that Heavenly Father would calm her and not make her so angry if that were the case. I told her how I had no idea why I made two sandwiches. Well now we knew why! We still had 1 sandwich to share! I am amazed how Heavenly Father prepared both of us in our different ways for that moment. We just tried to think that someone else really needed that food. But we are grateful for our loving Heavenly Father who is in every detail of our lives and is watching out for us. Funny now, not funny in the moment. 

Well I hope you all have a great week! "Seeking the kingdom of God leads to joy and happiness." —Elder Allan F. Packer

-Sister Judd

oct 6

Happy Monday! 

This week in North Carolina... 

I went on exchanges to Chapel Hill! Chapel Hill is a college town, home of UNC Chapel Hill. I was so amazed by how many people I saw. It has been a while since I have seen crowded streets and all that hustle and bustle. We rode the public buses all day and that was a fun adventure. You can always count on meeting the most interesting of characters on the public transit. So speaking of that.. The sisters there had been doing as we are supposed to, talking with everyone. As missionaries we are constantly talking with people and handing out Mormon.org cards and what not. So the sisters one night receive a call from this guy named Wayne. He explains that he was the guy they met on the bus and that he had gone home and looked upmormon.org and wanted to know more. This is something we love and wish everyone would do! The problem was, they had met so many people that day they couldnt remember who Wayne was. They set up a time to meet him outside a coffee shop and talk some more. So that meeting was while I was on exchange there. We rode the bus to downtown Chapel Hill and sat outside on the deck of a major coffee shop. Neither of us knew who we were looking for but we just sat there waiting for some guy named Wayne to come up to us. After a while he actually showed up and sat down. I have to admit, this was probably one of the most awkward circumstances I have ever been in. We talked to him for a while and answered some questions then set up another time to meet. Afterwards the sister I was with and I just couldn't help but bust up laughing. oh the fun of being a missionary! 

We taught a book of Mormon class this week! That was lots of fun. We are hoping this will be a way to find some people to teach. So far we have only had members show up but each week we will leave them the invitation to bring a friend to the next one! Hopefully this will bring success, and if not, its always uplifting to study from the Book of Mormon! 

We have been volunteering on a weekly basis at the assisted living facility that I talked about a few weeks ago. We are having so much fun with it! We have done all sorts of crafts and painted their nails. These old people sure are hilarious! You never know what they are going to say next! 

Remember Sarah from my birthday? She is the lady who told us that she has always wanted to read the Book of Mormon. Well we were able to go back this week and help her in her yard. We were also able to share a message about Christ. She is so sweet and we really hope she will progress! She has been through a lot in her life and we know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ could really help her! 

How about General Conference?! Was that not amazing of what. General conference happens every 6 months and its a time we get to hear our latter day prophet and his apostles speak to us! It was just the spiritual boost I needed! I have to say Elder Bednar's was probably my favorite! Missionary work is the BEST! If you would like to hear what a living prophet wants us to hear in this day and age you can see here. 

Well things are going well here. We are working hard to find people to teach! We went tracting yesterday between general conference sessions. Confession.. tracting is my least favorite thing to do ever! I try to avoid it at all costs but today it just had to be done. In my planner where we write everything we are going to do in the day I wrote.. "tract old barn neighborhood... because I love Jesus Christ!" I needed to give myself a little encouragement to knock on those doors with a smile. When I thought about my love for the savior and all that he did for me I wanted to tract all day long! I will do whatever Heavenly Father wants me to do because I love my Savior and I want to be the best that I can be for Him. And I want everyone else in the whole world to know that we have a Savior that suffered for us so we don't have to.  What are you willing to sacrifice because of your love for Jesus Christ? 

I love you all! 

Sister Judd 

sept 29

Hello!! Happy almost October! Can you believe it?! 

 

First off, thank you all for the birthday wishes! I had a great birthday! 

To be honest I wasnt really looking forward to my birthday this year. I am new here to the area, no one really knows me yet or knew that it was my birthday,  and nothing really special was happening on the day. I wanted to just kind of forget it was my birthday so I wasnt let down with the normal missionary routine. Lame thinking of me, I know. But luckily it turned out to be just wonderful! 

We woke up and did normal routine. Then after our studies we decided to go on an adventure and take a ride on the city buses! If I wasnt a missionary you couldn't pay me money to ride the Durham public transportation but things like that make missionary work and your birthday just that much more fun! We got on at the stop right outside our neighborhood. I walked on and tried to strategically place myself on the correct seat. I sat in front of a very nice lady. I began talking with her and she had just gotten off work. She is a single mother of 7 kids. We talked for a little while and then he was off on her way. Then another man got on the bus and sat in front of my companion. I saw him looking at her name tag, knowing anything could come out of his mouth at this point. But we were surprised! He looks at us and says "My finace is a member of that church". We began talking with him and were even able to invite him to church! We then rang the string and we got off at our designated stop, Downtown Durham. We are the northern part of Durham and we cover just the northern part of Downtown, right above Duke campus. It is such a beautiful place. So old and historic, lots of trees and the houses are so cute! The weather was perfect and it was the best tracting time ever. Sister Turley and I dont call it tracting. We call it "Walking the walk, and talking the talk". So off we were to walk the walk and talk the talk. It was still pretty early in the morning so we didn't want to knock on anyone's doors. We were just going to talk to anyone we saw outside. After walking a little ways we came upon a woman working in her yard. We stopped to talk to her and offer if she needed any help. She was very friendly and asked us who we were. We told her and then she exclaimed "Oh! I have always wanted to read the Book of Mormon!" Say what?! This is music to our ears! We talked with her for quite some time and she gave us a tour around her garden and house. We then let her get back to work but we will be heading back there this week! So far birthday is going off very well! I knew this was Heavenly Fathers gift to me. We then needed to get back so we walked to the nearest bus stop and were on our way. Later in the day we went out to go more people. We went to visit a member in the ward who lives in an assisted living place. We had a great visit with her. As we were in there the lady that lives next door came in crying. We offered her a place to sit and asked what was wrong. She stated that she was very scared because the next day she was headed to the hospital to have surgery because she has breast cancer. This broke our hearts and we just talked with her and tried to comfort her. We asked if she believed in God and if she would like us to say a prayer for her. She was very excited to hear that and said yes please. I offered a prayer for this woman. It was amazing to see the difference that made for her. I am so grateful for the power of prayer and knowing that we have a Heavenly Father who loves us so much.

We had dinner with a sweet family later that day who made cupcakes and sang to me. We then had some planning to do and then the day was over! 

I don't know why I was so worried about no having a good birthday. Any day spent doing the work of the Lord is a good day! I am grateful for each and every one of my birthday and this wonderful life Heavenly Father has given me! 

The rest of the week was good as well! The day after my birthday we had a leadership meeting. It was so much fun because so many of my close sister friends were also there. We were able to catch up on old times and have so many good laughs. There is nothing better than being surrounded by missionaries! But it was very sad because we are all coming to the end of our missions. Sister Fullmer, my wonderful trainer bore her testimony because she goes home in less than a month! And then right behind her are many more sisters. Tiem is going bby way too fast! 

We found out at our leadership meeting that we will be able to see Meet the Mormons!! Have you heard about this great movie?! If you havent go to meetthemormons.com now and then go watch the movie at a theater near you on October 10th! We were told that we are not to go in or anywhere near the movie theater but that our mission was being sent a DVD copy of the movie and we will be watching it at our Zone conference next week! We are very excited! 

Well running out of time but thanks again for all the birthday love! I appreciate you all! 

Love, 

Sister Judd 

Sept 22

In the words of my companion.. "two words.. rough week". 

But we will not focus on the negative! Like the fact that I think almost every single appointment fell through, we had 2 investigators dump us and tell us what we were teaching was crazy, and we found most moments of our days having no idea what to do next. This was all Satan trying to get to us because on Friday we got to go to the TEMPLE!! 

Thanks goodness for the temple, it was my saving grace this week. The temple is truly the House of the Lord. I am so grateful for it. 

And to top it off we had our session with the Apex Stake sisters. So I got to see Sister Treu and here about all the wonderful things still happening in Garner. Yay for tender mercies of the Lord! 

Other than that there isnt much to report about this week. I will tell you a little story that happened a few months ago. 

I was driving a car with 3 others sisters in it. My companion and another set of sisters. We were traveling home from a meeting. We were driving on the freeway when all of a sudden I see a car in the left lane drive over the median and onto ongoing traffic luckily missing all the cars that were speedily coming down the other side of the road and then the car stopped in a ditch. When I first saw it happening I yelled at everyone else to look and we all watched it happen. We then made comments like, "Holy cow! What in the world was that person doing?!" "Did they fall asleep at the wheel?" "They were probably using their phone or doing something stupid" "Maybe they were drunk". We couldnt believe what we had just saw. We were all then prompted that we needed  to turn around and go back. We didnt know why but as a missionary you learn very quickly to always follow promptings of the spirit. We made a u-turn as soon as we could and drove back. We found the car was still there and there was a lady sitting in the car crying. We were the only ones who had come back. We went up to talk to her. She explained that her brakes on her car had stopped working and the car wouldnt slow down. She saw a little brake in traffic and knew she needed to get off the road. She went over the median and that was able to help slow her car down and then when she went onto the grass on the side of the road her car stopped. She was very shaken up by it and was trying to call for some help. We asked if there was anything we could do for her and tried to help calm her down. She was able to receive some help and so we drove away. I dont know if that lady needed to see us or if we all needed to learn a lesson that day. We were so quick to judge when we saw it happen, thinking the driver was completely in the wrong. We had no idea what the situation was and how she was actually doing the best thing she thought she could do. I think this happens a lot more in life than we realize. I learned that day to be not so quick to judge others. To be more open to hearing what really happened. And to be more Christlike in all I say and do. We never know whats really happening on the other side. 

"May we ever be found doing the work of the Lord." 

I hope you all have a great week! 

We will be finding, teaching, and baptizing here in Durham, NC!! 

Thanks for all your love and support, 

Sister Judd 

Sept 15

*****It's Emily's birthday on Sept 25! Send her a card, she would love to hear from you!!*****


Hello all!! 

I survived my first week in Durham. Which is an accomplishment to say the least! 

Transfers are one of those things that you forget how hard they really are until you have to go through it again. 

But you know everything is going to be okay if you can just make it to preparation day, and here we are. 

Transfer meeting itself was actually really great. Sister Treu was training so she had to be at a meeting all day on Tuesday so me and some other sisters who I love got to hang around at the stake center all day and catch up on old times. It was lots of fun. 

After the bittersweet meeting we came back to Durham, brought my stuff in from the car and an exchange was already there waiting for us. Off we were to teach! No unpacking, no meeting the new companion, no really even discussion of who we were seeing or what we were going to teach. We just show up. And somehow it all just works out. Amazing how the spirit can work that way. We were gone and didn't get home until 9 that night. I had a little time to unpack but I was so exhausted all I wanted to do was go to bed as soon as possible. After a few days though I can sat that I am officially all moved in. I love the new place we live. Its a nice little town-home and its probably my favorite place I have lived so far. 

Oh my companion is Sister Turley. She is from Arizona. She has been out for 15 months. She is really sweet and so far we have gotten along great! She has been serving in the southern part of the mission and I have only been in the Northern part so we didn't really know each other until now. Sorry I dont have a picture of us together yet! 

We have been busy this week and we have a lot of work to do! We have 3 investigators right now. I got to meet 2 this week. We are teaching a 17 year old girl named S. She goes to the NC School of Math and Science. Its this awesome high school that basically is a college. The kids come from all around the state to come to this school. They live at the school and have everything they need there. Its super hard to get into and its tons of work. Its a really neat campus and everything is free. Even all there meals. The trick is just getting in.. But anyways, S is really sweet. Her boyfriend is a member and that's how she found the church. She doesn't really know if God is real but she decided to give it one last shot and is meeting with us. I really hope and pray that she will find truth in the Gospel and mostly gain a knowledge that God is her loving Heavenly Father and that she is of infinite worth.

Our other investigator M is very sweet as well. She is an older woman who had some kind if accident and is now in a wheelchair. Let me give you the situation of a typical meeting as a missionary. We knock on the door and she forgot that we were coming but lets us in anyways. We walk into the apartment and her son is sitting at the table smoking a cigarette and drinking who knows what with the TV blasting. We walk in and try not to breathe. We start talking and after what feels like forever his cigarette is finally burned up. Sweet M apologizes and starts spraying Lysol all over. Now that we have a great mix of second hand smoke and cleaning chemicals in our lungs we are all ready to start the lesson. You got a good picture of that? And thats pretty low key compared to some of the places we walk into. Who is ready to put in their mission papers now? I promise, you wont regret it. 

We share a car with the elders and this week we were on bikes. Holy cow, I think Durham takes the prize for most hilliest city in the mission. We biked a lot this week..and if you ask me we biked up way more hills that we got to go down. Thank goodness for the slightly cooler weather we have had! 

In the span of one day we went to 3 different retirement homes to visit people. That was an exciting day. We had quite the miracle at one of them. 

Something I love to do on my mission is serve. Yes, the whole 18 months is serving but I like to be involved in service opportunities to mix up the days a little bit. So I asked Sister Turley when I got here if there were any service opportunities in the community. She told me they hadn't been doing anything but that a member in the other stake owns or manages a retirement home and that they were looking for people to volunteer. Perfect I thought, we will go there. We go there one day and walk in and tell them why we were there. They called up the activities director to come speak with us. She was so excited we were there! She told us she had been feeling overwhelmed and asked God to send some help since they arent able to hire more people.  She gave us a tour around the place and we went into an office where she explained things we could do and ways we could serve. She was very kind to us and so excited to start working with us. It was the perfect situation. After we got back into the car with the member we were with we totally started talking about how awesome that lady was and how she needs to be baptized! We left very excited to go back next week and volunteer. Later that night during our planning session Sister Turley grabs the ward directory. She then gets this super weird look on her face and points to a name. Its the same name of the lady that was the activity director at the place.. And the lady is from Finland, it wasnt just some ordinary name. We just look at each other in complete shock. She has already been baptized! We knew there was something special about her!! We then just start laughing because we couldnt believe it. Her and her husband and 2 kids have been less active for a while. God sure does work in mysterious ways! We are now even more excited to go back and serve there and hopefully we will be able to get there family coming back to church in no time! 

I would love to receive letters from all of you. Especially since the 25th of September is coming quickly. I will let you figure out the significance of that day. 

Well time is running out fast! 

I hope you all have a great week and enjoy the rest of your Monday! 

much love! 

Sister Judd