Picture of Easter

Easter Package

Dying Easter Eggs

Dying Easter Eggs

Easter Package from Home

Surprise at the Easter Package. It literally exploded when she opened it

April 21, 2014

Dear Family,

Tell Aidan to keep trying! We're getting bikes hopefully soon so he can just come to Lincoln and we'll practice riding together...but at least he doesn't have to do it in a skirt...I have no idea how that's going  to work. We'll figure it out.

Dad, I love that all that you remember about my Pops Party is the food and getting a new book. haha
I don't remember any of it so I guess I'm not better.

Funny story about light sabers...a member gave us these blow dart things...and Sister McCauley and I used them as light sabers before we went to bed the other night so...yeah. We're super mature...;)

 

So this week has been great. Can I just say that having a companion that you like instantly get a long with is one of the greatest things ever. Missionary work is SO MUCH easier with a great companion. We've had a lot of fun this week. Also I had to give in training in a zone meeting this week. Um scariest thing I've ever had to do. 26 elders and 3 sisters staring at me. I got up there and I was like...can I run? Is that an option? But it went well. It was on following up and I was thankful for Elder Ballard for giving the Follow Up talk in general conference. Once I got started though it was cool because teaching just became very natural and even though my voice was shaking I felt confident. I love teaching with the Spirit. It's a lot easier than teaching by ourselves.

Another cool story. So Sis McCauley speaks a little bit of ASL because she served in ASL ward in Lincoln. Earlier Sis Sommmers and I tracted into a deaf couple. Obviously all I could say was hello and spell my name. So we went back and she signed to them about being missionaries and etc...They were nice but they said no to wanting to learn more about Jesus Christ. It was absolutely devastating when they said no! But it was just cool that she could communicate with them and since I've learned how to sign my testimony so that's cool. We'll probably go back and see them. :)

This week has been great but it's all been really hard. They decided to cut our miles...so we can only travel into our area and then back home at night that's it. So...members have to give us rides. And the people we were going to get bikes from decided last minute that they wanted to keep their bikes...which was terribly frustrating! But that's okay. The Lord provides these things. But it's been cool to just be happy even though a whole bunch of crazy stuff is going down.

So we forgot to pack dinner because we were doing service for this family all day so we figured that they would feed us after 5 hours of digging in the dirt. Nope...they were actually kind of rude. That's alright we love them anyway. Anyway we were like um alright so we just went on doing are thing  planning on coming home and eating after we got home at 9:00. But thankfully a member saw us and they had just gotten Wendy's and they were like hey have you eaten dinner yet? We said no. Then they just handed their Wendy's stuff to us and said here eat this and we'll go back and get more. So...how cool was that?! :) They even had vanilla frosty's. Coolest members ever. haha

Other than that it's been pretty chill. ;)

This week should be pretty epic. Hopefully. We plan on playing tennis all day today so I'm pumped for that. :)

Well hope all is well for you. Love you all.
Love, Sister Curfew

April 14, 2014

Dear Family,

Blaine, thanks for that very enlightening email. Ha I loved the story of you chewing like a giraffe. Hilarious! Congrats on making it to state that's a big deal. :) I'll wave to all the planes that I see flying over me and maybe one of them will be you.

That's crazy that you can put in your papers so soon. I'm glad you've enjoyed having me on a mission...it's probably because I'm not there bossing you around. :) haha.

Anyway. This week was great. The members started stepping up a little bit and we taught some people who we didn't tract into! Woo!! :) We went to dinner with Sister Rolapp who is here temporarily at UNL and she brought one of her classmates to dinner with us. And she saw my scriptures and she grabbed my Book of Mormon and was flipping through it and she was SO curious. She just had question after question. It was really cool. She lives in Minnesota and her next door neighbors are members but no one ever answered her questions. I'm a little possessive of my scriptures though so I was like be careful, please don't drop them in your food. It made me laugh I'm so weird. :) We probably won't ever see her again but I was thankful that we got to meet her.

Other than that we walked a lot because last week was really nice it was in the 80's most of the week. But right now it's currently 33 degrees and there is a couple of inches of snow...Oh Nebraska. Weather is a joke.

But yeah. Sorry my emails are getting lame. I will try and remember more interesting things that happened. Not a lot really happens here it's a very slow area. But that's alright. :)

Happy Easter and I love you all.

Love, Sister Curfew

April 7, 2014

Dear Family,

Aw Ryan looks so missionary like! Oh man. Missions are the best. He'll have a blast. I will try and shoot him an email.

Yes Sis Roseman and I email every week. I love her. :) Tell Jana that I got both of the packages and tell her thank you for me. I am super behind on my writing thank you letters and such. I will repent.

Glad to hear that you thought conference rocked. I loved it as well. Can I get a whole bunch of ensigns like you did last conference? That was MUCH appreciated. :)

Well this week was transfer week...and I got a new companion!!! Her name is Sister McCauley and she is from Ogden Utah as well. She is super cool. We're both very similar and we were really well together. I was very thankful to be placed with her. :) I am still in Holmes Lake and it's still good. So I had the coolest experience ever yesterday. So we were doing a scripture study with one of the members in our ward because she struggles with reading and so we are helping her with the BOM. Anyway we're reading and we get a phone call from a Brother Spilker in our ward. I pick up the phone and he was like "Hey I feel like I need to give you a blessing. Would you like a blessing?" So it has been a rough couple of weeks just crazy stuff going on and I can't really describe to you how I was feeling. In the back of my mind I was thinking I probably should get a blessing but I don't know who from and then I forgot and haven't thought about it. So I was of course very happy to accept. Needless to say the blessing was incredible. It hit on EVERY single concern that had been weighing on my mind for the past month. I have never felt so loved in my life from my Heavenly Father. Words cannot do justice the sacred experience I had. Afterwards he gave me a piece of paper and he asked me to write down what I felt, what I remembered, what stuck out to me, and etc... and then he told me what stuck out to him while he was giving me the blessing and then asked his wife what stuck out to her and then asked my companion what stuck out to her. It was really cool. :) I can now testify that our Heavenly Father and Savior Jesus Christ really know our thoughts and are mindful of us. One of the most fundamental things we know. God is our loving Heavenly Father and we are His children. But yeah. I'm feeling MUCH better and a lot more at peace. :)  I am so thankful Bro Spilker was so willing to follow this prompting. He said that he had had it a couple of weeks ago but ignored it and yesterday the thought just would not leave him. He was like the Spirit is a nagger sometimes. haha :) It made me laugh. Other than that we just did the usual missionary thing this week. Knocked on some doors, taught some people about Jesus Christ, played battleship with some members at a dinner appointment. (I won) You know missionary stuff. :) Enjoy Spring Break!

Love ya'll

Sister Curfew

Funny Sign

Temple Visit

Temple Visit

Providing Service-I Built a Transformer

My Winter Boots.  Love Them

March 31, 2014

Dear family,

I have heard so much about Divergent and I look forward to reading and watching the movie. Same with Frozen. Everyone keeps telling me how great Frozen is. I've listened
to the soundtrack and I liked that. I'm excited to watch all the new stuff when I get home. I agree it has been crazy. I hit my year mark in 2 months. Whoa. Doesn't feel like it's been

a year. It feels like I just got here. I still have MUCH to learn and am thankful I have awhile to learn it all. :)

That's cool that you're going to be more involved in MTM. I've heard some pretty rockin' stuff about that. I always wished I could go...or at least have a Sister version of MTM.

If you can sneak me a T-shirt..that would be great. :)

Mom thinks you need more culture? You listen to classical/opera music all the time. How much more cultured could you get??

I agree with what you said about missions building a foundation. My mission has for sure taught me how to work and serve and do it the Lords way and not my way.

Although I could be better at that. :)

Well this week was just like any other week. Except one of the Less Actives we were really close with got sent to jail. Turns out she had been scamming the church
for other 12,000 dollars. She completely lied to us and told us a lot of stuff that isn't true. And we just keep hearing different story after different story from the Bishop and the

Relief Society President, her case workers, and so on. I won't lie it really shook me up. I thought the Spirit was supposed to help with that kind of stuff. I sensed something
 was wrong but I didn't think it was that big of a deal. I was very frustrated because I am so naive and I trust a little to easily I guess. But Bishop helped us out and was like

when working with people who have problems we treat them innocent until proven guilty. So I guess that made me feel a little better, but still.

We had some very spiritual experiences teaching this week though. We met this 7th day Adventist who just let us right in when we tracted into her. And she was the

sweetest thing ever. She is basically LDS just isn't baptized. We gave her the Book of Mormon and bore testimony of it and I think one of the most thrilling experiences
of being a missionary is bearing testimony and instantly feeling the Spirit testify to someone else. It changes how they sit and all the sudden their body language changes

eye contact with them becomes very intense and it almost feels like your Spirits connect in a way. I don't know if that makes sense but it does to me. But that happened
with this lady. What she chooses to act on we'll see but the Spirit is something you just can't deny! I love it. :)

But I think my favorite thing that happened this week was the General Women's Broadcast. I loved every second of that. The speakers hit a lot of my concerns
when it comes to inadequacy.  I've noticed that I'm often comparing myself to other sisters and being  like well I don't have that talent so I will
never be good at teaching as they are. I know that's a form of pride, but I've been praying how I can stop because it sucks. I love that we have a church that 

through the Spirit, leaders speak to us as Christ would speak to us. The phrase "as a man speaketh to another" has popped up a lot in my studies and I  have come
to realize that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ speak to us individually and they say things that we will understand and they talk to us just like we would talk to our
earthly parents. Again, I should probably know this but I was reminded of the reality of it this week.

Other than that we did a lot of service this week. I still love digging in dirt. We hand tilled a garden this week. That was fun. :) I'm still somewhat buff despite the

weight gain. (I blame Le Mars) We moved a family out of their house and I'm pretty sure I used new muscles...and yeah.

I'm lovin the spring weather. Can't get any better. :)

Well I love y'all

Love, Sister Curfew

March 24, 2014

Dear family,

Thanks for forgetting about me this week. Haha just kidding it's fine. :) I hope you all had a great week an did exciting things.

My week went pretty well. We had 3 team ups this week which is kind of amazing! So that's been great!

We also had exchanges this week and I served in Omaha for a day. That was weird. By the end I was like yeah I want to go back
to my area...it was really difficult for me. But that's alright I learned a lot. I've had some really amazing experiences with prayer this
week. I really enjoy an effective prayer. Still really pumped for general conference. Yeah I don't have much to say. Sorry.

This week was kind of just the usual stuff. Oh Sis Sommers got sick again so that was horrible. But we made it! This week in my
scripture study I learned about Charity. I went through all the scriptures in the TG and the Index. The Bible Dictionary's definition is
my favorite definition. You'll have to go look it up. :)

Oh I finished the Book of Mormon the second time on my mission! :) Still true. Still the most amazing book ever.
I am also falling in love with the New Testament. I love learning about Christ character through the NT. It's great.

Ha we got a call from Laura Rodriguez the member who got baptized in Trendwood and she called us happy screaming
because she got her temple recommend to do baptisms for the dead on May 4th. She is so funny. She was like I am SO excited

this temple thing is really neat. I like it. :) It just makes me happy to see the joy she has. :) This gospel is real. :)

That was my week. Sorry this email is kind of lame. I got a cord for my camera so enjoy all the pictures that I have been
meaning to send! Love ya'll,

Love, Sister Curfew

March 17, 2014

Dear family,

This week was good. :) The weeks just keep going by faster and faster. But yeah. We got to go to the temple!!! Wooo!!!! I love serving close enough to a temple! :) :) And I saw the newest video! It was even better than the other new video! Have you seen it? Oh my goodness when the movie was over I was like can we just restart it and watch it again?? So good. :) But yeah. It was a little awkward though because we rode up with 12 other Elders because the other Sisters were riding with members. So...they stuck us up front in this giant transfer van...and the Elders were like should we talk to them or should we not talk to the Sisters...then the Zone Leaders are just weird so it was just a whole bunch of Awko Taco the whole ride up and down...Boys are weird. Especially missionary boys...Anyway.

We honestly just tracted streets all day this week...people in this area are not receptive at all.  But that's alright. We show the Lord our faith by working and He will give us people to teach. :)

We have been getting to know all the members by going to their house and just talking with them and being like hey how's the work of salvation going for you guys? And if they aren't doing anything we kindly teach them how. :) Unless they whine about it then I am not so kind... So we have been teaching members this week on how to better their missionary work. We're excited because general conference is one of the greatest missionary tools ever. It's a lot easier to invite someone over to watch a session of General Conference than it is for them to be invited to meet with the missionaries or to go to church. So hopefully we'll expose more people to our wonderful Prophet and his Apostles. :)

Sis Sommers and I have a little "bet". Not a real bet because we're missionaries. But we think President Monson will extend Sister missions to 2 years. :) haha. Get pumped. I'll extend. :)

Oh we also had our first team up in the ward with the Relief Society president. She was hilarious and so much fun! Whenever she made a wrong turn...and she has lived in Lincoln most of her life she would say "Oh fiddlesticks" in this cute older lady kind of way. SO FUNNY! :)

I am doing well. Although we didn't have much success this week. I am happy. I love being here. I love the sun. I love doing the Lord's work. I am SUPER EXCITED for General Conference. I have a really great and loving companion. :) Couldn't be any better. :)

I hope ya'll have a great week.

Love ya,

Sister Curfew