A Baptism & A Cake

Hello!

It's been a... interesting week here in Richmond haha :) It's been pretty slow when we go out contacting but this weekend people are going to start moving in for the school year so hopefully it will pick up! Elder Chuntz is one of the Senior missionaries in the ward and he told us during the school year that at the compass (this central spot on campus) there is so many people that we literally have to choose who we want to talk to because there's so many people! So that will be exciting because its pretty barren right now. But this week has just been weird and we've talked to only weirdies it feels like. 

Anyway. There's actually five sets of missionaries in our ward! Haha crazy right?? I guess there's just so many people to find in this area that we need that many, but it's fun because we have a senior couple (the Chuntz's), our companionship, the sister training leaders, the district leaders, and the assistants to the President all in one ward! So we get to see each other and be friends, it's awesome.

We actually had dinner at the Chuntz's last night and they are the funnies most awesome old people ever. Ah! I love them. Elder Chuntz was a lawyer and Sister Chuntz started her own business so they are really wealthy and just buy stuff and do nice things for the missionaries all the time. Next week Sister Chuntz is paying for the sisters to all get haircuts, she is so cute. And the dinner last night was home cooked and just so good. 

Oh and guess what! Remember Schic that i told you about? He got baptized on saturday!! Woohoo! It was awesome. We made him a cake and it was a great baptism. So that was exciting :) I'll send some pictures.

Dad, thats awesome about the stake program for family history work! I wish i had time to still do it, but you guys will have to just learn haha :) No i don't really get blisters anymore, I'm getting used to walking all day. I'm glad my garden isn't completely dead yet ha! Is the horse still evil? Probs.

Mom, no we don't really get fed at all... we're in a YSA. So we eat all of our own food! A convert bought us groceries the other day but that's about it! Um, i haven't had that many weird experiences yet- just talking to hobos is always a treat! They like to talk to us or something because we always get stopped by them. We walk through Monroe Park every day to get to campus and they all just sit in the park and talk to each other its so funny. 

One night we were talking to an Iranian guy and he told my companion that her nose was crooked and she needed surgery and that he knew that Christ isn't the son of God because one time he was one the toilet smoking and he hadn't eaten anything before, so he passed out and was about to die, but then he recited some Muslim saying that says Jesus isn't the Christ and then he came back to life. So yeah. People here are nuts hahaha. We were like.... uhhh all you did was pass out on the toilet? Anyway, other that weird stuff like that, not really!  

No we don't have ipads and i don't know when we'll get them, hopefully during my mission sometime but no one knows. Lame! They would be so useful!  Hahaha my companion's mom's name is Alyson Ritchie Clonts and yes, you can look her up on facebook, don't be creepy though ha :) No one has been mean to us, people here love Jesus and missionaries most of the time. No i don't have allergies. For Pday today we're just relaxing, but there's tons of museums and tourist sight here so i'm sure we'll go to those eventually. There's also a Forever 21!!! Ahh so i'm probably going to go shopping one of these mondays, no joke. :) Tell Park that unless he makes cool videos or something with his drone, then that seems lame. :) I don't need any fall clothes yet, its still hot! But i'll let you know. 

Other than that it's going good! My companion also loves books and Pride and Prejudice so we talk about that a lot. :) Last pday we went bowling and the picture is us in our shoes and dresses. Yup, i bowled in a dress. Wouldn't recommend it. Haha :)

 I'm still getting used to the missionary life but everything is going great! What else do you guys want to know?

Tell me what else is going on at home! Love you guys!

xoxo Sister Fowers :)

The New Greenie on Campus!

Hello everyone!!

Ahh I have so much to tell you and no time! We only get an hour and a half every week to email everyone and our mission president so if my friends and peeps could send me a letter or email me your address that would be great! Because it looks like letters are gonna have to do it from now on! 

Thanks for all the email and love though! You are all the best. 

I'm sending pictures finally but it only lets me send like 2 at a time so be prepared for a bombardment. ha!

Now for the good stuff :)

So, it was really hard to leave the mtc, there was so many great people and teachers and yeah i cried it was sad. BUT i'm so excited to finally be here in VA! I got here on monday and we spent the night at the mission home, which is so cute. President and Sister Wilson are just the funniest, cutest people ever. President cries at like every single meeting its so funny. Then we woke up the next day to get our first area and meet our trainers! 

Drum roll please......... My trainer is Sister Clonts!! Ah she is so awesome. :) She has been out here for about 13 months and is from Claremont California! She is such a good trainer and we get along so well and I'm not just saying that. Heavenly Father keeps blessing me with good companions. But yeah she is so obedient and such a hard worker. She's also like the best scriptorian i've ever met! She knows every single story in the BOM and Bible and who its about and what the reference is. Oh my goodness it comes in handy when we are practically bible bashing with people and she can just whip out every scripture in the bible to show them what's actually true. So basically she has shown me i need to know the bible so much better so that's what i'm working on right now. 

Also, guess where my first area is......... CHIPPENHAM YSA!!!!!! ON VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY CAMPUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yep. I'm on a college campus. In downtown Richmond. In a YSA ward. Basically everything i wanted. HOLLLA!!!! Oh my goodness I can't even tell you how much i love it. So VCU is like the sweetest campus ever, they took all of these old victorian/colonial houses and turned them into classrooms, so they like built VSU into the city and so i just walk down the cutest streets lined with threes and super old adorable houses all day and talk to people about Jesus. 

Life is good.

We have mormon.org cards and we just walk around downtown all day on campus or just in the ghetto and hand them out and get people to talk to us. Street contacting for daaayyysss. :) its so fun. Also, I've officially decided that black people are way nicer than white people. I talk to them all day long and they are so awesome. Everyone here says "have a blessed day" instead of goodbye its so cute. 

Plus its summer right now but school is going to start in a few weeks and then we will have so much more work! Ah its like i never left college ;) 

The ward is so good, i went yesterday and everyone is so awesome. its full of recent converts and i've realized that i've like never been exposed to very many converts and they just amaze me! They sacrifice so much and have so much faith in something they just barely learned, its crazy! So yeah the members here are awesome and come to lessons with us all the time. 

It's been a little rainy this week, but not that hot surprisingly. Everyone says that its been really nice weather and i haven't even felt the heat yet. One day though it was way humid and you would have died if you could have seen my hair. AFRO! Hahaha hopefully it will adjust to the humidity.  

I live in a little townhouse thing about 20 minutes outside of Richmond. If you want to send me anything, letters or packages send it to this address!

6820 Dartmouth Ave.

Richmond, VA 23226

We're teaching this guy named Schic (sounds like sheek) and he is the funniest most awesome guy ever. My companion and her old companion found him and when i got here he was already ready to be baptized and stuff so we're just finishing teaching him all the lessons before his baptism. For my friends, he is the black version of Kade Criswell, so yeah he is hilarious. 

We had some other investigators but everyone like left for a few weeks before schools starts, so we can't teach them until then. But we just go out and contact every day and try to find new people to teach! 

Here's one cool story that's already happened! 

So we get referrals and my comanion had a sticky note full of names and addresses of referrals. So we had time one day to go try to contact some, so we picked this girl to go visit because her address was the only one that was even kind of close to us. We typed her address into the GPS and went. We knocked on the door and no one answered, so we just left a pass along card in the door. Then there was this old man across the street, so we went and talked to him for a little bit and gave him a card too. He wasn't very intersted though, so we left. Then we marked on the sticky note that we had visited this house. 

Fast forward a few days and it was later at night and campus was dead so we decided to go try and contact this referral again! So we looked on the sticky note and made sure it was the same address, and then the GPS even still had it saved, so we just clicked on the same address and started driving. 

This time though, when we got there we were so confused because we were on a total different street and house? We were like what the heck? We know this is the same address and the GPS took us to the same address, but we're in a totally different place? We just figured we'd see if this was her house or not though, so we knocked on the door. Turns out the girl had moved a year or so ago and so a guy answered the door and told us she was gone and he lived there now. So we asked if he was interested, he said not really, and we gave him a card anyway. 

So, even though that story seems kinda lame, I know that we used the same address and that one of those people must have needed to meet us. I don't know why, and I probably never will, but it was just cool to see that the Lord does things his way and does whatever it takes to accomplish what he needs accomplished. So yeah it was crazy. :)

I don't even know what else to tell you guys but its is awesome here and basically I got the most coveted area in the mission for my first area. #blessed :) 

Send me pictures and letters! 

What else do you guys want to know?

You're all awesome and I love hearing from you guys :)

Oh and happy late birthday to Millie and Weston!!!!!! Send me pictures of Weston's party please :)

I'm doing great so don't worry! I've never had so many blisters on my feet but its fine :) 

Love and miss you all! 

xoxo Sister Fowers :)

Leaving the MTC

The mission home! Darling isn't it?

Beautiful Virginia

Kaycee and her first companion Sister Clonts

Aboard the train

Ahh, hello everyone!!
I feel like i have so much to tell you i don't even know where to start! thanks for the packages mom, getting mail is the best haha :) my district and roomates have been loving all the candy trust me. Hmm well the MTC is great! I love my companion and we get along so well. I have literally seen multiple people that i know every single day. I probably know 15 to 20 people here that i knew before my mission. It's the best seeing old friend and catching up :)

The first week we started teaching Victor, which is actually our MTC teacher pretending to be Victor... Haha but actually the teachers are like freaky good at portraying these investigators and think and act like a totally different person so it feels like you're teaching a real investigator. Anyway, we started teaching him and the first few lesson went really well, then we taught him about the restoration and it just flopped. That same day we started teaching our TRC investigator which are investigators hired by the MTC to be taught by the missionaries. Sometimes they are members, sometimes they are real life investigators and you never know which one! Ahh, all i do is try and figure out if they're real haha. But they are really good actors if they aren't. Anyway, our first one was this lady named Lawanna. Yes that is her name and she is a black lady from Arkansas. The picture of her that we got was her looking really sassy so we thought she'd be one of those really talkative funny sassy people. Nope!

So we go to teach her the first lesson and we were going to take most of the time to just get to know her and talk to her so that was mostly the plan. We get there and sike! we have to skype her. So that threw us off, then we skype her and she is like super ornery and acting like she doesn't want to talk to us. We'd be like "tell us where you're from" or "tell us about your family and what you like to do" and she'd just give us one word answers and then stare at us.... sooo we started rambling and it just went so badly. Then only about 15 minutes in she stops us and says "can i reschedule for tomorrow? its just really busy around here and i need to reschedule." we were like "ummm sure?"

So then we were feeling discouraged and went back to the classroom feeling super bummed. We had to teach Victor again that night and we were determined to redeem ourselves. Hahaha in our prayer before the lesson my companion even said "please bless us that as we teach Victor we can somewhat redeem ourselves." and guess what... we did!! it went so good and he commited to being baptism!! my first (fake) baptism! ;) haha it's so funny how we knew it wasn't real but that didn't make us any less excited. Last night he also committed to read the book of mormon and go to church so Victor is the bomb.com.

On sunday we had our first fireside which was T.C. Christensen who was the cinematographer of a ton of LDS films like 17 miracles, Ephraim's Rescue, Emma Smith: My Story, and stuff like that. He shared a bunch of cool stories about the pioneers and showed clips from 17 Miracles and stuff like that. At the end he had everyone in the audience who was a descendant of someone in the martin-willie handcart company stand up. So many people stood up! It was so cool. Then he told us how no matter where in the country he travels, whenever he asks that question, so many if not more people, always always stand up. Those people's testimonies literally lasted through the generations. I love it.

My MTC teachers are amazing too. Their names are Sister Ellsworth and Brother Kimball. Gosh i just love them so much :) Sister Ellsworth is like the most intelligent person and the best teacher i've ever had. She does role plays of lessons for us and all i can think the whole time is "i want to teach just like you!" Brother Kimball is super funny too. He's a total hipster and is from Seattle WA. He does ballroom dancing at BYU, loves to bake cinnamon rolls, and told us he is baby hungry hahaha. He said if he could be a single father right now he would because he just wants to be a dad. I died laughing, he is so funny.

Speaking of role plays, we do then constantly! I probably do like five or six a day. But they help so much!

Tuesday was our second devotional! I was actually in the choir which was super fun. We sand Lead Kindly Light, which is only one of my favorite hymns eeeeverrr. So i think you can look for that devotional online and if you do, you can see me on the camera :) Stanley G Ellis spoke to us and he's one of the seventy. He has 9 kids and every single one of them served missions, so each one of them came up and shared their testimonies and it was so cool. One of his daughters went to Paris, France and talked about the speed trains their. She said no matter what happens, whether you chose to get on the train or get off, the train was still going to keep moving forward. She compared those trains to our missions. No matter if we choose to be a part of this great work or not, its going to keep moving forward. Except if we choose to get off, then we are going to miss out on SO MUCH. Heavenly Father is going to still bring this gospel to the world, the only difference will be that you will miss out on meeting so many people and experiences who will change your life. She told us to not get off the train! Don't give up! And to thank Heavenly Father every day that you get to be on board.

So, I don't know about you guys but I'm staying aboard :) its hard here and i get tired and feel like my brain can't absorb another piece of information, but somehow it always does. Then i get home at night and just pass out from being so tired, but its a good tired.

Actually everyone take a moment and recognize that i have successfully woken up at 6:30 every day by myself. THAT DOES NOT HAPPEN. So holla at the spirit for waking me up ;) i also go to bed at 10:30 every night. but on the reals i am definitely taking a nap today for P-day.

Also, I tried to send pictures today but the computers here are really dumb and won't let me. so sorry! I'll send you some next week from VIRGINIA! Woot woot!

The MTC is great and all, but I'm ready to go. I feel so bad for missionaries who have to stay here for like 9 weeks. Nope! I would die.

Also, my district is the best and we've all just become best friends. It's me, my companion Sister Lopp, Sister Webb, and Sister Johnson, then a bunch of little 18 year old elders! We seriously laugh all day and sing hymns all the time. We struggle to focus a little bit, but if we didn't laugh a little we'd go crazy. So I love them. All the sisters including my companion are going to the West Virginia mission so Kade and Heather you can look out for them! But me and all the elders are going to Richmond, so I'll get another companion for the flight that i don't know. I think she's a spanish speaker. Our flight leaves at like 7:45 on Monday so i think i'll call you before then. We have to wake up and leave at 2:30 in the morning though! So we'll see how that goes. I have a layover in Detroit too.

Ok well i'm running out of time and i wish i could reply to everyone but i can't!

Just know that I love you all and I miss you! Keep being awesome.

Xoxo, Sister Fowers

Quick hello!

So it's not even my P-day but they told us to send a quick email to tell you that I'm alive! My real P-day isn't until Thursday, so I won't write you a real email until then... sorry! The MTC is so good though! I don't really get why people don't like it or get homesick because I think its so fun! My companion is soooo awesome. Her name is Sister Lopp and she's from Orem. She was an ambassador at dixie and plays softball so she reminds me so much of Maisie! It's kind of freaky actually. Plus she was senior class president too, so we're pretty tight ;) My district is awesome, they're all these 18 year old boys and they just make me laugh so hard. The food here is kinda nasty, i mean its good but i get sick of it. They give us ice cream though, so i'm always down for that. :) haha I don't have my camera but I'll send pictures next week!

Oh ya and MOM THIS IS URGENT. I FORGOT MY HAIR STUFF SO PLEASE SEND IT TO ME, ITS IN THE THING WITH OWLS ON IT, PROBABLY UPSTAIRS SOMEWHERE. hahaha i always forget something, smh.

and friends, if you want me to write you send me a letter or your address because i didn't write down any!!

Love you guys though, you're the best!

Sister Fowers :)

An Acceptance Letter

first of all, mission call acceptance letters might be something that people don't usually post anywhere because it's kind of personal, but for me its something that i want to post to keep a record of it for myself, and also to kind of share with you guys my testimony and how i felt about my mission call.

if you don't know, after you receive a mission call you send an acceptance letter back to the first presidency accepting that call and they actually get it and read it. kinda cool. it can only be so many characters long so you have to try and fit everything you want to say into a short little letter.

so here's mine!

2014-04-10

Dear Brethren

I am so deeply grateful and honored to accept my call to the Virginia Richmond mission. While waiting for my call to arrive I found myself worrying about where I would be called to serve. After a lot of prayer and scripture study, I now realize that it doesn't matter where I serve, but how. The Lord knows my heart and knows the exact mission that will help me to grow in ways that no other mission could. He knows the people's lives that I will touch and the things I will learn from them. I am so grateful to be a part of this great work. It is so exciting! There is so much to do and I hope that I can represent the Savior every day as I put on that little black tag. I have a testimony of this gospel. I know without a doubt that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ live. Not only do they love us, but they love us perfectly. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet called of God and that he restored Christ's church to the earth. I have a testimony of the truthfulness of The Book of Mormon. I'm so grateful for the guidance and peace it brings into my life. I know I can turn to it for answers today, even when it was written so long ago. I'm so grateful that I can be with my family forever through the ordinances of the Temple. I have a testimony of family history work and the blessings that it can bring into our lives. I know that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet of God and that he leads and guides us today. I'm so grateful for the atonement and that through it, each of us can repent and be made whole again. I hope that I can be a faithful disciple as I serve the people of Virginia. I love this gospel. I can't wait to be a part of the greatest work on the earth. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, my Savior, amen.
Sister Kaycee Fowers