Sister Manson -Silly Me In Philly-: Merry Christmas!!!

what happened this week..haha

We had a lovely surprise when we arrived to transfer meeting last Tuesday..a new sister!!! haha so we're still a trio(: her name is Sister Maughan (pronounced like a Jamaican saying man..maun!) Now we're:
M&M&M
M cubed
Triple M threat.

3M's

We watched the broadcast "100 years of Scouting"

it was really good! I was so pumped afterwards..I want to be a boy scout now! hahaha it was inspiring and made me want to work harder. So the scouts have a Scout law, but I decided to make it applicable to missionaries.

A Missionary is:

Trustworthy-John 17:4

Helpful-John 5:8

Loyal-Luke 4:8

Friendly-John 15:14

Courteous-Matt 7:12

Kind-Mark-10:14,16

Obedient-John 6:38

Cheerful-John 16:33

Thrifty-Luke 18:22

Brave-Matt 26:29

Clean-D&C 38:42

Reverent-Matt 6:9

Our bishop wants up to earn the Thomas S. Monson Award, and with that we have to read some talks and complete stuff for genealogy and family life merit badges. In one of the talks, it lists the scout law and gave all the scriptures with them! I really liked that so I decided to make it apply to my life and what I'm doing right now. They're all good qualities to have and to work towards having!

I was reading 2 Nephi 2 and couldn't believe how plainly it explains the Plan of Salvation! I've read 1st and 2nd Nephi a billion times in my life and never knew it talked about the Plan of Salvation. Scriptures seem to mean a lot more to me now that I'm serving a mission. I understand them so much better and actually enjoy reading from them and studying them everyday! I see the importance of reading scriptures and how they can really bless our lives!

Okay...confession time...I got a C in my Book of Mormon class last semester......not the proudest moment of life..haha I got a better grade in CHEMISTRY than my BOM class...so yeah I'm stupid or anything I just never really understood/enjoyed the BOM that well until being a missionary and learning from it.

I've always wondered why Heavenly Father would have the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Eden and then tell Adam and Eve to not eat the fruit. It never made sense to me. But we were reading this chapter with one of our investigators and we got to verse 16:

"The Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself(agency) Wherefore man could not act for himself save it should that he was enticed
by one or the other"

The word enticed struck me really hard. If the tree of good and evil wasn't there, then Adam and Eve wouldn't have even been able to choose for themselves whether or not to partake of it. Duh..agency! Our ability to choose for ourselves. Agency is so important in Heavenly Father's plan for all of us. He wants us to be happy and return to live with Him again. But he's not going to force us. So we see that the tree needed to be there so Adam and Eve could use their agency. That may sound like a dumb realization to most people..but I never understood that, and now I do! But it just shows me how we can get our prayers/questions answered from and by reading out of the scriptures!

We had District Meeting Thursday and afterwards Sister Singleton's new companion Sister Wright (freshly out of the MTC) came up to me and said:

Sister Wright: "I don't want to be a creep but....do you have a blog?"

Me: "haha no that's no creepy, and yes i have one!"

Sister Wright: "I was reading it before I left on my mission!"

haha I thought that was so cool! she took the time to read it haha i have no idea how she found it because I don't even know her...but yeah go missionary blogs! lolz

On Halloween we had to be in by 6! So we just ate candy allllll night and planned for the week and listened to church music. haha #GoMissionLife

Most everyone thinks we're J-DUBZ!! (Jehovah's Witnesses) the j-dubz church building is actually like 2 houses away from our church building! After we tell the people we're not j-dubz they're always more friendly and open towards us haha.

Sooo Heavenly Father knows how much I've been missing my iPhone, he made it possible for me to get one! #MerryChristmasSisterManson

Our Mission President announced that in December the mission is getting each companionship an iPhone(: and every missionary an iPad!!!
Hallelu! Heavenly Father loves me!! That'll be so nice! During lessons we can just whip out our iPads and show a sweet Mormon Message!

Speaking of Christmas...we already started listening to Christmas music(:

So Sunday we got an extra hour of sleep because of the Daylight Savings Time thing. I was so excited to sleep for a whole extra hour(: haha it was so nice. But that day started off bad..we got a really mean text from an old lady about how disappointed she is in us, and that she never wants us to come over again...made me feel REAL good...then everyone we were scheduled to meet with fell threw! They were all not home and wouldn't answer our calls! That was frustrating. But the day got better towards the end so that was nice. It was fast Sunday yesterday. Literally all i ate yesterday after I broke my fast was:

a piece of cornbread

2 muffins

3 cookies

and some candy...

i felt so sick! I really wanted to make myself throw up...but that's a eating disorder sooooo I just sucked up the crappy feeling and just didn't eat anything else that day. So that was fun.. and it was freezing yesterday!! 40 degrees!!!! Layering time!