Hard Work, Dedication, & Jesus!!

This week was sweet!! Christmas as a missionary is different but still good!

I facetimed my family and it was really fun to see and hear them(:

I've met people here on my mission that it feels like I've known them forever! One of them is the Place family. She just had her baby and I drank some of her breast milk that she kept in the freezer.......hahaha I made it into chocolate milk(; I was not disappointed!! #SorryNotSorry

We met this SWEET inspiring lady the other day. Her name is Stephanie. She raised all 3 of her kids on welfare. One day while talking to a welfare worker, she was told she would never make it, and that she would be on welfare for the rest of her life. She left that office building with a burning desire and hope to prove her wrong. She went back to school and soon got her Associates Degree. Went back and told the same lady "Look. I got my associates degree." Soon she got her Bachelor's Degree and went back and showed the same lady. May 2013 she just got her Master's Degree and is now working on getting her Doctorate!!! Talk about dedication and perseverance...like holy cow right???

Jeez she's incredible. She's working on starting a program to help people who just got out of prison/jail to help them get back on their feet, go back to school and get back up! She said and I quote: "All you need in life is hard work, dedication and Jesus!!!!!" hahahah so true.

ahh i love all these people here in new jersey(: gotta love em!

So last night was super sad.....probably the most I've ever cried on my mission so far. Our investigator's Chuck and Ella's son died Saturday and we went and saw them last night. The scripture Mosiah 18:9 was all I could think about...."willing to mourn with those that mourn and comfort those that stand in need of comfort" We all listened to her cry and tell us what happened. I felt prompted to talk about Brenna and how it was really hard when she died, but my testimony of Jesus Christ and being a member of this church was strengthened from it. I just bore my testimony that I knew they would see their son again. He was born with down syndrome and another rare disease and only lived for 11 days after he was born. So everyone who reads this keep their family in your prayers!

I'm doing good don't worry about me! We're going to Philly today so that will be fun(: have a good week!

oh and anyone who reads this who knows AVEN JONES message her a nasty strongly worded message on facebook to tell her to send me an email because i haven't talked to her for 4 months....hahah so i really need to talk to her(:

thanks!!

love sister manson

fun times being a sister missionary(:

fun times being a sister missionary(:

sister stubbendorff!

she took me running on christmas(: haha she's the best

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

it's Christmas in 2 days!!!!!! I'm so happy:)

Sister Stubbendorf (a member in our ward) is taking me running in the park! while my companions just chill there (because they hate running.....) Literally that's all I want for Christmas is to just run off all my stress and crap I've been eating! Ahhh I'm going to be in heaven(:

We went over to a less active member's house this week
.....here's what went down:

I walk in..and she is sitting shirtless on her couch..luckily i didn't see anything because she was quickly putting her shirt on....After that we had our lesson, got to know her, talked to her about the importance of the Book of Mormon and how she could use it more in her life. After we leave I comment to my companions that it smelt awful in their like cigarets. My companion Sister Handy says "That was NOT cigaret smell....that was MARIJUANA!" Pretty sure we all walked out of their freaking HIGH!!!!!! I mean...I felt great.......hahaha but my companions felt really sick and then I started to feel really sick when we got back to our apartment for the night...hahaha good times being a missionary...

It's POURING so hard right now!!!!!!!!!!!! haha i love the rain I just want to go run around in it..ahh I'm in heaven :)

Before I get anymore crap about not giving a certain someone a shoutout, I will do so now...let's call her L. Olsen...no no...Laura O.hahaha she's the best(: and i love her and she takes good care of us! so thanks CHANCELLOR.

On Friday we had our Christmas Devotional!! And got to watch Ephraim's rescue!! It was so good I cried my little eyes out like the whole time hahaha...I could just feel the Spirit so strong telling me that all the stuff they went through and all the miracles actually happened. If you havent seen it, go watch it! It was so good!

We went over to Bradley's house and met his kids last night! They are so cute(: One of my favorite things to do with kids is have them guess how old I am.
hahaha they said I was 16!!! hahaha and my companion sister maughan...30!!
hahahaha yeah i about peed my skirt when they said that....good times being a missionary(: hey at least i look YOUNG! (:

Never before has Jesus Christ felt more REAL to me in my life than right now. I know for a surety that HE LIVES. I love being a missionary and spending my Christmas as a missionary! Our whole purpose as missionaries is to invite others to come unto Christ and I think Christmas is an excellent excuse/reason for me to help remind everyone :) hahaha because Christmas is ALL about Christ.

have a good Christmas! see and talk to you guys on WEDNESDAY!!!

ohh and CONGRATS TO my helen keller aka KALIE HARPER for her mission call to
ARGEN-freaking-TINA!!!!!!!!!!!!! You are going to do awesome kalie :) i love you!!!!!

love sister manson

Uuuuuuuuuuuuutah

Okay so this week was crazy!! In a good and bad way..

Said goodbye to favorite companion..Sister Menlove..and got another companion!! Still not a duo. Hahah still a trio. Her name is Sister Handy, from Uuuuuuuuuuutah.

I asked her what the most important thing she's learned on her mission so far and she said that she actually has self worth. I look back at her and she has tears in her eyes...Definitely made me want to help her and take her under my wing and help her see how important she is!!

4 out of my 5 companions so far have gone to Utah State...I'm taking that as a sign I need to go there....hahaha.

John 6:66-69
Some of Jesus Christ's disciples "went back and walked no more with him" Christ then turns to the 12 and asks "Will ye also go away?"
And this is why I love Peter because he replies:
"Lord to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God."
What a powerful example and testimony we have from Peter. I hope we never turn away from our Savior, but turn to Him.

Saaad news..we don't get our iPads until January now... :( haha lame..oh well.

Gooood news..I got a missionary Facebook!

https://www.facebook.com/sisterchristy.manson

Feel free to follow me! I can't add any of my friends/family as friends..but everything I do is public so you can see it, so feel free to look at it and see how I'm doing (:

My district leader, Elder Hellyer shared 2 things with me that are really cool that he read in a book, that the Savior laughed and smiled alot! Isn't that cool? I've never thought about that before..

and the other thing is that whenever he would have a bad day and want to come home, he would think about Jesus Christ. What would have happened to all of us if the Savior just packed up and left because things got too hard? Pretty powerful!!!!

So Bradley (one of our investigators) came to church yesterday!! He's literally the best. He's so humble and I love helping him learn more about the gospel and about Jesus Christ and help him to feel the love and forgiveness from Him.

Etta (our recent convert) and her son Wayne want to adopt all of us because they are sick of the missionaries getting transferred all the time. haha and Wayne said he got a PERM one time that made him look like George Washington!! hahhaah i about died right then and there.

So have you ever thought about why we even have the Book of Mormon? what's it's purpose? Read Jacob 4 and Mormon 8!

Those 2 chapters are SOLID at answering that question.

I can't believe it's almost CHRISTMAS!! And then it'll be 2014! So crazy...

love sister manson (:

fun lunch with some of the people we teach! (:

my new companion! Sister Handy, Sister Maughan and meee

I love the Book of Mormon (:

Peter the Great

Sister Menlove is getting transferred :( I'm going to miss her!

Sister Maughan and I are staying here in Moorestown, NJ. So that means I'll be here for Christmas and the New Years! Now we'll be M&M :) haha...

We watched the John Tanner story this week with our recent convert Etta. I've never seen it before and it was amazing! Just learning about how much he did and gave up for this church just blows my mind! It really impressed me and it made me think about how much time and energy am I willing to give to the Lord?

Read these quotes and think about them.

"The Greatest of All, was a Servant to All"

and I decorated my planner with the phase "Service Above Self"

...

We got a referral a couple weeks ago for this man named Bradley. We contacted him and set up an appointment. He is literally the sweetest, most humble man I have ever met. He shared to us of how he felt like something was missing from his life and how he needs to turn his life around. He grew up in the church but stopped going when he was 7. He barely knows anything about The Book of Mormon, and Joseph Smith, not even the Bible really. So it's going to be really neat to teach him all about that and see him come closer to Christ. As he was talking, I kept feeling the Spirit so STRONG. Pretty sure that was the strongest I've ever felt the Spirit on my mission so far. It was so clear and obvious what I needed to do. I felt strongly prompted to invite him to be baptized.That was the first time I ever met him, and I could feel how much Jesus Christ loved him. So I asked him, and his response was pretty funny, he said...."I should!"

so we left him with the commitment to pray and ask for a date in which he would be ready. Ahh it was amazing.

I can't really put into words the feelings i felt and my companions felt....
all i can really say is that.....THE CHURCH IS TRUE.

I've been studying Peter a lot lately and I'm like so in love with him! haha not really, but I just think he's so cool! The type of man/apostle he was. How through Jesus Christ he became more than he ever thought. He was a lowly fisherman. But through following the example of Jesus Christ, he became the great Peter who healed, performed miracles, and taught people about Christ.

I think the book of Acts in the bible is my favorite book. It says that people would bring their sick to the streets just hoping that even Peter's SHADOW would touch them. They were consistently thrown into prison for preaching the gospel and about Jesus Christ, but the second they were released they continued and never ceased to preaching the gospel to everyone. They kept going!

I made it a goal to be DEEPLY COMMITTED to the gospel of Jesus Christ by March 6th 2014. We had stake conference this past week and one of the speakers who talked used this phrase and it really stuck out to me.

It snowed a crap ton yesterday! hahah and I hate it. Well it was exciting at first but now I just want it to go away haha.

have a good week!
love sister manson

our fav pizza place!! 

I love me some Justin Beiber
<3

I love me some Justin Beiber
<3

cute sister pat! she's the best <3

we decorated her little house for xmas :)

i love xmas!!

fun family holiday card hahaha we're freaks.

SNOW!!!

my fav companion (: sister menloveeeee

SNOW!!!

All-You-Can-Eat Buffet

This week started out SUPER rough..but it ended great(:

We went to this SKETCHY chinese place...#yolo and we tried all the gross looking food hahah in preparation for our thanksgiving feast..

Thanksgiving was so fun. We had a cute little get together at the church with some of the members and stuffed our faces and then went to the Sikahema's and ate even more food! I ate so much... #RegretOneHourLater.

But I have decided that I'm going to marry into the Sikahema family because they are so fun!! They would be the perfect in-laws hahaha. They only have one son left...so my chances are pretty slimmmmm hahahaha....

By the end of this week we find out who gets transferred! So I may or may not have a new address...I'll keep you all informed(:

I have been studying mercy a lot this week and what that means. I looked it up the old skool way in our 30 pound oxford dictionary...

Mercy:

"Compassion by one person to another who is in power and who has no claim to receive kindness"

That last part struck me hard..Heavenly Father loves everyone even the people we think don't deserve it..

We found 4 new investigators this week! One we found while in the bathroom....hahah

here's what went down:

We were trying to go to a library on Saturday but the one we usually go to was closed because they close early on Saturdays..so we went to a different one that was pretty out of our way but we decided to go anyways. we plugged the address into our GPS and it took us a really weird/long way through neighborhoods. So by the time we got the library we only had like a half an hour until it closed. So we get on the computer and I was looking up things on LDS.org and watched a really awesome Mormon Message called Daily Bread. It was so good, and then I read President Uchtdorfs new motto about "Service Above Self"

That's about all I was able to get done when the computer shut me off because the library was closing. So after that we went to go use the restrooms. I noticed this lady come into the bathroom right after us. So I purposefully started talking..loudly to my comps about what I had just learned/watched. I was talking and hoping that the lady could hear me, and she did! Because when she came out of the stall she smiled at me and started asking me questions about what I had just been talking about. hahaha #ItWorked

So I shared that stuff and talked to her about our Church and she wanted us to come over and talk to her more about it! We were like..OF COURSE. So we gave her a card with our names and phone# on it and set up an appointment to meet with her this Wednesday! We were so happy and excited. Strengthen my testimony that we need to bear testimony EVERYWHERE. Even in the bathroom haha. And it was cool too because everything was perfectly timed so we would be at the same place and at the same time. We probably wouldn't have found her if our GPS took us a faster way, or if the normal library we go to was opened, or if we decided to go the bathroom before using the computers instead of afterwards...

There are no coincidences! :)

Also learned its good to talk about the church and bear testimony in places where people have no choice but to listen to you. Hahaha...like the bathroom, or on an airplane, or on public transportation like buses/trains.

Back to the Daily Bread message I watched on lds.org

It was so good! Go and watch it! :)
...

Would you go 2 days without eating physical substances..aka food? haha of course not. Then why do we sometimes go weeks even months without eating any spiritual substances?

The Israelites live on manna for 40 years! God literally provided their daily substance. The manna would just appear on the ground and they would eat it and that's how they survived. They couldn't store it though, they had to keep gathering it everyday. He did it so they would not forget the source of their blessings and to always remember Him.

It's not a accident that we have to have daily physical substances. It's the same with spiritual substances! I've felt like my mission has been an All-You-Can-Eat Buffet of spiritual food! Imagine not eating any food for a super long time and then going to an All-You-Can-Eat Buffet and stuffing your face! hahaha yeah well that pretty much sums up my spiritual experience/feasting so far serving a mission.

Alma 32:28

"it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me"

Sums up my feelings perfectly.

We went over to a members house Sunday and ate dinner with her and her family. Literally the saddest thing ever... We sat and listened to her cry and vent about how awful her divorce has been, and a bunch of other stuff..like by the end I was crying and so were my companions..

I just care so much about the people here and it hurts me to see them like that. And it makes me sad that I can't really do anything to help them..All i can do it help them to rely on their Savior.

It felt like I got a tiny microscopic glimpse of what it must have felt like for the Savior, who felt not only her's but EVERYONE'S sadness and pains. And I haven't even known her for that long and was able to feel for her, but the Savior knows and loves her COMPLETELY, so I can't even imagine how that must have felt for Him when he did it not only for just her, but me and you and everyone..Think about the selfless he had...I know Jesus is the CHRIST. Our perfect, loving, merciful, kind Savior.

My testimony of Him and the Atonement increases each day, as I see and meet people here who need Him.

i hope everyone's thanksgiving was fun!

love sister manson

Ponder on this quote and tell me what you think it means, pretty deeeeeep:"

Irritation is an invitation to godliness"

My boys <3 

my companion tied me up....haha

and these are two cute future missionaries! (:

we had a super cute thanksgiving dinner at the church with some of the members of our ward!