Citylife

Things are going really well.
I've had a lot of sacred experiences with investigators and with the
sisters that we are with.

I am in LOVE with living here in the city. I'm gonna live here in the
future. There are so many stray cats and humans here.

Sorry this email sucks..we're taking some sisters out with us to show
around Philadelphia right now:) so that will be fun.

I have a list I'm working on about all things I'm grateful for, I'll
be sure to share that with you all next week.

I love you!
Promise next week will be better...haha so sorry.
Happy thanksgiving!!!!

{sister.manson}

JOY!

So many good things have happened this week.

First of all I got transferred to my new area Tuesday. Haha.....YOU'LL NEVER GUESS where they sent me

CENTER CITY PHILADELPHIA! I get to see the philly temple being built every single day :)

Here's my new address:

1715 spring garden apt 2F
Philadelphia, pa 19103

It's been such a JOY being here.

My new companion is sister Bennett. She's a combination of mine and sister steadmans personality, sooooooo you know we're just having a great time everyday. I laugh extremely hard everyday.

So as a sister training leader (STL) I go on exchanges with the sisters that we are over/with.

And I am so lucky because I have some of my favorite sisters :)

SISTER COX & SISTER BAILEY!

We are with 6 companionships. So 12 total sisters.

It's getting cold here and has been pouring rain. But I love it!

I had my most sacred experience on my mission this past week.

So like at the beginning of this week we got a letter from missionaries in Australia!!!

Telling us a member in their ward's daughter lives here in Philadelphia and wanted us to deliver her a letter she wrote to help her know she sent the missionaries to her. The mom and daughter are both from China. The woman's name we met is Yunong Zhou. We knocked on her door and she was so happy to see us because her mom told her she would send us. She welcomed us right In. We shared the story of how we have this letter for her and gave it to her and talked about the temple being built here in Philadelphia. And we taught her how to pray! Can't even describe the spirit that was present the whole time. It was so overwhelming I cried like the whole time. So sister Bennett had to explain to Yunong why I was crying. Sister Bennett said a prayer, then I did to show her how and then she did!! That was her very first prayer.

PHILADELPHIA is where I need to be right here.

My first Sunday in the Ward was great! There was only one speaker because the other one couldn't make it. Sooooo the 1st counselor gets up and says:

"Good thing we just got 3 new missionaries in our Ward. We'll turn the time over to sister Manson to come up and talk to us for alittle bit" hahahaha I was like wait.....what the!? So I go up and introduced myself and just started rambling about the gospel(: I love being a missionary, it's the best.

My heart is so full here. It's incredible being here in philly. I am praying this will be my final and last area before I go home in March. Do not worry about my safety, we are very safe here! Our area is nice, a little sketchy and ghetto........butttttt we're fine and loving it.

Love you!

Sister Manson

Isaiah 55:12 my new favorite scripture with the Philadelphia temple :)  

Tender Mercy

The tender mercy I wanted to share this week is pretty long... #longstorylonger:

Saturday afternoon we met a girl named Tatiana while we were looking
for a LA. We had a really sacred conversation with her, prayed
together, and she committed to coming to church with us the next
morning. We agreed to meet at 8:30am at the RiteAid on Broad and then
ride the subway to the church together. We were so, so excited for her
to feel the love of her Father in Heaven and for her to understand how
divine she really is.
Sunday morning we went early to meet Tatiana, but realized that we
didn't have any idea where the RiteAid is... We walk (sprinted) to her
house to try and catch her there, but when her dad answered he told us
that she had gone to her friends. We somewhat frantically explained
who we were, why we were there, and that we needed directions. He was
really cool and asked us to wait for him to change because he wanted
to see if she was around the corner.
I ran over to the corner to see if i could see her down
the street and said, "Sister Bennett! I'm stressin' out!" After
praying on the sidewalk, her dad came back and said she was still
asleep upstairs and had been up really late that night... As we walked
back towards the subway we were pretty bummed...
We then started inviting every living creature to church. We were
determined to find somebody to come to church with us. We were
desperate! Really, We invited every single human being we saw to come.
Every single one! We stopped and prayed and told Heavenly Father that
we would be inviting everyone we saw and asked Him to place somebody
in our path who was prepared and ready to receive us. Well... at this
point we were going to be late to church and nobody wanted to come
with us. We went down to the subway and decided we would find body in
the train.

(pause/rewind)

The night before we had an intense lesson with Dasse. Long story
short, he had committed to pray and ask God if he needed to come to
church the next morning. We had text him Sunday but hadn't heard back
from him.

(play)

When we walked down into the empty subway terminal guess who we saw...
DASSE! Dasse was sitting on the bench waiting for the train. As soon
as I saw him I was warmed by the spirit. Heavenly
Father had answered our prayers! It turns out that Dasse had gotten
off at the wrong stop and wasn't sure why. We also ran into two LA
members getting on the train to come to church with us. It was a ride
full of tender mercies from the Lord. I know He is aware of Sister
Bennett and I. He loves us so much.

Also....I have been quite good at Parallel parking!!! I've done it
like 6 times:)

And I have ridden the subway!

Ahh I'm learning life skills here :)

{sister.manson}

I.think.im.gonna.puke

Hello!!
Uh this week has been crazy.

First of all I am LEAVING morrisville :(
I have loved being here. It's been so good for me.

Second of all....my mission president called me to be a sister training leader!
So I'll be helping other sisters and going on exchanges with them and
training them on things...all on top of my normal missionary work
stuff. I will pray I won't get too stressed!
But it will be good :) just a whole lot of leadership/responsibility #yay

I have felt like throwing up since Thursday till now...I've been so
nervous and anxious About all of this..but my district leader gave me
a priesthood blessing like an hour ago and I'm feeling tons better.
Super peaceful and calm. The power of the priesthood is REAL!!

so grateful for it.

You'll never believe what happened to us last night!
We have only had our car for like a week and as we went to dinner with
a member family in the ward, they were backing up and totally hit our
car. Hahahaha we come outside and the bumper is ON THE GROUND. All I
could do was just laugh. It's actually pretty funny, but poor sister
handy has to now deal with this...good thing I'm outta here! (;

This week has been great, other than those things, we've been working
with new less active members in our Ward so that's been good.

I'll let you know more of everything next week when I find out where
I'm going and who's my comp tomorrow.

But as of now.,mail things to
721 Paxon hollow rd suite B
Broomall, PA 19008

Love you!!

this is karina, our investigator and her son cj. She was so sad I was leaving.
Actually It was really humbling to see just how many tearful eyes have
met mine as I have told members and the people I've been working with
(Kathie and Carmelina) that I was leaving. They were so sad and they
love me! And they all know how much I love them.
That's the best part of being a missionary. The amount of LOVE you
have for the people you meet..it's the best. I love being a
missionary.

Our awesome Book of Mormon class

D&C 121:7-8 and Lesson #22 from Raking Leaves

Know this faces misses you guys!!! :)

This will be a good email because I started back to writing in my journal every night.

I haven't been doing that in a while...but it has helped me TREMENDOUSLY.

When I take the time to write and think about what happened at the end of everyday, I remember all of the good things and crazy and hard things. But mostly the good(: It's interesting as a missionary...I know that I have had really really really tough times on my mission, but honestly I can't remember them. But I remember every single good moment. It's like the bad ones don't even matter, and D&C121:7-8 is TRUE. They are for but a small moment, so endure it well!!

Frank...elder manson leaves the MTC tomorrow! And goes off to californiaaaaaa(: wooo!

First of all..it's FALL! And it's bitter cold over here. Literally I am freezing and it hasn't even snowed...so idk how I'll hold up this winter. I've been layering my clothes like crazy!

Heres what went down this week: we raked some leaves...walked around...raked more leaves..walked around...raked leaves...the end.

Haha but seriously though we raked like 38,927,321 leaves this past week. #somanyleaves

And met some cool people along the way(:

We seriously met a gangster!! In the middle of morrisville (pretty nice area) haha I was dying. So funny. He was so impressed that we wanted to rake leaves for free and suggested that we go to his moms home. So we walked a couple blocks up the road and raked it. A couple mins after we start taking his moms house he shows up on his bike and was like "you girls are serious!?" And gives us water because for some strange reason it was freakishly hot that day..70s.

I love raking leaves!! Maybe it's because I never had to do it growing up so I don't view it as a chore..but it's awesome and I think of so many life analogies from it. This women's yard we raked was so big! I am grateful there's 3 of us or else we would have been there for a long time...I would say it was about 1/2 or a 1/3 of an acre, something along those lines. But it's awesome being able to first look at the yard covered with leaves and then look at it at the end and see how much work you did and how good it looks. It's a lot like life! Life sucks and is hard most of the time..as we start to work hard it's easy to look and see how much we have left! But we keep going and enduring and pressing forward. Then we get to the end of our trial and see how good it has made us(: #lessonsfromrakingleaves good stuff!!

Some sketchy stuff went down as it looked like he was breaking into his "moms house"

Haha hope we didn't witness or enable a crime...apparently he's a 9/11 survivor and almost stripped his clothing to show us some gang signs he has branded onto his shoulder.

Good stuff (:

A member of the Ward gave us this HUGE fruit platter and we kept it in our fridge and pulled it out to eat during the day. Well we only had it for like 2 days and as I putting it back into the fridge....I DROPPED IT! And all the 100 pieces of sticky fruit fell onto the ground...hahahah all I could do was laugh it off so I wouldn't get upset. So sister hall helped me clean it up quickly (sister handy was taking a shower) and I was like don't tell sister handy!!! Haha well like 2 days pass and sister handy's like where's the fruit?? And me and sister hall just look at each other and start laughing and explain what happened....sometimes you just gotta laugh it off.

We had a good lesson with our investigator karina about prophets and she came to church yesterday!! =happiness when that happens.

Sister handy had a random thought to go wash one of the members car one morning. And I was like uhhhh it's freezing!! But we did it anyways and it was so cool what happened.

{Side note:always listen to the spirit and ACT}

We surprised her and she was so happy&tearful and shared that the night before she was wanting to go get her car washed but ran out of time getting everything else done. And then we shows up the next day :) love it when that happens. When the spirit uses US as tools and instruments in helping others exactly when they need it. I've had so many experiences like that on my mission. After we washed her car, we noticed her next door neighbor was standing outside and we asked if we could wash hers too. She was supposed we asked but said yes. She had a U of A sticker on the back of her car which made me so happy seeing because I never see anything about arizona out here. I told her I was from AZ and we talked about that for alittle bit. We washed her car and left her a note quoting mosiah 2:17

Service softens hearts.

We got our car back...finally!!! We were without it for 11 days.....that was a wee bit frustrating and difficult. But we dealt with it and it was "but a small moment" got it back on Halloween. We went to the shop and he said it would be another 30 mins so we were with a member and she decided to go to the dollar store and pick up some stuff. Coolest thing happened. #rightplacerighttime

We were checking out and there was a family in front of us. I noticed on her neck there was this sweet butterfly tattoo. Something I love doing is talking to people about their tattoos :) so I was like hey I really like your tattoo! And she smiled and said thanks and saw my name tag and then looked at me and asked if I was a mormon. I said yes! I'm a missionary. She was so happy and shared that she used to have missionaries in her home but they had gone away and lost contact with her and the church. So I got all her info and am going to get missionaries to go see her (since she lives out of our area) that was such a humbling experience to see Heavenly Father helping and loving her by having us meet and help her find the gospel again. #thechurchistrue

Fast Sunday's are always the best. Whenever I fast I feel the sprint more stronger than I normally do. Here are some quotes from testimony meeting:

"When the unexpected happens, you're still in control. I can still control my thoughts, actions, words, and behavior."

"The Savior IS."

"Sweet is the peace the gospel brings"

Had a good relief society lesson yesterday.

All about the organization of the relief society and the member who taught it-sister Chatfield- used my picture I drew for her :) #small&simplethings and scanned it and made small copies of it for everyone. That was pretty cool. I just love drawing and painting quotes like that. It helps me keep sane in the mission world haha. 

Quote of the week

"The decision to retire, is the decision to die!!"

For Halloween I was a sister missionary :)

Love you!

{sister.manson}