Sister Neel: 5/30/22

 

HEYO

You guys I've officially hit my last transfer on the mission...holy. cow. Where the actual freak has the time gone. We all know how fast 6 weeks goes so pray that time slows down for your home girl over here living her best life in North Carolina. I cherish this name tag and calling you guys. "Walkin this walk" like my cute southern people always say is beyond rewarding and impacting my life in ways I only dreamed of. I love every second of every minute of every hour of EVERY day. I wish yall could come live a day in the life of a missionary with me and see the pure and intense joy that comes on a daily basis. Guaranteed, your life would be changed forever. And I get 18 months of this so you can imagine my glow up 🤪

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: we got transfer news and Sister paulsen and I are staying in Jacksonville!!!!!!! The zone leadership is staying together!!! We had major sad boy hours together as leadership. Saturday night after 9 pm. We called for a long time and brought up how much we had done for each other, how much we changed each other and the amazing memories we made together. We heard that Elder Littlefield might be leaving and knowing the quad squad was possibly getting split hurt different. It was the hoodie up, lay your head on your companions shoulder kinda call. We were literally depressed at the thought we wouldn't be together for another transfer. Ive never been so sad to leave a group of missionaries before. That was a call that will go in the books. We face timed the next morning, so we could be together for when we got transfer news. Prolly the most anxious sleepy heads you ever did see. It was legit the coolest thing ever tho. When we saw that no ones name was on the transfer board, we all began shouting, yelling and jumping for joy, hugging our companions and literally crying happy reads. 6 MORE WEEKS WITH MY BESTEST FRIENDS IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD!!!!! We legit were sooooo stoked and celebrated good when we saw them at church. Man God really does know how to make me smile :))

A p.s. to that story, the AP's called us and we are super close with them. Some of our favorites from the mission tbh. Elder Stocking told us that the transfer board had one of us leaving, getting transferred and when he came into approve what President had laid out, he said that we all had to stay together. There was too much good going on, we made a power house of a team and were needing to stay together here in the Morehead City zone. SO THEY KEPT US ALL TOGETHER!!!! I don't think Elder Stocking has ever recieved so much hype from any other missionaries in his life after he told us that news. We sure love our friends and feel blessed God saw that we needed each other for a bit longer

AHHHHH ALSO GET THIS!!!! President called us to trio train a brand new missionary so that's wild! I'm the designated trainor but since I'm leaving in 6 weeks, sister Paulsen will take over and finish up what we started. Here's to motherhood for the win!! (Hehe mission terms) We're so stoked for our cute girl to join us!!!!!! But President gave us the biggest compliment of all time. He said that we are the most enthusiastic, positive, energetic, and contagiously happy missionaries he has ever seen. He knew that this new missionary would feel heaven right off the bat in her mission and knew that she would be trained to perfection if we were behind it. It meant a lot and caused us to become even more exited for this new responsibility :))

Alsoooo before I get into the highlights, most of our lessons fell through or we spent most of the day testifying and trying to find new people. We still saw sooooo many miracles and that was a dub. Just not a whole lot to report on. We love talking to anyone and everyone. We love the gospel message and we love the smiles that cross people's faces when they see our joy. We are told often we are some of the most enthusiastic missionaries that have ever been seen before. We can't teach without a huge smile. It just ain't it. What we have fulfills and establishes joy. It's absolutely beautiful 

HIGHLIGHTS: 

☆ we accidentally almost led our entire district onto the military base. We typed in a restaurant and turns out, it was located on base. When we approached and saw the huge arch and chain linked fences with police everywhere we were like ohhhh crap. We had to hurry and skirt before we looked like we were illegally trying to get on without a pass HAHA

☆ the elders played a nasty prank on us at the church. We have a Lil prank wars going on but this one was mean. We had come to the church to do member work on the computers and there was a YSA activity going on, then everyone left and we were the only ones left in a dark church building at 8:30 pm besides the few members on the opposite of the building doing kitchen prep. We stayed behind and finished working but then we heard weird noises coming from the hallway. I got up and looked out but couldn't see anything cause it was so dark. We decided to go check the parking lot to see if there were any cars but there were none. When we walked back into the building we heard something fall down the hallway and I froze. My heart began racing. Sister paulsen and I ran into the FHC room, slammed the door, locked it and ran to grab our phones to call the zone leaders, and then the zone leaders burst out of the closet and scared the crap out of us. I literally almost fainted. I have never screamed so hard. They were laughing and could barley breathe but it was so mean. 

Our pay back wasn't nearly as mean but kinda funny. We took frozen pancakes and stuck them all over the outside of their car while they were in a lesson at the church. They have been wanting to go to IHOP with us for a long time so we brought it to them haha! When we came out to our car we caught them trying to stick the pancakes on our car and then it turned into a huge pancake fight haha. It was so fun. We dared them to collect all the pancakes and eat them in one bite...ahaha it was hilarious. You'll have to peep the pic below 

☆ it was Sister Paulsens birthday on Monday!!! We celebrated in so many fun ways. For starters, we stayed up until midnight (permission granted) with the zone leaders over FaceTime to officially celebrate together when it was her actual birthday. We played so many fun games, we did which companionship had the best yoga poses and even did dance off competitions. I laughed hard enough to where my body hurt the next morning. We. Had. So. Much. Fun. And then 5 hours later, we were all back together again to go fishing at the beach with the district! On the dock they have this beautiful gazebo that looks out into the open horizon where the ocean touches the earth and you could see dolphins swimming. Talk about magical 

It was also Elder Terry's bday this week and we got Elder Littlefield to leave the car unlocked so we could go decorate the entire car with decorations, his favorite snacks and a new race car. When they walked out and saw the balloons taped all over the car, they were so happy. And then we jumped out from behind and attacked them with silly string haha! BUT THIS PART KILLS. After we had gotten them, they opened the car door and pulled out other silly string bottles, smirked and said "game on." It was classic and the entire parking lot was covered in string. Turns out they had plans to attack us but we beat them to it. Alsoooo the dye stained the elders shirts and we felt so bad but they said they would keep these shirts forever as a memory of this day(: We also went to red lobster as a district, yes i tried seafood for the second time and it wasn't bad. Not great but not horrible. The senior missionary couple is always hanging out with us, they're like our cute grandparents, and THEY PAID FOR ALL OF OUR MEALS !!! We were absolutely shocked. It was so kind of them. And then to end the day perfectly, there was a huge rain storm that hit while the sun was shining and a double rainbow appeared in the sky. God smiled down on us 

We had MLC and after our zone got up to present, we got multiple compliments about how impressed people are with our zone leadership unity. How when we got up to present, it was obvious to everyone we got along really well and there was a serious friendship formed that also impacting the zone with so much good. It wad so cool to hear from other missionary friends and leaders of the mission!! ZL + STL gang for the win. Alsooo elder yuen was shook at how fast my hair had grown since he last cut it. I am too tbh. Not mad about it though. I'm ready for some change 😂

Lastlyyyyy we were preparing our apartment for our cute trainee and needed to move the massive couch in our room out. Yes, our bedroom is half the apartment, it's huge. We couldn't get it to fit out of our door frame and weren't strong enough to lift it by ourselves, so we sent a funny video to the zone leaders and they immediately left and came to help us move it. We ended up giving them a lot of useless furniture they really wanted. But it was funny cause 20 seconds after they left, they began facetiming us saying they were on their way back to our apartment for bread for their church service and were hoping we had some. Then after they left the second time, they called again and said they realized they had left their wallet on our kitchen table. We were dead at this point. They kept joking that they missed us too much and kept wanting to come back. They're some real homies 

Mannn well there's a little insight to sister neels week. If I could share everything, this email would be forever long. Our mems never cease to amaze me. I've never been so happy in an area before. This joy is so hard to describe but I love my missionary besties. I didn't know what life felt like without them but now I know how much more enriching it feels to have developed this tight, life long friendship with them. I can see why God needed me here, obviously to uplift the area but to also meet people I had prayed for. They make thinking about leaving the mission so hard. And that's where I'm going to end this thought before I cry hahahaha. I just love my people. I'm surrounded by so many good examples and I love who I'm becoming. There's no better way to end a mission then here. I wish this would never end. 

I love yall mucho! Till next week 

♡♡♡

Sister Neel