Week 44: Best surprise EVER

Here we are again. Another transfer has come and gone, and Sister Urbani is on her way to London right now and then off to France! Where does that leave me? With a new companion! Here is the story of what happened when I found out what was going on: "Sister Slack you will be getting Sister Thomson as your new companion" 3 seconds of silence, then jumping around with joy and singing some songs about happiness. 

Yeah, I couldn't believe it! Sister Thomson and I get to serve together in Coventry now. We were in the MTC together 10 months ago, and had a few adventures together over in Wales, and now it is just going to be a party every day together. We are so excited to go to work and see miracles happen all the time. Yup. Best surprise EVER. 

But what else happened this week? ON Tuesday I headed over to De Montfort for exchange with Sister Monnapula, and it was so fun. We were walking down the street talking to some people, and every person we met so far had said "This is too personal." or "Not a chance." It was going kinda rough, when suddenly we run into this girl named Chloe. Turns out she had met missionaries before on the street, and she had given them her number but they never called her. She really wanted to meet with them and now they have an appointment for this week. MIRACLE. It was awesome. 

Also, yet another week of working with Grace has past. As we keep talking with her about baptism, she is slowly but surely getting over her fears about it and will take the step eventually. She knows that it is right, but she is so afraid of making a promise. But, on the bright side we have an amazing girl we are working with named Joyce. She is christian, and she came to church for the first time this last week. We talked about what her favorite part of church was, and she explained how she loved applying the scriptures to herself. That's what we all need to do in life, apply the things we learn. That's really the whole reason we have the scriptures, is to see what we can change in our own lives. 

Anyway, we've gotta get going. But just know that this week is going to be amazing! 

Love you all,

Sister Slack

 Sister Monnapula and I on exchange

The district

Trio Exchange with Sister Stone and Sister Pickett

Sister Thomson and I!

Week 41: "Please, sister, just give me a kiss..."

Helloooo

Well here we are again! SO this last week.. hmm. Well. Yes, it involved eating chocolate Easter eggs. And yes, it involved seeing everything as Easter themed. We see Easter flowers, easter animals, and easter people! They are waiting for us to feed them the gospel and they don't even know it. 

We had some sweet stuff happen this week. We had more exchanges, and this time I actually got to travel OUT of Coventry! Yeah! I went off to a part of Leicester called Westcotes. It was amazing. We got fed 2ce by 2 different families, and they both made delicious gluten free food for me, and even had extra gluten free brownies ready for us. How awesome is that? I love it when people feed us food. I was there with Sister Leiss, she's from Germany, and she taught me the difference between the two stages of the dandelion because they are different in the German language. We also experienced an interesting drink called dandelion and burdock... gotta say it tasted exactly like cough medicine. 

We actually acquired that drink from an old man named Henry. We visited him for a few minutes and after he gave us this mysterious drink, we were leaving and shaking hands. I happened to be the last one to shake his hand and he proceeds to beg me "Please, sister, just give me a kiss, come on." Uhhhh.. Yup I didn't know how to react so I just nicely said "Sorry, I'm a missionary" and then ran away! But it's ok everyone, he had a cat to keep him company once we left. 

We also had exchanges with Glenfield this week. I got to bring Sister Crowley here to Coventry, and it was great! We had a cool experience together. We set a goal to find 6 people who wanted to learn about the church in the morning, and we also wanted to follow the spirit more completely. Our time to talk to people went by, and we had 5 people so far, and it was time to start heading back. So, I turned to her and told her that we needed to find that one more soul, but we needed to use the spirit to find him/her. So, we stood there in city centre, and started to walk towards a statue, and then we both saw this one guy wearing headphones. We said to each other "Let's talk to him". We did, and we ended up having a really nice conversation and he became our 6th person! It was awesome. 

Sister Crowley and I also decided to do some old school doorbell ditching to the bishop. It was pretty exciting, and we even left their family a little box of cookies. Annnnd yesterday it rained and we got to see an awesome rainbow!! 

Yeah well the time has come to go, but I love all of you! Keep on truckin, and remember to not get too friendly with crazy old men.

Love,

Sister Slack

Email time last week!

 I spilled some soup...

Exchange with Sister Crowley and Sister Alexandroia 

We made some fruit for our friend Uche, he needs vitamins while he studies

Talkin on the phoneee

Driving with sister Urbani

crazy cat (an Easter cat!) 

exchange with Sister Leiss!

Rainbow!

Week 40: "NO WAY. I haven't brushed my hair!"

Hey there everybody! 

So there we were. Walking by a few trees in city centre, when all of a sudden we see a rope tied between two posts, and a violin case on the ground. We then watch as this mid-40 year old man climb on top of the rope to perform by playing the violin, up in the air! Gotta say he is way more fit than I am. There are quite a few random musicians here in Coventry. Lots of accordion players. My favorite one was an accordion player who had no legs, and so he had mini skateboard to get around. He seemed pretty awesome! It sometimes makes you feel like you're in a movie when you have music playing in the background when you talk to people about the Gospel.

 This week on Wednesday it was interesting. We had some lessons planned for the day, but they ended up falling through. So we headed outside to talk to some people, and in about an hour we were starting to wonder what was going on. Why? Because every person we stopped was Christian, and had heard of Mormons, and wanted to tell us about how absolutely wrong we were about everything in the world. At first it was a little entertaining, but by the end we just wanted to talk to someone nice. Over the next couple of hours this is what happened: Sister Urbani passed her driving test! Yay! We had dinner with an awesome Indian family called the Randhawas. They fed us delicious food and it was a blast! Yay! Then we had coordination, a meeting with the other missionaries and the ward mission leader. Seeing other missionaries is always fun! Yay! Then we had a lesson with an investigator named Grace, and she wants to get baptized! Yay!

Wait, Grace wants to be baptized?? Yup! She started out by firmly believing there was definitely no God, but over the past couple of weeks she has realized that God was answering her prayers. She has been having some concerns with living the word of wisdom, though. But overall, it turned into a great day even if it started off rough :) The next day we went on exchange with the sisters from Nuneaton, and I got to bring Sister Scherf to Coventry with me! 

Sister Scherf is from the Netherlands, and she is super awesome. While she was here we saw Grace again, and Grace immediately started talking about the word of wisdom again and how she just wanted to have a try of everything (like champagne, stuff like that). While she was talking about it, we both felt like we should just listen. Grace probably talked straight for about 15 minutes, and all we said was "ok" and "yeah" and at the end she ended up saying "you know, it's not a big deal. I will just decide now  to live it". 

WHAT. Did our ears just hear that?? This is a 20 year old chinese girl who just solved all of her own problems and is now set to live the commandments. It was awesome. 

So this week Sister Urbani felt like she needed to switch things up with her hair, but we didn't have time on P-Day to get to the hairdressers. So, I told her confidently "I can cut it!" No. I've never cut hair in my life. But hey, she decided that that was ok and that we could give it a go! So at 6am (yeah, we woke up early to do it) and a couple of snip snips later I had cut off about 6 inches of hair and layered it. Gotta say I am pretty proud of my skills.

Also we have been seeing our friend Uche (from Nigeria) more often, and last night we asked if we could take a picture with him. He told us "NO WAY. I haven't brushed my hair! I never leave my house without brushing my hair." He says this, but his hair is like less than 1cm long. Then he showed us how he brushes his hair. Yup. It didn't look different. And no. I still didn't get a picture.

Well that's it for now. But keep on rolling! 

Much love,

Sister Slack

The musical gymnast

 I cut Sister Urbani's hair!

Exchange with Sister Scherf!

What happens to a gluten free brownie in a mug...

Week 33: You are being transferred to...

Hello everybody! WOW what a week it has been. So every last Monday night of the transfer, we have something called "Dodge Night" where we get a call telling us where we are being transferred to and who our new companions will be. So we waited ALL Monday for our news to come in, and (Drumroll please...) I've been transferred to Coventry with Sister Urbani! My last companion, Sister Butler, is staying in Swansea to train a new missionary named Sister Marsden and look after everyone there. 

My last 2 days in Swansea were amazing. It just so happened to be my birthday last tuesday (thanks for the wishes everyone!) and so we had breakfast and dinner appointments to get to for those days, and we got to see so many wonderful people that we've gotten to know in Swansea. It was pretty much the best birthday gift ever to be able to see so many people that I love.

So, there was a little more to transfers but in summary I've now been called to be a Sister Training Leader in Coventry, which basically means 3 things: 1. We get a car 2. We get to go on exchanges with a lot of the sisters and 3. I had to learn how to drive on the left really quickly. I had assumed that since I was moving to Coventry that my new companion would be driving us home. I arrived in Coventry on the coach only to be told by a few Elders "No, Sister Urbani doesn't have her license." That's also when I found out that I'd be driven to our car, have to get inside, and then drive around and pick up people for transfers. WHAT. 

I hadn't driven for over 7 months! And the last time I had driven was in America, where we drive on the right side in nice big lanes with traffic lights and the American flag flying high with the star spangled banner playing.. Ok maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the picture. Anyway, after we got dropped off at our car, I proceeded to try and figure out how British roads work and how to properly enter a roundabout with 4 lanes inside to go and pick up some Elders waiting patiently in the cold for us. It was only supposed to be about a 5 minute drive.. but because I had been in the city for about 15 minutes total and I had never driven in England, it took us about 40 minutes to get there because I kept getting lost. Needless to say, I did not crash. Victory!

In this past week we have also seen some incredible miracles. We got to teach one of our Albanian investigators about temples and family history, and in the lesson she explained to us that her whole family back in Albania should know about this. She decided then and there to send the missionaries to their door and to call up her family the next day to let them know that missionaries should turn up, and that they need to listen to them. She is such an incredible lady! She really loves feeling the spirit and wants everyone to know about her feelings in the gospel. 

We also got to meet with an 18 year old kid about the plan of salvation. He lost his mom a few years ago, and when we started talking about how his prayers went he explained that he had been praying to see his mom again. That night after he had prayed, he saw his mom in a dream and he knew that was an answer to his prayers. It was incredible to hear how the gospel is blessing his life already. 

I know that this gospel is what brings me the most happiness, and I am so excited to share it with the people in Coventry. 

Much love,

Sister Slack

Ps: Since I moved, my address is now:

Sister Slack

67 Blondvil Street

Coventry, England

CV3 5EQ

letters are always welcome ;)

 The gate to Singleton park we always walked through in Swansea

 Goodbye to Sherlock

Dawn Morgan--She made us gluten free red velvet cake for my birthday! She's amazing :)

Me & Owen (from swansea)

Somehow me and Sister Thomson went on exchange again

Transfers (Sister Butler --my missionary daughter, and Sister Marsden- my missionary granddaughter) sorry my eyes are closed...

DRIVING

 Me and Karl (a less active we worked with a lot, and now he's back to church!) (he's looking like a champ)

My birthday egg that Sister Butler made me (yes, we were SO sick of cake)

 Me + the Roberts family--they are amazing!

Snowing! Me & Sister Urbani