Monday, June 3, 2013

Letters requested please!!



 Here is last week's letter:

May 28, 2013

First off, we are doing fine over here, I heard about what happen in London, scary times huh? It goes to show that things can get dark but if we focus on the positive, it will be okay. Now this is my email where I tell everyone to please write me a letter! I am the only missionary in the field and was the only one in the MTC who didn't get a letter. I just want some post, and I promise I will write back! My address for my flat is as follows: 64 Birchwood AV. #5 Lincoln, Lincolnshire LN6 0JD. So please write! :) So my week, well on Tuesday, I crashed my bike and went flying off of it. I had a swollen knee for a few days and I have to call Sister Rasmussen about it (The President’s wife) I’m sure they all think I’m some girl that's going to get herself killed. But I wont. I promise. On Wednesday we had Zone Conference, which was just great, I got to see my pals from the MTC and hear some great talks! But it was all day so we had to take a Train to and from Nottingham, where it was held. I found out one of my Zone Leaders Elder Brewer Lived in Springville and is my same age, weird and small world. We have been constantly teaching about 4 investigators and they all are golden! Now for my super good news! We set a date for a girl to be baptized! On June 30th! We found this girl the first night I was here so it’s great! I was really kinda worried about my area because I had heard from people that it was called Outer Darkness because its one of the hardest areas in my mission, but I love it. I am just so happy! The Lord really does prepare the way! So the kind of work we do… we work loads though the members, but we also do tons of door knocking. I have come to enjoy having doors slammed in my face. It means one step closer to a door that will open. We stay busy with teaching lots of lessons, its great to be busy! And the members here are amazing, we have dinners at their homes all the time, they take great care of us here. So yesterday I couldn't email because it was a bank holiday so all public computers are shut down, so we had to wait till today to email, but yesterday we went to this manor home called Belton house. It was so pretty! It was like walking into a Jane Austin movie! So lovely! I hope you all are doing great! Email me, write me! Love you all and pray daily for you!

Love Sister J. Curtis

Fun Fact: Belton house IS from a Jane Austen Movie!! Pride and Prejudice was filmed at Belton House in 1995 as the stand in for Pemberly, Mr. Darcy's home. How awesome is that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belton_House

 

Off to Work in Lincoln

Hello All! Sister Curtis has been assigned to her first area in Lincoln, for those not near a map this is near the top of her mission. Lincoln is located in Lincolnshire in the midlands region of Englnad, from the pictures on wikipedia it looks amazing and I am excited for Sister Curtis to send us some pictures :D

May 20, 2013


Dear Mom,
My new trainer is amazing, I was so worried about who was going to be my trainer that I fasted and prayed about it on my first Sunday out here, and the Lord answered my prayers, she is great, we go running together and we talk and have some same stories! Its great, honestly I feel like I have been her companion forever, we are such best friends, and we have the same first name! It’s cool. We work as a companionship, not as I was thinking it was going to be, like she would do all the talking, its great! We do things as a team. So the area I’m in is called Lincoln. It’s the city and surrounding small towns. Sister Egbert and her comp, were the first ever Sister missionary’s here, so it still feels like we are opening a new area. We live in this little flat off of Dodington Road, we are in the south side of the town and the Elders are in the north side, it’s only us Sisters and the Elders in Lincoln. To describe this place, we have loads of fields, like in the picture books. And loads of old buildings and an old castle and manor homes. And its always misty and damp and just England! It is so green and pretty! It’s been nice because since I have been here we have been hard at work. The first 3 days I biked close to 11 miles per day. It was great, my first day in the field I got two blisters on my right hand and poison ivy on my left leg from ridding on our bikes in a field! Its great! The first day, Thursday (Since Wednesday is when we met and we had to ride a 3 hour long bus and a 1 hour train to Lincoln from Birmingham) we had a lesson with a LA (Less Active) named Pat with the Elders, it was good, she is a sweet spunky lady. We then had a lesson with this guy named John where all he wants to do is talk about the trinity, he is funny, but at least he is reading the BOM (Book of Mormon)! Then we had to ride into city center to meet the Elders to catch a train to Newyork for a DA (Dinner Appointment) with a family in our ward. (There is only one ward here with only 150 active members, suffer to say, its small.) But we had dinner with them, they have the cutest family, 4 boys, 1 girl all under the age of 11. I was jumping on the tramp with the two oldest boys and they bonked each other so they wouldn’t let me jump with them after that… oops. Haha, well we missed out train back, so the Mom had to drive us home so we were late in getting back but it was alright because The Elders who were with us, one of them is our District leader, Elder Watts. So it was understandable. But those two Elders, Elder Watts and Elder Battles are so funny; they asked the most random questions like, “If you could have any bug on earth pull you in a sleigh, what would you pick?” Haha… So on Friday we had a lesson with this guy named Gary who claims he already had the Holy Spirit with him... But he is so sweet! Really, I love all these people already. Then we went and saw this lady name Gale who we are seeing this week as well, then had another DA at this family’s house… the Crofts, People are so nice and just want to feed us all the time. After dinner we went and saw this mom and her daughter, Sue and Katy. They are LA, so we are trying to get them to come to church. We had a great time teaching them and on the way home we had to just push our bikes because it was raining so hard. I felt like such a missionary then, pushing my bike in the rain going back to our flat. 

Saturday, we did some finding, in other wards knocked on loads of doors, people are slightly rude, and just close the door on you, while your talking… oh well, but this one house had a glass window in the door, and we were just waiting for someone to answer, when all of the sudden a white dogs head pop up, didn’t make any nosie, just suddenly was there, Sis Egbert yelled and ran away real quick like. I just stood there, screamed really loud and then remembered to run. It was so funny and scary. Haha. We then a had met this guy named Malcom, who said he didn’t have time to talk to us but ended up listening to us for 20 mins, the Lord really does work on people who need this. We then rode a bus into town where we got picked up my LA member named Katy, and she took the Elders and us to Stake Conference. It was great, I got to see a few of the sisters from the MTC, I love those sisters. We then came home and studied, and went to bed. Yesterday, we had Stake Conference again at 10 and we were just praying so hard that Sue would come and guess what? She did! She hasn’t been to church in 12 years and she came! It was amazing how faith and prayer work. After that we had a meeting with Katy and the Elders about our investigators then we had Brother Hanks pick us up and take us to his house for dinner. All the ward members here are so nice to us, everyone has been so welcoming and been excited to me. Even the 12-year-old boys came running up to meet me..…. kinda weird, but really great. The dinner at the Hanks was my first real English dinner. Beef, potatoes, corn, carrots, some kind of scones, and loads of gravy... And some interesting kinda bland pudding... It was good. :) We then came back to our flat, grabbed some stuff and went out finding, we went and saw a PI (potential investigator), where we gave him a BOM and we are seeing him on Friday and then we went and saw this old lady named Hilda and we helped her walked her dog Judy around the park and helped her pick up rubbish. And we are seeing her on Wednesday. It has been a great week and I feel like this is going to be a great area. Today is P day and we are biking into city center to buy food for our flat, we are out of everything except beans, and we are tired of those. Haha, and then Sister Egbert is going to cut my hair. Yea! Well I love you all,  I love you and hope everyone is doing great. The Church is true, and Reading the BOM everyday brings such happiness to me! Until next Monday!
Love, Sister J. Curtis

Monday, May 20, 2013

Sister Curtis goes to Birmingham.

Last week Sister Curtis left the MTC in Preston, England for her mission field of Birmingham. We got this email from her Mission President's wife letting us know she was safe and sound, along with some pictures...It was pretty sweet.


Hello! 

We just wanted to send you the pictures of your missionary. They all arrived safely today and look like an excellent group.  They will make such an impact in the lives of the people they meet. 
 
Thank you for your support and sacrifice! 

Sister Rasmussen
 
 
Homes along the river in England

 Group of Missionaries at the airport on their way to the mission field.

Sister Curtis and Sister Dodds getting ready to go running at the MTC.

Missionaries in the Brimingham, England Mission

Sister Curtis with President and Sister Rasmussen



New missionaries to the Birmingham, England Mission
We are so happy to hear that Sister Curtis is safe and sound and can't wait for her to tell us new stories of her adventures as a missionary.

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Sister Curtis only wrote my Mom this week so I can't post the whole email but I will post excerpts from it. She is doing great! So far she loves the MTC, is learning so much and knows that she is right where she is supposed to be. What more can we ask for?

"How is Dad doing? How is Koda? I miss him. I miss all of you but I feel like I have been blessed in the fact that I don't think of you all much because I am so busy. Mom, it was the best choice to come out here on a mission, I honestly was worried that i was making the wrong choice but since I have been out here, I know that this is the the right choice. The feeling of getting to live with the spirit and the priesthood 24/7 is amazing, I am always so peaceful and happy, I am lucky in the fact that I'm a morning person and so getting up is easy, and enjoyable."

 Sister Curtis has been working so hard that in her email she tells us that she went without eating dinner for the first few nights from over sleeping on her naps. It is a good thing she has had all that time to prepare for getting up so early.

There are other rules she tells us about in the MTC where she is now, even with few numbers of missionaries (only about 48 in the whole MTC) the Sisters are not allowed to sit with the Elders at mealtime, Sister Curtis talks about how she misses the free time to talk to her Elder friends. From the sound of it the other rules are pretty chill, they allowed the missionaries to go to the ASDA (England's version of Wal-Mart) to run errands and since Sister Curtis and her companion Sister Dodds love to run in the morning they have been allowing them to run out past the MTC grounds, she told us a funny story about that.

"This place is just wonderful, I feel like I'm in a old English movie, the stone streets and houses built right next to each other, sigh... So funny story...... So when Sister Dodds and I went running on Saturday, they gave us a map that you use to go running outside the MTC boundaries, so we took it, both of us being fairly decent at running. Well in looking at the map to much and not paying attention to the road, I took us down the wrong road and instead of running on a trail by a river we were running on a really busy street.... We look at each other and decided to turn around, but on our way off the road, we got stopped by a Bobby! A police officer! He was nice and he looked confused and was like "girls, is your car broken?" And we were like no, we just think we went the wrong way.. And he was like, yeah, you're not suppose to run on the motorway. We had unknowingly ran on to the motorway! It their highway here, but ten times busier.. It was quite funny, we are still getting people asking about what happen... we are quite famous here.. haha."

 I love this story, it sounds just like something Sister Curtis would do :D

She ends her email for the week with this last little note:

"I love you all and am praying for you daily. Be safe.
Quote of the week for my district: How can you do what you do, when you know what you know.  
Love, Sister J.Curtis"
 

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Welcome to England!

            Well she made it! My Mom got an email from Sister Curtis letting us know that she had made it safe and sound to the Preston MTC. Her roommate is a Sister Dodds who was a student at BYU-ID and whose hometown is Twin Falls, Idaho. So far it sounds like everything is going great for Sister Curtis over in England.

Don't worry as we get more emails from Sister Curtis we will keep you updated!

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Start of the next 18 months!

Today we took Sister Curtis to the airport in Salt Lake City to head out to the MTC in England to start her mission. Saying goodbye to a missionary is a strange but wonderful experience, it is full of mixed emotions and nerves but that is soon replaced by the sheer excitement of the moment and anticipation for the new stage in the missionary's life.

       On the way up to the airport we asked Sister Curtis about her carry on bags only to discover that she hadn't remembered the different regulations when it comes to what she could take on the plane, this being her first flight it was not something she had thought of, quickly in the car we sorted through her bags and moved things around to make sure it was all in order. When we got to the airport we found the right airline and started the check in process, there were a few Elder's checking in at the same time, it didn't take long to find out that they were heading to the same MTC and on the same flight. While we said goodbye many more Sisters and Elders joined the group all leaving at the same time, this was so comforting to us as her family to know that she was not going to be flying alone and that she would have people to travel with and support her.





     There were tears all around as we said our goodbyes and took some last minute photos, Sister Curtis was anxious to get across the security and the line was growing so we let her go, wanting to make sure she got through security without any issues the family went up to the top of the escalators and watched as she funneled through the line toward the scanners. Sister Curtis made it through with only one slight issue, we had left a hair product in her bag so it had to be sorted through and thrown away...oops. It was a relief though to see her finally pick up her things and move toward her gate.

Right now she is on her way to the MTC and we expect to hear from her soon, we are ready for the next 18 months :D