Kaskade's "Disarm You" Trolls Couple - Studio C

Whitney and her friend Sarah were extras in this Studio C skit.  Being short has its advantages, Whitney is in several shots.

"He's blond...and he's desirable."

November 23, 2015
Hello my friends family acquaintances!

As many of you know I have been transferred! I left part of my heart in Leesburg with Sister Guynn and Sister Mohenoa and headed to DeLand (of promise) and I'm currently serving in the Daytona Beach ward! I am with Sister Nelsen from Salt Lake and I am really liking it here!

It was hard leaving Sister Guynn and Sister Mohenoa on Tuesday because we became so close this last transfer and I have missed them a lot. But Sister Nelsen and I get along really well and we have a lot of fun together! I think this is going to be a really fun transfer!

We have the Senior couple for our ward (Elder and Sister Corder) who live in the apartment below us and they are super fun! We have ice cream with them every Friday night and we stop by their apartment all the time to talk to them because they are basically our adopted mission grandparents. They are super fun!

Yesterday I got to see the Atlantic Ocean for the first time!!! That was super exciting! I also got to tour the Daytona International Speedway today with our ward mission leader and the Elders in our ward! That was so fun and we are so grateful to have such a cool WML!

We don't have a huge teaching pool right now so we are working to build it up a little. I did have the crazy experience of teaching a lesson to an Evangelist Priest! She is this awesome lady named Ya'Shanda and I must say there is nothing quite like testifying of the Book of Mormon in situations like that! It was a really interesting experience and she seemed interested in reading it! We are also teaching a lady named Pamela who always says "wow" like 4 times after every video we show her. 

Our ward has about 700 people we have records for and only about 150 are active so we have been doing A TON of work with less actives. It is a little hard because we don't get to spend as much time looking for gators but it's all the same work to the Lord!

I am SO EXCITED for Thanksgiving this week! We have several dinners set up and it should be a good time! Let me know how everyone's holiday goes and I just want all of you to know how grateful I am for each of you and for all the love and support I have gotten over these last two months. It has really sustained me more than you know and I am eternally grateful for each of you!

I am also so thankful for the Book of Mormon and all of the peace and joy it has brought to my life. I feel so blessed to live in a time when we are free to worship however and wherever we want. If you aren't currently reading it and applying its teachings I would encourage you to START NOW! It can only bless your life.

Have an AMAZING week and don't ever forget how much I love y'all!

--

     -♥-

Sister Reid

Willy

Whitney, Sister Guynn, & Sister Mohenoa

Whitney with Sister Nelsen & Kiki

Merry Christmas

Daytona International Speedway

"EVERYBODY ELSE GOT NAME PUNS AND I JUST GOT A SHORT JOKE?!?"..."do you feel 'short'changed?..

 

Okay okay so FIRST

I am getting transferred tomorrow. Sad face. I love my companions and Leesburg a whole bunch and I am super sad to leave. But also excited to see what adventures come next!

This week was CRAZY. By far the biggest week on my mission thus far. I got an awesome voice recorder from my mom this week and I made a long recording BUT #VerilyVerily I discovered that the file size is too big and that I need to make shorter recordings. We will work on it for next week. Sorry crew.

So here's my nutso week!

Monday: District P-day! We spent the whole day in Mt. Dora with the district at an awesome Mexican restraint and we saw a couple cute shops and then we played volley ball with the district. And then later that night we avoided a car accident by LESS THAN A FOOT! We were on the 441 coming home and we got a green light to go straight so we went and this lady decided to make a left hand turn in front of all the lanes of traffic! We stopped in time but the car next to us didn't and there was a total head on collision right next to us and it missed us by less than a foot! And another car tried to swerve and knocked down a lamp post! But we weren't touched and God protects his missionaries! So we gave police witness reports on Monday. haha

Tuesday: Zone Conference! Zone Conference was super fun and I learned a TON! I also got to see Sister Prows from my home stake so that was really fun!

Wednesday: We had a really good lesson with the Johnson's who have the best kids who give the best hugs, and we had an amazing amazing amazing church tour with Willy! It was super spiritual and he was so excited to see the baptismal font and we had a very powerful discussion in the chapel about the Sacrament and about how proud God is of Willy. Then we were late to this Veterans Day Dance that was in the gym that we were singing at so after Willy left we ran as fast as we could to our car to grab our music (don't sit under the apple tree... haha look it up.) and we were out of breath #FullCar #WeNeedToWorkOutBetter and as we walked in they said "here comes our entertainment! and so we tried to sing this song. Now we are all out of breath so it was just going okay. I'm in the middle trying to hold the mic and the music and I tried to turn the page and I THREW THE MUSIC ON THE FLOOR. So I'm trying to hold the mic up while they keep singing and I scramble to pick it back up. I'm singing Soprano so when I stop singing all you can hear is the harmony part so we all start laughing and couldn't stop and it was such a mess. But it was really funny and it made everyone smile. There is something about being a missionary where awkward things aren't that awkward. haha

Thursday: Normal day. A few good lessons!

Friday: We did service for two different people in our ward and then we had weekly planning! #MyFavoriteThing #NotReally but it was good. Sister Guynn got sick from the dust from one of the ladies houses so she was sick for Friday and Saturday and that was a bummer.

Saturdays: We got our transfer calls... There may have been tears I'll never tell. We had a nuts lesson with Louis where he kept interrupting Sister Guynn who was sick and was being really difficult. But we saw the Johnsons and they give the best hugs in the world!

Sunday: We had church and WE SAW SO MANY MIRACLES! So many people came to church! (Willy came! The Hetricks came! The Johnson's came! Bonnie came! Jake and his mom came! the Lopez's came! ) I think we had 18 people that we are teaching (LARCS or Gators) show up and that has been our biggest struggle of the transfer so seeing so many people was such a miracle and we were so very happy. Also Willy walked out of third hour and said to me "Yup I'm definitely getting baptized!" and I just about died. He is probably the person I am the most sad to leave. #TransfersStink #SorryForAllTheHashtagsThisWeek

Sunday also brought a super amazing musical fireside that took place in the chapel across from the temple! So I got to see the Orlando temple! Marvin Goldstein and Vanessa Joy performed and you have to look them up! My favorite parts were the primary song medley and when Vanessa sang For Good from Wicked and Sister Guynn and I just hugged each other and cried because transfers are a sad thing and that is one of my favorite songs. And It was for all the missionaries in the whole mission so I got to see Sister Prows again and I also got to see Elder Langston (he went to Layton High and is an AP) and El


der Dummer who is one of my friends from HS! It was fun to talk to Elder Dummer for a second.

Monday: P-Day! We went to a Flea Market with the Hunts! Fun connection story: So one of my best friends, Briana, had them as home teachers when she lived in Illinois! And it was her birthday yesterday so we all recorded a voice recording of us singing happy birthday to her so that was fun! Happy birthday Briana! The Flea Market was really fun! They bought us lunch and ice cream!

Now we are emailing, I'll pack later, we have my LAST lesson with Willy and sister Braga tonight. And TRANSFERS TOMORROW!

Out of context quotes:

"EVERYBODY ELSE GOT NAME PUNS AND I JUST GOT A SHORT JOKE?!?"...."Do you feel 'short'changed?"

CH_ _ CH What's missing? U R

"You're boyfriend has chickens?!?! You're his chicken!!!

<3

I love y'all a tenfold. The gospel is so true and there is nothing quite like being a missionary!

--

     -♥- 

Sister Reid

Moses doesn't want you for a sunbeam.

HELLOOOOO MY PEOPLE!

This week has been wonderful!

First of all I want to send a S/O to the scouts from the Layton 18th Ward. Y'all are pretty great and my companions and I loved reading the letters you sent me this week! And I'd love to hear how my favorite YW are doing so y'all should shoot me some letters! ;)

Second of all I need to let y'all know about letters! So, because of several circumstances (transfers, Christmas, etc.) We have been asked to have you send all letters to the mission office and not to my apartment. Packages may be sent to my apartment address if necessary, but I would be careful because there is a chance I could get transferred next week and it would be a total bummer if I were to not get anything you send. You can find that address on my blog (feelmysunlight.blogspot.com) or by contacting my mom.

Good. Now let's talk about fun stuff!

Like... It's November and yesterday it was 102 degrees here. LIKE WHAT!? #BlessedToBeInAFullCarMission

My week this week has been really good. I can't believe I'm already 6 weeks into my mission. It is actually very reassuring to know that I can do this work and to see how much I've grown in the last six weeks!

My mom asked me a bunch of questions that I thought would be fun to answer so here it goes!

My gators are still good. Willy is my favorite (don't tell the others) He cut his dreads this week so he can come to church and he is also working on quitting smoking and he is just so great and his so committed to the gospel. We also have Julia who I love! As well as Louis and David who are plugging along. And Kristy is still having health problems so keep her in your prayers as we haven't been able to see her or her girls in a few weeks. We also have several other awesome investigators but this email would go on forever if I talked about all of them.

Church outside of Utah is pretty fun. Almost nobody is native to Florida and just about everybody is a convert so there are a lot of really cool back stories we get to hear about people’s lives. I feel close to the ward and we have some really great people here. We work with the Bishop all the time and we LOVE their whole family. We actually got to help paint two of their bathrooms this week (you should be so proud of me mom!) Our ward mission leader helps us with a lot of stuff and the members love the missionaries.

Speaking of fun service we also got to help Sister Shultejans (one of my very favorite ward members!) sort through a whole bunch of clothes. She has a lot of clothes that she doesn't need so she has the missionaries help her go through them and then she lets us pick out anything we like! So it was basically shopping and service all at the same time!

I go to ward council every week as well as a Book of Mormon class we do every Wednesday for recent converts and anyone who wants to come and we also go to an addiction recovery class every Thursday and that class is basically the light of my life! I LOVE all of the people that come to that class with all my heart. It is basically a class on how to apply the atonement and it is my favorite thing ever.

I cover half of the Leesburg ward (the East side). And there are Elders that cover the West side. (Elder Thornock and Elder Reschke both from Utah) Elder Thornock is our district leader as well so we work with them a lot. Elder Reschke came out of the MTC with me so he is training too. They are super fun!

I have been able to see some of the blessings this week that come from following the spirit and it is always amazing to know that you're tiny efforts really do make a difference in other’s lives. My favorite part about missionary work is seeing the miracles that happen and how the Lord really uses the weak and simple to do great things with his work. Here are a few examples:

 We had an experience this week where we had felt impressed to share a certain conference talk with a less active member in our ward. After we showed it to her she said it was exactly what she needed. Then at church yesterday she spoke and shared with the ward how she was having a really hard time and that that talk we showed her was a direct answer to her prayer. That experience taught me that if you follow the promptings of the spirit you are doing the Lord's work, and the Lord's work is perfect so if we are listening to Him we have no need to worry about ourselves.

All the awesome missionaries who arrived on the same day as me

I also witnessed a great miracle visiting another part member family this week. We have this part member family that just moved to our ward in April but that hasn't come to church yet. We felt impressed to invite a member of our ward to come with us to this visit. This member has a non-member husband who surprisingly asked if he could tag along (he normally doesn't want anything to do with the church.) The lesson seemed to be going pretty rough. Most of the conversation was steered towards why they all agree that church is weird and why they don't like it and we were having a hard time trying to re-direct it back to positive things. But in the middle of the lesson I had a strong feeling that I needed to testify of the sacrament. So I did and they all agreed that the sacrament was important. The lesson went on and I still didn't feel like it was going well at all but out of nowhere the non-member husband we brought with us looked at the less-active member and said "Let's make a deal... If you come to church I will start coming too." And they both agreed as we all sat in shock as we realized that the non-member was perhaps the best missionary in the room for that lesson. We didn't even have to invite them to church for them to make that deal! It was pretty great! I also learned that the Sacrament is really the biggest reason we go to church and it is in fact the most sacred part of our week if we allow it to be.

     -♥- Sister Reid

"The odds are good but the goods are odd"

Helloooooo my people!

Missionary life is pumpin!

So... many of you enjoyed my story last week about the man licking his dentures. I have a new one from this same person. So this man (Roy) is a non-member who is the husband of one of our recent converts (Betty). Yesterday they came to church and as soon as he took the bread during the sacrament he said quite loudly "That would have been a lot better if they had put peanut butter on that!" And we all about died trying not to laugh.

We had exchanges this week! Sister Mohenoa and Sister Guynn went to Apopka with Sister Bridgewater and Sister Olsen, and I stayed and lead out my area with Sister Weston (I LOVE HER!) I was super nervous about being in charge of the area because I still feel like I don't know anything. But it actually went really good and we didn't get lost and I actually found a really cool lady knocking on doors (Bonnie) and I didn't screw anything up too bad so I guess I can call myself a missionary now!

On Friday we had our ward Halloween party that was so fun! We have this less active family that has lived in our ward boundaries since April but that has never been to our building come and they had so much fun! We got to talk to so many people and we all had a good time!

Halloween was less exciting because all of our appointments canceled and we can't do stop bys because it wouldn't be effective so we spent the night planning.

Church is always our biggest struggle because we all have such a hard time getting investigators come to church. We actually didn't have any investigators in our whole district come to church this week so we would all appreciate some prayers that we will be able to help our investigators feel a desire to come to church. We did have two awesome less actives we are working with come to church and we were so happy about that!

Update on gators!

Willy is crazy amazing. We had an AMAZING lesson with him this week where we showed him a video of Thomas S. Monson speaking and he had to stop the video half way through because he was feeling the spirit so strong he couldn't handle it. Then he said "he was talking in general...but he was talking to me...but it wasn't him talking... it was God." And he just is so great and he loves the gospel.

We weren't able to meet with Julia this week (Willy's girlfriend) but keep praying for her! David is doing good, but he is having some stumbling blocks when it comes to coming to church. Kristy has been in the hospital so we haven't been able to see her or her daughters Kiki and Ana in a while either so pray pray pray for them! And Louis is just Louis. He's doing normal and is just his confusing self.

Every P-Day we have a big volley ball game with a bunch of the surrounding areas and some of the local YSA people. We usually have 7-11 missionaries and 3-4 other people. It is always SO fun and I will send y'all some pictures from this week. (also, I have picked up saying y'all a lot which is about the extent of my "Florida accent.")

Also, here are some of our out of context quotes for the week:

 "How have your feelings been doing?"

"Slow vibrato... All the cool kids are doing in these days?"

"Brother Gray is like the Bob Barker of the ward... Who's that? The host on the price is right... Oh...

"Yesterday during Book of Mormon class I learned how to flare my nostrils."

"On a scale from 1 to facsimile 2 how deep was your scripture study this morning?"

"I think the first thing I learned on my mission is that kissing isn't against the law of chastity."

"In my head is what's real, in my hands is what I feel, in my stomach is what's for lunch because I'm hungry.... and the second thing I learned is that there is a thing called the veil."

"I don't even know where Botswana is..."

"we're not just the candle, we are the cake."

So that is all I've got for this week! I love you all and I hope you have an amazing week! Read your scriptures because they will make your life so much better!

     -♥-

Sister Reid