"he named his dog after me."

Wow.

K so wanna hear about transfer doctrine? HNA Jones and I are both staying in NSB!!!

*whips and nay nays*

ALL OF THE SISTERS IN THE ENTIRE ZONE are staying.

*whips and nah nays some more*

They are white washing the NSB Elder's area again....

*stops whipping and nay naying for dramatic pause and to allow time for audience to shed a few tears.*

My BFF from L-Town {Elder Adam Dummer if any of y'all know him} is coming to be a zone leader in Daytona in the same zone.

*moon walks out of the room*

I'm just really pumped about life right now.

So today we are having a zone P-Day. Should be pretty exciting.

Let me tell y'all bout my week!

Monday we had district P-Day. We carved pumpkins... 

Mine is already rotten. #ThanksFlorida

Then we went bowling and I beat Elder Skidmore by a whole point and he wasn't to happy about it.

Then my comp got kinda sick so Sis Carter and I went on exchanges to go to Walmart where I bought all the foods and a biketoberfest T-Shirt so I could fit in with all the bikers on the street because I'm hardcore. 🏼 Then we came home and I had a Book of Mormon readathon in my biketoberfest shirt while my companion was sick. 

 

Then on Tuesday we went to Habitat for Humanity and did some retail work with the old ladies. Then we taught an awkward lesson with Cody where he met us at the club house and didn't wear shoes and then we all had to sit on the same bench. Then we taught Tammy and helped her move her yard furniture back because #HurricaneMatthew2K16 is gone. We also taught the Schreck family that night who are the coolest! Michael is going to the Air force in about a month. Then we went home because HNA Jones still wasn't feelin' too hot.

On Wednesday we had our last District meeting of the transfer. I gave a spiritual thought on desTROYING YOUR COMFORT ZONE. It was a good DM. I took this selfie with all the cool kids...

 

Then we saw Sister Gruber who is just the wisest old lady and I may have shed some tears because she is so wise in her eternal perspective. Then we taught the Lesh family and Austin told us he would like to take the lessons. 🏻 Ok ya I guess you can.. Then we taught the Shipkowitz fam. Josh is almost nine and he is pumped to get baptized. Then we taught our friend Larry who is a #HurricaneMiracle. Then we drove to Bunnell so I could exchange with Sis Anderson who is the light of my life. We realized her grandparents live in my hometown so we discussed all the sweet food places until all hours of the morning. 

Thursday Sis Anderson and I were in Port Orange while HNA Jones and Sis Yance were in Bunnell. It was one of those days where you go to a neighborhood and the streets are desolate and you wonder if you found a ghost town on accident in your area... but it's fine. We taught the Orbans who are my faves. We also taught Brother Harper. We were sitting there talking about the wildlife of Florida...aka the bugs... when ALL OF THE SUDDEN he looked at me and was all "you know, I think it's time for me to come back to church."

*passes out*

 

We also taught Brother Schmidt and Judy and had a swell time

Friday we weekly planned. We had lunch with the Orbans and Shauvers and took this blurry pic with the Halloween Tree.

 

Then went to the Cintron's and weeded all the pineapples. I don't know if you've ever weeded pineapples, but they scratch ya up pretty good. After our pineapple party we went and saw Rod... well we always teach Rod outside and last time I got eared alive by mosquitoes... so I was all "oh... I'm going to be smarter than the mosquitoes and put on bug spray like Sister Berry always told me to do." BUT THAT DOESN'T FEEL SO HOT WHEN YOU HAVE PINEAPPLE CUTS ALL OVER YOUR BEING. ouch. Then we drove to Deltona and I got to go on exchanges with MY BEST FRIEND FOREVER SLASH DAUGHTER SISTER HART. oh man. She is my number one. 🏼 We stayed up in till an amount of morning that I won't tell you about because then y'all will judge us for being diso.

Saturday we taught Barbara and had this dramatic unnecessary goodbye because I told her I might be transferred. She told me she was going to pray I would stay. It worked. We took a picture too. #AdoptedGrandma

 

Then we contacted some people that thought we were sisters. Picked up a lady named Laura as an investigators. Her daughter Maddison gave us necklaces which we wore all day. Get on our level.

 

Then we had lunch with the Sebastian family. Junior is on date for November 27th! Whahoo! Then we went to this extremely long Eagle Court of Honor. 

 

 

The Eagle Court of Honor ended at a Yacht Club. Check out these sick pics. #ILiveInParadise

 

 

Also...

Here's a fish...

 

Then we drove back to Deltona and I was reunited with HNA Jones. 

Sunday we went to church. It's been almost a month since we've had normal meetings so it was nice. After church we had a lesson with Junior and we showed him the font and he is all jazzed to get baptized. Then we had choir practice and ran home for lunch and studies. That evening we taught the Doss family... last time we stopped by they told us to go away... THIS TIME THEY INVITED US RIGHT IN AND ASKED IF THEY COULD SCHEDULE A DINNER WITH US. what? Then we met this sweet YSA named Ansley who is a graphic designer and loves Harry Potter and her and I just became BFFs forever and ever and I was very pleased with life. Then we stopped by the Krainik family and got SURPRISE THANKSGIVING DINNER AND I may have shed a tear or two. #BestDay

 

So there ya have it. Life is beautiful. 

 

I'm so pumped for this transfer. Watch out Port Orange . We're about tear it up in here.

S/O to Briana for getting hitched! 

The church is true. That's all.

 

Have a swell week. Peace out

 

-Sister Reid

#HurricaneMiracles

Hey there. 🏼

Y'all wanna know what happened this week?

MIRACLES.

That's what.

Like so remember how there was a hurricane that swept through my neck of the woods last week? Well it left behind a heck of a lot of miracles and tender mercies mixed in with piles of debris that are currently being gathered by large Bunyan trucks from all over the country. The debris I mean... not the miracles.

I even found myself a Mormon Helping Hands T-Shirt. All of my wildest dreams have come true. 

Sunday we got up and went to church. We only had sacrament meeting again so that the Mormon Helping Hands could attack some trees. Our bishop instigated a testimony meeting and let me tell you... it was a wet eyed testimony meeting all around.

Like you know how in between conference sessions they play stories about Mormons going into help in disaster struck countries and saving the day? Well my little community of New Smyrna Beach has been living those stories in real time. The Lord is with us friends. He really is here.

We have seen so many miracles from the hurricane clean up. We met a guy who told us that they hadn't had power in days and that his brother was sick and had been crying because he wanted the power to turn back on. He said at that point they were praying to God to give them a miracle. He told us that was the day that the Mormon's in the yellow shirts showed up, gave them a generator and cleaned up their yard. He looked at us with tears in his eyes and said "Our family will never forget what the Latter-Day Saints did for us." 

He is now investigating the church.

The Lord works in mysterious ways!

I love you all and am SO THANKFUL for so many friends and family members that prayed for us during the hurricane. We definitely felt your prayers. So thank you! 

My mom is updating my other blog feelmysunlight.blogspot.com with more info and pics about the hurricane so feel free to hop on over there for more miracle stories! 

I love y'all lots! 

-Sister Reid 

"We need to go get junk food before this happens. I can't eat carrots during a hurricane!"

Welp.

I survived a hurricane.

Monday we had P-Day. It was normal. That evening we went to go visit my bffs Melody, Brittany and Milady. We get there and nine year old Milady lets us in and we had a lesson with her and Brittany. Okay let me tell you how cool Milady is. She is literally NINE YEARS OLD. Nine. And she reads her Book of Mormon all the time and is taking her Book of Mormon with her to school to show it to her friends and she reads it out loud to her family.

I want to be just like her when I grow up.

Then after the lesson Milady asks us if we'd heard about the hurricane and starts giving us advice about how to prepare. She was all "you're going to need to go outside and secure anything that is loose so it doesn't blow away." And I'm over here thinking "what the heck... you're nine... Stop being smarter than me."

I'm only joking because I actually love little Milady with ALL MY HEART. 💛💛💛

We invited them to be baptized in November and they are PUMPED about it. #Blessings

Milady also asked me to paint her nails so I did. 💅🏼

So we then left and went to Bunnell for exchanges.

On Tuesday I stayed in Bunnell with Sister Anderson for her very first exchange. That girl is a champ. We had a lot of fun. We went to Habitat for Humanity and I organized ALL of the books. All of them. I found a book about MoTab and that was exciting. We also biked around for a while and people were not so thrilled to see us. Whatever.

🚴🏻‍♀️🚴🏼‍♀️

K so then we visited this less active couple who gave us a tour of every inch of their house. Like they literally were opening cupboards to show us what was inside them. I don't really understand. I didn't role play that in the MTC. Haha Then we went to dinner and had some pizza. 🍕K then guess what happened next. We are headed to an appointment with a less active family and they call us and are like "we have an investigator here waiting for you." And Sister Anderson and I are looking at each other like 😮😎. So we go over and sit in this super incredible lesson that was completely facilitated by the members. Let me tell you. The Spirit was thick and there were multiple people in tears. Ahh I love being a missionary! After that we exchanged back and I was back with Hermana Jones in NSB.

K so here's where my week got weird.

Wednesday we went to ZTM in the morning. It was a good meeting and all I had to do was say a prayer. #BlessingsOfPlanningTheMeeting Then we get news that #HurricaneMatthew2K16 is coming towards us and we're going to need to evacuate to Deltona in the morning. So we go home and started our hurricane preparations. You'd have thought the zombie apocalypse was happening. Gas stations were running out of gas and grocery stores were running out of food. It was mad.

We got a notice on our door from our apartment complex telling me I should tape the windows so there I was putting pieces of tape on the windows thinking "I don't really know what this is going to do...." 😂

Well due to the hurricane headed towards us nobody really wanted to meet with us so we spent the restoration of the evening calling ward members and telling them that the bishop felt impressed to strongly encourage everyone to evacuate. It was a pretty exciting time. People were freaking out.

⬆️I just realized that when I typed "rest" it autocorrected to "restoration" and thought it was pretty funny so I decided to leave it. #YouKnowYoureAMissionaryWhen...⬆️

In the evening we got put on this conference call where they tell us they decided Deltona isn't safe and they are going to send us to Orlando and that we needed to be at the mission office before 7:00 the next morning to find out relocations.

Thursday we got up at 4:30am and the Daytona Sisters came and we packed up the car and started our road trip down to the citayy. We were expecting a lot of traffic since there was a hurricane coming, but we soon realized that it was the middle of the night so we were basically the only ones on the road. So we got there early and went to Chick-Fil-A. I was making a voice recording when a police man walked up and started to ask us about the church. We got the whole contact on a recording. It was pretty funny.

Then we met in the mission office with all the other Hurricane Refugees. It was one of the most fun times I've had in a while. I got to see all of my friends and we just talked and played games and waited for the APs to figure out what they were going to do with us. Eventually the APs announced relocations and me and HNA Jones, Sister Hart and Staten, HNA Mickleson and Guerrero, and Sister Carter and Badal were all going to President and Sister Wood's house.

I don't know if I can accurately describe to you how excited I was about this.

Exactly a year ago almost TO THE DAY I arrived to Florida and spent the night at President and Sister Wood's house. It was surreal to go back to where I began my mission and think about how far I've come in the last 365 days. Sorry to be all deep and whatever, but I thought it was pretty cool.

So after a while of waiting we loaded up the trailer and Elder Johnson decided we should go wait inside so we played a game of signs and then we rode the Big White Whale to President Wood's house and we helped him prepare his house for the storm and then we walked around the neighborhood offering to help people put things away. Nobody really wanted our help. Whatever. Then we came in and cooked dinner together and had a super fun "family night" that Sister Wood had put together. We played games and had scripture study and Sister Carter and Badal did a little devotional. Then all the sisters sat and told embarrassing moments and oddly enough I had been present for almost all of the embarrassing moments that were shared. Hahaha my life.

THEN GUESS WHAT

They had me share a room with SISTER HART AND SISTER STATEN. My trainee and her trainee.

God loves me so much. I still can't figure out how that worked out.

So as you can imagine we stayed up talking for a good amount of time.

Guess what else...

I slept through the hurricane. What the heck? I didn't even wake up.

It wasn't too bad down in Orlando. We didn't even loose power. But we were told that it hit the east coast pretty hard. So when we got up it was pretty rainy and windy, nothing we haven't seen before, but we still weren't allowed to leave. So we spent the ENTIRE DAY Friday chillin' with President and Sister Wood. We made fancy meals and we played Apples to Apples and Hermana Guerrero read us children's stories, and President Wood even let us watch movies with him! We watched Mobsters and Mormons and The Best Two Years and it was SO FUN. We did a bunch of projects for Sister Wood and we had another "family night" and scripture study and stayed up supper late talking again. Just imagine a sleepover with 8 sisters and that's basically what happened. There was non-stop laughter for about two days.

Saturday morning the Fort Pierce Elders came over because the family that was hosting them had to go to work. So the thirteen missionaries and President and Sister Wood had breakfast together and then made homemade pretzels. Then we cleaned up the yard and I was peer pressured into doing my first back handsprings in over a year. I did a bunch of them and they weren't cute, but hey, I can still do them so that's good! 👊🏻 *whips and nay nays*

Then the APs came and picked us up and took us to the mission office. We had a little post-hurricane pow-wow with President Clark and at the end we all knelt in prayer and President Clark offered a beautiful prayer thanking God for getting us through the storm safely. It was a very cool and humbling thing to be a part of.

Then we loaded up and drove home with the Daytona Sisters. We didn't have power at our apartment when we got there. We spent the rest of the day unpacking our stuff, and cleaning the church parking lot with the Newmans. I had a three year old out rake me. He kept giving me orders about where I should rake and it was the cutest thing. Then we had dinner with the Newmans and they are my new favorite family.

Sunday was a weird day. We got up and went to church in our jeans. We had a short sacrament meeting and then armies of people in yellow T-Shirts from all over the state of Florida came to help clean up. NSB kinda looked like you put a salad in a blender and then threw it on the ground. Massive trees were everywhere. On top of houses and garages, Hanging on phone lines, There were signs that had fallen on top of cars and fences and street signs destroyed. There was incredible damage and it was very humbling. We spent all day moving debris into piles and cleaning up the yards of those who couldn't do it themselves. It was incredible as we did thousands and thousands of dollars worth of labor for free and the feelings that I felt as I looked these home owners in the eye and said "no, we don't want any money. We just want to serve you." Were incredible. We spent most of the day working on the team run by Brother Newman who was kind of in charge of the whole operation in New Smyrna Beach. We kind of worked as their assistants. We toured the area with them a little bit to assess the damage and oh man. It was crazy. Then we were driving past Blind Pop's house and saw Lamar outside so we got out to talk to him for a bit. I was relieved to see him because I was worried about him in his tiny house, but he survived and was doing great and we were all in good spirits at that point! Later we joined a crew that was made up of mostly missionaries from our stake and helped clean up the house of one of my investigators I had given to the elders a while back. That was fun! Then the Griffitt's family fed us all dinner because they are saints and then we came home.

The clean up isn't done and we still have a lot of work to do. This week was a week I will never forget and one I'm sure I will tell my children about someday. I just want you all to know how much I love my Father in Heaven.

On Sunday during our shortened sacrament meeting we sang Master the Tempest is Raging which was so fitting. But what stood out to me was the fact that the first verse he is describing the storm and how scared he is, and in the second verse he is calling out in prayer pleading for relief, and the third verse is describing the peace and relief he felt that comes through Christ. I think that's the whole reason we go through trials. To teach us to rely on Christ and to allow us the opportunity to feel His redeeming love and the relief that comes through the Atonement. That hymn will never mean the same thing as it did before this week.

I know that God lives and that He loves us. I know He is aware of the personal hurricanes that we go through and He is always there to help us feel peace and happiness even amidst the storms. All we have to do is let Him.

I love y'all so much and I love y'all more than missionaries love to do hurricane cleanup.

Hope y'all had a splendid week.

I'm now in search of a T-Shirt that says "I survived #HurricaneMatthew2K16" if anyone wants to send me one. I'm also in search of a Mormon Helping Hands shirt because I never got one yesterday and was super bummed about it because everyone else got one. But you know, it's fine.

I survived #HurricaneMatthew2K16

Peace out! ✌🏻️

Out of context quotes:

"Whips and slips"

"Oh... President Clark is petting my goat."

"We need to go get junk food before this happens. I can't eat carrots during a hurricane!"

Sister Whitney Reid

Feelmysunlight.blogspot.com

Citrusfruitsister.blogspot.com

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"Off with their heads" -President Clark

Oh man. What a week.

Okay so last Monday we went to the beach in the mornin' and had a grand ole time. Then in the evening we went to exchange with the Daytona sisters. We were sitting in the Daytona apartment and we're just sitting there talking about goals and whatnot and ALL OF THE SUDDEN AP Elder Johnson calls and is like "oh hey Sister Reid... President Clark wants you to give a training at MLC on Thursday..." 😳😶 And I'm over here thinking "I've never been to an MLC where anyone except the APs, President and Sister Clark, and GENERAL AUTHORITIES have given trainings..." what even is life? 🙈 but you know, it's fine. 

Tuesday I stayed in Daytona with Sister Badal and ALL THE GOOD THINGS HAPPENED. All of them. And all of the crazy happened too. We started off our day at the HUM doing some service for the homeless. We cleaned the showers and toilets that the homeless people use. It was very humbling. Then we went outside and this homeless guy asked us to push his wheelchair up a hill and then after a few minutes Sister Badal started to not feel so good because of the smell of the whole place so she almost passed out. And I'm just thinking "well this is going to be an interesting exchange." 

I was right...

Then we did some finding and taught one of my faves Brother Zanker. The Spirit had him in tears twice during the lesson. *whips and nay nays* Then we did some more finding and found a sweet new gator named J.... and then.... read this story... we go try to contact this former and we got up to the porch and this trailer and before we can knock the door SWINGS OPEN and this old lady and a lady covered in tats while wearing a bikini are holding onto this giant man eating dog and they quickly tell us we need to get to the end of the driveway or the dog might eat us. So we booked it to our car and dived in before the dog could rip our faces off. Then we watched them secure the dog and then then bikini lady starts walking to our car so we are sitting there thinking she's just going to come to our window and say sorry, but THEN SHE HOPPED INTO THE BACK SEAT and Sister Badal and I both start to panic because here we are trying to spread the gospel and then all of the sudden there is a lady in a bikini in our back seat. She was telling us all kinds of things about her life and wouldn't even let us talk. I was just sitting there trying to plot a way to get her out, but after a few minutes she quickly decided on her own that she needed to get out BUT THE CHILD LOCK WAS ON THE DOOR SO THE BIKINI LADY WAS LOCKED IN OUR CAR. So sister Badal was going to get out and unlock it but the lady decided that would take too long so she dived over the seat and climbed out he drivers side door. So Sister Badal hopped in and we drove away realllllll fast.

The crazy doesn't even end there. 

We went and met a guy named Chopper who had ramen noodle hair. Then we saw the Trents who are the nicest! Then we had dinner with Sister J. I don't know if you remember but about 11 months ago we had dinner with this lady who dumped Coca-Cola all over me on accident... well that was Sister J. She remembered me, but I don't think she remembered the coca-cola incident. Haha she was all excited to give us yogurt. What? I don't even know. 

Then here's the best story from exchanges...

So we are leaving and Sister Badal needs to use the loo pretty bad 🚽so we drive over to the church and she runs into the bathroom and I'm just chillin' outside the door and just as she sits down she hears someone say "I'm so sorry.... I have to tell you I'm in here." THERE WAS AN ELDER who will remain nameless IN THE STALL NEXT TO HER! I  was laughing so hard I was crying listening to this all go down. He said there was only one stall in the boys bathroom and he really had to go and he didn't think anyone would be at the church. So there Sister Badal was just peeing away while an Elder was taking a dump next to her. She hurried out of there as fast as she could and we ran outside and laughed until we couldn't breath. Then the elders eventually came out and we all laughed about it for another solid ten minutes.

It definitely made the top 10 funniest moments of my mission. And the best quote from the whole ordeal is "You don't know how loud your pee is until there's an elder in the stall next to you."

 The last miracle from Tuesday was when we went to visit heir progressing investigator John and I realized that I TOTALLY CONTACTED JOHN eleven months ago with Sister Nelsen and he is INVESTIGATING THE CHURCH now and he RODE HIS LAWN MOWER TO CHURCH ON SUNDAY and I just really like when I find out that the work I did in the past really did make a difference.

What a day.

Wednesday we had DM and we gave a two minute training on memorizing scriptures. We also taught Tammy and went to a super fun ward choir practice where the director just played songs on the guitar and we jammed out. Then we went to young women's and did skits with them. 

Thursday we road tripped down to Orlando for MLC. I'm there thinking there are going to be several people giving trainings, but Hermana Jones asks Elder Johnson how many people are giving trainings and he holds up a number one and then points to me. ☝🏻👉🏻Excuse me what? Oh man. But I gave my training and nobody even died so I guess you could say it went pretty well. 😂 I kinda gave an obedience lecture and then told a story about mung beans and then talked about following the spirit. Hahaha Then there was a really good discussion on obedience that was lead by President Clark. Thursday we also taught Melody, Brittany, Milady, and Jefferey. They are my favorite family. Then we taught Sister Chilkott, and then Brother Schmidt and Judy.

Friday we weekly planned and had a meeting with the Zone Leaders to plan ZTM. We also had dinner with the Cintron's who I LOVE! And we taught this 13 year old kid named Jathen who told us about fishing for a solid 30 minutes and and I was just nodding my head like "ya mhmm garr is a good fish to catch... did you know Jesus' apostles were fisherman?" 🐠🐟🐠🐟🐠🐟 Then we convinced him to read his scriptures. 👊🏻Then we taught Angel and Brother Clausen. 

Saturday was general conference. My favorite holiday. There were many revelations received. 

So here's the cutest thing. I've had the same home teacher since I was seven and every year since I was a little kid we've had to draw him pictures during general conference and when he comes to visit after conference we would present our pictures to him and he'd give us a treat in response. Well we are teaching a part member family right now so that some of the kids can get baptized. I decided to pass this tradition onto them and so when we went over Saturday night they all ran to me to show me their pictures. I was in awe as they told me all about their favorite talks and stories from conference. We took some selfies with their pictures.

Sunday we had some more wonderful sessions of general conference. Go watch #LDSconf if you haven't yet. We also taught a guy named Frank who was nice. 

Like I said, I always like to joke about how conference is our favorite holiday. I like to say that because it really does feel like a celebration of the fact that we have the restored gospel on the earth today in its fullness. The overall feeling I got from conference is motivation. I liked when President Eyring said that LDS also stands for "Let's Do Something." Overall conference was a reminder that this is the greatest work I can ever do and I am so excited to go out and do it!

I'm doing really well and I hope y'all are too! Thank for all the love and support. You really don't know how much even little emails mean to me. 

I just love y'all more than missionaries love conference, and more than President Uchtdorf loves airplanes.

Sister Whitney Reid

Feelmysunlight.blogspot.com

Citrusfruitsister.blogspot.com

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