Christmas Time in Royal City!

Hello!!

SO this week has been CRAZY. So many ups and downs, kind of an emotional rollercoaster really. Plus we had so many meetings! On Tuesday we had our mission Christmas party. It was really fun to get to see almost all of my MTC friends. Our party was the north half of the mission, so about 90 missionaries, plus a few senior couples and of course President and Sister Lewis. (look for pics on Sis. Lewis' blog!) It was especially fun, because my zone all got together and did a musical number "Mary's lullaby", and I played guitar!! Woo hoo! It was so fun. We had a great lunch together, with some amazing apple juice freshly pressed from apples grown in that very orchard where we were! (I'm obsessed with apple juice) and we got to watch “Meet the Mormons” together. I forgot how good that movie is. Especially the part about the Candy Bomber. I love history.

Home Grown Apple Juice!

Apple orchard!

Amazing "Ranchion" where the party was held 

(those that know Alison well know how much she likes

to talk about her future mansion on a ranch, or "ranchion")

Tuesday night was pretty rough, because my companion got really sick. We ended up staying in and not teaching anyone and asking Bishop and Larry to come over to give her a blessing. Then we wrote a song together! I told her it's the best kind of therapy, and it really was. She did so much better after that.

Wednesday was a day of miracles. First we had a district counsel with the other hermanas, and three sets of elders. I gained a lot of knowledge and spiritual inspiration, and then the elders gave us some blessings. Then later that day after some appointments, we went to dinner at Bishop and Nancy's house, and Nancy texted my mom :) She ended up taking a video of me singing "Merry Christmas Darling" and sending it to my mom. I almost started crying in the middle of the song, and I'm sure mom was just bawling, the lyrics that say "We're apart that's true. But I can dream, and in my dreams, I'm Christmasing with you."  Gah! I'm getting choked up right now just thinking about it. I love you, Mom, so so so much.

District Council

Then after our dinner we went to Anastacio's house, and seriously, a miracle happened. He is an old man, probably about 80 or so, and in the past he has been very prideful and stubborn. His wife, and son, and his sons' family are all converts and really active in the church, but Anastasio said he doesn't need church because he doesn't sin... he's a good person, but not perfect!  Anyway, when we got to his house his whole countenance and disposition was so different. He was warm and inviting and his heart had been softened so much. Apparently he had this dream where his uncle, who is dead, who he looks up to so much, was talking him and telling him he is being foolish and stubborn and that he needs to listen to us. Then he had a dream about being lost, and a huge scary black dog was chasing him around. And then these two people came to him and saved him, and they were us! Anyway, now he is taking lessons from us and really progressing a lot just in the last few days.

Then we had a really great lesson with Maria and Elmer. And the gift of tongues was SO real. Usually I don't get to talk too much in Spanish lessons, because the people just talk to Hermana L because she is a native. But we were just teaching, and all of the sudden I was speaking perfect Spanish and they were listening to me! I can't even totally explain it, but it was just awesome. Miracles are for real.

So something funny about Royal is that everyone here is related in some way! Sunday we were at a meeting with some of the leaders in the ward, and I was trying to take notes of how all everyone is related. It was so funny. Then they were all like, "Sister Knight, I would love to see your notes! And see an outsider's perspective." then we decided I'm like a detective. Haha!  It's pretty funny and crazy!

Go Royal Knights!

Thursday during the day we went to Yvonne's and cleaned out and organized her entire bathroom, it was so hard but so refreshing and fulfilling. My mom would be proud. I should have thought to take before and after pics. Also, Yvonne gave me a brand new Hot Tools curling iron that she didn't want! It's awesome!  Then Thursday night was the English Christmas party, and it was so fun!

Friday we had to go to Les Schwab because Ruthie (our car) was sick. But don't worry, she's all better now! Then that night I got to do a couple more musical numbers at the Spanish Branch's Christmas party. My roommates and I all sang "Noche De Luz" and "El Burrito de Belen" together. I've gotten them hooked on 3 part harmony of course... haha. 

Only white person at the party!

Saturday was a pretty weird day. But we did end up driving about 50 miles out to the very border of our area and found a grocery store!! It was amazing! There were so many people there that we talked to and gave Pass Along cards about "A Savior is Born!"  It was like the Promised Land. Haha! We were so excited.

Sunday we had our Christmas service, and it was really beautiful. So many people came too! It was very exciting, and then we went to see one of my favorite families. Their mom is SO much like me, but she's extremely inactive in church. She has a lot of issues with Utah and her childhood, and is having a hard time separating Utah culture from actual doctrine. It's really a struggle. They have three daughters who remind me a lot of my sisters, and the cutest little dog who is just like Tobie. I feel like they are some of the people that I was specifically sent here to help. Usually the mom is pretty closed off about spiritual things, but last night when we were talking to them she really opened up to me. It was amazing. We had a total heart to heart for about an hour, and then her youngest daughter who is nine bore her testimony about how when she feels sad or alone she knows that Jesus is always with her and understands how she is feeling. And then she started telling all of this stuff she was remembering about the last lesson we taught them. It was so amazing. She really brought the spirit into the room and her mom even started crying. She is a seriously good kid. I just love that family so much. Please keep them in your prayers, and pray that the spirit will guide Hermana L and I to know how to help them come back to church. 

Merry Christmas, everyone! I am so excited I get to Skype my family!

 Winter in Royal City

 All bundled up! It's FREEZING here!

 I love my little Christmas Tree! Thank you Mom!

 So many presents!

Each morning we've been receiving Secret Santa gifts!

Washington, Week 2

Hello, lovely people!

This week has been weird. It's been pretty good but also pretty bad. Good, because I love being a missionary, and I love my companion, and I've been very spiritually edified. Bad because almost all of our appointments fell through, and nobody will answer their door in this town! It's frustrating. Even a lot of our dinner appointments fell through, which never happens. It's always a highlight of my day to go to member's houses for dinner and visit with them. So it's really sad when that doesn't work out.

Have ya’ll seen the new Christmas initiatives this year? Go to www.christmas.mormon.org and the main one "A Savior is Born" is right there on the top, then if you scroll down there's another one on the bottom left corner of the screen called "Why We Need a Savior" It's so good! So powerful too. The videos really help you feel the Spirit. The other awesome thing is called "12 Days of Social." Not sure if you've seen it, but it's really awesome. For 12 days of December, famous Mormons are making YouTube videos that go around the theme "A Savior is Born." Of course I love the Gardiner Sister's video. Also Studio C's, and David Archuleta's are both really, really good, too. David Archuleta's almost made me cry. So powerful! We've been sharing it with all the members and also when we go teaching. This one brother, named Big Ed (he's taller than my friend Jared, and reminds me of Hagrid) actually broke down in tears sharing his testimony. I love how music does that to people. It takes the emotions, and spirit that you are feeling and just amplifies it. Gah! Music! Love it.

I met a lady named Gloria De Dios, this week. LOL

I got Hermana Luevano hooked on SmartPop white cheddar popcorn! She had never tried it before, so I gave her some of mine and she was like "How have I been living without this?" ha ha

The other thing that's been not so great this week is that we're all four getting sick. Hermana Luevano and I have been getting migraines and nausea all week, I had a fever last night, Hermana Hirche had a fever all week, and has been throwing up, Hermana Hall is starting to not feel well, too. Apparently it's going around church, so that's awesome. Please send some prayers our way! 

I got to see my other missionary friends a lot this week! First on last Monday after I got done emailing, we went to Othello and went grocery shopping, and then went to the church and saw all my friends in my zone, including Elders Cordon and Buchanan!!  

 Elders Buchanan and Cordon and Hermana Knight

We also had zone training (SO POWERFUL) where I got a really cool quote from Sister Lewis. I'll just take a picture of the whole deal, but basically we talked about how when we are teaching we need to not be a Homie or a Robot, we need to be a true friend. We also had trainer/trainee meeting. I got to see President And Sister Lewis! Woo Hoo! And Elder Harman. So that was really fun.

"The best missionaries aren't trying to be the grey area between black and white, they don't try to be the balance between a bad level and a worse level. They are a whole new level, a true friend."

Tomorrow we are having a huge Christmas party with all the missionaries in the northern half of the mission. All my MTC Friends will be there, except Hermana Aldrich, who is in Yakima, so in the southern half. My zone has been practicing a song to sing at the Christmas party called "Mary's Lullaby," from the Children's Songbook, and I get to play guitar with it!! SO fun and so refreshing. I love, love, love guitar, and I have missed it so much.

 Practicing Mary's Lullaby

 Playing chair soccer in Othello

Some other interesting and entertaining activities this week: On Thursday we helped Yvonne (less active member who had a heart attack a couple months ago) make some garland and put it up on her front door. It was really surprisingly hard!! It took us probably 2.5 hours, but now her house looks so pretty! She's also been coming to church the last few weeks, so that's really good! We also had two investigators show up at church yesterday, both unexpected. It was such a great, pleasant surprise. It was a Christmas miracle! Woo Hoo! I also finally tried mushrooms for the first time last night (I've never thought about it before). They were gross and tasted like a dirty sock, but I'm glad I at least tried them!  Hermana L. and I went to a single, less active sister’s house the other day and almost got trampled by a bunch of horses! We go and help her muck the stalls and put out feed sometimes (she's pretty old).They are normally a really nice bunch of horses, but it was raining and freezing cold. So I guess the little pieces of ice hitting them all morning really spooked them. It was pretty crazy. Jill was able to calm them down for a few minutes while me and Hermana L hurried and got out of the stable. It was pretty intense! I know Heavenly Father was watching out for us.

 Helping Yvonne decorate for Christmas

 Us with Yvonne. We love her!

 The finished product!

Another fun thing this week is a random secret family in the ward has been bringing all four of us presents all week to our apartment! It's the "12 Days of Christmas"! It’s so sweet! Yesterday we got ornaments and candy canes, and a plate of cookies. We haven't opened our presents from today yet. Also, Hermana Hirche's mom is sending her 12 days of Christmas every day too. So it's really fun when we get to open five presents every day! We also got a cute little nativity book from a member and we read a little story out of it every night while we drink hot chocolate (I drink milk, LOL). Anyway it's fun to have this cute little family to have Christmas with. I love my roommates. The other day Hermana Hirche got a random package from her weird uncle that had a blow up buck, some blow up teeth, and a set of blow up organs (like stomach, liver, etc.) and the note said, "Dear Hermana Hirche, I love you. Here is the most random things I could find. Merry Christmas" ha ha!

 Putting up our new ornaments

 Missionary Christmas tree!

Blow up buck from Hermana Hirsche's uncle

Anyway, I guess that's everything this week. It's been pretty weird. Hopefully things will start going better soon and I can get over this nasty bug, whatever it is. Please keep me, my companion, my missionary friends, and all my less active, and investigator friends in your prayers! 

Much love, Alison <3

Royal Knights

First, some last photos from the MTC:

 Saying goodbye to MTC friends

"The Map"

And now for this week's letter:

Greetings from Royal City, Washington!!

The last week has been insane as you can imagine! Tuesday morning I woke up at 2:30 in the morning to go catch a shuttle to the airport and fly to Seattle. I was supposed to be able to call my family but ended up getting caught in security for a long, long, looooong time. I even got a pat down! Because, you know, missionaries are very dangerous people! Then my bag and one of my friends' bags got checked and then the line for baggage was seriously long. We ended up almost missing boarding for the flight because all the security took like three hours. One cool thing though, was I was being super nice and patient the whole time, and one of the employees was impressed so he upgraded my seat to First Class free of charge! So that was pretty sweet. I got a window seat, a huge chair, and the whole row to myself.

I ended up getting a few more hours of sleep because the plane had a problem and the maintenance crew had to come and fix it. So we were sitting in the plane for about an hour and a half before we even took off. Then the flight was a little longer than expected because of weather. So by the time we got to Seattle we only had about 20 minutes before our flight to Yakima, so I hurried and called my mom really quick and got to talk to her for about 15 minutes. It was really awesome and I didn't even cry.

Then we got on this teeny tiny plane and flew to Yakima. The pilot spoke over the speaker "I wanted to extend a special welcome to the 20 missionaries we have on board with us today. It's an honor to fly you!" It was so cool! Then he came back and shook each one of our hands, looked us in the eye and said "Thank you for your service. God bless you."

The mission president, his wife, and 3 APs (Assistant to the President) came and picked us all up, and we went to the mission home. Sis. Lewis was taking tons and tons of pictures! Check out the mission blog to see them! Then we went to the mission home, which is gorgeous by the way, and we got to have a delicious home-made lunch (yay for no more cafeteria food!!) Then we went out on splits with local missionaries that have been here for a while. The sisters I went out with were very surprised at how good my Spanish was, so that was awesome. Then we went back to the home and had orientation about our mission cars, debit cards, p-day, schedules, etc. It was so hard to stay awake! I guess everyone else looked as tired as I did because then they let us take a nap. 

 The van they picked us up at the airport in (and also my sister, Libbie's dream car! HA!)

 Me with President and Sister Lewis (Boy do I look tired!)

The sisters I went on splits with the first day

After my nap I started to feel a lot of anxiety. Not for any particular reason, I think I was mostly just exhausted and realizing, oh my gosh I'm a missionary... this is real life! So I went to Pres. Lewis and he gave me a blessing. It was amazing as soon as he was done I felt this amazing peace wash over me. Then we ate dinner (which was also delicious) and had some time to write a note home to our parents saying we got here okay, and some time to get to know each other a little better. There were a lot of new missionaries that are musicians, and the Lewises have a piano and guitar at their house, so we were all jamming. I felt 10,000 times better after that. There's something about music that just amplifies the spirit in the room so much.

The next day we had a delicious breakfast, which I got to help cook. (I love to cook and missed it so much at the MTC) Then we had some time to do personal study. Then we had a little more orientation about all the different areas and zones of the mission, and we all packed up and went to the stake center in Yakima for our first transfer meeting.

 MTC friends, reunited in Yakima!

Hermanas Luevano and Knight

My new companion is Hermana Luevano. She is the cutest, sweetest, nicest girl ever. She always laughs at my dumb jokes, and she's really nice about correcting my Spanish or giving suggestions about where we should go. I have been really blessed. I love my trainer! She was born in Mexico but grew up in southern California, and her family has four daughters too! But she's number three. We have a lot in common, but also a lot of differences that really complement each other. We’ve already had some great teaching experiences and I can't wait for the rest of the next six weeks.

So I was put into Royal City, Washington, which is literally out in the boonies. The only store we have is Walmart, and it takes 40 minutes to get there!! Anyway, apparently the high school mascot here is the Knights, and we were in the state championship game this weekend for football (we won by the way!!) So everyone was already so stoked for that when I introduced myself. Everyone has been like "Oh you are so perfect for our town!!!"  ha ha 

Our Apartment 

We live in "downtown" Royal!

In our area there are two sets of sister companionships. We have two English wards and one Spanish branch. The other sisters cover the 1st ward, we cover the 2nd ward, and we share the branch. It's nice to be able to use my English a lot, but it is also super, super hard trying to switch back and forth all the time. 

On Sunday we go to English Sacrament Meeting, Spanish Sunday School, English Relief Society, and then Spanish Sacrament. It was exhausting! The other two hermanas that aren't native speakers like Hermana Luevano said that I will be able to switch pretty easily in about a week though, so let's hope they are right!

 Hermanas Luevano and Knight

Hermanas Luevano, Knight, Hall and Hirsche

The first night here we went to dinner at the Christensen’s house. There's about a million Christensens here, so we actually are four for four for Christensen dinners. Ha ha!  And we go to another Christensen’s for laundry! I'm pretty sure I've met 7-8 Christensen families by now, but I can't remember for sure. Pretty much everyone here goes by their first name because they all have the same last name!

Hermanas Knight and Luevano at the Christensen's house for dinner

Anyway, at the first dinner, we get there and it's baked potatoes and rolls... so it was kind of awkward because I couldn't eat anything (a rare occurrence--usually I can eat something that is served) and then the sister called everyone in the ward and told them. The members here are so kind and sweet they all have been doing research on glycemic indexes and sugar levels of food! They have been so nice about preparing things they know I can eat, and giving us so much help! I love this small town feel because everyone is so humble and nice and we can just stop by randomly any time and they will invite us in and give us water, a treat, a warm towel, and let us use their bathroom! They literally drop everything and run to help us. It's so awesome! Also it's a farming town, so most people are pretty poor but SO humble and so prepared to hear our message! Even the owners who are really well-off are very humble and kind though, so I just love it here.

Wednesday night I got to play the Bishop's guitar! It was amazing. I almost wanted to cry because I had missed it so much. And then last night at dinner we were talking to this couple (bet you can't guess their last name!) and we really just felt like something was missing, like we needed to do something special to invite the spirit into their home. So then Hermana Luevano asked if I could play something on the piano for them. It was kind of crazy because she didn't even know I play the piano but she just felt really prompted to ask me for that. So I went over to their piano and played a really pretty song called "Liz on top of the world" the spirit was so strong after that! The sister actually started tearing up a bit. It turns out their daughter used to play that piano all the time, and now she's grown and moved out. She said her house has always seemed so quiet and lonely since. It was one of the greatest lessons we have had so far. It was so awesome for me to get to share my talents in this way. That's the whole point of being a musician. Not for attention, or acknowledgement, but to express emotions, invite the spirit, and comfort people in a way that nothing else can. It is my favorite way to bear my testimony. 

On a different note, my comp doesn't drive, and it's been snowing here a ton, so that was a little scary at first. But I'm getting better at it. It also gets dark here super early! About 3 pm the sun starts to set! We named our car Ruthie. We figured she's a missionary car, so she should have a strong Bible name!

Oh! (A little note for my Texas peeps,) Jeremy Fielding's brother is the branch president of the Spanish branch, so that’s cool! His voice sounds EXACTLY the same. It's so weird! Kind of cool though. A little piece of Texas all the way out here. 

Friday Hermana Luevano and I were out knocking on some doors trying to get to know the people in the community and almost knocked on the door of a naked man!! It was scary. Ha ha! Then we had a cool experience where we lost our phone and couldn't find it anywhere and were getting really concerned, so we prayed.  Then suddenly, it just talked! It was on speaker phone and said "we're sorry but your call cannot be completed as dialed" it was right there on the ground covered in some snow! We picked it up and wiped it off. It wasn't even in the middle of a phone call and wasn't set to speaker phone mode either. God is so cool. We now lovingly refer to that experience as the "phone miracle". 

A funny experience--one night we were teaching a guy named Jonny, a recent convert, and he is completely fluent in Spanish and English. But the lesson was at a Spanish member’s house, so Jonny and Hermana L were speaking back and forth in Spanish. Then all of the sudden Jonny started saying things in Spanish, then repeating it in English, then Spanish, then repeat in English. I was just like "?Por que usted hablando en espanol y despues ingles?" I thought he was just like, practicing or something, but he was totally shocked for a second and just looked at me funny. Then Hermana L said, "She speaks Spanish," and we all started laughing (including the members whos house it was)! It was so funny! I guess he thought I couldn't understand so he was translating for me. Ha ha! Anyway, so now it's gotten around the branch that I'm a solid Spanish speaker. 

I've taught about ten lessons since getting here and knocked on a ton of doors, got two new investigators, and one person is set for a baptismal date! It's crazy how much the Lord is helping us out here. Even in the middle of no where.

 Hermanas being silly

Decorating with the roommates 

Hermana Hirsche