It's a GIRL!

On Friday night I couldn't sleep, my mind was racing a million miles a minute thinking of all the possibilities transfer calls could bring. Sister Ireland and I had decided that it was basically for sure that we would be staying together for another transfer. But my mind wouldn't stop. If anyone would leave it would be me, I'd been in the area for longer, but where could I go? My mind kept going. When it was time to get out of bed, I was exhausted my brain could not take another minute. So during personal study Sister Ireland sent me to bed, I was useless without my brain.

About half an hour in I woke up to the sound of the phone ringing. Sister Ireland ran upstairs and mouthed to me, "President." My heart stopped. You only get a call from President Blatter if one of you will be going to a leadership position. My first reaction was that Sister Ireland would become a Sister Training Leader and I would stay and get another new companion. The first words out of President's mouth were, "I'm really sorry, Sister Ireland, that you only got to stay one transfer in Shelton. But you'll be going to Southworth!" My brain was confused for a moment, Why had President called us if Sister Ireland wasn't going to be an STL? "That leaves Sister Monson in Shelton," President continued, "and you'll be training!" Shock is literally not even an accurate enough word to describe my reaction. I was basically petrified.

I am so sad that I only got Sister Ireland for 6 weeks, but she truly has changed my life and my mission, and I will miss her terribly. But I am excited, nervous, terrified, happy, and really just freaking out to train a new missionary. This will be a grand adventure! I don't even know her name yet!

All my love,

Sister Megan Monson

PS: When you are trained, your trainer is your "Mom," and the Trainee is a "baby." hence the terminology!

PSS: Sister Monson has decided NOT to count weeks so I guess I won't be adding what week it is on her blog either. But I may still be counting fast Sundays and there are 10 more :) I think!

SNOW!!

SNOW BALLS!

Sister Monson made the little snowman

thumbs up for this gorgeous missionary

such cute sister missionaries, love the hats

Sister Monson made the cute headband!

Week 32:Life is Good and so is God

  

Last Tuesday Sister Ireland was sick as a dog, literally could hardly get out of bed, let alone do missionary work. To be frank, I was a little frustrated, not with Sister Ireland, but with the fact that we had to stay in for a WHOLE DAY. One day inside means one more day that we can't go find those who are ready for the gospel! But we stayed in because we knew that if we went out there was no way Sister Ireland would get better as quickly.

   As we were sitting inside watching The Testaments for the eight billionth time we got a phone call from a Sister Anderson, with a referral for her son's girlfriend, Molly. After getting all the information and chatting with Sister Anderson for a bit, I hung up and Sister Ireland and I just looked at each other. How does that happen? We stayed inside and somehow we still found someone to teach! We decided that that was Heavenly Father's way of telling us, "it's okay, you can stay inside and rest, get better."

sick day activities

     We went about our week looking forward to the appointment we would have with Molly on Sunday, all we knew about Molly is she is dating a member and is our age. Because neither Sister Ireland or I have ever served in YSA wards we haven't been able to teach people our own age before so we were excited for the adventure!

      As we sat down with Molly we asked what questions she had and she admitted that she was agnostic, but never felt right saying that God doesn't exist. She asked us question after question, deeper doctrine questions, ones that I would typically have to go home and study about before I could give an answer. But the words were always there. In Preach My Gospel it says that you can tell you are a successful missionary when you can feel the Spirit working through you, and this was one of those moments. Molly's questions lead us to teaching parts of every lesson we teach. We talked about the atonement and Christ's love, we talked about where we go after this life and how perfect God's plan is. As we talked I could literally see a change in Molly. When we finished our discussion, Molly looked at us, on the verge of tears, and said, "thank you, I know that God is real now. What more can you teach me?" It was truly one of the most spiritual moments of my mission. It was as if when she was realizing that God is real, He was also reminding me of His reality.

    Life is good, my friends, and so is God.

     All my love,

        Sister Megan Monson

Week 31: More Strength to O'ercome

Remember how a few weeks ago I set some New Year's Resolutions? Yeah, Sister Ireland does too, she wouldn't let me forget them, especially when she was asked to do a musical number for sacrament meeting... Naturally her response was "yes, and Sister Monson would love to do it with me!"

One of my most petrifying fears is singing in public, seriously, I haven't even attempted to do it since I was 14 years old. If it came down to speaking in front of a million people or singing in front of 150, I would choose to speak in front of a million people. And I am pretty sure public speaking is the general public's biggest fear.

I figured that there would be no better time to get over my fear than on my mission, so I set one of my goals to get over it, this goal is entitled "More Strength to O'recome." Sister Ireland voluntelling me to sing caused the closest thing to an argument that we have ever had. I fought it for a while until I realized that the longer I fought it, the less time I would have to practice and the bigger the train wreck would be. So I succumbed and we chose to sing "I Know that My Redeemer Lives."

Standing up at the pulpit was literally the most terrifying experience of my entire life. My body vibrated I was shaking so bad. But hey, I did it and now maybe my crazy companion will let me slide now!

I love "I Know that My Redeemer Lives," it is basically like bearing your testimony through song, and isn't that why God gave us the ability to sing?

D&C 25:12 For my soul delighteth in the song of the heart; yea, the song of the righteous is a prayer unto me, and it shall be answered with a blessing upon their heads.

God gives us talents for some reason or another and we have to figure out why. I don't profess to be a great singer, in fact I have lost most of what talent I ever did have due to neglect of my voice. But God did give me a voice and I will praise Him day in and day out for His goodness to me!

All my love,

Sister Megan Monson

PS: on a less Spiritual note: Every transfer I have a word in Ratchet (the language of Tacoma) to help me learn to speak it, this transfer's word is Janky. To explain Janky here is a janky hotel and a janky bridge:

And we also put a pass along card in a bottle and sent it off to sea... someday we will hear a story about someone walking along the beach and realizing they needed to be baptized, just watch.

Pictures from the Mission blog

Week 30: I Love To See The Temple

After over six months of waiting, I finally got to go to the Temple! What a wonderful place to be. We woke up super early Wednesday morning and drove all the way down to Olympia to get on a big yellow school bus, which took us AAAALLLLLLLLL the way up to Bellevue to the temple.

    Going from having several temples within a twenty minute drive to having no temples within the boundaries of my mission was a stark contrast.

    President Blatter decided to allow us to take one name all the way through and by a small miracle I had one name that I hadn't done any work on before I left and I was able to do all but the sealing for her this week. What an amazing thing!

     After the time spent in the place closest to heaven we loaded back on to the buses and drove back to Olympia. Just as Sister Ireland and I were pulling out of the parking lot, my trainer, Sister Bird, and her companion pulled in, and stopped us. Apparently their phone had been left on the bus which was now... who knows where? So I got to spend some time with my favorite companion in history, Sister Bird! So we spent most of the evening in Olympia, and the crazy thing about Olympia is that there is more than just a Wal-Mart and a McDonald's there, they have everything. And people, I haven't seen so many people in the past 9 weeks! I guess that is what happens when they ship you out to the middle of nowhere, a quiet and beautiful place, you forget what it's like to see people frequently!

    Other than that this week has been cold, cold, cold! It hasn't rained a whole lot so there haven't been clouds to keep the heat in, but the forecast says it will start raining soon which means it will be warmer... just wetter. Which means I will get to wear my rain boots! It has been too cold for them for a long time!

     I hope you all have a wonderful week!

           All my Love,

             Sister Megan Monson

Week 29: More Holiness Give Me

The first week of January is a week of setting goals and trying to figure out what you need to improve more on. I was stumped on what I really wanted to work on. I have so much that I am not where I want to be at ultimately and I just couldn't choose.

All week there was a song in my head that I love and adore but hadn't heard in awhile, so it didn't really make sense as to why it would be running through my head. Until I really thought about it and remembered that often the way the Spirit speaks to me is through music. Hymn number 131, "More Holiness Give Me"

1. More holiness give me,
More strivings within,
More patience in suff'ring,
More sorrow for sin,
More faith in my Savior,
More sense of his care,
More joy in his service,
More purpose in prayer.

2. More gratitude give me,
More trust in the Lord,
More pride in his glory,
More hope in his word,
More tears for his sorrows,
More pain at his grief,
More meekness in trial,
More praise for relief.

3. More purity give me,
More strength to o'ercome,
More freedom from earth-stains,
More longing for home.
More fit for the kingdom,
More used would I be,
More blessed and holy--
More, Savior, like thee.

The solution to my goal-setting problem had been there all along. So I chose the attributes of the Savior that I really wanted to work on and I found ways to do so. So my goals all are lines from More Holiness give me! If you haven't set your goals yet, read through this song and it will basically help you so much to know what you need to do! Anyways, that's all I have to ramble about today!

All my love,

Sister Megan Monson

Week 28: The Wolf-Deer

   This week was utter insanity. It started with trying to fit all of Sister Philippi's stuff into our tiny little Chevy Cruze. If you can just imagine squeezing things into every single nook and cranny, in the trunk, backseat, front seat, floor, back window, everywhere. Sister Missionaries have a lot of stuff. Then we drove down to Olympia to drop off Sister Philippi and all her stuff. I then took another sister with me to Tacoma who was transferring out of Sister Philippi's new area. So we exchanged stuff and there was still stuff covering every single surface of the car, so much stuff! Finally we made it to Tacoma where we exchanged stuff one more time and I got my new companion, Sister Ireland. 

Sis Ireland and Sis Monson

     Sister Ireland is incredible, she is from Maricopa, AZ and has the biggest heart of anyone I have ever known. And this week we worked hard, harder than I ever have on my entire mission, and that is saying a lot. We are trying to meet the zone standard of 25 finding hours a week. After working our tails off we wound up with 23, which is pretty good for not having any hours on Tuesday because of transfers.
     On Saturday we were on the verge of crazy, we had knocked for 5 hours by the time it was time for our daily 5-7 knocking and we were exhausted. As we were driving to find a new spot to knock we turned down this street in the middle of the woods wondering where it lead... and we saw it. It's eyes were glowing and I swore it was a wolf and Sister Ireland tried to brush it off as a deer, we drove down the road screaming that we were being chased by a wolf-deer. We still have no idea which it was, but we basically decided knocking doors at night in the woods is not a very good idea.

I hope your New Years was wonderful and you didn't get eaten by the wolf-deer!

All my love,

Sister Megan Monson

MTC Sisters

Sister Monson and Sister Philipi

Shelton Washington

New steeple

Inside the steeple

Shelton Ward