Christmas!!

12/25/2012

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MERRY CHRISTMAS Family and Friends

I hope you are all having a really wonderful day! It's Christmas! Thank you for all your love and support and presents and cards and love! I've been having the BEST couple of days! The mission had a big Christmas party last night - We watched 'Miracle on 34th Street', ate Cafe Rio :), sang carols and played the bells, made aprons with signatures from the sisters, some of the sister put on a real nativity and it was ALL so much FUN!!!!! I will send you pictures. I will also send you pictures of a member dinner we went to on Thursday. It was the first member dinner I've been to as a missionary and it was so great because we got to share a spiritual thought and we sang them a Christmas song! 

There are sisters all around me talking so I'm a little distracted but I will do my best to focus. We are having another Christmas party today! 

 I'm so happy and I'm excited to talk to you on the 30th to thank you better for alllllllllllllllll the gifts! I love you all very much! Friends THANK YOU for the cards and presents I feel soooooooooooo much love! 

I just took a break from writing to send you a million pictures and I still have a whole bunch more! Oh I love all the pictures you sent today! I feel like it's been so long since I've seen pictures of you mom and dad! You are both so lovely! I really like all the pictures! 

It's so tempting to call you all right now but at the same time I really want the Days to be there. I will call you at 3pm your time on the 30th. I figured you'd for sure be home from church by then, even if you missed the 1:30 ferry. Oh speaking of church. So many people from our ward at home sent me Christmas cards! They are so nice! I love them!

Being a missionary is so great! It's so fun to be here. The Gillette's are so nice and they make sure that all us sisters have so much fun all the time. It feels like a big family with lots of sisters :) 

I spent more time sending pictures then writing today because I knew I would be able to talk to you all in a couple days. 

Excerpts from my  letter to President this week-

"Thank you for all you, Sister Gillette and all the presidency have done for us this Christmas time to help us feel so much love. I'm so happy. Temple Square Mission is the best and I feel very blessed to be here!"
"This week has been great. Sister Hinton and I have been able to help our new investigators turn into progressing investigators and I love seeing all the positive changes those we have been talking to have been making. I hope and pray that they will continue to progress as they feel the Spirit testify to them that the Book of Mormon is true. Two of our investigators will be baptized this week."
"The zone is great. Each sister has her individual challenges but with love miracles happen. I'm especially happy with ..."
"I've been studying about The Atonement a lot this week. Because as I take time to remember the Saviors birth it always brings me to think about his life and his sacrifice for each of us. Heavenly Father loves us so he sent his son. I found these few scriptures in my studies the other day that I really like - Mosiah 3: 8, 13, 17 and 20. I know the Savior lives and loves us and that it only through him we can receive a remission of our sins and enter in the Kingdom of God."

I love you alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll VERY VERY MUCH!!!!! HUGS AND KISSES!! So excited to talk to you!!!! MERRY CHRISTMAS!

LOVE Sister Emily Turner 
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One Week to Christmas

12/18/2012

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Hello Family and Friends!!

I'm very full of sugar right now :) We just finished our Zone activity for the transfer! Sister Hinton and I planned it and it was so much fun! We made gingerbread houses and watched "It's a wonderful life". It was so fun but I ate toooooooooooooo much sugar. Zone activities are only once a transfer so it will be okay. 

Can you believe it's only 1 week till Christmas!!!!! I'm so excited that we have p-day on Christmas. So even though I'm waiting until the 30th to talk to you all I still get to write you on the 25th. Speaking of the 25th I've been having sooooooooooooooooooooo MUCH fun with the "Santa Baby I Only Want to Make you Happy" advent. I love it sooooo much. We love doing the challenges and it's really fun, we as in Sister Hinton and I and we  (Haha family can you tell I'm a little sleepy right now, I need to wake up we are teaching a lesson in 1 hour!) Anyway really it's like Christmas morning every morning. I have been taking pictures of the different things I've been doing but a lot of them are on Sister Hinton's camera, I just sent you the ones I do have. 

Unfortunately I can't fulfill the request of getting pictures with the nativities, we are only allowed to take pictures before 7am and Sister Hinton and I already did that once this transfer. Maybe if we have an early morning meeting I'll try to get one quick. Have you set up your nativity yet?

Mom thank you for all the emails this week :)  Hey when you get this letter you'll be home on Quadra!! Give everyone a hug for me, and ask someone to give you a hug for me too. Are you going to get a Christmas tree at home? Dad thanks for the email. I love getting your emails. When do you get to go home for Christmas?

We got to go see the Christmas Concert! IT WAS AMAZING!! They told the story of Gale Halverson The Candy Bomber (you'll have to look him up) and they had little parachutes of candy falling from the ceiling of the conference center! It was SO cool. It was especially neat because we were right underneath them. We originally had our seats on the balcony but when we were walking in the doors one of the hosts pulled two tickets out of his pocket and told us these were better seats so we were like 30 rows from the stage in the middle of the theater! It was so fun. 

Enoch got baptized on Saturday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He was baptized, got confirmed and received the Holy Ghost, received the Aaronic priesthood and got his temple recommend to do baptisms for the dead and this was all in one weekend!! Talk about enduring to the end! We are so excited for him, he's awesome. When we talked to him on Sunday we was just glowing through the phone. His joy is great and our joy is great! Our other investigators are doing well, there is a family we are teaching in Louisiana and Monica continues to do great! I love the gospel. Tonight we are teaching one of our new investigators from Salt Lake. We are also teaching someone we met in the beehive house the other day. Every night this week we go home at 10pm instead of 9pm because lots of people come to the square this week. So great being on Temple Square.

We had a zone meeting on Sunday. Sister Hinton and I felt that the zone needed reminders about how great they are doing but also what it means to rely on the Atonement through times of difficulty. We talked about "forgetting yourself and going to work" we also talked about making a choice between being happy and focusing on trials. It was so great because then the sisters bore their testimonies of how the Atonement had helped them put off the natural man and become more like the savior when they are struggling. It went really well.

Family and friends you are so great! I feel so blessed because I have so much support and love coming from home. Thank you for the Christmas cards and parcels :) 

I love you so much! You are all AMAZING!! MERRY CHRISTMAS! Merry Christmas eve! Lots of love and hugs to everyone! 

Love Sister Turner
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Hello!

12/11/2012

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Hi Family and friends!

I had a great week! I love doing the little service acts on my advent calender each day! Sister Hinton and I had soooooooooooooooo much fun at the Garden resturant! We had deep fried pickles for an appetizer and they were so yummy, at first I was reluctant to try but Sister Hinton was on her outbound in the South so she knew they would be good and they were! I've also sung a few people Christmas songs, given lots of hugs and I gave my companion a foot message last night :) I just opened the final # 7 last night so we will go out for a piece of cheesecake tomorrow during our lunch hour and think of how awesome Sarah is because it was her birthday on the 7th! HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY by the way! I've been having so much fun doing all the activities thank you!  

So many sisters in our zone have been sick this transfer so I wanted to thank you mom for the awesome first-aid kit! Now half our zone knows what slippery elm is and it has been helping them get better. Especially the international sisters are very grateful for some medicine that is herbal instead of a medication that they have never taken before in their lives. So thanks again they are very appreciative and much healthier now!

Oh we had an awesome mission meeting this past week! Elder Evans http://www.lds.org/church/leader/david-f-evans?lang=eng came and spoke to us about missionary work and it was so wonderful!  I love the church and the leaders that God calls to lead and guide us and to help us fulfill our potential on this earth. Elder Evans talked a lot about the missionary age change and how it was more then just an announcement but that it was a revelation from God. He is the in charge of the missionary dept along with a few other general authorities including Elder Holland and so we explained to us how the age change was made and the reasons why. It was so neat to hear. He told us about our mission and how we got our mission calls here to Temple Square and why. He promised us blessings and we remain faithful missionaries and members of the church. Sister Hinton and I left feeling like we just went to the Temple, it's a great experience to have a general authority stand up and promise you blessings. He also told us something that I found comforting, he told us that our mission will not be the greatest thing we will do in this life but that is to complete our covenants and get married in the Temple. It made me feel a bit better about only having 6 months left to serve. I knew that the mission wouldn't be the greatest thing but I think at some point I forgot and thought that nothing could be better then serving the Lord 24/7. But there is and as long as I serve faithfully to the end of my mission and continue to serve throughout my life all the righteous desires that I have will be granted to me. 

Sister Evans also briefly spoke to us. She didn't talk for very long but something that she did say that really stuck out to me was that we have a precious gift from our Heavenly Father (the gospel) and it's up to us and missionaries and members of the church to give that gift to someone else. I liked it because she told us a Christmas story about when Elder Evans and her were young. They had dated before he left on his mission to serve in Japan just before Christmas. She had worked endlessly on knitting a white cable knit sweater for him to wear during the cold winter days in Japan. She had taken every spare minute she had to knit the sweater so that she could be sure he got it before Christmas and then packed it up and shipped it off in plenty of time to get there. Then she waited for what might be coming from him, she waited, and waited, and waited until it was Christmas eve and nothing came (she added at this point in his defense he had just got to Japan about a week before). The morning of Christmas eve she woke up still hoping the mailman would have something for her that day however when she looked out the window it had started to snow and continued to snow so much that the busy road she lived on eventually had to be closed and there was no cars going down the road including the mailman. She still stayed up until about midnight hoping that somehow her Christmas parcel would come, but it never did. Christmas morning came and her teenage brothers tried to cheer up their disappointed sister but she said that nothing helped she was sad and sad was all she could be. She was sitting in her bed that morning when her dad came in her room after shoveling the walk and told her softly that there was a parcel sitting on the doorstep that had her name on it. She said she leaped out of bed and ran downstairs to see, sure enough, her Christmas parcel from Japan! It had a beautiful little Japanese doll that she still has to this day. After her story Sister Evans went on to say that for years she had always thought of Elder Evans as being the hero in this story, making her Christmas wonderful and getting the parcel sent right on time, it wasn't until one day as she was thinking about it that she realized it was the mailman who was the hero. She didn't know who he was but he had spent his night, well past mid night, delivering Christmas parcels. He could have been home with his family enjoying a Christmas eve together nice and warm in his home but instead he was out in the cold delivering parcels to strangers. He didn't know what that box meant to her but he was willing to still walk through the cold snow to make sure she got it. As missionaries we have the opportunity to change someones life for eternity by sharing with them the Saviors message. That is what we are called to do and it brings us great joy!

Lately as I've been writing emails I've been trying to figure out what to say so today I brought my journal and it's so much easier remembering all the things I learned this week that I wanted to share with you! 

Something else I experienced this week was that I was able to strengthen my testimony of the importance of planning. As missionaries every week we have a weekly planning with our companion. We plan for investigators and set plans of how we will help them continue to progress towards baptism and lasting conversion. Sister Hinton and I have some amazing investigators right now who we love so much! Anyway we also set plans to find new investigators and it's something that we decided to really work on this week. So first we had a desire, then we set plans that was something that WE could do to increase our ability to find new investigators and the rest was left up to the Lord. That day we found 2 new investigators in the Beehive house! I love Heavenly Father and I love that we have the opportunity to always be learning and improving! 

Speaking of our investigators Enoch is getting baptized this Saturday!!! Please keep him in your prayers! I am so happy for him and this decision he has made that will bless his life for eternity! 

Sarah thank you for your letter this week! It was great to hear from you! Also I got a few Christmas cards this week from dear friends thank you!  Mom it was nice to talk to you for a couple of minutes the other day! I think it will be okay that I will call on Dec 30th so that I can talk to EVERYONE!  I hope you are all happy and safe. 

I love you all so very much!!! MERRY CHRISTMAS! Mosiah 3:5-8. 

Love Sister Turner 
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Happy December

12/4/2012

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Hello beautiful family and friends!

How are you all this beautiful day? I love being a missionary and everyday is wonderful :)

OH first and foremost you have to tell Raven CONGRATULATIONS! For me and that her darling daughter is soooooooooooooooooooooo beautiful and that I'm so happy her for and Keenan!  Anyway I love the picture and I love her name Kaydence, so beautiful! 

OHHHHHHHHHH I have news!!! So you know how the change in missionary age reduced the MTC times, well if you didn't hear about it they've changed the MTC time to 2 weeks instead of 3 so that means that everyone's release dates have been changed. So I'm not longer getting released on the 19th of June, it will most likely be the 12th June. I will let you know next week but I wanted to give you a heads up so you can change your vacation dates at work. So guess what that means... We will be together for my birthday! 

Sarah and Mom and anyone else who was involved with the Christmas parcel THANK YOU SO MUCH!! Sister Hinton and I are soooooooooooooo excited to go to the Garden restaurant! We are going to go on Thursday so we can open up number 3 as soon as possible! I loved the name of the advent too "Santa Baby I only want to make you happy" I explained where the name came from to Sister Hinton and she thought that was so cute! I love Matthias, I love all my wonderful nieces and nephews you are all so amazing! I love all my family! I will let you know what else I've opened next week :)

This has been a great week! We got to go the First Presidency Christmas devotional on Sunday! It was so amazing. Did you all get to watch it? I loved Dieter F Uchtdorfs talk about not just being a good giver but also about being a good receiver. It was great to hear and I think much needed for the world today. I also really liked what President Monson said about giving service and that's the gift we remember. What did you like about it? Did you find me in the crowd of 21,000 people? :) 

Our investigators are doing so great! We have been busy finding new investigators this week which has been good. Sister Hinton works hard and I love it because it really helps us fulfill our purpose as missionaries every minute of the day. We have been setting a lot of goals together and we know that Heavenly Father will help us achieve our worthy goals when we rely on him for help. Enoch is doing so great and will be getting baptized on the 15th of December! I wish you were a little closer to Vancouver and then you could go and support him! Sister Hinton and I wish we could go but we know he will have a great support there because the YSA there are awesome! Monica continues to do well and is excited for her baptismal date in January! We have been teaching a really nice woman from New York who we met at the Beehive house and that is going well. Also tonight we have a first teaching appointment from a member referral that Sister Hinton called, he is interested in different religions so we will call and teach him the restoration and help him see how the gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored to the earth. I'm excited I love teaching!

Sarah HAPPY (early) BIRTHDAY!!!!! What are you going to do for your birthday? 

Dad thanks for the email! It's interesting that you've been teaching about the fall of the Jaredites and the pride they had because just this morning Sister Hinton and I were discussing pride and how that was what got a hold of the Nephites in 4th Nephi. Also yesterday I was reading in Mosiah 26 about how many of the people that had heard the words of King Benjamin in their youth had fallen away because they "did not believe the tradition of their fathers" and I was thinking about that and relating in to missionary work and how sometimes people don't believe because they haven't tried to gain the personal witness for themselves because they rely more on the things of the world than the things of God. What I really liked was how Alma responded to these people. He wanted to help them but he didn't know what to do, it says in verse 13-15 of chapter 26 that he poured out his WHOLE soul unto God and then God was able to help him know what to do to help these people. Alma was so humble and so willing to be taught by God. Sometimes I expect immediate results and answers to prayers but I need to be more like Alma and take the time to pour out my whole soul unto God and then he will lead me to what I need to do to help others. Anyway thank you for sharing with me what you were learning and teaching, that is a little but about what I've been studying lately.

Mom I loved getting your emails too and I hope I was able to answer your questions in this email :) And I'm so glad you are enjoying your calling. I hope for a chance to work with the youth soon after my mission. I've been able to teach a lot of youth on my mission and it's so great. I love you so much! And once again I'm really excited about my Christmas advent adventure! 

I LOVE YOU ALL! And I just want you to know that I LOVE being a missionary there has been nothing else that has brought me so much peace and happiness! The work of the Lord truly is a great work.
Love Sister Turner
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