Abby's Mission to Orem

From Dad - Spiritual Muscle Dear Abby, How I love you and miss you at the same time as I'm so proud of you and excited for the challenges and hardships you will have that will help you to grow and progress. This week-end we enjoyed the opportunity to attend Stake Conference with Elder Dushko visiting. You may remember him as his talk in the April General Conference caused us to look at each other in wonder and we agreed that his talk was an answer to the questions and prayer's we had been discussing that week before General Conference. He opened with this statement: " My message is for those who worry about their testimony because they haven’t had overwhelming spiritual experiences. I pray that I can provide some peace and assurance . " He was amazing to listen to and to interact with. We were blessed to be able to have supper with him and other bishops and branch presidents between the leadership and adult sessions last night. He shared some fun stories from Church H...

From Abby - Humility Manifest in Bike Helmets Heyyy  FIRST PDAY IN THE FIELD  This week has been absolutely insane and I'm typing my email from my phone so this is going to be interesting  Tuesday, we packed all morning went to HALF of our morning class and then The district followed us to the travel lobby Where we hugged lovingly all the sisters and shook firmly the hands of the Elders. District 25-C was so good I'm SO SAD. (that sounds sarcastic but I'm sad) Next thing. I know it PRESIDENT BROWN himself walks in with all of his APs (assistant to presidnt) looking all cool with their sunglasses. They nabbed our passports and luggage and we were off to the mission office  Tuesday evening we went on a tour to two different temples (Lindon and Orem)  and visited with our travel group and the sisters were told we will be helping with the Lindon temple Openhouse?! SO exciting.   (the only one I'm seeing again out of my travel group is the elder in my distr...

From Abby - Do you have your room key ... ? Hello all!! The current item of worry on my mind is the fact that today is the LAST day at the MTC. Well, the last full day. Tomorrow Sister Christiansen and I board a shuttle and probably drive for less than an hour :D HOW to break don this week, I have my very filled journal in front of me trying to pick and pull the best moments for all of you, and of course future me.  A COUPLE STORIES ABOUT SISTER HENRIE (Love you Sister Henrie) At one point last week Sister Gilbert reappeared in the group after being gone for like 20 minutes and we were like "Where did you go?" and she was like "I needed a pencil!" and we were like "You could have told us we all have pencils, why didn't you tell anybody?" her response? "I told Sister Henrie!" Sister Henrie *Smiles quietly* DIDN'T TELL ANYONE  The day after last Pday I had been complaining the whole two days about not having an SD card reader to get all my ...

  Dearest Abby, I’m so excited to hear about your first week in the MTC.  Mom and I are loving cruising with Liz and Jeff, Grandma and Susan. The crew and tour leaders take good care of us and the only reason I haven’t gained a bunch of extra pounds is thanks to the excursions to places like Santorini, Mykonos, Turkey/Ephesus etc.  which involve usually quite a bit of walking. Grandma Smith is holding up well.  We also enjoy a lot of the shows and activities on the ship.  This also included something called an iFly, which is essentially a massive fan in a tube that will blow hard enough to let you fly in the wind. We did the one minute trial version and it was a lot of fun. We all did it except for Grandma but she probably could have signed the waiver and done it anyways. Mom looked totally normal but my cheeks were up by my ears. Time for some face tightening exercises.  I also tried the surfing and immediately hit the deck.      One of the ...