Sis. Young is Called to Serve in the MMM: August 31, 2015 “State Fair, Don’t cha know!!”

"State Fair!!"

Area: Anoka Minnesota

Companion: Sister Macey Jolley

Hometown: Alpine, Utah

Snail Mail:

Minnesota Minneapolis Mission

5931 West 96th Street

Bloomington, MN 55438-1715

Email: ashlee.young@myldsmail.net

Hey Ya'll!
So, today, we went to the famous Minnesota State Fair with Chad and Missy Fossum! The plan was to write in the car on the ride there and then back.

The State Fair was so much fun! I am literally drained though! There was everything and anything you could imagine fried on a stick. Not only that, whatever it was, the servings were H U MO N G O U S!!! There were so many people, rides, food, food and more food! Oh, did I mention there was food? Seriously, Minnesota has like a set space in St. Paul for the state fair. It's not like a park I have seen anywhere in Utah. It is “The Fairgrounds”! There were a lot of people. Many stared at us as usual. Some even asked if we were Mormon Missionaries! ha-ha! Got to love it! We were not the only fun thing to see at the fair. Would you believe me if I told you that there were “butter carvings?” Another cool thing was an animal birthing center! Anyways all in all it was a really good and fun day!

I love you all… sorry I didn't get to email any of you personally! (Shocker right?) With sharing the IPad, I hope you will enjoy some great excerpts from Sister Jolley on our week:

"Monday August 24: Pday. We went bowling with the Elders. Later we had a great lesson with Murial. She is the mother of a recent convert who is getting married in the Temple in January! Murial is hilarious, she is so great! She wants to start taking the discussions, and learn more about what her daughter really believes. We can totally see her getting baptized in the future. She has a lot of questions, and uncertainties about the church, but she is very open and doesn't judge.

Tuesday, August 25

We had District meeting. We received a great training from Elder Anderton about having faith while we find. He is a wonderful District Leader. After District meeting we went to go see Murial again. We got to meet her two daughters, which was great. We answered some more of her questions. Everything from tithing to temple marriage; she had a lot of questions. Luckily we were able to confidently answer all of them. We had dinner at the Taylor's, and Sister B (recent convert) came. After dinner we had a lesson with Gladys and Yammah! Holy Cow! This lesson was amazing. We brought a girl from our ward named Becca, who is 16. We decided to teach about the plan of salvation. We had already taught Yammah that, but where she is only 8 years old we decided to review. Gladys sat in the entire lesson. She received a couple of phone calls during our lesson, but she ignored them, or told them she would call them back. That has never happened before! Yammah was able to pay attention the whole lesson! Gladys not only answered questions, but asked them. At the end of the lesson we asked Gladys if she had any questions. She asked" Why does God let us struggle?" (Keep in mind that she had just lost her job, she is moving apartments, and she is a single mom, who is also trying to get her 3 other kids over from Africa still). The spirit got so strong. I started telling her how struggles help us to become more like our Heavenly father. Then I asked her why she thinks God is having her go through what she is, and she said, "To make me stronger." She started crying. People, SHE STARTED CRYING!!! We felt so much love for her. Then I testified that God is aware of her, and her family. That He is not letting her struggle without reason. I started holding back tears, Sister Young was crying, and so was Becca. I wish I could describe this lesson better. After a minute of silence, Sister Young invited Gladys to be baptized. She was very open to it, and so we committed her to praying about being baptized. Both she and Yammah together! I have never felt the Spirit as strongly as I did in this lesson. When I first met Gladys, when we first started teaching Yammah, Gladys would go into the other room, or play on her phone. Never did I think she would pay attention. It’s amazing to see God work on those we are teaching. After the lessons, we floated to our car, and couldn't stop smiling.

We had an appointment with the Ongoro's right after, so we took Becca with us and went over. We taught Cate more about the Book of Mormon. She is coming to church on Sept. 6th. She and her family are super busy right now, but in the next week her two boys will be in school, then life will calm down. It has been hard to set up solid appointments with them, but we are going to keep trying. Cate likes reading the Book of Mormon and is very interested. We haven't seen much of David. When we went over he was taking a test for school on the computer, but he is still doing great. They are a super cute family and we are excited to see them again!

Wednesday, August 26

On Wednesday we had service at ACBC. We were at the front desk, so we got the easy job! It is fun to sign everyone in because you get to meet everybody. After service we had a visit with Sister Roades. She had a great birthday this week, which included the chance to go shoot her new gun. Whatever makes her happy! She loves our visits, and we love seeing her! After Sister Roades, we had Bishops meeting and dinner with the Bishop. We walked into the door, and the Elders scared us again. Ha, ha, Sister Petersen was cracking up! I can't believe the Elders turned the Petersen’s against us. We had breakfast for dinner, which was delicious! We tracted, with not much success, but we both like tracting so it was at least a little fun! To finish off our night we had a great lesson with Mike. He is a Marine. He unfortunately got Staff infection, and is in recovery. We invited a girl in our ward, named Maddy. She is 17. We had a great lesson with him. We just started talking about the restoration, and gave him a recap of what we taught him the last time. Something cool was that he went camping with some of his friends, and they started talking about religion. So Mike brought up Mormonism. His friends were trying to tell him all of this made up, or just flat out incorrect stuff. But Mike stood up for the church, and corrected everything they were saying. That was cool, considering we have only had one lesson with him. Unfortunately he is moving to St. Paul on Saturday :( So we will have to give him over to those missionaries. He has some great potential! He is coming to church on Sunday, so that is exciting. When we told him how long church was he about died! He was like, "3 hours!!!" But he still wants to come!

Thursday, August 27

On Thursday we had another great lesson with Gladys and Yammah. A member of our ward named Tara came along. She just graduated from high school. We had a great lesson about baptism. Yammah really wants to get baptized. Gladys didn't pray about baptism because she said she has been super stressed out with everything going on. She told us she wants to pray about it when she can calm down! But she is still very open, and is taking the necessary steps to receive an answer to her prayers. We are super excited for them! We had dinner with the Christy family. They are a super cute old couple. They have their own garden, and they make great spaghetti. We saw Elvie, and had a great visit with her! She is going to feed us dinner next week, so we are excited. Herald (her nonmember husband) was actually super nice to us this visit!! To finish off our night we had a great lesson with Pat and Sister B. We talked to Pat about baptism, and what it means, and taught her about what covenants we make with God.

Friday, August 28

Friday we had a great lesson about the 10 commandments with Isabelle who is a 9 year old girl in

our ward who is getting baptized. The Elders have been working with her, and they invited us to go teaching with them. Her parents are both members, and they are super excited that she wants to be baptized and that she is taking it seriously. Our Sister Training Leader came to our area for the day. We had a great lesson with a new investigator named Helva. Sister Anderson came. Helva is great! We taught her the restoration. She told us that the day we came knocking on her door she was having a really awful day. She was just about at the end of her rope, when we came. She felt that God was telling her He was there and was aware of her! Super cool! We had dinner with Holly (investigator). We had stuffed eggplant, and beet soup. Super good, and no ghost pepper! Hooray! At the end of the night we saw Sister B, and had a great visit with her. The STL's stayed overnight. It was fun to have four sister missionaries in our small basement.

Saturday, August 29

Saturday was a day for the books! We were so busy! We started out our day by seeing Bette of

"Elders saving the mattress!!"

course. We love her so much! She loves our visits! I feel so loved when we go visit her. We then went to go help Gladys move. Which holy cow was a project? She didn't want to rent a truck, so we just stuffed everything in cars. Their apartment was a disaster. So dirty! I had no clue it was that messy. Luckily, the Elders were nice enough to also come help! She said they are going to try and keep their new apartment clean! Funniest moment of the move had to be when we were driving over to her new apartment, and one of her mattresses flew off of her friend’s car, and landed in the middle of the highway. The Elders ran out of their car, and carried it off the street; put it on top of their car, then drove to the new apartment with their hands out the window holding onto the mattress. It was hilarious! That night was Isabelle’s baptism. Pat and Gladys both came to see it! Woot Woot! It was awesome! Gladys liked it, and Pat thought it was so cool! We are so excited for our next lesson with Yammah and Gladys! After the baptism we had a great visit with Tina. She had the movie Battleship on the entire time, which made it hard to focus. We were good, and didn't look! Ha-ha. It was a fun night, and we were so happy about Pat and Gladys coming to the baptism. For the second time this week, we just floated home!

Sunday, August 30

Holly came to church! Gladys couldn't come because she was so wiped from moving, which was understandable but still a bummer. She sent us a really heart felt text though, saying how much we mean to her, and how grateful she is! Bonus points! We had dinner with the Moss family. Who love Ben and Jerry's…..so they bring out 7 pints of ice cream, and we got to pick whatever we wanted. They fed us steak. Holy cow, (no pun intended) we were full and happy! We took opportunities that night to find, and we met some great people. None with much potential, but we will find those people in our area that are. They can't hide for long.

Overall, we had a really successful week in the Anoka area!!!"