Service and Sunshine

HELLO MOM :)

Did y'all happen to record Jared and Addey singing? Because that is something I would LOOVE to see! How did Bobby's braids turn out? Props to them for the long uphill trek! Is it a real pioneer trail? Don't they do those in Utah? I quite liked how flat ours was and muddy, that was fun too! 

Summer in Utah sounds quite convenient considering it's what we would be doing anyway, without the long driving or sleeping on the floor!

Crystal is doing awesome! She hasn't smoked once or drank coffee at all since we taught her about the Word of Wisdom! She is on a roll! ALSO we have had a couple Book of Mormon reads over the phone since she has been gone and she told us in our last call that she is working on her language WHICH we never even talked about at all. She is just killing it. Thanks for the prayers! No doubt she has gotten to where she is because of them!

You asked about service and it was QUITE the week for service! So many opportunities!

We met this lady named Erin on the street and she is working on covering the front of her church with butcher paper and coloring it to look like Mt. Everest for a courage themed VBS. It's a HUGE project that she took on alone so she let us come over and help for a couple hours a couple times this week. SO fun! We had some great conversations. Though she is thoroughly catholic and wasn't to interested in OUR message, I learned a lot about Catholicism. So that was cool, especially since Cameron had had some questions about the role of the Pope and how it was different from the role of the Prophet. Obviously there are some fundamental differences. but I didn't actually know what the Pope does do. So I got to learn from Erin and answer Cameron's questions tonight!

Also an awesome family in our ward moved out this week and we told them if they needed any help to let us know, so Saturday morning the lady texted us and said there were a couple things that were left uncleaned, just sweeping and vacuuming and wiping windows and such. So we got to go do that and it turned out they had a blueberry bush with like a thousand delicious blueberry's on them. So of course we picked them all and washed them and then sat on the floor of a completely empty house and ate them all by the handful. It was a delightful moment in my life. how many times to you just get to eat a handful of blueberries? They cost like 5$ a berry!

Also another service we did was stacking firewood for Sarah, our investigator they have an entire barn literally full of it! It was a work out for my little arms! We had an awesome lesson with her at a members house. The spirit was so strong the whole time! We read The Family: A Proclamation to the World together and she had some questions about temples and ordinances when we got to that part. So we went more into detail about what the temple is and what it is used for and she was SUPER interested and excited to learn more! I have noticed that baptism for the dead makes sense to everybody! For good reason! Really everything in the gospel makes complete sense, but baptism for the dead is something people can really wrap their heads around right off the bat!

LOVE you so much! Thanks for the great letter:)

Sister Erin Orr




Hey Dad --

I am so excited to go tubing! Me and Sister Jeffery were trying to think of something fun to do today and everything we thought of was either out of our area or involves wearing a swimsuit. haha! We might go bowling next week if we are together!  Transfers are next Tuesday the 7th. May the odds be ever in our favor!

I told mom about a family that moved out this week and forgot to mention they gave us all the food from their freezer! it was sweet. Plus earlier in the day our district leader told us he was completely out of food and so he might fast for the next couple weeks. ;)  We told him we could scrounge up stuff from our apartment for him and then we got the text from the Rushton's that we could have all their food! So we ended up bringing the elders a big ol rubbermaid bin piled high with good stuff! I felt so happy for days about that! Service really is the perfect way the to reach a state of joy rather than doing something that will just bring us fleeting happiness.

I don't know if I mentioned this before but one of our investigators, Michel, really loves peoples individuality and finds it hard to believe that it can stay intact if everyone is supposed to live by the same beliefs and standards. SO we thought Meet the Mormons would be a great thing to watch with her! We told our ward mission leader and he organized a big outdoor screening in one member's giant backyard! We are encouraging all members of the ward to bring their nonmember friends. I hope a lot of people take advantage of such a fun way to be a missionary!

This week, while reading in the Book of Mormon  Alma 33: 19- 22 and 37: 44-47 super stood out to me! Alma made some awesome connections that were probably apparent to everyone else but that I had never considered. And I loved it! Tell me what you think!

Love ya so MUCH!

Sister Erin Orr

7 months in!!! The teaching and the food :)

Erin and Sister Jeffery and a friend

Happy Father's Day Dad!!

(These letters crack us up because Erin talks so much about the food!)

Good MOOOOrning Mom!

Your week sounds so fun! 

Bummer that Bob is having hip and knee pain! I had some hip pain my first transfer and that gave me quite an anxiety attack cause I immediately thought the worst, that they would have to send me home. and it was so lame cause if I went home early I would hope it would be for a better excuse than my stupid HIPS again! Anyways, yes, I had quite the freak out. haha. It only lasted for a week or two though and I've been fine since! Maybe its cause I've been stretching more!

You asked about Cameron! His baptism has to be pushed back since he has to attend 3 sacrament meetings before he is baptized and he has only been able to make it to Young Men's the last couple of weeks. So we are still working out the details on that situation. His mom, April, grew up in Utah and realizes what a commitment it is to be a member of Christ's church. SO the Young Men's president went over last night and had a really good conversation with her about the Young Men's program and about his conversion and such. His name is Brother Brady and he converted when he was 15 too! His parents never converted and he has an awesome conversion story that I think is really unique to Cameron's needs and really helped April with her concerns. His insight into their situation is so unique and awesome and he just recently became the Young Men's President because the old one got a job and moved away, so that is just a testimony to me that Heavenly Father has been preparing the way for Cameron for quite the while now! Its so sweet to be a part of it all!

Guess what! I had another food miracle this week! My Heavenly Father knows me cause he knows I love to eat so I'm pretty sure thats why all my miracles involve me getting food. So like 3 perfect things happened in 1 day! On Friday I wanted a southwest salad super bad but I didn't have the stuff so I just made a different salad. Then the next day for dinner we went over to eat dinner with a young couple and they gave us big ol southwest (delicious) salads for dinner! So perfect, and then we were talking about cake and I told them about the chocolate cake that you make with peanut butter frosting and then RIGHT after we left there we stopped at a potential investigators house to see if she had looked at beta.mormon.org yet. And guess what she gave us! Chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting! It was so good! Also earlier that same day we were doing service for this lady in our ward and she remembered us telling her that we went through celery like crazy, so she brought us out a few bunches! And we were out! It was just a great day for food! :)

Have i told you this, by the way? I eat a crazy amount of celery nowadays! With cashew butter and raisins!

I totally don't remember who all I've told you about, but Shayla and Crystal are both on date for July 18! Woot woot! Pray for Crystal! She is going to be working at some state fair in Tacoma for the next couple weeks and she is trying to quit smoking. Everyone smokes there I guess and it will be a real trial of her faith. She can totally do it and she knows it but she is going to need an extra dose of strength from the Lord!

Hopefully Lexi will soon join her sister and commit to be baptized on July 18. She just wasn't in our lesson with Shayla when that happened!

LOVE you so much! Thanks for the great letters!


HELLLOOOO Dad!

Happy Fathers Day yesterday!

Did ya get my video? I'm glad yall are pushing it back a week though cause my letter isn't actually completed yet so I will finish and send it today!

This week i ate salmon 3 times! And I didn't even puke. :)  The second day it was actually super delicious! We had lox and bagels. Have you had this? SO GOOD! It was a bagel with plain cream cheese and smoked salmon and sweet white onions and tomatoes and capers and salt and pepper. And i just loved it!

Also at that same dinner appointment, while we waited for someone to get home so we could eat, me and Sister Jeffery checked out a trail behind the house that led to a lake. BUT we got stung by stinging nettle which is a VERY stingy plant and we got lost for a while. Also there are apparently bears and homeless people back there, so I'm not gonna check that out again I don't think!

We are going to try to hike Rainier soon though cause a lot of it is in my area! So that's exciting!

Thanks for the talk. I'm excited to read it!

45 people asked me if I got to skype you yesterday. I think the church is going to have to change some things!

Welp I've got to run! BUT I LOOVVEE YOU!

Have a great/quality week!

<3 sister Erin Orr

Sunshine in the Pacific Northwest

Hey Mamma!

Nope, no girls camp yet, (for the teenage girls she's teaching) they go towards the end of July!

This week we had a zone training on the Sabbath Day and making sure our investigators know why church attendance is so important and getting them there! So we set a zone goal of 59 investigators to come to Sacrament Meeting this week. We had said we our portion would be 6 which is a big number but we honestly thought we could get it! We worked so dang hard to reach that goal this week, let me tell you! Cameron and Crystal were a given and every single lesson and contact with people this week we stressed how important it would be for them to come to church. And NO ONE CAME. Cameron came to Young Men's which was super awesome and he had a great time and President Eaton was there and taught all the youth! But Crystal bailed at the last minute and no one who had committed to come to church came. So we were bummed about that.

SO I/we decided to go see Robert James White (my life guru) about why he didn't come cause I had full on bore my soul to him the day before and he said he would come and he DIDN'T. So we went to see what was up and he said he had been up all night working and he had to sleep...blah..blah. BUT he said he had taken 20 minutes and looked at the restoration pamphlet again and it FINALLY sunk in to him what the significance of a RESTORATION of the gospel actually was. So that made me super happy and I'm excited to talk to him more about that!

BY THE WAY. Back to Cameron. He is on date to be baptized on the 27th! Woot Woot! Right after church last Sunday he went and got a haircut and got all cleaned up and told us that he had made it a goal to come to church every Sunday. He will probably be the prophet someday. :)

Yesterday's dinner appointment was fun! The people that we ate with had just had some bad smoke damage in their house so they had been preoccupied and a lot and dishes had piled up and things like that. Also there was a fireside for the youth last night that the mom had to bake a ton of cookies for. So we just ate super quick and then got to make a bunch of super delicious chocolate chip cookies and do a big stack of dishes for them while the mom got ready. It was a quality experience! I wish every Sunday was like that!

Welp, I LOOVE you! Watch out for Joey's nosebleeds. They sound dangerous!! Haha!  (funny story from her cousin, Joey)


LOVE, Erin


Hello Dad!

I will find out what my address is and send it to you for sure! (So, we can find where she lives on google maps) It's just an apartment, so not quite as fun as the lake house. But right next to the complex there is Lake Wilderness and there is a trail system around the lake that we run on in the morning and an arboretum so that's fun and pretty!

I love what you said about the amount of our resurrected glory being ACCORDING to our personal righteousness. In the bible, like the only place it mentions celestial glory is in 1 Corinthians 15: 40, and its not talking about the kingdom, but our physical bodies! Also I totally believe that we see the effects of that here on earth and that all commandments, especially like the Word of Wisdom and Law of Chastity, cause those are so directly related, help us to keep the light of Christ within us and to have as glorified bodies as we can in this mortal state! Keep the commandments. Fact.

I got to be in a parade this week! It was so fun! 'Maple Valley Days' came to town this week, which is a carnival/people selling stuff from booths/the whole town was there/it was insane. AND there was a parade Saturday morning that the office elders got us a spot in. So we taped a bunch of candy and such to mormon.org cards and family history cards and pictures of Jesus and Article of Faith cards and honestly just everything we had. And we had a biggish banner that said "beta.mormon.org" and some other stuff that I don't remember. A couple of elders held the banner and most of our zone was there! Some just walked and waved and some of us handed out candy and cards to EVERYONE. We gave out SO many things. It was so FUN! We found out the day before that we had to do an exchange and that Sister Jeffery wasn't going to be able to go to the parade and she was so sad and dramatic and then she just looked up at me and said "it will be fun for you" just trying to be positive. I was bummed she couldn't be with me! But my Sister Training Leader, Sister Webb came and she is super fun and we got along swimmingly. The rest of the day was kind of a dud cause no one was home cause everyone was at stinkin Maple Valley Days! Haha

Have a QUALITY week!

LOOVE,

Erin

A Dang Good Week!

Hey Mom!

This week has been so dang good! SO GOOD! 

At FHE last week with the YSAs we stayed for a bit after our lesson and played Heads Up. UPDATE: I still love that game!!

Also we had the best EVER lesson with Shayla and Lexi this week. We had a lesson all planned out, BUT, when the girls showed up Lexi told us that she had just re-read the Gospel of Jesus Christ pamphlet, so we went with that and reviewed it and the girls understood super well. Our lesson originally had been about our desires and we were gonna have the girls write out what they want most on pieces of paper. We decided to still do that part and took just like 5 minutes to think and write. They told us that they wanted to share and they both had written about how what they wanted most was to be baptized, and pray more often, and feel close to God, and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. It was so awesome! So we formally invited them to be baptized and they accepted! We just have to get them to church now! :)

Our YSA investigator, Crystal, is so excited about the Gospel. We invited her to church at our last lesson and she was like "Yes! I'm going! and I'm not going to let anything get in the way!" She was like super stoked! And so she did come yesterday and there were a couple girls who had just gotten off their missions there that knew that she needed a friend so they totally took her under their wing. She had such a great time! And she's going to FHE tonight!

Also Cameron came to church! We had two investigators at church yesterday! We have had such a hard time getting people to come so I was on cloud-stinkin-9 to have 2 people there! 

Cameron is the coolest ever. we introduced the Book of Mormon to him on Tuesday and when we saw him again on Friday he had already read 10 chapters. He was confused cause I guess the word smite means "kill" in other contexts, so he wondered how Nephi's brothers kept smiting him and he just kept showing back up. Haha. I love questions that are that easy to clarify! And he totally had his mom bring him to church and he stayed the whole time and connected with the teachers really well! Pray for him!

I'm so glad you loved Florida! The pics look so fun! The Denver airport has that little subway thing that takes you to your gate and it confuses the heck out of me! I'll pray for the girls! (referring to Aubri and Addey travelling alone on Wednesday and needing to change planes in Denver)

Love you!

Sister Orr!


Dad,

We didn't get to shop with Lauren this week cause she stood us up. Bummer! BUT we will continue to knock on her door at least once every Wednesday until she specifically tells us not to:)

This week we had a tri-companion for one day.  Her name is Hermana Leach and her companion had to go to a leadership training for several hours this week, so we got to take Hermana Leach with us. She is a fairly new missionary and having sort of a hard time so me and Sister Jeffery made it our goal to make her feel included and loved and comfortable during our time together and it turns out she is SUPER smart at taught us a whole lot. And she was craving Arby's so we totally went and guess what? The nearest Arby's turned out to be RIGHT next to Legendary Donuts!! Have I told you about this place? I should have, cause I love it! They have the actual best donuts of all time! AND June 5 HAPPENED to be National Donut Day! So me and Sister Jeffery split a donut cause they are giant and Hermana Leach got her Arby's and we were all happy as clams. 

Good day all in alll!

Welp! Have a good one!

Erin

Goodness from Sister Orr :)

Mom,

I heard the best expression of my life this week!  We were teaching my two favorite kids ever, Mason and Gavin. They are 12 and 14 and mason was saying that something was boring, but instead of saying "boring" he said "that is so a 40 year old Austrian man in a business suit drinking champagne." haha I just started busting up laughing so hard. I couldn't stop, as happens occasionally. They are so darn funny. Also they have a memory foam mattress in the middle of their living room. so we did our lesson sitting on that. And they are SO receptive so the spirit was strong and they are so cool and it was one of my favorite lessons ever!

That rain in Houston had to have worn away SO MUCH dirt. (she's referring to the news story that I shared with her about he coffin being washed from a Houston cemetery and ending up in the middle of a running path)  That's kind of crazy. and funny. I kind of love that story. People hear are thoroughly up to date on the weather down there. I've had 110 conversations that go "Where are you from?" "Texas." Then they freak out like "Have you heard about the floods???" and "Is your family ok???" and I just say "Yep" and that's the end.

We found a 15 year old kid while we were tracting last week and he set up a lesson with us but seemed like he just did so we would go away and didn't seem very interested at all BUT when we showed up for our appointment he was totally ready to hear us and understood the need for the restoration so well and he had been talking to his Mormon friends at school about meeting with us. His name is Cameron and he is the bomb. I am so excited to teach that kid again!

Also yesterday we had dinner with this family who eat a strictly plant based diet, and make SUPER good food. They made an avocado pie that tasted JUST like a key lime pie, but better, cause I dont actually like key lime pie, but I loved this thing! She is going to email me the recipe and its 100% good for you! She is super into "forks over knives". Have you read this? I want to when I get home!

I'm glad you survived your plane ride! Has your fear gotten worse? Cause I swear I've flown with you before and things were not so intense! Have a fun vacation! and I'm jealous of your bikes!


LOVE you!

Sister Erin Orr


Hey dad! 

I'm glad y'all made it to Florida safe!

Such good news! We had another food miracle! We work at the food bank for a few hours on Fridays, and this week they had a bunch of 1-serving salads that were expired by a few days so they had to throw them away even though they were actually perfectly good, so me and sister jeffery took them home and we got to eat a HUGE salad every day this week and they were so good!

My weekly goal every week is to get 20 lessons in and we got 21 this week! WooHoo! I'm so happy about it! The work is real! This is the 2nd time I've hit my goal. I know its a good goal because its attainable but I have to work HARD to make it!

One day this week a bunch of our plans were falling through so we were just looking for people to talk to and we ended up teaching lessons on the spot to 3 new people. 3 new inestigators totally unplanned in one day! The lord needs us when he needs us! Even if we had planned for a full day!

Have fun in Florida!