One Year In!!! And Happier Than Ever! :)

Hey dad! It as indeed been quite the year. I can NOT believe its been a whole year! Mission time is crazy. It's definitely true that days feel like a week. And weeks feel like a day. And I might add that apparently a year feels like 6 seconds.

At the mission devotional last night president eaton said something way cool that everyone needs to hear. I think a lot of people nowadays tailor Christ's teachings to however they want to live. Instead of tailoring themselves to fit Christ's teachings. President said it's like creating your own diet. No matter how much you want or say that brownies will make you lose weight, the fact is that they don't and that veggies and exercise are the way. Christ told us the way to live with our Father in Heaven and with our families perfectly happy forever. He provided the way. It's our job to follow him, not to change His way. In fact we cant. So don't try. Just submit to God's will and you will get where you want to be:)

I love that! Have a greaaat week! 

Love Sister Erin Orr

MOM:)

I love this new ward and companion! I am seriously stoked about these current circumstances! You wouldn't believe how perfect this all is! Sister Westover is bomb! She is from Midvale, Utah and we are just very similar and get along well. It's nice to have someone so like me. We have a lot of fun! The ward is cool! I have met some awesome people. I LOVE the Lopez's. They are seriously so funny and sarcastic and I just want to be best friends with them. (this is a family that Jared met on his mission and he's really close with them)

Also we are teaching an incredible lady named Libby. She is getting baptized on the 28th! She has NO religious background so she is just a sponge. But, she has always done a lot of meditating in the past and I think that has helped her become in tune with the spirit! She recognizes the feelings of the spirit so quickly and just knows and loves this gospel already! She gets so excited about new truths and things becoming clear to her. It is such a privilege to be a part in helping her get ready for baptism! We just talked about temples and family history. There is a family history discovery center at the church right behind the Seattle temple and president just told us we can now take investigators with a baptismal date there! So we are all going this week! I'm crazy excited! And we get to take Libby to walk on the temple grounds. She's gonna love it!

It has been downPOURING this week!!  So much rain! And because of that no one is outside, so we get to do a lot of tracting. Whoo! I don't even do my hair in the morning because its just going to be soaked all day anyways. Or makeup. One day we went tracting and it was raining so hard and no one was listening and it was so tempting to cut our finding hour a little bit short BUT we did not and at the very end as we were finding our way back to the car we met a girl named Jalleyah who is the bomb and is looking for the true church and wants us to introduce our message to her sister as well. Blessings!

The craziest thing happened Saturday night. So we were sleeping and we started hearing this banging sound and Sister Westover thought it was some one hammering upstairs but I thought it sounded like someone knocking on our bedroom door. It was 3:00 am. and it was loud and scary!  And it happened all night! We didn't sleep and we were scared as heck! I thought if I opened the door I would no doubt get stabbed. Well, a member of our ward is the apartment manager so we asked her if she knew anything about the banging. and she said that the lady who lives above us got locked out on her balcony at 10 pm and was stuck out there in the freezing rain until 6 am she was trying to get peoples attention all night! We felt SO bad! We brought the poor lady some brownies when we got home from church!

We stopped at a senior living center and visited a member lady who said that in our letters home this week we should mention that we visited the "crazy house". Haha, she is a hoot! She gave us the full tour and introduced us to almost every single person there.

It snowed for like 8 seconds so that was new. Everyone freaked out.

There is seriously a lake in front of our apartment complex that wasn't there before the rain came. It's left us about 6 inches of dry path so we can still get to our apartment, but it wont be long before we have to break out some kayaks or something to get home.

The only really progressing investigators we have are Libby and another named Corrina who is amazing. She just wants to get baptized so bad! Which is way exciting!  But other than them we don't have a super solid teaching pool so we will be building that up!

I'm excited for your package to come! Hopefully I will get it tomorrow! The nice thing about my last area was that the mission office was like 4 inches away from my house. So Sister Young would call me as soon as a package arrived to come pick it up. But now I have to wait till district meetings again. I guess thats a first world problem. There's a girl serving here from Papua New Guinea and it takes a YEAR to get a letter from home. So I guess I can't complain. :) 

I LOVE you. Hope the primary program goes swell. You should have emily critique for some quality constructive feedback. Primary programs are her specialty! :)

Have an amazing week! 

LOVE sister Erin Orr

Goodbye Maple Valley, Hello Federal Way

Hey!

So I was indeed right! I am being transferred to Federal Way:) My companion will be Sister Westover. Who I know I know but I'm not 100% sure who she is right now! Hah! I'm super sad to leave Maple Valley! I love this place! But I am also excited for the change! This will be one of the few times of my mission thus far that I will be in only one ward and not in YSA. So that will be new.

Hermana Peacock flew home yesterday so her companion is hanging out with us till transfers. Did I mention she sent me a pic of you and Sister Hotter last week? hah! That was fun! So you should be looking out for her! Anyways while her companion, Hermana Jorgenson was at our house this morning and she took a FALL on the indo board! So we were on the floor die-laughing for quite a while. It was SO funny! 

It's getting crazy dark now so we can't really just stop in places at like 8pm cause people don't like that. So when we don't have somewhere to go we have been calling the contacts in the phone who we don't know. And we found some BOMB potentials! People totally interested in learning! We need to expand our teaching pool and this was a great week for that!

Andrew brought his mom to church this week. She is not super interested but she likes the church and is grateful that Andrew chose a good one! :)

We were about to give up on Maggie cause she never answers her phone and she is never home and such. BUT we had some extra time while we were down in Auburn so we decided to give it one last shot and she was home! And told us she still wants to learn! Yay! She is way cool and I think she will let the gospel change her! I'm so excited to hear about that!

Daniel cam to a baptism with us this week. He LOVED it. My favorite part was watching him at the end walk up to the person who had been baptized and ask him how it felt and how he feels now. It showed his sincerity. I was grateful for that moment. It helped me see Daniel though Heavenly Father's eyes a little better. He loves to talk and tells a lot of stories and has a lot of obscure ideas, so it can be frustrating to teach him sometimes. But that was a simple moment that showed that he is growing in his understanding and faith.

One funny thing this week was some members took us to Panera and it was way good! But there is a sign on the table that says you can literally just sit down, get on the Panera website on your phone, order what you want, and people will bring it to your table. What the even heck! How much less human interaction can you get? People are crazy.

I LOVE ya!

Sister Erin Orr

Miracles and Baptisms!!

Hey MOM:)

Kaylynn is still on date for Saturday! For a couple days she wasn't responding to us which was kind of scary considering she was supposed to be baptized in August and then right before that, she freaked out and went AWOL and that is what leads to her now being baptized in October. Anyways so we have been trying to have some kind of contact with her everyday to avoid that kind of thing happening again. So we were scared after not hearing back from her for a few days. Apparently her phone wasn't letting her answer calls and such. We got back in touch last night so that was an answer to many peoples prayers! She is being interviewed by our district leader tonight! Yay!

I found out an incredible thing this week. You can make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies with only: a can of pumpkin, boxed spice cake mix, and chocolate chips. so that changes the world. I tried them. They are almost just as delicious as the other ones we make. 

Some more miracles are happening! Heavenly Father is DROPPING prepared people into our laps!! One kid named G. texted us and told us that he is not active but he wants to stop smoking weed everyday and get on a mission! We have been in constant contact with him since! He has seriously one of the strongest testimonies I have ever seen! You can feel it so strongly around him. He got a blessing yesterday to help him quit smoking! He has smoked weed pretty much all day everyday since he was 14! And now he is 24. He hates how much it controls him and is excited to be free. He has relied so much on the Lord to get him where he is now and I am so excited for him to be a missionary!

He also had a guy call us and ask if he could come to church! I guess he works at Walmart and met a swarm of Elders on a p-day and thought he would check church out. Way cool! We met with him the night before and he came to church for the first 2 meetings!. We think he is developmentally delayed. Bishop said by watching him, he looks to mentally be about 12. I haven't really had experience teaching people like that, I don't really know what differences it will make at all in teaching. So if you have any tips, I would highly appreciate it. 

Leslie came to church again and so did Daniel! They both like it a lot and people are so great and welcoming!

So fun you got to talk to Chrissy!  Did I tell you my korean companion, Sister Lee's best friend from back home, trained Kenzie. I may have said that in a confusing way. So sorry! But I thought that was way cool!

Have you heard of Jamberry? It's a Mary Kay type of thing but for nail polish sticker things. Anyways we went to an old lady, Betty Jane's house to help her set up to have a "party" for one of her friends who is selling them. No one was arriving except the lady doing the selling, so we stayed for a little while. And eventually one other old lady showed up. And we asked her if she was going to get her nails done. And she said "No. I don't do my nails, I'm just here to support Betty." hah. Betty Jane didn't want to get her nails done either. So I think that party was a bust. It was kind of funny.

Mom, Maple Valley goes so hard for Halloween! Decorations are insane!  I have never seen them like this. One guys yard looks like full on Disneyland!  I will send pictures!

I'm glad your color flow class went good! I never actually tried that! You should teach it again when I'm home!

Please tell Addey and Bob to write or email me.  I haven't heard from them in forever!

lOvE yOu So MuCh!

Sister Erin Orr

A Week of Miracles

Hey Mamma Dear! 

Mom! This has been a week of miracles! I don't know if i told you about Kaylynn but she has been taught in a family ward in Auburn for a couple years and is ready to be baptized! AND we had a handoff lesson with the sisters in her ward so we get to teach her so she can be baptized in the YSA ward!  Sister Lee (my favorite Korean companion) was her missionary before so we got to teach together again! It was awesome! She is getting baptized halloween morning:) and is so excited! She is planning on serving a mission! I feel so lucky that we get to teach her! She came to church with us on Sunday.

Also we were driving back to Maple Valley from Ravensdale and we saw this guy walking down the road. As we drove away I thought about talking to him. Then I saw Sister Stewart turn her head to look at him as well and that let me know she was thinking the same thing I was. God was telling us the same thing. So we did a U-turn and hopped out of our car. It was clearly a weird thing to park on the side of a foresty road to talk to someone so I said "sorry if this is creepy but we saw you walking and we have an awesome message to share with you!" and he said "you came at the perfect time! I just lost my job and I'm wondering what is going to happen, and I was thinking about seeking some godly help!" It was sweet! We walked and talked with him for a while. He has some strange ideas about things, but every time we have met with him he seems to have more of a clear understanding of what we are saying! He came to church too! The YSAs are awesome fellowshippers! AWESOME! Probably because the are recent RMs and know what investigators need. It's incredible to watch and I'm learning about what I can be when I'm home by watching their examples!

Also we had a lesson with Phil, which he ditched. He does that periodically but his phone doesn't work out in the boonies where he lives so he cant tell us when he has to leave. Whats the point of having a phone? I don't know. Anyways, the next day we came and he was trying to haul a bunch of pipe up onto his roof to solar heat his hot tub. Again, not to sure about his logic, but he has a spinal chord injury and was trying to climb a ladder holding a whole bunch of pipe. We showed up expecting to teach a lesson, but instead got to help him out and help him feel safe doing his work. Don't worry we did not get on the roof. He knew we were totally God sent and said a prayer of thanks at the end! I think his heart is softening!

ALSO I don't know if I have told you about Leslie.  She is pretty old. We were actually in Black Diamond when we found her a while back, looking for YSAs when we came across her boyfriend and started to talking to him. He is a less active member. He introduced us to Leslie who told us that she actually lives in our Rock Creek ward boundaries and has had a bunch of exposure to the church and is interested in taking the lessons! We ran into her again last week after losing touch for a bit and did some service for her. She and her boyfriend came to church on Sunday and yesterday we had our first lesson! It was at Mcdonald's. Haha.  She prayed to know if our message was true and committed to be baptized November 28th! She made sure to write down the date so she wouldn't forget. :)

Also we got to teach Alyssa again finally after a month! woot woot! And honestly so many more good things happened. It's been incredible! And we are not planning on letting the miracles stop!

Yes, I'm driving everywhere! Our area covers 2 stakes! No wrecks yet. Also we have these black boxes in our cars that yell at us if we speed. So that is helpful and annoying.

Crystal took her mom's advice and decided not to waste our time. Super sad! But we are grateful to get to spend more time on those who are willing to make changes.

My friend Natalie Peacock, who knows the Kotters goes home in 3 weeks. Sad for me! But she said she's coming to visit you:)

We just started ponderizing as a mission! Our scrip for this week is 2 Nephi 2:8

Welp only 5 days till we get to email again! LoVE YOU!

Sister Erin Orr

Work and Miracles

Hey Mom:)

Sorry for the late letter. (referring to the fact that her letter didn't come til way late in the day) El comp made me go to choir. 

I GOT your PACKAGE! Thanks so much for the scale money!!!! And the Sobes and Ensigns! I forgot to tell Sister Baxter that you sent me those.  She would think its so funny because I LOVE reading the Ensign! I read it all the time and they are all over my desk and bed. haha. Also the chocolate. I don't think I'm going to get to trick or treat so that will do nicely :) The cute senior couple who work in the mission office have been calling me whenever I get packages so I haven't even had to wait till Tuesdays. They just have me come pick the packages up or bring them to me at the end of the night. Perks of living 2 inches away from the mission office!

I actually do eat breakfast nowadays. (Just answering a question in my letter because she was not a fan of breakfast before the mission) Either a smoothie with coconut/almond milk, a banana, kale, and spinach. or an egg with lots of veggies (mushrooms, onion, zucchini, tomatoes,peppers) to drown out the egg :)

Oh, did I mention I'm driving now? .....  (haha, I'm sure she mentioned that because she doesn't have the most stellar driving record.  #moretimeonmykneesnow)

Next week Elder Lawrence is coming so for some reason that means p-day has to be on Wednesday. So this is your official heads up on that.

We had a day this week that was completely awesome and completely didn't go as planned. One principle I have for sure learned is that sometimes Heavenly Father leads us to where we need to be, not always for the reasons we think we need to be there. This was especially evident as every person on Tuesday we had planned to see, canceled or wasn't home or wasn't available. However each of those times time we found a new person to teach or found someone close by who we had been looking for! One example happened at the very end of the night when we had like 15 minutes before 9:00 so we thought we would drop by Pia and sing her a song. :) Before we get out of the car to teach or talk to someone, we always pray. So as we were sitting in the car around the corner from Pia, my companion was praying, and I noticed someone get out of his car (as you know, I have never been great at keeping my eyes closed during prayers) and I knew that we had come to talk to him. By the time Sister Stewart said Amen he was right about to walk inside. I quickly said Amen and jumped out and yelled "Hey!" down the street. haha. The good news is he stopped even though I was an apparent creep! We had an awesome conversation with him and he told us that he sometimes wondered if there was a "right" church and if so, which one? We bore testimony of the restoration of the gospel and set up an appointment for this week! His name is Edgar and is a YSA! Woot Woot!  I'm so excited to teach him!

I got a cold this week and was like, miserable all day. so that night I pretty much overdosed on vitamin C and took Nyquil and Vicks vapor rub and I woke up feeling pretty good! I destroyed that cold!

We taught Crystal again. I was thinking that I might have dropped her too hastily so since she is back from Tacoma, we met up with her and her mom. For some reason we had our lesson at Denny's again. So we drank hot chocolate while we discussed. Crystal's mom is less active and she is awesome! She bears testimony to Crystal that taking this seriously and becoming an active part of this church will change her life for the exponentially better. What I would LOVE for her to do is to become active and be a living witness of that truth! We will see how things go!

We do have seasons! (answering my question) It POURED here a couple days ago. Man it was insane. So there are beautiful red and purple and yellow and orange leaves all over the ground!

I LOVE you quite a bit!

Love, Sister Erin Orr


Hey Dad!

I got the scarf! I love it! It's so great and very very warm! Thanks so much!

Guess what I made this week? Fried green tomatoes. They were pretty good! Someone gave them to me and I thought, why not? Did I mention I made lemon meringue pie a few weeks ago? I'm just cooking everything!

Remember my investigator, Jack? He was awesome and then he fell off the planet for a few weeks. No replying to calls or texts. No one answered the door. Nothing. So right before General Conference, we threw out a text reminding him about conference and what a great opportunity it would be. THEN he FINALLY replied. and said thanks for the reminder and that he had been out of town. We stopped by on Monday night to see if he was home and he answered the door! We asked if he had gotten to see any of conference and he said he had seen ALL of it! We had a bomb lesson right then. T'was a miracle.

I'm so excited to hear Bob and Addey's duet! 

LOVE you so much!

Sister Orr

The work rolls on in Rock Creek

Hey mom!

I don't have much time to write cause I accidentally used up a ton of time watching the all the addiction recovery videos in mormonchannel. Those things are seriously good! 

So transfers are this week and I am staying in Rock Creek! woot woot! Sister Baxter, on the other hand, is being transferred :( I'm about to have my 6th companion in 5 transfers in the same area!  I think my new companion is Sister Stewart, who I'm pretty sure is Sister Frischknechts companion right now. So that will be fun. I don't really know her at all yet.

I LOVED the Women's General Meeting! I thought there was a big focus in understanding our divine nature! Other people I have talked to saw a different main theme which I think is so cool! The Spirit knows what we need to hear! And I am so excited for conference! Our bishop in the YSA ward does a watching conference/eating party at his house for the Sunday sessions so we are trying to get investigators to that!

I saw the lunar eclipse! I was hoping we were both looking at it at the same time! #othersideofheavenflashback

So we have been talking to this family we keep seeing outside and I just love them! I haven't really met the dad. but its a couple and a 14 year old boy, Kelly. and two girls: Tori, who is 10 and Emily who is 7. The girls love us so much! Kelly was teling me that he is trying to find a new scout troop, since he moved and I told him about ours for our ward and he said he would look into it... then at school he became friends with a kid in our ward who invited him to come! And he did and he loves it! He went on a bike ride/campout this past weekend. We heard from our inside sources that we was really quiet the first day but the next day he opened up a lot and had a lot of fun! We haven't taught the family yet but we are hoping with all of the friends and connections this family is making with our ward, their hearts will be soft when the invitation comes from a member to take the lessons:)

Also, super sad news. We were supposed to have a lesson with Cameron this week but apparently his families opposition towards him taking lessons and joining the church and stuff has become a lot more vocal, and he decided to stop taking the lessons. He was really frustrated about it and it made me so sad, but at the same time his frustration showed me where his heart is and that he has the desire to do what is right. He said he will keep reading from the Book of Mormon and reviewing the pamphlets. Luckily I had felt prompted to bring the book "Our Search for Happiness" by Elder Ballard. He said he would read that too.  So anyways that was not fun! He will be in my prayers for a while!

We met this guy named Brandon the other day who is married with two daughters. We kept setting appointments and then things fell through and that happened a few times until Sunday night we were finally able to meet with him and his daughters. We brought a BOMB member who lives down the street too. We taught him about the restoration and he received it SO well! He said the closing prayer and it was VERY sincere. He wants to do what God wants him to do and whats best for his family. Brother Dyal invited him and his family to come over for general conference Sunday morning:) That will be so great!

Love you so so much! 

Have a great week! 

LOVE Sister Erin Orr :)

Happy Fall!!

Erin and other sister missionaries at a zone meeting

P-Day hike - Dewey Lake

P-Day hike "look at the mountain, ignore my hair"

P-Day hike to Mt. Rainer

Hey Mamma! Happy Fall!

I LOVE those quotes! (referring to some awesome quotes that I sent her from church this weekend) At one point a few months ago I found myself taking offense to a bunch of things and not being able to just brush them off which I'm normally pretty good at! I found the talk "And Nothing Shall Offend Them" by Elder Bednar and he brought it back to the Book of Mormon in Alma 60 where Captain Moroni writes a pretty not nice letter to Pahoran. Like super mean, and Pahoran was doing the right thing. Moroni just was not informed about why he was doing what he was doing. So Pahoran could totally be justified in back-lashing, but being the spiritual giant that he is, responded with serious charity and love and even appreciation for Moroni and his comments. He chose to respond as Christ would. That's now one of my favorite stories in the Book of Mormon. It is a huge lesson to me in self discipline, also that we have been given the gift of agency - and it is a spectacular gift! NO ONE can make us act or say or respond anyway we don't choose. Sometimes we don't give ourselves enough credit. Fact.

We got to go hiking today! We did the Naches peak loop. It was beautiful! Seriously! I think I might start going every week. We had a member take us. Sister Kropelniki from the Cedar River Ward is a mountain woman for real! She has hiked to the top of Mt. Rainer like 3 times. I will send more pictures!

Chelsea texted and said the missionaries in Arizona found her! And she is all set to go to church and keep learning! So happy! Her town is called Globe, AZ. I think its pretty small.

I need to see a picture of this Van Halen cake. I assume it is still intact so you can send me a pic?

I still dont know the whole story with Ed. We got to talk to him for approx. 8 seconds and we tried to ask questions that seemed normal but also might reveal to us who this guy actually is. But we didn't learn much. The mystery continues!

Well I have to be fast so we can shop before the end of P-day!  

LOVE you so dang much! 

Love Sister Erin Orr